PTPOP - A Mind Revolution
PTPOP - A Mind Revolution-Leading you out of the rabbit hole one grain of truth at a time-A production of
Peter Tompkins Productions LLC & Skating Bear Studios
#ptpop #culture #personalgrowth
https://www.patreon.com/PTPOP
Welcome to PTPOP: A Mind Revolution, where the art of storytelling meets the quest for profound understanding. Hosted by the inquisitive and thought-provoking P.T. Pop, this podcast delves deep into the realms of psychology, philosophy, and the human experience. Each episode is an enlightening journey designed to challenge conventional thinking, inspire personal growth, and explore the intricacies of the mind.
PTPOP: A Mind Revolution is not just a podcast; it's a movement dedicated to unraveling the complexities of human consciousness and societal norms. With a blend of insightful interviews, compelling narratives, and introspective monologues, P.T. Pop guides listeners through a transformative experience that sparks curiosity and ignites a revolution of thought.
PTPOP - A Mind Revolution
Jeanne Marie Spicuzza: The Art of Fearless Filmmaking
I had to extreme pleasure to speak with Jeanne Marie Spicuzza an award-winning filmmaker. She shared her journey through the shark infested waters of independent cinema, creating emotionally powerful stories like The Scarapist and Night Rain that redefine what it means to be a female visionary in film. #JeanneMarieSpicuzza #IndependentFilm #WomenInFilm #TheScarapist #NightRain #IndieCinema #Filmmaking #TraumaHealing #ArtAsTherapy #PTPOP #seasonsandmusestudios Jeanne Marie Spicuzza's website: https://www.seasonsandamusestudios.com/
Hey there, everyone. Welcome back to PGPOP on a Mind Revolution, the show where we challenge and explore the deeper layers of art, truth and consciousness. Truth and consciousness. Today I have the absolute privilege of speaking with Jean Marie Spicuzza, a brilliant, fearless filmmaker, writer, actress and true visionary Hailing from Milwaukee, wisconsin. Jean Marie is the mind behind the intense psychological thriller the Scarapist, which not only stunned audiences but won Best Picture at the Baron-Gücher-Kreckerund Film Macher Film Awards in Germany. I think I butchered that, gene, I'm sorry. Her haunting and poetic film Night Ring continues to receive critical acclaim for its emotional power and stunning imagery. I've seen it. It's really something. Gene's work is raw, deeply personal and unflinchingly honest. I'm beyond excited to have her on the show today to talk about her journey, her creative fire and why the world needs independent voices like hers now more than ever. Let's dive in, jean. Welcome to the show. Hey Jean, can you hear me?
Speaker 3:I can hear you. Can you hear me?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can hear you Great.
Speaker 3:Okay, good, Okay, because I saw this mute come up at some point in the corner of my screen and I was like, wait, I'm not muted, am I so? No, I'm not muted.
Speaker 2:Oh, good yeah.
Speaker 3:I love your environment.
Speaker 2:Oh, do you? This is my. It's kind of based off of an old horror host.
Speaker 3:Your inspiration space. I see a picture of Bill Murray there, yeah. Bill Murray, it's like the Ghostbusters era.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got the Odd Couple with Jack Lemmon and Walter Maddow.
Speaker 3:Oh great, Is this like a communion style alien over there. This yeah.
Speaker 2:This is my mask. I don't know if you've seen my Midnight Mutant Theater.
Speaker 3:I've seen some of it, but I, oh, and I see the mug back there behind you too.
Speaker 2:You've got good eyes. Yeah, that's my mom's sorority mug when she was in college.
Speaker 3:Beautiful. And then there's an alien mug on the other side. Oh, and look at that lamp, that round lamp. Oh, this is nice.
Speaker 2:Well, that's actually a moon.
Speaker 3:Oh, that one, and then the alien one. Yeah, that's beautiful. We had the strawberry moon recently, as they like to call it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:So how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm good and I've got Metalunia Mutant here from this planet Earth, I think it's called. I've got a bunch of little 1950s creatures.
Speaker 3:When we start talking about creature uh yeah, monster creature features and what got you new movies? We're gonna have a lot of fun with that oh yeah really fun stories about that because my dad really, so we'll be able to talk about that stuff.
Speaker 2:It'll be fun did your dad make movies like that?
Speaker 3:no, oh, okay, but there is a story behind these things for sure with okay in relation to my dad, oh, excellent, that's cool. I didn't know for sure in relation to my dad, oh excellent, that's cool.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my dad. I think my dad more than I realized at the time. I think my dad had a lot to do with my early thoughts about movies.
Speaker 2:For sure, I'm sitting here adjusting my lights. I was thinking boy, I hope your dad didn't produce some of these movies that I make fun of, because some of these movies are so bad it's like I don't know how they got distribution or a company to produce them.
Speaker 3:It is truly amazing. But then you look at what Ed would accomplish too. Somehow he always finds people to keep them, while he repeats them Despite everything.
Speaker 2:And there's always a theme about brains, nuclear war and and aliens for some reason I don't know what stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah this will be fun, because you know I mean you do you do realize one thing that if you have any contact with things like creature features, especially the more obscure ones, then you know that you've got to be some kind of cinephile. Yeah, because that's just that. I like to think of it as kind of geekery. I mean, I'm a geek. That kind of nerdiness, like it comes out of a certain passion. You have to have a certain passion. Yeah. Appreciate it and get involved in it on some level, for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's really funny because I don't know. You said we were just going to go with the flow today, so I've already recorded an introduction separately, so we don't have to do it now.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:I kind of do it or I got to clean it up. I kind of do it or I got to clean it up. But the background is kind of inspired by these guys. In Cleveland from the 60s and 70s and 80s they had a show called Big Chuck and Houlihan and they would show Dracula and the werewolf and then at commercial break they'd have little comedy skits and they'd have these backgrounds with all their monster movie posters behind them. So this is kind of inspired by my my nerdiness of of loving those guys as a kid.
Speaker 3:When you're talking about that, that is familiar. I have a friend who's who's so into b horror, b monster movies and I remember him. We, we started conversations about it and we got into things like attack of the killer clowns and attack of the killer tomatoes and at one point he held up this dvd because some of these things, you know, never made it to streaming. So he had this dvd collection and he's like here's one I bet you've never seen, and he holds it up and I was like oh yeah, satan's cheerleaders.
Speaker 3:I'm like I saw that when I was in high school and he's like you're kidding. And I'm like no, no, no, Like I, this is going to be a whole conversation. Well, we'll just, we'll just yeah. But yes, yes, I mean so. Well, it's since're. Are we just starting? Are we just going with?
Speaker 2:it yeah, let's just go. I mean, I was going to have it all structured and after talking to you, I'm like, why don't we just wing it and see what happens? I do an introduction, like we're going to talk about you and your film career and the Scarapist and Night Rain and all that stuff. Night rain and all that stuff. Um, oh, the one thing, well, I don't want it to be like oh so, um, did you go to college to do this and all that stuff? Unless you want to go down that formal path, we don't, we'll just go wherever, let's just yeah wherever, wherever you want to go, hey, I'm gonna.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna say you take the reins, because okay, it's your program and I'm here to be a guest and to be with you through it well, I'm so happy you're here because when we talked in the phone well, let me back up a little bit to tell everybody how we kind of we met. I'm in ohio and jean is in here in los angeles, right, and I found you because I made my first film and I was. I was searching around Instagram for other filmmakers and I discovered, I think, the scarapist and I've discovered your work. And then I stumbled upon this photograph of you posing in front of a, I guess, a train Depot called angels flight and I wrote to you and I said I just love this photograph. It reminds me of a never hopper painting. Can I do a painting of it? Said I just love this photograph. It reminds me of a Neverwood Hopper painting. Can I do a painting of it? Because I dabble in painting. And you said, sure, and I did this painting and I made a documentary of me making it.
Speaker 2:I sent the whole thing to you and you loved it and I was really horrified. I was sending this to you because I saw an interview with you. You said you had a stalker and I'm like, oh no, she's going to think I'm stalking her or something. And my wife is like, just send it to her, she'll either not respond or she'll like it, you know, or something like that.
Speaker 2:So we just kind of hit it off and started talking about this documentary I made, which it's a small eight-minute documentary which is posted on her website. Jean's website is seasons and muse studios plural studios, pluralcom seasons and muse, pluralcom, and my film was on there and along with a lot of all of her productions, that's kind of where we we met up, I guess you would say. But what I wanted to do is just kind of find out how you got started in filmmaking, because what I've noticed is your production quality is just fantastic your, your camera work, the sound, the people you work with and it's very well done. You work with and it's very well done productions, and how did you go from never doing a film to making a scarapist and all of your other productions?
Speaker 3:that's um. I like the question because it's it's almost like one of these provocative questions where it's like how far down that rabbit hole would you like to go? I? Was thinking as I asked it I'd like to go pretty far down the rabbit hole but not spend too much time getting to the point, the core of the question okay, but I?
Speaker 3:I when I was little and we had this the summer home in lauderdale lakes w Wisconsin, which isn't far from you know people into music will know Alpine Valley. People who know vacation spots near Illinois will know Lake Geneva. So my parents and my aunt owned a cottage there and my dad over the summers because he was a guidance counselor. My mother had been a teacher. He was the first person to ever win, to earn, to garner five letters in a college sport which was for wrestling, so he also coached wrestling, but he had summers off. We had summers off and we'd go to this, my parents and aunt's cottage, for the summers and I remember that he would watch these creature features like the mummy returns. And.
Speaker 3:I wasn't supposed to be watching them, but I would sit on this landing and you could hear it was very creaky. So I had to be really, really you know quiet and really, you know careful and I'd sit and I'd watch them from the stairway, watching down at the television. Did he know you were there.
Speaker 3:No, he usually didn't know I was there and I would have, you know, I'd have a hard time sleeping and I'd have nightmares and things like that and you know my parents would be like what's going on with you? But I always, I just I don't know. I was really fascinated with motion picture and I was already painting and writing at a very young age. And then I remember when I was a student of philosophy, my friend Len introduced me to the European production, but it was with American cast, some American cast, the adaptation of Umberto Eco's Il Nome in Della Rosa, the Name of the Rose. So I was like, wow, you can do this with philosophy and being a single mom. At that time I was trying to be practical, which I mean I was in philosophy, so how practical was I already.
Speaker 3:I was a poet already and all these writing plays and I didn't. I tried to actually move away from the arts and become interested in the serious disciplines like psychology, possibly teaching or something like that. But I also. There were students in the photography and film departments at UW Milwaukee who would always say I want you to be my photographic subject, I want you to act in my film. Wow.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm not a professional and I'm not a theater major. No, we want you in it. So one of my first acting jobs was as a student. I was still being paid, and I portrayed Stella in a student version of Streetcar Named. Design. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Now, before that I'd already done theater and things like that growing up and you know, again it's like it's not something. I necessarily sat down and said this is what I'm going to do, but it seemed like so many things in my life were already and always kind of pushing me in that direction.
Speaker 3:Oh wow, pushing me in that direction, when I was faced with the decision of whether or not to pursue philosophy as a profession and I'd already had experience as a professional artist performing and still being asked you know, can I film you? Can I do that? Would you be in this? And it was that was always happening. And so when you mentioned production values it's interesting because I have to say that I think one of the reasons for that you know, I've worked with such talented people over the years. I think they've come to me and I think I've been very blessed that way.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, very, very blessed, oh yeah, picture and making a movie about Hildegard von Bingen, who's this remarkable woman from the 12th century, and my research on her was not accepted because she's not considered traditional philosophy and I by then was so in love with her and so I just I took my screenplay the first screenplay I ever wrote I just hauled off to los angeles and I started getting. I started becoming in contact with other people and very interesting people and um, and that screenplay was a semi-finalist in the nickel fellowships, which is how do you motion picture earth and sciences? In fact, an assistant to um, uh, gary marshall, we were dining one time and he said yeah, the first penny marshall's gary marshall's, assistant at the time
Speaker 3:oh, wow and um, and he said to me, you know we were meeting about screenwriting. And he said, well, the first script you ever read, right, I hear that you just junk it, you just throw it in the garbage. And I said, oh, the first screenplay ever wrote was a semi-final. Son nichols. He's like okay, okay, so forget about that. You're like there are no rules. There are no rules. I think it's the, the passion and the willingness. Yes, it can really help. Obviously, you know Greta Gerwig has. She's done some things right. I mean, she went to the Tisch school and she got agent quickly. And Viola Davis went to a Juilliard and got an agent quickly. But I don't think that's the end, all be all. It's not the only path there. There are so many paths in the arts. I think that's one of the things I love about the arts is that there are so many variant paths for people oh yeah, variant paths for people, uh, so no, I didn't go to.
Speaker 3:I didn't go to film school, but I received a really great education from a lot of my friends who did oh, yeah, yeah, very well, um, I was mentored by, um, you know, david Lynch and even Julie Dash.
Speaker 2:She taught me a lot.
Speaker 3:She taught me a lot. Um, it helps to be a good writer. Being a good writer draws people. It's hard, I suppose, to find good writing and acting. I started acting at a very young age so I didn't have a plan to direct or produce per se. It's almost like an automatic that you start producing and from there you start directing. It kind of just it starts following, it follows from one to the other, to the other. So it's just, it's just an interesting journey.
Speaker 2:Wow. So it started very young for you and it's funny. We have a similar experience of the hiding on the staircase. When I was three, I was supposed to be in bed and I would sneak downstairs in this old colonial house in Cleveland Heights, ohio and hide behind a couch. Try to watch this big Chuck Newhoolahan and Johnny Carson and I'd always get yelled at. Go back to bed, you know oh, you got caught, you got.
Speaker 2:I always got caught. Yeah, there's. There's a little more to the story than that, but I'll leave it all out. But but they always caught me because I was always trying to sneak down there in my sleepers. I had those sleepers on the feet. Yeah, the rubber bottoms.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Border admitted land in Ohio. But you know, those were things that we wore as kids the sleepers.
Speaker 2:Oh, I know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sleepers or sleeping blankets where you had the feet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:They were very warm, but it did make it hard to like escape quickly. They weren't supposed to be slippery. They had like rubber bottoms but sometimes they were slippery.
Speaker 2:I fell down the stairs once. Running running down the stairs for my brother and I stepped on one of the toes and when tumbling, but mine were lime green. I'll never forget the color color I was on.
