Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Unconventional Film-Making | Andrew Treglia
16 Plays22 minutes ago
Andrew "Drew" Treglia is an American filmmaker recognized for his work as a director, writer, and producer. He is the founder of Drew Media, a production company involved in various film projects.
In 2023, Treglia directed "Jones Plantation," a film set on a cotton plantation exploring themes of resistance and rebellion among enslaved individuals. The narrative delves into the complexities of oppression and the fight for freedom.
Treglia's involvement in "Jones Plantation" extended beyond directing; he also contributed as a writer and actor, showcasing his multifaceted talents in the film industry.
Through his work, Treglia aims to present thought-provoking stories that challenge conventional perspectives and encourage critical thinking among audiences.
----------
Connect with Drew:
Jones Plantation: https://jonesplantationfilm.com/
Barnum World: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/barnum-world
Twitter: @treggsman
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DrewMediaTV
----------
Are you following health trends that actually harm your body? In my eye-opening masterclass "The 7 Popular But Deadly Health Fads," I reveal how common health practices promoted by influencers and gurus might be ravaging your gut, accelerating disease, and shaving years off your life.
Discover which popular diets, supplements, and health rituals are secretly sabotaging your health and learn what to do instead. I explain why these seemingly healthy habits are damaging your body and provide actionable alternatives for true longevity.
Register for free access to this essential health information at https://www.livelongerformula.com
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
Introduction and Anarcapulco Reunion
00:06:21
Christian Yordanov
Okay Drew, so thank you so much for joining us today, bro.
00:06:23
Drew Treglia
Yeah, thanks for having me. Good times.
00:06:25
Christian Yordanov
so yeah yeah So we met at Anarcapulco, met some awesome people there. Super grateful that you took time out of your busy day ah ah editing and producing your latest film, which you can talk about a little bit later.
00:06:42
Christian Yordanov
But first I want to talk about...
Jones Plantation Film: Origin and Contributors
00:06:43
Christian Yordanov
so ah ah I'm sure so plenty of my listeners have heard of the Jones plantation film. You are the writer, you act in it, you're a director.
00:06:54
Christian Yordanov
I mean, you're, you're producing them. So you, you have a huge, is this your baby? So it's you Larkin Rose, who else? And, um, Lee Gauman, that is it, who sort of is the driving force behind this film?
00:07:06
Drew Treglia
I mean, um well, to go back, ah writing, the original story was Larkin Rose. There's a 12 minute animation online where the thing was adapted from adapted adapted from.
00:07:19
Drew Treglia
And and then he wrote the first draft, of the screenplay, and then we passed it back and forth. And then. we we end up with a shooting script. because he'd never written a screenplay before.
00:07:31
Drew Treglia
i mean, the first draft he gave me was I think 150 pages. So generally when a screenplay you're gonna do like a minute, a page is kind of how you estimate the movie.
00:07:39
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:07:39
Drew Treglia
So like a two and a half hour film. And it's also Larkin. He's a teacher by just his spiritually, he's like a teacher. That's what he loves to do. His father was a professor, I believe.
00:07:51
Drew Treglia
And, um, so, you know, it had a lot, he wanted to put everything in there and he'd ever written a screenplay before. So, so we passed it back and forth and came up with something that was ready for, for production. Then when we got into production, then you get all the warm bodies there and the people and everything changed.
00:08:10
Drew Treglia
So at that point, uh, we, I was, um it became almost like me and Lee Gallman or legal man, uh, pretty much writing what we actually shot.
Production Challenges and Indie Filmmaking
00:08:24
Drew Treglia
So I would write, cause we had to take, it's a long story, but we had, and someday we're going to tell this story. We actually want to make a documentary about the production of this thing. Cause it was um brutal.
00:08:33
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:08:35
Drew Treglia
And I mean, like I said, at my, my grandfather worked in a coal mine when he was 12 to support his family. So I'm not complaining. I'm just saying that as far as film productions go, it was ruthless.
00:08:47
Drew Treglia
The weather was horrible. The, um, I can get into that later, but, um, so when we got in there, we were like, Oh God, this is just like, we'd have like a nine page scene. We got, we gotta, we gotta make this two pages.
00:08:58
Drew Treglia
So I would just rip everything out and have the very bare minimum of what we actually had to have to make the film work. And then, um, And then i i would pass it with legal man. Cause he was on set, you know, Larkin was kind of just around as the writer, you know, and, um, and also legal man was a lawyer for 30 years and he's written so much copy. He just like, is so efficient and getting a message across.
00:09:22
Drew Treglia
And also so we just have a connection. We have the same sense of humor, you know, we became friends right away.