Speaker 3:I'm just glad you didn't crack a skull or anything no, I bit my tongue.
Speaker 2:That was it, and it was just you didn't have wood floors that sounds like a wood floor. Yeah, we had wood wood staircase. Yeah, yeah that was.
Speaker 3:That was very common in like midwest and oh, yeah, yeah most homes, the, the, the. You know you still had a lot of the old wood yeah, yeah so less of the carpeting and yeah I'm glad you didn't oh, no, no, no, I, I, I'm fine.
Speaker 2:No, it was just a. It was a funny thing that you said that, because I've never heard anybody else say they snuck downstairs to watch. Because you know, we come from that era. I think you must come from the era where it was the old tube tv set and my brother had this old black and well, my mom and dad had a black and white tv set till 1978. My brother would take it, take it upstairs and we'd watch these old monster movies with the lights turned out and I'd be scared. You know cause? He was eight years older than me and he thought it was funny that I was scared of the werewolf.
Speaker 3:Oh, and it is so scary. I mean, when you're young you're trying to kind of attune yourself to what's going on and and those. I remember having a little black and white set and that was perfect for watching, and not only the, the old creature features like the mummy and Dracula, but I also used to like to watch from the time I was like 10 and 12, I started watching like the old film noir, like sorry, wrong number was one of the first, one of the first suspense films, the first uh suspense films I watched uh as a young person. I remember wait until dark starring audrey hepburn and alan arkin.
Speaker 3:Uh, amazing alan arkin he did too, and I remember watching, um, I remember watching uh psycho. I remember watching psycho alfred hitchcock. That really changed my life. In fact it changed my sister's too. My older sister was taking a shower and I thought it would be funny. I guess it was more funny for me than for her to sneak up on her with a you know playing playing Psycho. I guess it was great. And, and, and I would make that.
Speaker 2:Did she think it was real or?
Speaker 3:She was really freaked out. Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:She understood that it was me just being me, but she was not. I thought it was funny. She definitely didn't think it was funny. That's hilarious. Yeah, I was a weird kid, so I mean, movies definitely made a very deep impression on me and I don't think I was built for nine to fives. Whenever I worked nine to five jobs and it wasn't very often something always pulled me out of it. You know I'd come. You know, oftentimes I'd be riding a bus or something and maybe I was coming from classes or wherever and I'd show up 20 minutes late or 40 minutes late and the manager would be like Well, you can't just do that.
Speaker 3:And I'd say, well, it only takes me 20 minutes or 25 minutes to take what, it takes some people 45 minutes or an hour, 15. So what difference does it make? I had a weird frame of mind that way. I definitely was not built for that kind of structure. Oh yeah. I really admire people who are I really, really, truly do. But I'm one of them.
Speaker 2:I'm the same way. I worked in the corporate world for 20 years and I'd always be sitting there drawing pictures or daydreaming. And I remember one of the last decent jobs I had. I was drawing a picture of somebody in the meeting and a girl next to me and I'm not really a great drawer but she goes wow, did you draw that? She's's like you shouldn't be doing this, you should be working in art and that those words that this is 30 years ago have inspired me to get where I am today. She I don't know whatever happened to her, but I always want to call her up and find her and thank her, because I couldn't stand the corporate world. I couldn't stand sitting at a desk. Um, I was always in another world, dreaming about music or something. I didn't know anything about movies. I'm nowhere near as intelligent about movies as you are. I've made a couple documentaries, but you really know your producers and directors and films. I'm just new to it in the last five years.
Speaker 3:I was going to say that I think that it's something that's kind of followed me and it was almost like it was almost compulsive, it was almost like something I couldn't. It was very I was very inspired by and at one time it's funny I remember telling one of my cinematographers what is the big deal, after all, about citizen kane, and he's like what's the big deal about citizen kane first, first movie ever shot.
Speaker 3:That included you broke the fourth wall. Explain to me, you know, and he was this amazing cinematographer. He worked on my movie Field Day. Prior to that, he was the um.
Speaker 3:He was one of the interns, uh, in cinematography on the movie the Terminal oh, wow yeah, it's like I mean, these are people who came in my life and it was like what a blessing. They taught me a lot. They taught me a lot I. I think it helped me. I think it helped me see things a little differently, though I I get a little bit and, by the way, my stalkers are not only just like people who bug you you're talking about. Really I ever since you have multiple, multiple stalkers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've more than one. I've more than one. I've had to alert the FBI field office. I have stalkers who are like professionals. I have stalkers who are literally like internationally renowned professionals.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, I'm too lazy to be a stalker.
Speaker 3:That's a whole other level, yeah.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:Because I've been involved with a lot of politics. I wrote an article. I wrote an article about the Committee for Presidential Debates and things like this and supported a lot of third parties and independents and, as a result, I started getting some very strange things happening in my life. I don't really want to give them too much attention because I know they like that. Probably I might even incite them to do something from here. I've had websites hacked. I've had email hacked.
Speaker 4:I've had credit cards hacked. I've had really really high level, stalking, wow, yes, yes.
Speaker 3:So I know that they enjoy that, and if that's, if that's what you're paid to do, I know, however ugly, that's your job. However ugly, that's your job, but yeah, it's it's. I know that the term gets used for many things, but for me it's a whole other level. I found, though, you mentioned that I wanted to come back to that when someone told you that your drawings were good and you were saying to me. I remember you said to me I'm not really a painter.
Speaker 3:But this is the painting that I made in the documentary I made, yeah, yeah, and I really was impressed. I really loved the way it flowed, the documentary, the mini doc, and I really was impressed by what you had created and it never occurred to me from that photograph, and that's the amazing thing, I mean, and thanks to Mark Yanni, one of my key photographers, we work together quite often. He was a photojournalist, which is makes it really interesting. A lot of people who do photography might start in fashion photography not that that's there's anything wrong with that. One of our actors has worked in fashion and since has done a lot in fashion in milan sure but coming from a photo photojournalistic background is interesting.
Speaker 3:I mean, that's like people like ouija and stuff like that came from these backgrounds.
Speaker 2:I know uh oh, the film the dead people.
Speaker 3:Yeah, stanley kubrick, you know they started doing a lot of kind of what you might call grit photography or photojournalism. You, um and photographing like kind of journalistic realism and things like that, and I it does. It's interesting because their thought, their, their thinking, is in terms of story, right right off. It's not just how does this look, but what is it saying. And it makes sense to me that Mark would produce a photograph with me that would then propel you into a thought of like what is this story behind that? Um, I think that's really cool and we hadn't said this to people. So the the photography is promotional photography for the upcoming motion picture I'm doing, called making angels, and so of course, we're shooting at angels flight, which is a very historical railway in Los Angeles and in fact I think it's the first funicular railway in existence, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 2:Is it? Really.
Speaker 3:I think so. Okay. And so I thought that was really cool too that you saw Hopper, because with my background I'm also a watercolorist. Wow. I've done both fine art and illustrative watercolor, so I'm very in tune to people like Homer and Hopper, and I just found it really interesting that you saw that and then you were inspired to create that. That's pretty amazing. It shows us that we must be on the right track when other people are inspired by something we do and then we're inspired by them and there's this sort of, there's this symbiosis and relationship well, I think it's even more interesting that you just happened to show up.
Speaker 2:I don't remember the story, but that photo shoot. But you showed up on a day where it was. You couldn't get to the other side and you only could go to the side that I liked. Is that right? There was under construction or something it's along those lines.
Speaker 3:What happened was we were choosing what day to shoot and I said to Mark you know we were thinking about I think it was on a Thursday. Actually, we were thinking about what day would make sense Because, of course, you're talking about downtown LA, you're talking people going back to school, so fewer tourists, hopefully, in theory, you don't know for sure you're talking about people going to work and being at work. But when we got there, when we got to the site and now this isn't the original site where angel's flight was located. It has been moved because, of course, bunker hill doesn't exist anymore. Okay, what was built for? For people traveling up and down bunker hill in los angeles? Uh, it was moved and they had some issues with it, um, safety issues and things like that.
Speaker 3:So what they do, apparently, is every seven years they test this funicular railway. Now they don't announce it, they don't announce when they're going to do it, and it's not on the same day every seven years. So we could not have known this. But we get there. We get there. We get to the, the, the lower terminus that takes you up towards the, the ticket office and things like that. We're at the lower terminus, which is across from the I think it's the grand, the grand market, and it says that they're closed. They're closed for testing that day, the one day out of seven years, and it's never, it's not consistent. It happened to be that day.
Speaker 3:It was the feast of St Hildegard and I thought well, this is interesting. It turned out to be such a happy accident because, even though we weren't able to film on the real cars, we were able to film all around, because no one was riding the cars, so no one was really around from top to bottom. That's why we were able to get, because normally you'd probably have a lot of people standing where I was standing and you wouldn't be able to get, because normally you'd probably have a lot of people standing where I was standing and you wouldn't be able to get that shot. But because of this happy accident, we didn't even anticipate. That's how we were able to get a lot of those shots.
Speaker 2:Do you mind if I share a screen of the photograph? It's going to be from your channel. See if I can do this thing. Show people what we're talking about here.
Speaker 3:It helps, yeah, to have the visual. I don't know if you can see that, is it on there oh, it's not on there yet, oh, yeah, there it is.
Speaker 2:This is yeah, I can see. I think I've got it muted. I don't know if it's gonna. How do we play the playing?
Speaker 3:how much, um I think, you, if you go to that little arrow. For here. Yeah, I think that's the thing that's going to be there. There we go, okay.
Speaker 2:So this is it's, you know doing a. Well, there's one of my sketches there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is impromptu, but somehow you were able to capture a real sense of this, not only visually but story wise and emotionally, and it is a very historic place. The color is really specific. As you noticed, it's got this and some of that. I did myself images.
Speaker 3:I took those original images and I'm I affected them so that they would look more 30s because of course making just takes place in the 30s and the 90s, that's it's period um, I didn't know at the time that I chose that that I've since been told by historians of various disciplines, whether it be cosmetic historians or wardrobe historians or aesthetic historians or cultural historians, that apparently there are a lot of similarities between the 30s and the 90s that I was not aware of at the time. The 1990s. The 30s and the 90s, the 1930s and the 1990s.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I didn't either. It was really an inspiration that I had when I wrote the screenplay. I started the screenplay back in 1998. It was a dream I had. And I woke from this dream and I dreamt the characters. I dreamt the characters, I dreamt the scenarios, I dreamt certain camera angles and shots, I dreamt the title, I dreamt locations. I dreamt almost the whole thing and then just had to work out certain details. You mentioned Making Angels, the teaser.
Speaker 2:That's yeah let me show that, because I just love this teaser, this where the camera's going through the whole theater or the um, yes, yeah, you mind if I show that is.
Speaker 3:That is that yeah, no members only. Yeah, that's on, that's on the platform too we released it before off the platform. There's a reason for that. I'll I'll share with you in a minute that the story behind it or I can share it with you. It's okay to share it yeah, oh yeah, let's see here I'm just gonna mute it and then we can talk a little bit about this. So this is the. This is a very historical location in la.
Speaker 3:This is called the wilshire ebell theater okay and this is where we shot it and when we shot it. We shot it during the WGA strikes, right before Wow, but right before SAG also joined in the strikes.
Speaker 2:Oh, that transition right there is phenomenal through the curtain.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, now that's my editor, who's also a videographer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's phenomenal Through the Curtain. Yeah, yeah, I never saw that before. That's my editor who's?
Speaker 3:also a videographer and he feels he has not earned his right yet to call himself a cinematographer. He refers to himself as a videographer, okay, which is pretty impressive, because I know cinematographers who think his work is spectacular, including Michelle Cantor, who founded Cinefem, who is in this video, actually, as she portrays Dorothy Parker. This whole space is remarkable. Not only is it a theater, it was an educational facility for women, for women. That was its primary purpose. This is the library. This whole space is remarkable.
Speaker 2:So was this shot in one take, or well, maybe that one edit wasn't.
Speaker 3:No, it wasn't shot in one take, although a lot of the footage that you're seeing from before our transitions, like here, this is all shot in one take.
Speaker 2:And so somebody has the camera on a stabilizer or a gimbal.
Speaker 3:Cynthia and I are walking together with it okay, you did this okay we both did, we both did, he, he really we both. I shared the vision with him and we have a very interesting creative marriage, so we work very well. We've this is our third project working together and it just works for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just saw this and I was so drawn into it. It was just like something out of the Shining, like following that little kid on the bicycle or the tricycle.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, when he's riding through. Now this here, those feet are Michelle Kander, and getting that image is harder than people realize because you actually aren't filming what people think, because otherwise you're seeing cameras. So the way you have to create that is very interesting.
Speaker 2:You have to probably have it backwards or have it look like you're walking through the frame of the mirror.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there are just certain ways you have to do it.
Speaker 2:It's a very interesting way to study how to do it and how it ends with you on stage here. This is just, it's just very powerful.
Speaker 3:Thank you for bringing this up, because this has not really been seen outside of the platform. And there was a reason. Yeah, that QR code is our nonprofit QR code through Cinefm. When we created this and I had already had plans to create it and I had already had plans to create it I was scouting the location in January of 2023. Ironically, in an interesting twist of fate, back in the early 2000s, I was an extra Well, I was supposed to be a featured player. I became an extra uncredited on a show called Providence.
Speaker 3:I've heard of that that was shot there. I always remembered it. Also, one of the first jobs I ever did for a television a Lifetime movie called Jackie's Back and Tim Curry was responsible for that, and so I worked with him. That was one of my first projects in. La Wow.
Speaker 3:Being a featured extra in a temporary production, and they shot at that location. I never had forgotten that location. It really impressed itself upon me. Now I went back to do some scouting in January and of course, the strikes hit in May of that year. So we'd already prepared to film there and so I said, well, we're going to have to do a couple of things here. We're going to have to shoot this without a script, and this is one of the reasons it turned out why it didn't. I think it's a happy accident that it did, because it might have had more dialogue or more voiceover. So we really couldn't have that that. We were shooting it. Because we were shooting it during the strikes. We couldn't release it on am, on any am ptp platforms, because that would have violated strike rules.
Speaker 3:Oh, no script. Now someone at the wga said to me but you know, story, story can be script. I said, well, yeah, story can be script, but one thing we know about the movie industry or business is that it existed before there were screenplays. People just shot what stories they knew or things, things that they conceived of. So while I would agree that script is story, story isn't always script.
Speaker 2:Well, the silent movies too.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So if you're shooting without a script, technically you're not really violating. You know you're not violating the precepts. Plus, you're not releasing it on AMP TPP platforms even things like YouTube. So we releasing it on AMP TPLP platforms, even things like YouTube. So it was one of the first things that we had exclusively on the platform. Besides Night Rain was the Making Angels teaser, and so I'm glad that you enjoyed it. I appreciate it too, because we had to film it in this unique way, kind of like we had to do our photo shoot at Making Angels. It's funny when life imposes certain challenges on you, it can really push you in an interesting direction, because those perceived limitations push you into creativity you didn't necessarily think of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you've got to think in your feed, you've got to improvise yeah, and which a lot of movie making is.
Speaker 3:Because you were really surprised. I remember when I said to you yeah, you know, with night rain we had sometimes, you know, over 45 people on our set on a given day and you were like whoa yeah we made that?
Speaker 3:we made that like the old studio motion pictures. We that's how we shot it, and we shot it at historical locations and we had things we had to solve just really spur of the moment. We had a prop that didn't function the way it was going to and it was a really important part of the plot and it was we're all staying around for like 20 minutes going, okay, this is what we're going to have to do with it. You know, we kind of we kind of had to improvise in the best possible way and I remember everybody was still being democratic about it. We were pushing towards like 35 minutes of discussing these things and finally I was like OK, I am a menopausal woman having hot flashes. I've earned the right to make this decision.
Speaker 2:This is the way it's going to be.
Speaker 3:And I saw everybody on set just be like like there's a lot of stuff, and everybody got really quiet. But it worked because I was like, ok, let's go, because of course, every minute you know it's crazy to be an actor, a writer, a director and a producer, so you're aware of what needs to happen creatively, you're aware of how things are going to have to play on camera.
Speaker 3:You're aware of what your performance needs to be. You are aware of what plot needs to be. You're also aware of money going out the door at every given moment that it turns into oh yeah, it's all going off in your head at once.
Speaker 2:It's just, it is.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, it's really intense, but Night Rain was by far now one of the most rewarding creative experiences I've ever known, because we really did the whole thing stem to stern, much like the old movie industry. The old studio system did it. We were like a family and we ate together.
Speaker 2:We did things together and it was just. It's really cool let me ask you go back to the this teaser for making angels. How did you have to pay to have that space empty and have your, just you? And uh, what was your director with you?
Speaker 3:uh, yes, uh. Well, I was directing, I was directing uh cynthia, our cinematographer. He brought his uh, his his uh, gaffer and grip okay oh, andrew weber. And then it was. You saw um on screen. Uh, that was um michelle canter, the founder of cinefem.
Speaker 3:Very talented filmmaker as well and actress, and she portrays our dorothy parker. And then, of course, you see me standing on the stage. It was the four of us and originally it was going to be solely a photo shoot. Uh, it turned into a teaser shoot and they gave us a deal on it. The the wilshire e-bill theater was very kind to us okay, so they did charge you generally um, they charged us, but they didn't charge us as much as they might have.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I get it the same thing happened at the Biltmore.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we still paid for it. We still had to pay for insurance. We still had to pay for the location. One of the things you can do is you can pick off times either days of week if it's a short shoot, or times when normally the industry shuts down, like we did with Night Rain. Night Rain we started shooting that on December 6th at the Biltmore. We finished around the 23rd. Most productions have shut down by then, so we got a very special deal. We also got a special deal because our production dealt with issues that dealt with the Biltmore Hotel, specifically Elizabeth Short and her untimely and brutal murder, known as the Black Dahlia murder.
Speaker 3:Uh, biltmore had some shade thrown on it from that people. It was rumored that she was a prostitute, which she wasn't, that she brought her tricks to the biltmore, which she didn't, and it's not that kind of place. Uh, they liked the idea of us making a movie that was true to the story of Elizabeth Short, the events leading up to her murder. So they really embraced us. They gave us a very special deal for that.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, because I know it's very hard, because I like to recreate movie scenes. And I wanted to recreate the scene with Jack Nicholson from I think it's called Five Easy Pieces, where he clears the diner table and there's a diner down the street from him that had almost looked like that exact diner set up from that era. And I walked in and asked the owner. I said you know, I'd like to recreate the scene in this restaurant and you know, this is just a little deli, this is not like anything fancy. And he sat down and goes so, uh, what's in it for me?
Speaker 2:and I went well, you know, I, I just you know he wanted to be in it maybe no, no, no, he wanted, he wanted money he just wanted the cold hard cash and I said I could? You know, I can give you 500 bucks. I'll come in before your shop opens, so you don't lose any business. I can probably knock this thing out in two hours.
Speaker 3:And he it was just kind of funny how he that was reasonable, that was a fair offer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I thought it was, but he, he, he didn't want to do it. So I was just like I don't know. I just kind of left it there and just kind of I didn't walk out. But I said, okay, well, you just let me know if you're interested. I gave him my card but, um, you know, it's just kind of funny how people, when they hear you're making a movie, they think you got money. Yeah, that's often the assumption I it's.
Speaker 3:It helps to well and I guess, see in los angeles, where you do have people with a great deal more than what productions have, they're often more yeah forgiving of certain things yeah um, because that that is.
Speaker 3:That's. That's kind of a hard line. That's a hard line from what you're describing and I I have not experienced that, gratefully. And we've, we've worked at we've. We shot at um, pacific dining, sadly no longer in existence Very historic restaurant. We shot at Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach. They were very fair to us. Biltmore was amazing. Biltmore was truly amazing, and LA itself, the people of Los Angeles and they're used to seeing productions. At one point it was really sweet. We were up on Mulholland Drive, which is also a very historic place, looking at the Hollywood sign and we were shooting. My car is supposed to drive past the Hollywood sign and the line is how does anybody ever get anywhere around here? And it's, it's a double entendre, because it's hard in the business and hard just traffic wise.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, oh, I see what you mean.
Speaker 3:Space, space, distance wise. But there was a group up there at the time, a tour group, and who uh was running the tour group was like are you guys shooting a movie? I'm trying to, you know, explain to them that all kinds of movies get shot. I'm like, yes, yes, uh, it's called night rain, nice meeting everybody. You know you're friendly to the tour people too, and it, I think I think it does. I think generally it really helps when you can find people you can really work with and find to you and vice versa.
Speaker 3:It's like it really makes a difference, because the hard lining thing I guess you know, maybe, like you said, he maybe had an idea that you had a lot more to give, but that that's a pretty reasonable offer. I don't think we, I think some of our, some of our offers included like we'll pay you around that amount, say $500 or something like that, and we'll eat there, you know, and when you're talking about you know, all this cast and crew, that's, that's good business for them.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, so I I'm, we've been pretty blessed. We've been pretty blessed with what we've and I can hardly wait to keep going. I mean, it's been so difficult. First we had the lockdowns, then we had strikes, you know, then to have to defer the authority over the California.
Speaker 2:Coast Guard to Governor Newsom now. The Coast Guard or the National Guard?
Speaker 3:The National Guard.
Speaker 2:Oh, so that happened today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was just announced within the last couple of hours. Yeah, that a federal judge made that determination. So there's an injunction. There's an injunction against the White House to deploy any more of the National Guard and other troops.
Speaker 2:I think that's kind of too bad. They're just tearing the place apart.
Speaker 3:You know I was there interestingly.
Speaker 2:Oh were you really. You know, I was there interestingly, I was down there.
Speaker 3:I was down there on tuesday and, while I think there were some there, I believe there were some of these incidents going on. Uh, and that was earlier on, but, um, when I was there, I did not see any of that. I did not see any of that, although I did not see any of that, although I did see a lot of vandalism, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:Well, it opens your eyes up to what the media really covers and they change your viewpoint. You have no idea what's real anymore.
Speaker 3:Which is why I went there, yeah that's nice. Well, I'm seeing so many people posting whatever side they're saying they're on back and forth.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, I thought well you know, I said to a friend of mine we were on he was with me on the phone at the time and I said you know what, let's just go. So I took Slauson to Alameda, Alameda, right into Temple and right into the First Street area and I drove through it a couple of times and I was asking people from my car like you know, why are you here? Uh and um, I got like offers for like five dates and I was like, okay, I don't think, I don't know that that's what you guys are here, but that's apparently why some of you are here but it takes
Speaker 3:all time and there was a guy like selling flags of mexico and other people like you know.
Speaker 3:You know door to door dash and things like that like coming in and like bringing food to people and you know door, you know door to door dash and things like that, like coming in and like bringing food to people, and you know, I mean it's just. I heard about that in the sixties from friends of mine who grew up in the sixties saying you know it was some people were there because they were very passionately inflamed with the issues and some people are there to you know, pick people up or whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, it's. It's's amazing how the media slants things, and it doesn't matter which network you watch, it all seems to be garbage.
Speaker 3:It's very social media and you'll see too, like I will always fact check now People will post.
Speaker 3:Pope Leo XIV said this they're deploying trips to Disneyland and I looked that up and I was like, uh, deploying trips to Disney, disneyland? And I looked that up and I was like, okay, I cannot find a single story that verifies this, so I don't think this is real. Um, you know, and it's like I'm just finding myself fact checking everything, which is why, for me, most of my posts, rather than my opinions which, while my opinions are worth a lot to me, at the end of the day I don't. I don't, I'm not a lawmaker, I'm not a politician, I'm not even an attorney I've consulted. I consulted, for you might be familiar with this. I consulted, for you're probably familiar with Tommy Wiseau of the Room. He was the subject of the movie Disaster. Artist with James Franco, artist with James Franco, and there was a lawsuit, a cross-border lawsuit, from Canada to the US and now here in the US and I consulted for that case, I used to tutor attorneys.
Speaker 3:Someone once asked me well, are you an attorney? No, I'm not an attorney, but I consulted for attorneys, and I also have. I've also tutored pre-law. I should say not attorneys. I tutored, more specifically, pre-law students, but I know something about the law. But I'm not a lawmaker, I'm not a politician, I'm not an attorney, I'm not a judge. It's not up to me. I have my opinions. Sure, the internet is filled with opinions. This is this, this is this, this is but I generally like to just post stories that are reliable when it comes to things like that, when it comes to actual facts. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Because, at the end of the day, I could verse my opinion on Tommy Wiseau's case, for example. I was consultant for that case. I can say this is what I observed, these are my opinions, but I don't ultimately make the decisions.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's unfortunate. There's a thousand, at least a thousand guys and gals on YouTube that are saying the sky is falling, but they don't give you a solution. What should we do? There's nothing I can do about immigration. There's nothing I can do about Israel. There's nothing I can do about israel attacking iran or anything, but they pounded into our heads and make us feel helpless. I mean, what am I going to do?
Speaker 3:pick up a rifle, and you know, it's just and it's just about not to, because you'll probably, you'll probably be taken out when you do.
Speaker 2:I mean, oh sure oh sure, but I just think, I think it's, but I'm trying to steer away from not to mention because my channel is kind of what's that- I said, not to mention, people get hurt oh yeah, yeah, but I think it's unfortunate that they're steering the pot instead of providing solutions and nobody's providing solutions, because I lived in Arizona for 10 years and there were Mexican people everywhere and they were the nicest people.
Speaker 2:None of us. We had landscapers that were Mexican and people working in all the shops and they were the nicest people. We never saw any violence. But when you move back east, it's like, oh my God, the Mexicans. It's like what, what? We didn't see anything. I don't know what you see in Southern California.
Speaker 3:You know, when I was in downtown LA, I didn't see any of that and I'm not denying that there was, at one point, violence. I saw graffiti. I saw the footage of people setting Waymo cars on fire and throwing rocks down at police cars and things like that.
Speaker 3:Did it escalate to the point where you needed to deploy 4,000 National Guard troops and 100 Marines? I think that was the latest number I read. I didn't see that. I think that the footage that I did see often being replayed was the more violent footage they didn't show, the more peaceful. But violence is news, I suppose, and of course you're right.
Speaker 3:I mean there is this desire to shape the minds of people. I think it was during the days of Augustus Caesar. The expression he who controls the mob rules Rome. So if you are going to shape the way people think and feel, I think, especially feeling. I think one of the easiest ways to manipulate people is through their emotion, emotions. I try to look at it from certain perspectives. I'm eight and a half years in philosophy. I've been literally in disciplines that teach me to think or attempt to think logically about things and look at facts. One of the facts that doesn't escape me is that if these troops hadn't been deployed and if a budget of $134 million wasn't driven towards that, maybe some of that could be, I don't know.
Speaker 3:Put towards the LA homeless, we have the highest homeless population and an audit has been done and there is still no proof that any monies that have been allotted to the homeless of Los Angeles have actually made it to those organizations that will help the homeless and food and real health care. Not just insurance, but actual care. Yeah, Make it available.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 3:I support these things that people refer to as liberal. I think of them as being very humane. My father was a liberal Democrat. My mother was a conservative Republican. That's how I grew up and I'm an independent and I don't mean I sometimes vote Democrat or sometimes conservative Republican. That's how I grew up and I'm an independent and I don't mean I sometimes vote Democrat or sometimes vote Republican. I mean I'm a real. I'm a champion of independents and third parties. I have been since 1996. So that has gotten me into some trouble.
Speaker 3:Some people don't like that, but that is who I am. So if that's uh I'm not.
Speaker 2:I know I won't please everybody no, you'll never please everyone, and I I try to stay out of it altogether. I I kind of. I see things differently now that I'm older than when I was younger, but um, did you ever see the movie harold and maude with bud cord and ruth gordon?
Speaker 3:oh my god. There's a wonderful line in there about. Consistency is not a human trait is one of the lines in the movie. The other moment I love in the movie is when he asks her about doesn't she engage in any more protests.
Speaker 3:This film was made in the early 70s and she says well, yes, she says oh, every day in my own individual way, and she's, you know, much older than he is. This is part of the story. I think it starts. I think you were saying, like, what am I going to do about this? What am I going to do? I think you make changes in your own individual way and I think you do it every time you treat a human being with dignity. I think every time you treat a creature with dignity and even our enemies love our enemies.