00:09:28
Christian Yordanov
Yeah. Yeah. Right.
00:09:28
Drew Treglia
And, um, And then, you know, so that's what happens on set. We would just kind of, I would come in every day. i mean, go home at night, like everything that you see, like, I don't know. i don't want to give too much away, but, um, the, what they call the breaking of the fourth wall when they talk to the camera.
00:09:46
Drew Treglia
i don't know if you remember that in the film that was done on set. We made, I made that up and much to the so chagrin of Lark.
00:09:46
Christian Yordanov
yeah
00:09:51
Christian Yordanov
right
00:09:52
Drew Treglia
And he was really did not like that idea. and but yeah, And the and the the commercials, the political ads. i don't know if you remember those vote Jones and all that stuff.
00:10:02
Drew Treglia
yeah all We all did that. That came later as well.
00:10:02
Christian Yordanov
Yeah,
00:10:06
Christian Yordanov
yeah, yeah.
00:10:06
Drew Treglia
That came, that was actually almost like, I knew I was going to do that when we shot.
00:10:08
Christian Yordanov
Cool.
00:10:10
Drew Treglia
Cause there was a whole sequence in the original script where, um you know, there was a campaign and well, we had the campaign, but like ah there was a vote and all this other stuff. And I was like, this is, we're just going to do commercials and do a meta thing.
00:10:23
Drew Treglia
So I knew early on from the production that there was no way that with our budget, our budget was like 300,000 bucks and that's being generous.
00:10:24
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:10:31
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:10:31
Drew Treglia
um there was no way we're going to compete with a dramatic, because it was like, the first script was drama. You know, it was just like this period piece drama. And I knew there's just no way we can compete with three and hundred a $300,000 budget and a period piece drama. i mean, this this is a...
00:10:48
Drew Treglia
this is a five, $6 million dollar film minimum to compete and have any chance with no name actors. So I knew we had to do some sort of a cult film, which is basically just like a one-off, you know, a film where you've never seen anything like yeah you love or hate Jones plantation.
00:11:05
Drew Treglia
You've never seen anything like it. There's never been another film like it. it And it has,
00:11:08
Christian Yordanov
yeah
00:11:09
Drew Treglia
elements of every genre, you know, has comedy. And I knew we had to have a lot of comedy. So all these things that we were shooting Larkin was very upset because he had written the screenplay, hed never worked on a film before, but to his credit, when he saw the film, he was actually crying the first, first showing of it.
00:11:24
Drew Treglia
And he was, he did a video and said, not only was I wrong, but this is better than what I originally wrote, which is, you know, he's a, he's a man of character. I've always, why we connected right, right in the beginning.
00:11:34
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:11:35
Drew Treglia
and't know. That was a long winded answer.
00:11:36
Drew Treglia
I hope I answered your question. I don't know.
00:11:37
Christian Yordanov
So...
00:11:39
Christian Yordanov
So the the movie, like, I would admit I'm not, I'm very ignorant ah with regards to cinema. And like I said to you earlier, if a thing is good, it will absolutely blow my mind to where to the point I was like, that day and the next day was just telling my wife, like,
00:11:57
Christian Yordanov
parts of the story and then this happened and then they're showing this and then you think it's that but then it just shows you how we're fucking slaves on a plantation and my wife is like wow okay that sounds good you know um but so just for me it's the and ah having known the the budget was like that low How the hell did you pull that off, this movie, bro? like I see your IMDb, you have worked on like a number of things. like so Obviously, you have a lot of experience.
00:12:30
Christian Yordanov
um But like how in God's name did you actually pull off such a masterpiece with basically what's the... I think you were saying when you were talking there, that's the catering budget for like for like what ah like ah a week ah on a set, on a major movie set that you used.
00:12:48
Drew Treglia
Well, yeah, I don't know. I mean, basically the catering budget. Yeah, on our normal film. um
00:12:53
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, okay. Okay.
00:12:53
Drew Treglia
Make no mistake. i mean, like the I'm not doing this to pat myself on the back. There's a lot of people involved, but it was nothing short of a freaking miracle that that film not only got finished, but actually worked.
00:13:05
Drew Treglia
So, I mean, it's just it's not just the fact that we did for three hundred thousand dollars like. you can do a $300,000 film, you get two actors and you have one location, you're in a, you're in an apartment, you know, this, or like a horror movie. That's what everybody, 98% of indie productions are horror movies because they're easier to do is scare people and you can, and you can sell cheap looking horror films. People, you know, there's a whole genre there.