Speaker 3:I think even with people we would perceive as enemies people with a different point of view I've seen people get very inflamed. I've been named, called, and I'll say Would you please kindly not say those? I've had people call me someone. Somebody in my q&a recently referred to me as a fraud and I'll say would you please kindly not say those things? I've had people call me. Somebody in my Q&A recently referred to me as a fraud. I was like, well, no, this is how this is. I'm trying to reason in the situation. I'm trying, well, this is one of the stalkers most likely. But I try not to. I try not to inflame situations and I try to at all costs treat people the way I would want to be treated basically so even if they don't agree with my point of view, even if they become hostile, try to. I try to somehow summon something valuable, and so in that way too, that's. That's one way that you can always do something, no matter how helpless we may be made to feel at times.
Speaker 3:I think we're not, but you're right that we can be made to feel that way.
Speaker 2:So your current, we're going to kind of steer it back to to the filmmaking Cause. I'm thinking filmmaking.
Speaker 3:But I guess when films deal with real life subjects, you know I mean Making Angels has elements about race and things like that. So I guess you know it does touch on all of those things.
Speaker 2:So I just where'd you get all of your energy? I mean mean, you have all this amazing energy and focus and excitement and that I didn't. I wasn't expecting that. When we had our first phone call, it's like whoa, wow, she's so passionate and you're, you know movies, you're, you're brilliant. And how do you keep the energy going and keep going and pushing and pushing forward? Because I know how hard it is. I'm all by myself and you, I, you know I tried to hire a cinematographer for my first documentary in the middle of the production at a shoot. At the end of the shoot, he goes I'm sorry, I'm not coming back. And I went. Well, I gave you a contract where the you have to give me two weeks notice. He's like I'm sorry, I'm moving to Cincinnati and I can't do that.
Speaker 3:And he was gone, so I had to do the rest of the cinematography myself, which is fine, I know how to do it, you know.
Speaker 2:It would have been interesting if he would have been able to refer you to somebody.
Speaker 3:Oh, no, no, no, okay, no I work, I've had situations like that. I although I have had people drop out just a few days, field day, our, our director dropped out a few days before and our cinematographer, um, took on a lot of things and it was embedded in the script. You know, a lot of direction is embedded in scripts. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:The directors don't always know that, but it's true. Yes, I have such a deep, deep respect for writers, but I have a deep respect for every person on a moviemaking team and that's why I I don't. I I know directors guild has certain rules. Writers guild has certain rules, as directors guild can be tough, but I don't put a film by in my name. It's because I figured it's by every single person who worked on that movie.
Speaker 2:So so where do you buy in?
Speaker 3:all the credits.
Speaker 2:So you have an idea for a film and you just call people up and say, hey, it's gene, let's make a movie, or you say okay, I don't, because I I have a hard time, I, I I had someone once.
Speaker 3:I had someone once say to me I want to be like gina, just run around, make movies, like run around and make movies. Okay, I'll tell you how I run around. Yeah, it starts. It starts with an idea, it starts with something that inspires me. It often incorporates something true or historical. In the case of the scarabist, you had a true story of therapist abuse. In the case of night rain, it came together when I realized it needed to be something that liberated elizabeth short, the real elizabeth short, not false image, um, making angels.
Speaker 3:Uh, you know, you have this character, dorothy parker, who's inspiring these five women artists, and zora neale hurston as well, and these are real people. And then, of course, you have this project vamp out that incorporates vlad the impaler and tommy was so, and kind of mashes their stories together.
Speaker 2:Oh see, I haven't watched the trailer to uh vamp out yet here yeah, that's, yeah.
Speaker 3:That's an introductory video lad the impaler. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, and vampires so I've already been in touch with some of the historians who work really, you know, and uh and malaki, and, and they have documents that have never been seen before. They have. They have an incredible store of documents that were never released about the historical person who Dracula is based on, and I just I become very interested in real stories and true stories, in historical events and people.
Speaker 2:So are these considered historical fiction? Are these historical?
Speaker 3:It's not documentary to say, you know, it's almost like. It's almost like taking the historical details of lad the impaler and the historical details of tommy was so and bringing them together. But it's, it's so, it's play. I mean, I I don't know if I call it, I don't know if I call it historical fiction. It's almost like historical details embedded in a narrative. There's, so there's two stories happening at once, like night rain. Night rain even had elements of factuality because they're really. This stalker character in the movie is a composite of my stalkers, um, and the people who are characters in night rain are based on real people in my life so you've taken somebody stalking you and turned it into a movie kind of.
Speaker 2:I mean, you've taken your own experiences.
Speaker 3:Oh, one of them contacted my producer days before we were getting ready to shoot and said you don't want to work with her. She's just a liar, she's a horrible person. And she was like, well, why does this person even care? But they were basically trying to get my production shut down right before it started. That was their aim apparently. It didn't work, thank God, and we had a great shoot, wow.
Speaker 3:But yeah, there are some very interesting people in the world. We'll say, yeah, and what their motivations are and why they do what they do? I guess sometimes they're being paid, sometimes they may have some other reason, I cannot ascertain, but I leave it to them to work that out for themselves. Um, but it is interesting, and so it was interesting that life was emulating, art was emulating my life was emulating the art. There was sort of this meta reality and, yeah, mirrors kind of lined up together and sort of reflecting each other almost in ad infinitum. So, um, but, but it starts with a script. For me there is a script. The teaser was certainly an anomaly to that, but there were reasons for that because of the strikes.
Speaker 3:A screenplay is written, it is worked, production meetings happen for sometimes months, like with Night Rain. We have table reads, like we did for Making Angels, to finalize the script. Once the script is finalized and generally it's one of those things you know when you know it that it's workable. And it's not just that it tells a story, it communicates that story to the people it needs to communicate to, which is your team. If you can see actors developing the character as you've seen them, or maybe even things you haven't seen, but work, if your crew understands what's happening in the screenplay, then you've written a good screenplay. Agents will say a good screenplay is a script that sells, because that's their job. But I say a great screenplay is a screenplay that communicates to the cast and crew as it's supposed to. It's a blueprint.
Speaker 3:It's a blueprint to make a movie as opposed to architectural plans that that create a building in a similar way. And so you have the structure, and the structure is very clear and people going in know what they're shooting, know what they're performing, know what they're doing, and then, of course, you still have all these things happen that you can't even anticipate.
Speaker 3:But it's all very, very planned out and you only have so many days to do it. You have your equipment rented. Some of it is owned, maybe by some of your crew members, but a lot of it has to be rented regardless and the locations have to be rented and the people everybody has to be paid and, god willing, I mean sometimes very miraculous things have to happen for that to work out. It's really amazing how things can come together in a movie shoot.
Speaker 3:You plan everything and you still can't plan for everything, and I think it was Robert Altman who said the best things on his films have often been just happy accidents, and that's a pretty humble thing for a director like Robert Altman to say. I mean, he really is a phenomenal director. I was recently watching MASH again and I was watching the Player not that long ago for a podcast that I did with a group, and it's just you watch him and you go wow, wow. There's a certain mastery in shortcuts. Also, there's a certain mastery in what he does, and yet even he admits that some of it has to just happen accidentally.
Speaker 2:Do you find yourself watching films, now that you know so much about movie making, where you can't enjoy the film like you did before you made a film, cause I see stuff now I'm like oh, this is this, is this, is all green screen, or you know, um, we went to see mystery impossible the most recent with tom cruise and and there were scenes that just didn't make any sense to me, the way they put it together, and I'm like what did they do? Would they just say, oh, fuck it, I'm just gonna, we'll just make it like this and put it out there it's tom cruise, so whatever yeah, I haven't seen it yet I can't comment on that intelligently.
Speaker 3:I must admit that I'm not a big action film or superhero film person, I have watched them. I will say that I have a lot of. My appreciation has grown. I mentioned that I was mentored by David Lynch. Every time I watch David's work I can find a new appreciation for it and what he accomplished did he do blue velvet?
Speaker 3:oh yeah, oh, blue velvet is such an interesting story, oh yeah isn't that? That's one of my favorite films, basically the long the short story, the long story short the short story of blue velvet being made and originally he wanted val kilmer in the role. That went to colin glocklin, which actually and talk about a happy accident because they had a wonderful uh filmmaking, movie making show making marriage. Colin glocklin was amazing in twin peaks. It's hard to imagine anybody else in the role of agent dale cooper um oh, yeah, yeah you know, but uh he, no one wanted to touch that movie.
Speaker 3:Um bell kilmer thought that it reminded him of soft porn. He wasn't going to touch it.
Speaker 2:Uh, it got made because it was kind of edgy yeah especially for its time and um, and because it's still edgy.
Speaker 3:so for its time it was really edgy and uh, I um am very well aware, working with david's team and having had communications with david too, um, and jennifer lynch and her her uh, her um representative as well, um, that movie was made because david gave final cut of dune to Dino De Laurentiis. That's why Blue Velvet got made. That's what he sacrificed, that's his offering on the altar of filmmaking to make Blue Velvet.
Speaker 2:Lynch was part of Dune at first.
Speaker 3:Pardon.
Speaker 2:Lynch directed Dune. He directed Dune. Oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he directed the very first adaptation of Dune and he did not like it. He did not like the end result, and a large part of that was because he gave up the final cut to Dino De Laurentiis, the producer. But that's how Blue Velvet was made. No one wanted to touch it. It was not going anywhere in Hollywood until he gave that up, and thus Blue Velvet was produced.
Speaker 2:Here and I'll show you how much I love I've got little sound effects, a board sound effects thing here, and here's a line from Blue Velvet. God damn, you're one suave fucker.
Speaker 3:So, that's Dennis Hopper speaking to dean stockwell yeah, oh yeah it's very close friends with, uh, russ tamblyn.
Speaker 3:That's how russ tamblyn ended up in the role of dr jacobi on the twin peaks series, because when he saw blue velvet premiere in support of his very, very good friend, dean Dean Swath but he was also very good friends with Dennis Hopper and in an after party he said to David, I'd really like to work with you, and David's like oh Ross, I think we can do something. And David was a filmmaker and a gentleman, so if he said he was going to do something, he actually did it.
Speaker 3:And he did going to do something. He actually did it and he did. Russ Tamblyn did not have to audition for the role of Dr Jacoby. It was a role that was shaped largely for Russ by David and then Russ took it the rest of the way and with his artistic background he did a very good job, I thought, with it. And's the whole, the whole lore of things is so interesting and I I've been very blessed to know very remarkably talented, creative people who inspire me, who in turn then inspire me and inspire me to keep going. It's not easy now. Filmmaking has changed a great deal even since the lockdowns, especially since the strikes. That includes independent filmmaking as well changed a great deal even since the lockdowns especially since the strikes.
Speaker 3:That includes independent filmmaking as well, but um, I guess it's just something inside of you. When it's just something inside of you, when it's what you do, you have to do it well, isn't it fascinating?
Speaker 2:you mentioned changes, how what once took a room full of equipment and you can do it all. Now people some make some movies on their iphones. Yeah, exactly, and this is fascinating. Like just to record music, I can do it all right here on a laptop and record a commercially viable piece of music. Um, that you needed a whole room of equipment 30 years ago to make and you needed a lot of money because you had oh yeah 35 millimeter, and that was very expensive oh yeah, the film, yeah
Speaker 3:thing to do, and so you you now to be a filmmaker, and I will distinguish filmmaking and movie making. You know, film, a filmmaker, can grab a super 8 camera or their phone, as you mentioned, and they can shoot the whole thing themselves without a crew, even without a cast, depending on what you're shooting. But if you want to make movies, if you want to make motion pictures, that's a little different. You do need a team to do that. There is a certain scope of a motion picture. It doesn't make one better than the other because each one functions very differently.
Speaker 3:I couldn't have made Night Rain as a film because we needed those 45 people on that set. But, uh, when, uh, I was working with my friends in film school, we were making films, we, we had a very small cast, a very small crew, sometimes barely any. Sometimes. I knew people who just went out and shot footage of plants with their Super 8 camera and edited it, and it was beautiful footage and it told a story. It told a story. In some way. It's storytelling. It's storytelling with a certain kind of medium.
Speaker 2:Wow, I just think it's fascinating what you can do now.
Speaker 3:It's amazing. It's amazing and you don't need large sums of money anymore to do it.
Speaker 2:No, and I think the other thing that's added to it is the Internet. I mean, think about 30 years ago I would have had no idea that you existed or I would have never known about your films.
Speaker 2:I've met so many people around the world, especially in Great Britain not filmmakers just people I've interviewed or talked to and the internet is bringing the world together. A lot of people don't like it, but I found AI has helped me write things. I don't use it to write things verbatim, but you see that all these tools are kind of making the process easier, especially for an independent artist like yourself. It isn't represented by a major studio. Do you find that the technology is making things easier? Are you, are you anti AI?
Speaker 3:I'm not. I'm not an AI person. I'm not. I have no judgments about the use of it.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:I I don't have any judgments about it. I someone was actually recently suggesting to me for me to use chat GPT and I said I don't use chat GPT to write. And he said, well, you could use it just to create this, to format your screenplays. And I said, well, formatting my screenplays is also writing. That's also part of the writing process, especially for me. So I think it just depends on each individual person. And of course there are certain says I mean, it's interesting, I'm an independent artist, I'm an independent artist and filmmaker, but I'm not fully independent because I do have a studio, so I'm a small studio owner. I do have a studio, so I'm a small studio owner making independent style movies, independently of major studios. But I'm right there in a town where the major studios exist and have constant interaction with individuals related to those places. So I'm in a really weird position. I'm kind of I'm pulled in a lot of directions. I see things from a lot of different perspectives.
Speaker 3:I have no judgments about what tools people want to use to tell their story, because, after all, it's their story. Who am I to say you should do this or you should do that? You know, I don't think I'm in a position to do that, um, but I personally tend to do things still the old fashioned way. Maybe it's just cause I'm stubborn, maybe it's just cause I'm a creature of habit, I don't know.
Speaker 3:Well, if you, if you know that there are issues, I know there are issues in the industry with things like AI for actors and writers and and uh, now there's I don't know if you heard, but the first lawsuit's been launched. The very first lawsuits related to AI have been launched by Universal and Disney. Apparently, there is content that has been created through AI that is somehow a violation of their copyrights and trademarks, potentially.
Speaker 2:Oh, definitely.
Speaker 3:So here we go. I was told by an attorney who's my attorney is one of the top 50 copyright trademark attorneys in the country, daniel Katman, and he told me they've already they've already been briefed about this stuff. It's coming, you know. So now it's arrived.