00:13:32
Drew Treglia
and So to do like what we did ah with that budget,
00:13:32
Christian Yordanov
Yeah. Yeah. yeah
00:13:38
Drew Treglia
I mean, cause you got to understand the other thing is that we had at some point, I think it was 30 plus actors in the film. So, and I wanted more, we needed more. Like and there were so many things we could have done more if we had a little more money, but, um,
00:13:53
Drew Treglia
But we had also were in the middle and nowhere. So we shot in a place called Natchez, Mississippi. And Faraday, Louisiana, which is right across the border. So we did all the interiors at this old plantation house in Natchez.
00:14:04
Christian Yordanov
Hmm. Hmm.
00:14:06
Drew Treglia
And then we went across the border And did all the plantation stuff at this place in Louisiana. And that that place is three and a half hours from New Orleans and I think 90 minutes from Baton Rouge.
00:14:22
Drew Treglia
But most of the flights we did out of New Orleans because it was cheaper. Baton Rouge is more expensive. So he a you got to understand the logistics
COVID-19 and Creative Freedom in Filmmaking
00:14:29
Drew Treglia
here. We have no budget. We have to get people from the airport to the location.
00:14:36
Drew Treglia
Some of them we just made them. If you want to be in this film, you better be there. Then we have to put them in hotels. Then we have to feed them every day. People don't understand how and I've had. I talked about this in Erica Polko and the guy like, oh, yeah. You know, and I was like, dude, um you don't understand feeding people how what a nightmare this is if you don't have this capped when you're shooting.
00:14:55
Drew Treglia
um And then just to have, you know, the crew we had. I mean, we had some and inexperienced people. We had a the and on a set, the gaffer, he's supposed to be an electrician.
00:15:08
Drew Treglia
And he's in charge of, uh, the, I don't know how detail I want to bore your audience, but there's like two sides to the production team to keep it really simple. There's the electric side and there's the, um,
00:15:17
Christian Yordanov
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:15:19
Drew Treglia
And there's the ah there's the gaffer side and then there's the um the grip side. And that's the non-electric stuff, the flags, the C-stands and stuff. On our set, all we have is a gaffer. We didn't have a key grip. So usually the key grip's in charge of the grip side and the gaffer's and charge.
00:15:32
Drew Treglia
But the gaffer's huge. He's a really important. And then hi this guy did know, don't think, I think he just made up his credentials and he didn't know what he was doing. Luckily, the DP knew what he was doing and he knew the gaffer was terrible.
00:15:47
Drew Treglia
At being a gaffer, he might've been a good crew guy if he was just honest, you know? um And he didn't know anything about electricity and we kept blowing out. I mean, cause we're the building that the church that we shot and was from like, it's like it was built in the 1700s.
00:16:01
Drew Treglia
So it's like, there's like holes in the wood. It's one of the coldest winters they've had in Louisiana than don't know, blah, blah years. And it was freezing.
00:16:10
Christian Yordanov
Yikes.
00:16:11
Drew Treglia
I mean, cause you're on an open plain to the farm. So all the trees are gone. Excuse me. Sorry. ah the The globalists that show always try to get me on these shows. And then, so then it's just the wind was insane and it was raining.
00:16:25
Drew Treglia
And so we kept blowing out lights. So we'd be there like five in the morning, all the light, the guy would blow the lights out. So eventually we had to fire the guy and bring in another gaffer.
00:16:33
Drew Treglia
um And just so my point is it was just to to have what we have and then to to actually have something that was editable. And then actually it seems like people really like it. It worked. Uh, it was just, I mean, it's really nothing short of a miracle. I don't know. I don't know how,
00:16:33
Christian Yordanov
yeah
00:16:48
Christian Yordanov
And that house, how did you get that house? It was epic.
00:16:52
Drew Treglia
ah You know, the house was funny because there were nicer ones around, but I wanted, i wanted to, I just went there and talked to the guys to answer your question. I was basically, my mom got sick
Personal Stories and Filmmaking Journey
00:17:05
Drew Treglia
in 2021, think it was.
00:17:08
Drew Treglia
And I, so I had to drive across the, she's, um I was born raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and that's where she lived. And so I had to go get her and take her out to Phoenix and, seller house is a whole nightmare, but I had to go back and forth across country several times.
00:17:21
Drew Treglia
Not, and not to mention the times back and forth. We drove to the set for Jones plantation, but um that's another story. But um so I just would, I just made it a location scouting trip and I went down to just went to Natchez and looked around. I knew that that was a big, so you see Natchez, Mississippi at one time was per capita, the richest city in America.
00:17:44
Drew Treglia
Yeah. Or the South. I can't remember. i think it was America, but it might've been the South, but don't quote me on that because so basically when they, the North marched to the South and burn everybody's houses down to kill everybody, they didn't take a right.