Speaker 2:Well, what I'm finding is, I think, how AI works is it goes out and queries all these pieces of art. So if you say, create a video of a cat and a ball of yarn, it goes out and pulls all these pieces from different pieces of work on the Internet and puts it into this final product, but it can't be copyrighted. The Copyright Office told me you can't copyright that.
Speaker 3:Well, the issue is because a copyright has to be something that's created by an individual, created by a human being, not by a technology, technological machine. But we are the first lawsuit against, I suppose, those who own the ai technology potentially, I mean, as some, the scarapist became the. I was talking to um, a french director who has directed some very commercial Hollywood films as well, and he said, yeah, he said that he knew about the Scarabist and he said that is considered in Europe to be a very successful movie because it had such an influence on culture and on cinema, because you had from Get Out to Unsane, to Greta, to Hypnotic, to Hypnosis, to Split, to all these other movies that emulated aspects, or even the Scarifist itself, like Hypnotic, for Netflix did, and so he's like that's what we consider to be successful, because it's culturally impactful. It's not about how commercially or not saying it wasn't commercially successful, but how commercially successful it is or not. I do take issue because I saw a lot of that going on before AI technology was being implemented that way.
Speaker 3:You know it's okay, okay, I get it. Maybe you're inspired by it, maybe you just want to take things from it. You can't take concepts. Of course that's not copyrightable, but it would be nice to get an acknowledgement. It would be nice to get an acknowledgement and I I do. That's where I take some issue with ai ai pulling from these different artists to create something new, interesting. But where's the where? Where does the artist get credited or paid through all of that? And the answer is they don't.
Speaker 3:Of course they don't yeah um, and I I do have some issue with that I don't.
Speaker 2:It almost makes me afraid to put anything on the internet anymore, because you never know what's going to be ripped off just by accident I don't know if you've seen this.
Speaker 3:I don't know if you've seen this, but there's also this issue, peter, that if you, for example, if you post the lyrics to a song or, uh, the verses of a poem on social media platforms like Facebook, there's an issue with commons licensing and things like that once you've done that. So, yeah, copyrights and intellectual property are going to become a really big hotbed issue, especially in entertainment with all the new technologies. There's no doubt about it. We're just at the beginning of it now, so it is a very real thing and it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's arrived now officially, yeah, yeah, people thought coming, but it has officially arrived. So I, I think, also for my own purposes, it also helps me not to step into that, but that's because my work does go out into the commercial world and the last thing I want is something popping up where it's like you know, it's embedded in the film.
Speaker 3:The sound is finished, the color, the colorizing is finished, everything's done or the conversation is finished, or correct is finished, and then someone says, oh yeah, you can't use that because that's I'd be like, oh, I'd be like, oh Jesus, oh my God, I could be spending. I could be spending tens of thousands of dollars just to take that one little piece out or some such thing.
Speaker 3:It's just not it's not worth it to me in what I do, Cause I have to really streamline things, Cause I have relatively tight budgets although our upcoming budgets are not as tight as they've been but still, uh, you don't want to find yourself in that situation.
Speaker 2:So, but still, you don't want to find yourself in that situation. So your current project is Making Angels correct.
Speaker 3:That's one of our current projects, as is Vamp Out the one I mentioned the mashup of Vlad the Impaler and Tommy Wiseau. There's a very prominent festival that invited us to send our catalog of projects. I should be hearing back within the next, probably week. Uh, it's very nerve-wracking. Um, we are working on different projects at once. There are a couple of books too, titles of books that are being not just developed but finalized, and so you've written yeah, and illustrated yeah, yeah, there's a number of them.
Speaker 3:I mean I just I've just got so much to do most of the time so.
Speaker 2:So you write books, movies, and you're a musician too. You scored some of the music, I, when I watched um, uh, what was night rain? You were doing some of the piano work in that, aren't you? Yeah, wow.
Speaker 3:I didn't train for piano formally, I trained for classical guitar. There's actually a classical guitar on the side of me. You can almost see the case.
Speaker 2:Oh, you play guitar too.
Speaker 3:I do play guitar too, I keep going the wrong way with it, but everything's a mirror image. You can almost see. You can almost see like where the guitar case is right there, oh beautiful. Yeah, we're talking about I had formal training in guitar, but not piano. But yeah, Classical. Yeah, classical, oh wow.
Speaker 3:And some blues and some blues and folk and, oh wow, two different genres of guitar. Yeah, I at one time I thought I was going to be like a metal guitar player for a metal band. I had this idea for a metal band and I was like, ok, this and post-punk, it's just. You know, there's. It's just. I think that when you're a creative person, you don't want to stop it, you never want to stop it, you never want to stop it. Oh yeah, you want to make sure, I guess. I think I think the energy comes from that. It comes from that, the need, the passion of it. Um, it's what we're made for. It's what we're made for.
Speaker 3:We were made to make stuff that's what it is to be a human being, and I think that, actually, the struggles since the lockdowns, well, particularly since the strikes, though, I've had to consume a lot less and create. I don't know about creating more, but maybe more fervently, maybe more of a consciousness, because you don't have those other distractions and it's just something you have to do. It just comes, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:We had talked about that, about how some people say well, you should just focus on one thing and make that, but I can't. I do painting, I've written books, just like you. Poetry music movies.
Speaker 3:I can even see from your environment that that's all around you. And.
Speaker 3:I just talked about this because I just did a poetry performance at this beautiful historical dance studio. The daughter of one of the founders of modern dance now occupies the studio. And I was saying that thing because I was being asked like, well, you know, you're doing all these things and I don't necessarily do them all at the same time, but I do them. And I said you know, arts are different from post-industrial assembly line. You know manufacturing, one person makes this part and the other person makes that part. So you've got somebody makes the carburetor and somebody else focuses on spark plugs and somebody else, and then you've got a car at the end of it all. Uh, arts are different.
Speaker 3:Arts interweave, interact, interplay intercourse with each other you know, it's just, it's not. I, I, I think it's actually somewhat unnatural for an artist to try to be one thing. Uh, one thing tends to bleed into other things. I, I, really, I would, I really appreciated what you created with that film and incorporating taking a photograph, a photographic image really, that you saw, and creating a painting out of it and then making a film about painting it. That's just. That makes sense to me. That makes a lot more sense than oh no, I only do this and only that.
Speaker 3:I only paint, but I don't really write or draw or make films or act or shoot or, you know, play music or whatever it is. It seems to me very natural when artists do multiple things.
Speaker 2:That's very natural and when I made that, it wasn't initially made for you to see it, I was just I wanted people to see the long process Because most people think, oh, he just tosses off paintings, you know. But you know, my has has evolved over time, from really rough and now I'm trying to be more meticulous and doing studies and sketches and studying other artists, all the stuff they told you to do in college that I didn't listen to. But now, now I'm doing it, but I want to people. But the average person just is like ah, whatever, they're, like my least popular videos on youtube and yeah, that's okay.
Speaker 3:That's okay. That's okay Because, you know, someone said something to me really interesting Recently. He said to me well, entertainment is more of a passive demand. You sit back and something is happening to you. Arts are a little more demanding, arts are a little more active Arts. They provoke you to think and feel things. So if they're not as popular, that's okay.
Speaker 3:Van Gogh sells one painting in his lifetime to his brother and now he's sold to David Geffen. David Geffen bought his sunflowers in the highest bid in history, in the highest bid in art history. So I think that I think we also get oriented in this technological world to think in terms of clicks and hits and all of these things. But I don't think ultimately that should matter. It could matter economically, but then not necessarily. I think if we're going to retain our creative natures and really honor them, I think we just have to make stuff and not worry too too much about the rest of it, because you're not going to please everybody, because it's hard. Even samuel goldwyn, who was one of the great producers of the golden age, said we can make a tree, but we can't make a star. It's hard to know what the public wants.
Speaker 3:You know, you put carrie grant the most popular actor of the time, but you put him in a movie where it's a serious drama, where he portrays a surgeon and nobody goes to see it. But it's Cary Grant. So who knows why? You know nobody.
Speaker 3:It's pretty hard to predict. It's better to make stuff. It's better just to make stuff. I think that's true too. I think it's interesting that, for example, the year that Chicago and the Gangs of New York came out, the Gangs of New York was slated as the big production. I mean, it was Martin Scorsese, it was Daniel Day-Lewis, it was so top-heavy Cameron Diaz and Leonardo DiCaprio. So, of course, weinstein Company, miramax, thought this was going to be our biggest production of the year. They didn't anticipate that, because of the 2008 economic collapse, everybody was going to flock towards chicago, which became the big movie of the year. So you have a taster like weinstein. And now we. Weinstein's fate has been affirmed because he's been convicted yet again.
Speaker 3:But and I won't even go there because I have a Weinstein story, but I won't go there, right? Now. No, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, I just I'm not that kind of actress. So my movie Breath of God wasn't made around 2003 when I thought it might be. But I wasn't willing to do certain things and I don't judge people who did, but I was not raised that way. But even Weinstein, who's considered a taster and has so much power and influence, not even he could have predicted that. He did not predict that. He didn't foresee what audiences ultimately would respond to, because they didn't realize what kind of impact all of these economic challenges were going to have on the public. So we think we know something's going to be this. We don't, not even people who are at the top of this industry can absolutely affirm that what things are going to do.
Speaker 3:Nobody predicted that the room, which is called the best, worst movie ever made, was going to be the celebrated movie that still sells out at theaters, which is yeah, it's almost inconceivable well, I think I've learned that too.
Speaker 2:Like with music, I stopped trying to write music for the public and I just write what I like and I like it. I have fun doing it, I put it out there and if they like it most people don't like my stuff. I've just come to accept that and I'm just like what I don't care, I just like it.
Speaker 3:And what you know. It's interesting too. This is an issue that I take and this is a social media. I've heard people say things like I don't like it, it's not good, it's like wait, those are two different things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3:You don't like it, and that's not wrong. That's your opinion and it's subjective. And art is made to provoke and art is subjective On many levels. It's subjective we well, this is this, this is what I like, this is what I don't like. I like it, I don't like it. I like it. It's good, I don't like it's bad. No, that's not necessarily the case. I've watched movies or listened to music that I can appreciate. I don necessarily like it, but it certainly doesn't make it bad. Whatever that was supposed to mean.
Speaker 3:Bad, good, bad, good. I actually think that we need to regroup and restore our sensibilities when it comes to the arts and remember what to value and what really matters, and I think that's a really good way to kind of round everything out of.
Speaker 3:Everything we've talked about is I think we sit need to sit down and reevaluate a lot of things this isn't just about what kind of monies are available or not available, or choices people are making, what side of the political fence someone is on. I think all of us, as human beings, we need to collectively rethink our valuation and remember what real worth means.
Speaker 2:Well, I have a theory that the 60s specifically, I used to be a huge Beatles fan. The rock group the Beatles, Sure. But now that I'm older I hear their music. I'm like, how did that song make it? And I think the Beatles kind of dumbed everybody down to what's really good music, because you went from Gershwin, neck and Cole really crafted songwriters that were making a lot of those music back then. Then income, love me do.
Speaker 3:Love me do as one verse and a chorus and although they they pushed the envelope a bit with things like the white album, I think they wanted beyond.
Speaker 3:I think they wanted to get beyond the pop uh yeah invasion pop sound and george martin had a lot to do with the production of that and Brian towards that and you know, because they were very inspired by people who Lynch was inspired by, you know. So I mean, they're there, they were, they were and they were interested in in the RNB of the United States and I think it was please, please, me was supposed to sound much slower and and they sped it up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they sped it up, so you're a Beatles.
Speaker 3:I know a lot of Beatles. Well, I knew Beatles when I remember I was a. Really I was very interested in John Lennon, his anti-war stance, and when he died I was very sad. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Back when I was 11. My husband, guy Hoffman, who was drummer in Violent Femmes of Bodine's, was a very big fan of British invasion bands like the Beatles and the who, because he learned to drum from the age of nine from those bands. Yeah, oh yeah, and I'm very familiar. But I think that I'm trying to think now. My brain is just, if I can just think for a minute like it's going to hit me. Who did it? God, no oh man, it's gonna come to me in a minute, it's all right, yeah, it's like.
Speaker 3:It's like, um, it's gonna come to me in a minute. It's like one of those moments where you're just like, no, there's too, there are too many. There are two. Oh, roy orbison, there are too many. There are too many. There are too many, um, far too many songs Like I'll search crying It'll bring up Aerosmith. I'll search pretty woman, it'll bring up the movie. I'm like no, no, I'm trying to get to Roy Orbison. Roy Orbison. Uh was a big influence on the Beatles. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Beatles, uh, george Martin, did I say George Harrison, george Martin, their producer had a lot to do with affecting their sound. They had kind of an edgier sound when they were the Silver Beatles playing out of clubs like in Hamburg and places like that. But I think that, yes, I think you're right in the sense that the whole thing of pop music pop music the late 50s, early 60s saw you heard a different kind of sound and a different kind of lyric. She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know it's, it's not exactly, you know, protest song, but I mean. But I guess in a way we've kind of always seen that, we've kind of, you know, I think the movie industry too has always seen kind of these. You know they'll have these what they call screwball comedies. Sure.
Speaker 3:Meet cutes, but then they've also had, you know, things like Casablanca, confessions of a Nazi Spy. We've always seen in the popular genres, even within entertainment, different, uh different elements, but certainly I think that there was a shift. The beatles did create a pretty big shift in what was considered was considered to be not only music but music culture, because suddenly you had the four mop tops all in their suits.
Speaker 2:You know, that whole look was very crafted, it's very crafted, and the beetle mania was very crafted well, if you want to see an interesting channel on youtube, it's called sage of quay, a guy named mike williams posted and he he talks about a conspiracy that he thinks he's discovered that the Beatles were the first manufactured boy band.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't doubt it, original members was Pete Best, and Pete Best was pushed out because it was felt that bringing in Ringo, who was very established in the British music industry and especially he played very well as a session musician as well, was studio musician and these other three guys were not but their material was interesting.
Speaker 3:Their songwriting was interesting, but bringing bringing. When brian epstein took them on in management brought them to george martin. That did change things and their image was crafted so in a way that there is something to be said about that there yeah maybe not I wouldn't exactly call them new kids on the block or anything like that but there was a quality oh, yeah, yeah there was a quality whereby they were, there was a certain amount of manufacture going on well, if you have, if you have time, just check out the channel.