00:17:58
Drew Treglia
And so it's a little bit West. So it got spared. So the whole town is just like filled with all these like credible plantation houses. So you can do like, There's a lot of, they're all museums now, you know, so you can do that like plantation tours.
00:18:10
Drew Treglia
The one that we got was a little bit worn down and they were a little bit financially in trouble. And I thought this is perfect because that's what's happening with this family. Their, their, their world is falling apart and it had like,
00:18:22
Drew Treglia
you know, it's the shutters had cobwebs and the house was worn down and it just looked perfect. And, you know, it was perfect for what was going on with them. Like it was a good, it was a good match.
00:18:33
Drew Treglia
So ah good I guess did answer your question.
00:18:35
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:18:36
Drew Treglia
and I don't remember what you asked me.
00:18:37
Drew Treglia
I'm just babbling on.
00:18:37
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, brother.
00:18:38
Drew Treglia
Yeah.
00:18:38
Christian Yordanov
ah Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:18:40
Christian Yordanov
It's just, to me, just the whole process of making film is ah such a, it looks like such a complex and fragile process.
00:18:50
Christian Yordanov
like Like you said, like, you know, the wrong guy in the wrong sort of role and it could derail your entire film.
00:18:55
Drew Treglia
It's over.
00:18:56
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, yeah. So it's such a i it's almost unbelievable that people even undertake projects like this to me, at least from my kind of vantage point, you know? let's, I want to discuss.
00:19:07
Drew Treglia
Well, let me just say, not to cut you off, but let me just, I forgot to mention another thing.
00:19:08
Christian Yordanov
ah Yeah. Sorry.
00:19:11
Drew Treglia
The whole COVID horse shit was going on during that time. So I had the film, I know actors, and I had the film, wouldn't say cast, but I had people ready to go.
00:19:14
Christian Yordanov
Ah, yeah.
00:19:21
Drew Treglia
In fact, one guy, you wouldn't know who he is, but he is a Marvel actor. He's done, like, he's on their TV show, one of their TV shows.
00:19:27
Drew Treglia
i don't watch this stuff, but. and And I got a call from the union. and like, hey, are you you know, you got your covid protocols? because I was going to do SAG ultra low budget. People give me a hard time for that. But I'm like ah the union controls all the actors. So what you want me to do?
00:19:27
Christian Yordanov
Mm-hmm.
00:19:42
Drew Treglia
And I was going to do what they call SAG ultra low budget so i could use SAG actors. And they're like, you have their COVID protocols protocols. I'm like, what's that? And they're like, uh, well, you need to, everybody has to have a wear a mask on set and everybody has to get tested every day.
00:19:56
Drew Treglia
And I'm like, first of all, I'm not directing in a mask. It's not happening. Uh, and second of all, um, Tested every day. So the way that that's set up, so that that was all set up to screw independent productions, because if you're a Hollywood studio, if you get tested, the test, as you know, is all horse shit anyway.
00:20:17
Drew Treglia
It's all set up to false positives and find stuff that isn't there.
00:20:19
Christian Yordanov
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:21
Drew Treglia
You know, you know the deal with the test and the, the,
00:20:23
Christian Yordanov
yeah
00:20:24
Drew Treglia
That's how they ran that whole scam on was that test. But so what happens if like my DP, my director of photography test positive pops a positive? Well, he's what happens is you have to disappear from set for 10 days.
00:20:36
Drew Treglia
OK, so if I'm if I'm Warner Brothers, what do I do? like I have a a lineup of DPS that will come in that I can pay, you know, $5,000 a day whatever. I could put this DP in in the Beverly Hilton and we're good to go and in any print and production. Once you start, there's no stopping.
00:20:53
Drew Treglia
ah we're We're out of words that shut the set down. It's over. So they know that.
00:20:57
Christian Yordanov
yeah
00:20:58
Drew Treglia
So, and oh, and also to hire some COVID apparatchik, um, just so you know, your camera's going out of focus a little bit, or maybe it's just maybe it's the, okay.
00:21:06
Christian Yordanov
Okay. I think it's just just the the connection.
00:21:10
Drew Treglia
Yeah, so i you had to hire some guy on set and making sure everybody says something. This isn't, it's impossible. There's no way to do that. so um So we didn't do it. I wrote a letter.
00:21:21
Drew Treglia
So we ended up casting it.
00:21:21
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:21:22
Drew Treglia
Everybody online. The only actor I met before production was legal man. Everybody else showed up on set and I met them that day. And I did have, i mean, i had talks with them on, on the phone and gave them, you know, the marching orders and the plan and what we were doing.