Speaker 2:It's pretty interesting. He's got, he's done. Just count. Just I can't imagine how much hour, how many hours he's put into his research. Um, it's kind of conspiratorial. So if you're into kind of that, that spooky conspiratorial stuff, he's a very nice guy. He's been on my show a few times but he's that's so cool twisted. Some people see this twisted. I. I never saw it that way. Now that I see it, I can't unsee it like oh, yeah, yeah, yeah you know, once you see building seven on 9, 11 fall free fall speed.
Speaker 2:If you're like wait a minute, something else wouldn't happen on that day, then I don't know. If you know about building seven, we're off on a deep off in the weeds, yeah we could yeah, well, I I I know, I know some things.
Speaker 3:I there's a poet, um, who wrote a book about 9-11 and interviewed quite a number of people, including people who worked at the airports, one in particular in LAX, who had a lot to say about 9-11. Yeah, I think there's a lot beneath the surface when scratched.
Speaker 2:And I know, if we say anything about it on YouTube, they'll delete this video. That's how controversial it is. It's possible. It's possible. Oh, it's true.
Speaker 3:It's true, it's true, yeah, now.
Speaker 2:I'm tempted to let me see if I can find his name?
Speaker 3:who wrote the book and who formed it? Do you know this person? Oh, yes, yes, I did a performance with him when his book came out and he had a lot of interesting things to say. Uh, san Sandra Hicks, who also has run for some offices, sandra Hicks, um has a book out about nine 11. That's very interesting.
Speaker 2:Oh, really Okay, I'm just looking at him up here. Yeah, look that up when we're when we're offline.
Speaker 3:He's a very interesting person and he did I, he ran for political office within the last 10 15 years and ah, the press and he. He's a very interesting person. He had a lot of interesting things to say in that book. I've used that word interesting a number of times because interesting says a lot without it's it's, it's it's.
Speaker 3:You know, I think it was noam chomsky who very deftly said that he only reads the economic papers because they're the only ones that don't lie. And he said and he said, you know, I'm not trying to tout conspiracy theories, okay. He said I'm just presenting. This is Noam Chomsky now. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Professor at MIT, professor of linguistics, founder of, genitor of grammar theory, brilliant man. He said I'm not trying to devise or tout conspiracy theory. I am presenting facts. If you deduce conspiracy from that, I can't help that. I think what he's basically trying to say is that a lot of the facts point to some of the conspiracies that are out there. There's conspiracy theories that are out there. I try to look at facts. I try to say these are the facts and if this is my interpretation, this is my interpretation of those facts. I try not to confuse the two things and state my opinions as if they are fact, because that is a common problem in our age, these days, and I think social media has brought on some of that as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Um but I, just I. I think that, um, it's important to be able to voice what we think without danger. I know that's naive, because it happens anyway, but I think it is important to be able to dialogue again. We've had, we've reached the point where volume on conversation is very loud A lot of the time. A lot of the time it's about people come in with an assumption almost immediately, very defensive, and what is? I'm right, you're wrong.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 3:I think we've lost our sense of communication and intimacy. Doing that, lose that, and it's a very high price to pay for being feeling right or being right. I hope I don't find myself there. I hope I can remember how important it is to dialogue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and most people don't even know how to talk to each other anymore.
Speaker 3:So you see, everything, isn't it, Peter? It's yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you walk into the drugstore and you try to talk to the cashier, it's like hello. I just said hi, how's your day? And they're like what? It's like my God what?
Speaker 3:what's wrong with everybody? People are very. I see that too. I mean you know people are very hyped up people are very defensive people, oh yeah, angry people, and they're afraid and it's understandable and I think especially the united states. We're sort of conditioned to be scared, especially the media. The way it's designed is. We're conditioned to be afraid, and I think the more afraid we are, the more we consume things we don't need or something. So there is sort of you know, sort of thing going on there.
Speaker 3:But, as I said, with the strikes and everything I I mean, I I had a good five to seven months where we were able to get on, and then things got really hard yeah, my first bout of COVID in November of 2023. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:And I had another very severe kind of influenza in this last December of 2024. Wow, and yeah, it was very stressful. And so I think you, you know, I think we're almost all of us kind of in this state of trauma. Now Trauma's become, which isn't healthy. It's not healthy to get to a point where trauma becomes normal yeah, yeah, you're living constantly in that really uh toxic environment yeah, and it's, it's kind of it's encouraged.
Speaker 3:Now here we are in los angeles with all that's going on, and we just had the fires, and before that was the strikes, and before that was the lockdowns and yeah, yeah, uh and I was speaking about that with a music therapist who's a friend of mine, who I've known for a long time.
Speaker 3:Her name is judith pinkerton and she's been working with various organizations and individuals to try to relieve trauma trauma from individuals who have become almost like treating trauma like it's sort of their, um, their only stability anymore. It becomes really hard to uh heal from trauma when trauma becomes sort of a way of life it's almost like you you need it to survive.
Speaker 1:It's almost like it it somehow it's a myth, it's a farce, yes, but it's true. It becomes a crutch or something I absolutely agree with you.
Speaker 3:I 100 that it's become. That's the mirage. Now, that's the mirage. Yeah, the mirage is that you've got to constantly be like in the state of fight flight freeze, you know oh yeah, oh yeah, it's in order to yeah, and it's healthy and we weren't made for that. Oh no, we weren't made for that at all. It's very terrifying. Yeah, because I actually am a PTSD sufferer myself, so I know. Oh yeah, we would want to live as human beings.
Speaker 3:It's not it's not a fulfilling way to live, and I think that the more we create, the more we can heal and move away from that kind of oh exactly, yeah, no, I agree, I use my creation to to heal from my trauma too.
Speaker 2:So I think a lot of us artists yeah, I, it was just something I gravitated to, like the beat, beatles got me into art and music. My mom did too. She was an artist, but it was always a place of escape. I find it healthy, a healthy escape or a coping mechanism which has led to I mean, I guess I want to end right now.
Speaker 3:I love what you're saying. I just love the character of what you're surrounded by. I have to ask now who was your favorite Beatle?
Speaker 2:It was John Lennon me too yeah, and as I look at myself in the camera, I've got the wrong white balance on. Here, me, mr movie maker, and I'm I look pink I kind of like that.
Speaker 3:I kind of am liking the pink. Actually I actually thought that you did that because you know that's kind of that was always kind of like the host creature feature thing to do oh, yeah, yeah back the lighting. That way you know you watch movies like attack of the killer clowns, where they have, like the pink and the orange and the blue like to signify differently yeah it's really quite cool actually, I think this I bought this mask at a place called um immortal masks in los angeles, and this thing weighs 25 pounds.
Speaker 2:It's. It's like foam, rubber and I don't know. It's really heavy. So when I'm on it, when I put it on, I'm drenched in sweat and I can't breathe from my nose, and so I put on this persona and I can be somebody else and um, but you've got to check out an immortal mass there.
Speaker 3:I immortal mass immortal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're great people, they. They follow me and I'm trying to get them to sponsor my show, but they're oh, that would be amazing, that would be, amazing.
Speaker 3:You know. It's funny too, because, as you were talking about that, I was thinking about the people I've known, like the assistant to gary marshall, for example, and he knew Rob Reiner too, and he also had been a character on one of the Star Trek series.
Speaker 2:Gary Marshall was.
Speaker 3:No, this gentleman, I talked about oh okay. Who was his assistant and who worked with Rob Reiner? Gotcha. He had been on one of the Star Trek series. It might have been a Deep Space Nine, okay, and you know, you look at him in the photographs with the makeup on and you're like, oh my god, with these people who are in these, on these shows yeah, you know there was like because it wasn't just like with the horror movie, where you know you were hired for a certain amount of time and then you're done with your stint.
Speaker 3:It's a week or it's a day, or it's five weeks or whatever it is, but on television programs you had to sit in those chairs for hours oh, yeah, yeah a day, you know, just to get that makeup on every day. I mean, I have such a tremendous respect for that. I I don't work in that genre. It would be interesting because it's so funny. Like, walking around, I've been called everything from lilith and they're referring to beam, norwood, from cheers.
Speaker 3:There's my, my post lilith, oh, I never saw a worker called right, the lady who runs the post office where I go. It calls me that and then I've had people in my building like I'll be walking past and they're like morticia and I'm like but I'm not even trying, so. But thanks, you know, it's like. This is just how I look, normally do you dress in black a lot.
Speaker 2:I do, I do, and when I was, younger, when I was in high school.
Speaker 3:I remember after high school someone saying oh yeah, you were always doing that goth thing and you know, whitening your skin and darkening your hair. And I was like that was just me.
Speaker 2:I was like no, that was just. You weren't trying to put on weren't trying to put on.
Speaker 3:I wasn't trying to do that at all. No, that's oh, I don't I all. The only makeup I have on right now is is lipstick.
Speaker 2:That's it, this everything else, this is just me oh, I thought you had eyeshadow on and stuff too, no, no, this is just me now oh, wow yeah, no, this is my natural coloring because I make, wow yeah because I I thought you were. I don't know what. You call them vintage dressers or period dressers.
Speaker 3:I do love. I do love vintage. I do love various it's I am. I love the medieval period and I also love the Victorian period and I also love that. Wow.
Speaker 3:Is, but I, I don't. I love, I really love and respect the people who do all the cosplay stuff and just go all totally out. I tend to try to incorporate pieces into my everyday life because, I still want to look like I'm a person in my life, not doing cosplay in my everyday life, so I try to incorporate pieces and I do. I'll end up looking very forties A lot of the time. Forties, I think especially, is the one that people tend to cite.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I there's. I've seen you dress like that, and there's a model I worked with in Phoenix. Her name is Amanda Lee and she dressed like that. 24 seven. Oh, wow. Rezier shoes, blue dresses, makeup hair everything. Seven oh wow, shoe's, dresses, makeup, hair everything. She was a platinum blonde. She was a fascinating model to work with, but I don't think I could carry that out all the time.
Speaker 3:Oh, all the time. I mean, I think it was Joan Crawford who once said if you want, you know, if you want you know, if you want the girl next door, go next door. And the thing was her belief was you answer your fan mail at all costs and and you always look your best, you always walk out because you have to prepare for you. And there I I do really respect that. She had the longest running careers in hollywood and for a reason she was. She was very, very devoted to her fans. She was very, very devoted to the people who appreciated her.
Speaker 3:I don't know if I necessarily I don't. I don't vibrate with the word fan. I kind of like friends and I kind of like fellow people, fellow artists. But fandom, fandom I I've I've experienced it. I have experienced fandom on either side, like I've seen people like around tommy or greg with their fandom, and I've experienced fandom myself. And I remember one time there was somebody and Greg was like, wow, you have a fan. And I was like a super fan. I'm like he's a really nice guy, though he's a lot to take, but he's a nice guy. And and I'm talking about referring to Greg Greg Sestero now, who wrote the disaster artists.
Speaker 3:I have to remember that when I use people's first names in my life, I know who I mean and everybody may not know who I'm talking about, um, but I've, I've been, I've been very blessed to um, to be given the opportunity to meet people. I'm glad you reached out. I, your wife was right, just just show it to me. I'm so glad you did because where I first came from in my life, before I could even talk or speak or whatever, my great uncle, francesco Spicuzza, was a post-impressionist painter. So what I remember first and foremost of the arts is looking up at his paintings when I was like two years old and thinking I do that, like it's already in me. You thought that at the age of two.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Wow, you know you thought that the age of two, yeah, wow, yeah, I used to. I remember I can picture myself I'm standing on the stairway of my parents and aunt's cottage again, because they he would do small studies and then he would do the larger paintings and, uh, one of his small studies was a landscape with snow. I just remember seeing that and that was the thought that I had. I couldn't really talk because I was too little little to really. I talked, but not a lot, but I could think and my thought was I, I do, I do that, like it's already in me, and so by the time I was four and five in kindergarten, I'd be like drawing things with like perspective and stuff like that, you know. And then I started acting when I was like six and I wrote my first play when I was 10.
Speaker 3:And I really had like a lot. I mean I had. I had a very good education, but it wasn't like someone said this is what you've got to do, or sat me down with formal training and said do this. It just came out of me very naturally and it always has. That's why, kind of like formal training kind of freaks me out a little bit, because it's like what do you mean? This is how you do this. I've always done that. It's like what do you mean? Um? Yet I do I do rely on very, very, um, very technically intelligent people.
Speaker 2:I mean I I don't make movies alone, I don't yeah, oh yeah, it's hard, it's almost impossible to do, I think I've been.
Speaker 3:I I just I keep thinking that all I can think is gosh and I've. One of the things that I've really been so happy about is that all my sets I've had people say this was like my best experience making a movie or this is my best experience making a film or doing a production and that I feel like, okay, I'm doing something right, then that's a good sign oh, that's good yeah, because you want it to be like that.
Speaker 3:You want it to be like a family, the familial experience and people creatively coming together toward a common goal. There's nothing like that. I can hardly wait to get to get back to that, because even when we were shooting the teaser, which was a one-day shoot.
Speaker 3:It was a one day you know shoot with like four to five people and it was like gosh. It was just so great Cause a lot of the core members of the team were back together and I just I can hardly wait to do the next thing. It's like you just get this itch that you just have to catch it's like oh gosh.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to find out very soon what, what is happening with this next movement and, of course, if that road isn't the road, there's just got to be a different road. Yeah. I know two billionaires personally and I'll tell you, in this current economy even they don't want to move their money right now because they'll take such a loss with the way the stock market is, the way that certificates are and other accounts are, it's just, it's even moving on the ground.
Speaker 2:It's really volatile right now. It's really bad.
Speaker 3:And assets trying to. You know, you make a plan and then everything changes. The very next day after that and it's just. It's a very difficult economic time, difficult political time. Oh, for everyone yeah, these are the times, oftentimes, where artistic times need to be very productive.
Speaker 2:Oh true, that's. Very true.
Speaker 3:I really am very excited for you because I enjoyed Angel's Flight.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you.
Speaker 3:For everybody listening. That is an exclusive. We are very proud of that. That that's an exclusive on the platforms the platform we devised and designed and created over the course of an entire year of 2022. You know, we launched it November 3rd I believe it was of 2022. And we worked on it that whole year and it's the first fully woman-owned membership streaming platform in existence.
Speaker 4:Oh wow, yeah, that's awesome, awesome, it's really incredible, and I'm just really very happy with the.
Speaker 3:You know the curating of content the way you would curate a museum or art art gallery.
Speaker 3:You know it's not, it's a beautiful website thank you, thank you, I, you know, I, I, I had ideas and I devised certain things. And the execution. Again speaking of execution, leonardo Veneziano, who is the founder of sunken realm design company, he, he really helped to implement a lot of those things. Wow, they helped do that and so it would. And another programmer we kind of to try to find the ways in which we could make this truly secure and safe for filmmakers. Hence the name the Studio Club. I'm just really glad that you came on board with us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm really glad you allowed me into your life, so to speak, and got to know me a little bit, because I think your passion and your vision is just inspirational. Thank you, we hope, right, we all want that, don't? Oh yeah, and it's very hard for me to meet other artists that are willing to like, be as open and think. I've met one other woman. I'm doing a mini documentary on a name, fatima taylor. She's a painter from ohio and I told her about you and I said the two said she's got a Russian, uzbekistan background, but she's very driven, very strong type A woman who has a vision, and I think you're similar. I pointed her to your Instagram page and stuff, because there's not a lot of women. I don't think there's enough women respected in the art, in the creative community.
Speaker 3:No, just I you know not alone.
Speaker 2:I mean it's in the business world too.
Speaker 3:But it's funny you brought that up because I I posted this recently on facebook that I'm kind of doing my own little test with meta ai.
Speaker 3:You know the meta ai on instagram and facebook sure I'm like, wow, I'm finding that there are some obscure actors or filmmakers that are, who are male, and I can find their information readily through meta ai. But I'll search for like a celebrated female director or actress and I can't find they're not. Meta doesn't bring up any data and I'm like, okay, this is definitely sexist leaning, there's something wrong well, think about all the famous directors.
Speaker 2:They're all men. Most of them are, are or you know. It's like that in all businesses seems. It seems like it's all white men, like if you try to find a black artist like all the black artists here in cleveland are kind of they're in their own little community and I'm like why are you guys all over here by yourselves? And they and I'm in the one girl I'm friends with she's like well, you know who else is going to promote our, our culture?
Speaker 3:but I think it's it's kind of weird, well, and that's, that's to your credit too, that you can celebrate women directors. One thing I have noticed, noticed is that in the social media sphere, you know, in the internet universe, in the internet verse, sometimes I find that I think sometimes there are men who are very uncomfortable with the idea of a woman leading. They're not comfortable with that at all.
Speaker 2:I've seen, I've seen it oh, I know, I know yeah fortunate.
Speaker 3:It's unfortunate because there are a lot of very talented women in this business. Uh, there's a group called women in media and they, uh they, they are specifically geared toward women crew in the business and they.
Speaker 3:They've really that's a beautiful, that's a beautiful organization, film Fatales. I've mentioned Cinefem, alliance of Women Directors, and they're jam-packed. I mean they're packed with really talented people, people who some people have heard of, some people haven't. I just I think it was Orson Welles who said you know, movies are like a wife. You know you should have divorced long ago, but you love her too much. It's like he said it's. You know he has these funny stories and it is. It's really being a movie maker or filmmaker, however you want to structure it, it's like it's it's. It can be a challenge in the sense that you spend a lot of your life, spent a lot of my creative life pursuing the means to make motion pictures. It's not easy to do, it can be daunting and sometimes I mean that's the side of me you haven't seen yet where I'm just like oh, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:There are days like that, oh yeah, it's like, why am I even doing this? And then you just remember you, you see someone else's work, you remember your own you're. You remember what it was like being on set and you just are like, yeah, oh, it makes it, it does, it does bring a worthwhile quality to everything, a worthwhile quality to everything. And I, I'm excited at the prospect now because, like I, I found your picture and I saw the, the value in it, and I wanted to be a part of that and we wanted to release it on the platform. And then, um, there's another you know documentary, um, an extended documentary. I'm looking at that I saw last november and there are some other movies and and it's like, like I said, it was like a kind of it's an interesting curating process.
Speaker 3:I don't, I still don't know exactly how we. Streaming is harder and harder to monetize. Now people are getting there. They're just becoming used to getting their entertainment like for free, or they think it's for free. You pay for an Amazon membership and you pay for netflix and then you just forget about it and you think I'm getting all this stuff for free?
Speaker 3:no, you're not really but, um, but I just I, I we were going to talk about that too a little bit. The distribution issues I mean liz minashel, who was at one time the head of distribution. Um, they created a position for her at Sundance Institute and, uh, she did a, a survey with her partner and published it in Filmmaker Magazine to demonstrate how few filmmakers even break even much less make money an overwhelming number, don't even break even oh, yeah, and when?
Speaker 3:I and when I told her, well, we were getting, you know we were making I said we were getting a million, over a million viewing minutes per month on Amazon Prime for three months straight and we were getting a penny per viewing hour, which isn't uncommon. And, oh my God, we were making just over $200 a month. And her jaw dropped and I said I know, isn't that terrible? And she was like that's like what some movies are making across all platforms in three months.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and she's talking about, like even Sundance film make very prominent, well-known film, yeah yeah. And I was like, wow, you know what do you do then? And that was like, wow, you know what do you do then? And that was one of. I mean, we were already in process of building the platform at that point, you know, and there's more to come, but it's not easy, it's not easy for filmmakers it's gotten harder in many ways because we don't have the physical media as much anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think one has to become very creative, and I, the person who probably stands as one of the greatest businessmen, business people, marketers around that I mean tommy. Tommy taught me a lot of things too. Tommy taught me a lot of things too, about how he marketed the room and what he did for that, and I, I, I commend him for that. People don't always give him credit would you but?
Speaker 2:would you be interested in? We had talked about breaking this up, maybe in the segments. Yes, because maybe we've been at this for two hours yeah I know this might even be like cut in half or something in part, yeah but I think maybe if we talked about the distribution process in another segment, if you have, time, because you're just like so busy and stuff no, no, I'd love to, because I think anything that helps all of us along in this yeah, yeah
Speaker 3:I. I recently notified an organization and said hey, you know, I, I really support what you're doing, but please don't market yourself like you're the first women's platform to do this or that. It it's like that's us. We did that already. So just please, just just as long as you're not stepping on us or treading on us, hey, we're all in this together, you know, and I, I think that's a great idea because I think there's so much more that we can address.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, in another segment there is. There's so much depth to all of this. There are so many layers and, like we were saying, one of the beautiful things about the arts is it isn't one direction, one way. People, someone, someone talked about that recently steven spielberg. I didn't even realize that he had tried to get into usc film school and didn't, and they told him we don't see a future for you. And he ended up like in long beach, in in in a small uh program in long at long beach university and he goes on to create the summer blockbuster.
Speaker 2:It's like oh yeah, I don't think they even had a script for jaws, did they?
Speaker 3:uh, I, I think it was. I think there were a lot of issues. Yeah, he's about to do some kind of introduction about that, talking about the making of that.
Speaker 2:They're re-releasing it this summer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, because it's 70 1975 because yeah, yeah what it was, the 50 year. I don't can you believe this? Yeah, no, that just hit me just now between the eyes. It's the 50 year anniversary. And do you know that the organization that created uh lobby cards? We created versions of that for night rain, for, for example, lobby Cards. I think Jaws was one of the last films. They started in like the late teens, early 20s, with Lobby. Cards.
Speaker 3:And there was an organization responsible for that, and then Motion Picture Society, and I think Jaws was one of the last ones 50 years ago.
Speaker 2:It's crazy and I know my wife is seven years younger than me and I bragged to her and I said I saw this movie in the theater when it came out and I was like nine years old and she's like, oh, it's because so she's dying to see it on the big screen, because it's one of our favorite movies and we always see something new in it.
Speaker 3:I love that you guys have that together. That is so awesome. And you know what? Please thank her for me, because I'm glad she encouraged you to reach out to me, because she was awesome.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm paranoid, so I always think you know. Number one I'm very sensitive to how I approach a woman because these days people don't always know who they're dealing with and, like I said, I'm serious.
Speaker 3:I'm too lazy to stalk anybody, I'm just well, and again, I mean, I gotta say now what some people call stalking. I'm like, oh, you ain't seen nothing, oh no I've had.
Speaker 2:I've had people stalk me on here. I've had a couple people um well, I'm not gonna say what happened because there's some people. I'm just ignoring what happened and they've kind of gone away.
Speaker 3:Yeah eventually, yeah, well, yeah, it depends on the level. I've. You know some of them. If they're professionals and they're being paid, they're not just going to go away because they're not doing it for their own emotional gratification, they're doing it for their own.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've seen some pretty hellacious things about me in the comments on my YouTube channel, like why would you say something like that? You know you know people.
Speaker 3:It is sad. That's the part of the internet, that's the part that you know. We were talking about the good sides and that is the unfortunate side that what some people will do is they'll hide behind this perceived anonymity and think I can say anything. I can say things I would never normally say.
Speaker 3:Yeah exactly, and there aren't. There's no consequence because they won't know who I am, but there is a consequence because you are still you, even if no one knows it, and and you are you and you know about it and other people can see it, and so I don't know. You know if I think it was Douglas Adams and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who said the last time something like this happened. This, you know, this guy came along and and said why can't we all be you know, love each other and be good to each other? And he got nailed to a tree.
Speaker 2:Oh God, did he really? And literally got nailed to a tree.
Speaker 3:Well, he was talking about that crazy carpenter named Jesus. You know, that was what Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was talking about. Yeah, it was like you know the last time something like this happened was. You know, this woman's trying to stop the world from being blown up and you're trying to appeal, trying to appeal to the better nature of human beings and he said the last time something like this happened, you know, a man was nailed to a tree for saying why can't we all just be nice to each?
Speaker 2:other I. I think the greatest words came out of the la riots from the 90s was a rodney king said why can't we just all get along? And it's always been overlooked. But I'm like, can't we just kind of put all this aside and, just you know, work together, especially artists? I always find it so hard to work with other artists, especially musicians. That's a whole nother story.
Speaker 3:But when ego steps in, unfortunately when you know the best defense against the ego that the ego can't seem to defend itself against, and that's humor. Oh, that's true. Murray. Bill Murray understood that in his version of uh of the razor's edge he made a remake of it, the one originally starring to run power and and you're like an encyclopedia of just movies and directors and quotes.
Speaker 2:My God, I mean swimming around.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is quotes. My God, it's all swimming around. Yeah, you can't see it now. It's covered by this lovely veil of what people think is goth the goth look. But it's my natural coloring. I just really love, I really have, and I'm a nerd. I guess I'm a movie nerd.
Speaker 2:Oh, I know it's great being a nerd and if you could see my messy studio behind the camera.
Speaker 3:I love your studio. I find it the most charming. I just find it absolutely adorable.
Speaker 2:My moon. The battery died.
Speaker 3:Oh no, it was glowing before folks. I can attest to that I saw it. I loved it. Live on the air in the Bill Murray back there. I love the live on the air and the Bill Murray back there, bill.
Speaker 2:Murray. I mentioned Bill Murray. Yeah, I love Bill Murray and I love Walter Maddow and Jack Lemmon. I've been friends with them for years and I've got some of my paintings down here.
Speaker 3:Oh, look at that. Oh yeah, I love it. I think the charm of it is what you clearly put into your environment. It's just wonderful. It's wonderful, it's just wonderful, it's wonderful. It's clearly. I don't know, maybe you don't express it as effusively as I do with the same histrionics maybe. No, I'm very conservative and quiet You're passionate about what you are interested in and what you enjoy.
Speaker 2:I mean, I can see that I can be around the right people. I pretty much keep it to myself. I'm very closeted about it. I, if you met me on the street, you would never know I'm very eccentric. Sides to me that, oh very few people know about the best ones. Yeah, I know, but I don't.
Speaker 3:I have to put the mask on to you know, to let it come out, or you know, it's like you've got this, you've got this quiet nature, but then oh yeah, yeah, I mean I'm not schizophrenic or anything, but I have.
Speaker 2:I'm always afraid. Look, so there's a few people that know the real me, uh, and my wife's one of them and uh. But there's some friends of mine that you know, that know what I'm like, and sometimes it doesn't come up unless I've had a few beers and I don't drink anymore so I rarely have any alcohol, but um you, I have, like I have a dirty martini once a year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to drink quite a bit and I was like I can't do this anymore. Um, this has been great, this has been awesome. Uh, I'm really so glad we're talking and if you have ideas, I know you're really busy I appreciate the time We'll do it, let's.
Speaker 3:let's not wait too long, is my thought. Let's not let's not let the let's not let the embers burn out. Okay, let's, let's ride on this and let's maybe think about when the next time is. We could do this. Gosh, I might have some really good news by the next time we do this, depending.
Speaker 2:Hopefully, so yeah maybe I by the next time we do this depending on yeah, hopefully, so Maybe I'll have a lot more to report. Yeah, keep me informed on that. And I've got a medical procedure, so I'm going to be kind of out of things at the end of June.
Speaker 3:The monks, and I said a special prayer for that during my oh, I told you about that didn't I. Oh, that's right.
Speaker 2:You went to the monastery.
Speaker 3:I went to the monastery. I was there last week and I did ask for prayers for your.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you so much. Well, I found this. That really means that it really touched me so much that you even thought of that and I've always wanted, I've always dreamed of kind of becoming a monk to get away from the world.
Speaker 3:Monks are cool. Did you ever play the video game Heretic? No, the little monk. They're like good and bad. Sounds like some kind of like lab mixed with God knows what kind of Darth Vader breeding they're doing. Yeah. Heretic. And what was the Hexen? Hexen and Heretic, I think, were the name.
Speaker 2:I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 3:Particular video games. They were video games with like freaky monks. My friend who was a theology major. Yeah. Len turned me on to that. I can't spend too much time playing video games, though I respect them, but I can't play it Spend too much time on them because I'm doing all these other things all the time.
Speaker 2:I've got the original pong my closet and the first Sega system. My brother sent me those for Christmas when I was a kid.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I used to play Atari. Do you remember Atari? Yep, yep. I remember Atari pong I played. I can say that I played pong as a very young person.
Speaker 2:You did play it too.
Speaker 3:I did. Yeah, I still got myself. Yes. My brother. I think you're in the Gen X category. I'm pretty sure I think that's what I am. Yeah, I think you're still in the Gen X. Gen. Xers are just cool, we're just cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Gen Xers are cool.
Speaker 2:We have a foot in the digital world and a foot in the analog world and we've seen so much between wars and politics, and art and entertainment we're cartilage and entertainment cartilage, we're cartilage.
Speaker 3:We understand the boomers, we understand where the boomers are coming from.
Speaker 3:I mean, they came up during the economic, the best economic period of this country, post-world war ii, yeah, exactly never has happened before or since that you know, one country, the united states in this case, over inherits over half the world's wealth all at once, and you have this incredible economy in this incredible period in history, where just everything is there for the taking and the making, and that's the boomer generation, and then you have the, the millennials and the, the gen y and the gen z and and it's like, and they've struggled, you know, and they've, they've, they've seen some of the most difficult economic periods, and oh yeah perpetual wars and things like that, and we're the cartilage between the two.
Speaker 3:We kind of understand it from from both perspectives and it's an interesting. It's interesting to be gen x, it is, it's, I think yeah it really is a lot of things the gen xers can really do a great deal right now to help the world. Actually because I I.
Speaker 2:That's a good point. I think we could do a lot connective tissue.
Speaker 3:We're connective tissue. You know we were made. We were made to, like you know, be, be understanding of all these different points of view. You know it's like and and and try to communicate that somehow, in the midst of like, the sky is falling, you know yeah, it's on fire, but at the same time it's like no wait, let's try to get a perspective on this well, this is what I mean.
Speaker 2:There's so many people out there just rattling, you know, stirring things up. Let's, let's, step out of the muck.
Speaker 3:Well, I, like I said I was down there and I'm not, I'm not decrying that certain things were taking place. That was certainly the norm and not when I was down there. Certainly even by Tuesday a lot of that had already had already resolved itself, and I there.
Speaker 3:Certainly is vandalism which I think is tragic because it's costly and I really would like to see more money go to the poor and go to the homeless and you know, help people and go to education and go to roads, and you know the things that in the fifties we took for granted, because you know people were paying 40% of their money towards taxes and things like that at that time and I'm not just talking about the average person, I'm talking about even the wealthy was paying. They were paying their share too.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, and I mean, I know Peter Buffett, I've met him and spoken with him, and I think there are some billionaires I've even met in person who would like to see more of that. They try and then things don't go where they should and we need a lot of help. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3:We need to keep making stuff. That's what we do as artists because, like you said, otherwise it just can be overwhelming, because it's like that's that would be my thought for everybody. It's like make stuff, keep making stuff. Make stuff because what you know, you're. You're not going to change the entire world, but you can make a difference as an individual. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, make a start to our better, towards a better world.
Speaker 3:Make sure, make sure to reach, make sure to recognize the value of every person, even people we don't necessarily like or get along with, or whatever that's sure. That's okay too, we can still love them. True. So love them, even if we don't want to be anywhere near them. That's you too, stalkers them. That's you too stalkers. I love you, um, but I, I will, I, I it's hard.
Speaker 2:This is how we know we have to talk. It's hard to say goodbye, you know. Yeah, yeah, no, I just love this.
Speaker 3:Where's the end point? It's like there's just so much more there there is.
Speaker 2:I'm just gonna I don't know what I'm gonna do with it, because it's just so it's. I love editing, but I'm gonna have to figure out probably chop this up into two pieces and then do a couple of pieces and we'll go from there yeah let's go from there.
Speaker 3:There'll be more to come. I I hope I'll have some really good news from you soon oh, yeah, yeah, let's hear.
Speaker 2:Let's hear some good news about your production we need that, we need oh yeah, I'm ready to.
Speaker 3:I I have that hankering. It's like I just I'm like, oh, like, oh, my God, what more can I do? I just want to be back in it. It's been a while and I want to be back in it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you're so talented and you're so passionate. Thank you. I think good things. I think, even if you don't become famous or whatever, you've already put so much wonderful stuff out in the universe, and what more could you?
Speaker 3:ask for so many people just doing what we do. One person say, my god, you're like my favorite celebrity person. I'm like for a friend, I'm like me. They're like, yeah, I'm like, oh, I don't think of myself that way. Someone else oh, you're not famous at all. I'm like, oh, okay, well, it's a matter of opinion, I guess it's okay. Yeah, no, I I think it's better to leave that as a very uh, leave that where it is.
Speaker 2:It's not the prime directive it's not the prime directive making stuff has to be the prime director I had a friend of mine say you don't know how lucky you are to be an artist. I always wanted to be an artist and I could, just could never do it and I'm like i't know. I don't know if I think of myself as lucky, but I guess there's some people that never tried.
Speaker 3:The world is lucky for artists, luckier than they sometimes realize. I think that when it comes to being an artist, it's a way of seeing and it's a way of living. I think it was in Raise High, the Roofbeam, carpenters and Seymour, an introduction by JD Salinger.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like an encyclopedia. This is just amazing.
Speaker 3:Someone asks the character. Buddy Glah about his brother Seymour, and says well, you know, they're all debating his nature, his character, finally not knowing that this is his brother. And he says you know, seymour was a goddamn poet because that's very salinger goddamn poet. He was a goddamn poet. You would even even if he'd never written a stitch of poetry. All you'd have to do is look at the back of his ear and you know he was a poet.
Speaker 2:I remember reading that shortly before I started performing poetry wow and I remember that very well because you could just get that essence. You mean, because he's so yeah, yeah, I think.
Speaker 3:I think it's so. I think, yeah, I think it has a lot to do with who you are and how you live and how you see things and what we were made for. I think, an artist a lot of people think of an artist as the stuff that we do. You write, so you're a writer. You paint, so you're a painter. But, like I was describing even as a two-year-old, there was something inside of me who knew already this is in me, it's who I am, this is in me, and if it's in there, then I think the goal is to bring it out of there exactly and not just for ourselves.
Speaker 3:I mean, that's it's for, it's for other people too oh, it's wonderful and I think that's very, I think it's, I think it's exceptionally important to uh, it's, it's almost, it's almost a a responsibility that what you're given you're not given, what you're given, to keep it. Yeah, I mean, you're given what you're given, you're not given what you're given to keep it yeah. You're given what you're given to give it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to express it and to put it out there into the universe.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that matters. I think that matters the most and the rest of it. You know, the fame thing can be important when you're wanting to command a salary or sell something. Sure, but it a lot of it. I was just talking with a friend. It has its downsides it has its, oh yeah, it's downsides.
Speaker 3:It has its downsides and and he doesn't see many upsides I think there are a few upsides as an artist, it might help you get work, it might help you earn more money, um, but it it had it, definitely you can become a victim of your own image and that's dangerous oh, yeah, yeah, it can, it can really because you, you want that to be, you want to continue to.
Speaker 3:It's got to be authentic, and for authenticity's sake, one has to be very careful with these cultivated images oh yeah, yeah, it can be toxic, I think what this?
Speaker 2:is what we can, we just whatever we can do, we yeah do, that's it well, this has been awesome, jean, thanks so much, and I'll leave you with this the the little animal behind you there, um, or whatever that is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that, that's the color of my one of my granddaughters that's the color of my sleepers when I was two and three. Oh, it's kind of a turquoise or teal yeah, it's not.
Speaker 2:I don't know what I said it was, but that's the exact color. I had a. I had an easter bunny.
Speaker 3:That was the same color, the feet like kind of like a white.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, they had like a little texture to them so I couldn't fall or slip or whatever you said yeah.
Speaker 3:Mine was kind of a pale yellow. Mine was a pale yellow, really Okay. By Sleeper. Yeah.
Speaker 2:How funny, how funny. We remember that stuff.
Speaker 3:It's amazing how you. I mean just go. That's full circle, because we were talking about when you sneak when you sneak down to watch the movies.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah you know something's brewing when you're sneaking down to watch movies that you're not even supposed to be watching for me it was jenny carson, because my parents always stayed up and watched jenny carson and it was movie, it was big chuck. And who brilliant oh I miss him a lot. He was, he was great awesome.
Speaker 3:He made suzanne. So I was thinking about that recently. He made suzanne summer as a star.
Speaker 2:Did he really?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, she came to Hollywood with a book of poetry, a book of poems of hers that were published, and she was on I think it was the Paramount lot doing an audition and possibly a callback for like a bit role. And he saw her in the commissary and said what a beautiful young woman. And she said Well, I got this, this book of poetry, and I just got my first call back and didn't even know what that was initially, had to find out what that meant. And he's like you're just so charming, you should come on my show. And that's really that's what got her the gig on three's company. Really, yeah, johnny carson was a star maker oh, I had no idea that he even.
Speaker 2:I know I'm sure he had been on her show, his show, but I had no idea that he even I know I'm sure he had been on her show his show, but I had no idea he got her start.
Speaker 3:He got her started. Wow, yep.
Speaker 2:Yep, Now did, did he? Did she have to sleep with him to do that?
Speaker 3:Not to my knowledge, he was that kind of producer.
Speaker 2:Oh, he wasn't that kind of guy, okay.
Speaker 3:I don't think in that case that was the case. I think that was still a time when you could still know. Of course there was. There was the story of ac lyles and, uh, yvette vickers. But the interesting part was ac lyles. Ac lyles actually did when he, when he did casting couch. Apparently he actually did deliver though. So he didn't say I'll do this for you and then not do it. But there there have been all kinds of interesting tales throughout hollywood oh yeah, that would be an interesting topic to tackle.
Speaker 3:I've heard all kinds of stories well, and that links to distribution, because the reality is the way some people got their start, or not the way people would imagine oh yeah, yeah, I've heard some real crazy stories you know, I I mean I I might have had an academy award if I'd been willing to do certain things by now. It wasn't on the basis of my talent, certainly not my writing or acting capability, other capabilities, I suppose, but I wasn't willing to go there there's some people on the big screen.
Speaker 2:You wonder how did they get there.
Speaker 3:Men and women like they're and in some cases it's like I I think it was judy dench, and judy dench is one of the greatest actors of our time, quite frankly, and she has been known to say things like um, sometimes it's just being in the right place with all her talent with all her talent. She has said that too. It's hard to know. It's hard to know why things hit, how they hit the target. Oh sure, sure.
Speaker 3:Even in cases where people do sell something out to get where they are, but the public still has to accept them. I mean, it's a strange thing, you can't really again going full circle. You, it's very, again going full circle, it's very hard to predict the public. It's very hard to predict the public. It really is. All the more reason why it's best to just keep doing what you do, because Mozart died in an unmarked grave. He was thrown into an unmarked grave. He didn't have the money for a proper burial.
Speaker 3:And now he's one of the most celebrated composers of all time. Yeah and now he's one of the most celebrated composers of all time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, it's like van gogh poor, van gogh poor, vincent you know, yeah, uh, van gogh, I, he just people, he was ahead of his time. I guess there's all kinds of and that'd be another topic. I mean maybe we should just start a podcast. I mean, because all of these things are.
Speaker 3:They carry a value, yeah, but you know, it's just, I think that I think that, in the end, um, you have to really let things be what they are mm-hmm let people be who they are. Yeah, I, I really, I, I really.
Speaker 2:I I've so enjoyed this, peter oh good, yeah, it's a great time you're, it's so fun talking with you.
Speaker 3:You, you have a great droll sense of humor.
Speaker 2:It reminds me of some of the british sense of you, the british, oh yeah, yeah, my, I was raised on monty python and the wit of the beatles and all that stuff and I went. I'll leave you with this. I went in to get some x-rays done a couple of weeks ago and this, you know, x-ray tech comes out, young lady, about half my age, and there's this big white machine and I go is that the machine that goes bing? And I don't know if you've ever seen the meaning of life with monty python. Oh, oh yes, there's an operating scene with john cleese and he's like bring out the machine that goes bing, bring out the machine that goes bing.
Speaker 2:And it comes out and it goes bing and the girl goes what?
Speaker 3:I know they don't know.
Speaker 2:So I pull it up on my iPhone and this drives my wife crazy. She's like, please, don't pull it up on your iPhone, I don't care. This girl's looking at me like what are you doing? And I'm like I'm an old man to her and I'm like here, here's this scene. And she's like uh-huh, and the thing goes bing. And she's like, oh, okay, great, Okay, step over there and I'll step behind the lead wall. And she just completely blew me off.
Speaker 3:You know some of the young ones, though they get it. Some of the young- ones, yeah, yeah. Every once in a comeback. Oh, Monty Python. Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know in fact I want to mention that too before I go that in an interview Terry Gilliam. Terry Gilliam said you know, if we were to come up today, monty Python, we never would have made it it. He said, in our day, everything it was like a pyramid and you had all this talent at the bottom and a few suits at the top, and they were willing to take their time with you and nurture you and allow you to grow. He said that's now. It's the opposite. Now you have a little bit of talent at the bottom and all the suits at the top, and it's very, very difficult.
Speaker 3:He's oh yeah, verse, it's almost the inverse and I thought about that and that was that. He said that like close to 20 years ago, so it's gone even more wow no, so we're just. But the good news about that is that because it's so daunting and because everything is hard and here's a good way to leave things because it's so daunting, because everything is difficult you might as well do what you love now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's going to be hard. And that's exactly what I've done. I just like screw it. I'm just going to do what I want.
Speaker 3:Do what you're called to do. Yeah, everybody, everybody do it. Everybody's got is given a calling. Do what you're called to do. Yeah exactly Be. Be like Frodo. It may not be easy, but it'll be very, very rewarding. I swear I can speak from experience. It will be rewarding. It won't be easy.
Speaker 2:Oh it is. It is Awesome. This has been great. Thanks so much, and if you come up with ideas, just send me a text or an email and we'll just go from there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we'll probably I want to say definitely before the summer's out and before the end of August or something. Yeah, that sounds perfect, we'll do it and, please, I hope everything goes well. Oh, thank you, you brought it up. I hope it goes well, and I know that those, the, those wonderful monks on the on the mountain and big sir, we're all rooting for you, wow I just can't, even you can't begin.
Speaker 2:I I'm too tired right now to express myself coherently. But, um, it touches me that you even thought of that. That's just amazing. A total stranger is having monks chant for my well-being and thank the monks too.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I don't even I.
Speaker 2:thank you, monks.
Speaker 3:Thank you, monks, and thank you, peter, for for for you know doing this, for inviting me.
Speaker 2:Oh sure.
Speaker 3:And I've really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Thanks so much for being on. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Thank you All right.
Speaker 2:Have a good night.
Speaker 3:You too. See you soon. Talk to you soon.
Speaker 2:All right, bye-bye, bye.