00:21:31
Christian Yordanov
Wow. Yeah, yeah.
00:21:39
Drew Treglia
And, you know, that's really important.
00:21:42
Drew Treglia
And, um, and then we sent everybody a letter that legal man helped me pen him was like, look, this is a film about human flourishing and freedom. We don't care. We're not requiring you to get a vaccine and we're not requiring you to wear masks.
00:21:42
Christian Yordanov
yeah
00:21:52
Drew Treglia
If you know, If you want to, that's your business. But that at the same time, I was like, please, God, don't let one of these COVID lunatics show up. And, you know, I didn't know. You don't know. I didn't know anybody. And then we had one actor show up in day one, had the mask and the face mask on. I'm like, oh, God, here we go.
00:22:10
Drew Treglia
But by by day two, everybody had taken their mask masks off. It was like, nobody cared.
00:22:15
Christian Yordanov
Amazing.
00:22:15
Drew Treglia
So, so it all I mean, it was just like that. That's just the kind of thing that made this thing almost impossible. you know At one point I was like, look, Larkin, this is, I don't know how we're gonna do this.
00:22:21
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:22:24
Drew Treglia
I mean, maybe we just need to do like an animation or something. Like this isn't gonna work. and
00:22:29
Drew Treglia
And he would have none of it, thank God. I'm glad he pushed me. but um
00:22:30
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:22:33
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:22:33
Drew Treglia
And then it's crazy, because right before my mother passed,
00:22:34
Christian Yordanov
Man.
00:22:37
Drew Treglia
I told her, I said, I'm going to production to do this Jones plantation. she went, cause she's always liked at my films and was like, and you know, I did this film called the Atlantan for $13,000. It's my first feature. And it's, um it's, it's good for a $13,000 film, but it's dark and it's very personal.
00:22:54
Drew Treglia
It's not an enjoyable experience. And then, um and then I did another, this crazy documentary and, but she saw this, she's like Jones plantation. Oh, that's, I like that.
00:23:05
Drew Treglia
That's going to, I think that's going to work. and I was like, it was just weird that she, she said that. I was like, huh? So anyways, anyway, so yeah, it's just, like I said, it was just so crazy to go into production.
00:23:15
Christian Yordanov
and what was the documentary yeah after the atlanta that on
00:23:17
Drew Treglia
Lord of the freaks it's called. It's about this crazy billionaire producer.
00:23:21
Christian Yordanov
that on imdb
00:23:23
Drew Treglia
Yeah. yeah Yeah. You know, IMDb, I mean, most of this 95% of the stuff I've done is not on IMDb.
00:23:30
Christian Yordanov
okay yeah
00:23:30
Drew Treglia
You know, I mean, I've worked on commercials and, you know, tons of client corporate work and you name it, I've done it. Music videos. I mean, you name it, I've been involved in it in one capacity or another.
00:23:41
Christian Yordanov
yeah
00:23:42
Drew Treglia
and probably the most experience I have is next to directing is editing. So I edit my own stuff. So that really helps. um Not just the budget, but also ah just making sure the film's good.
00:23:56
Christian Yordanov
The vision.
00:23:57
Drew Treglia
Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:57
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:23:58
Drew Treglia
Yeah, I mean, I just... I don't think... I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but, like, I probably... no there's i can't change I can't change oil in my car, but when it comes to editing, I'm definitely like in the way elite, top 0.01% of editors in the world.
00:24:08
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:24:14
Drew Treglia
i'll take I'll edit.
00:24:15
Drew Treglia
and I mean, just because of my experience, of just because I've done it for so, so long and so many hours, and I have a knack for it.
00:24:15
Christian Yordanov
Wow.
00:24:18
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:24:22
Drew Treglia
And if we had had an editor for this film, like we just hired some guy, he would have been like, this is uncuttable. I'm just telling that's again, that's going to go into, we're going to do a documentary called tortured antebellum someday. And we're going to tell the story of the making of Jones plantation.
00:24:36
Drew Treglia
um But if we had handed that to an editor and we didn't know anything about editing, we would, he would have like, I don't think you can cut this together. I'm not joking. I mean, I had to take, it was so crazy.
00:24:46
Christian Yordanov
but
00:24:47
Drew Treglia
What i had to go through in the editing room, but it worked.
00:24:50
Christian Yordanov
and how how much how many hours of footage did you have when you went in the editing room
00:24:54
Drew Treglia
I don't know what they call that the ratio, the raw to the final cut. I don't,
00:24:58
Christian Yordanov
yeah
00:24:59
Drew Treglia
I don't really know. I don't remember. I never really had a lot.
00:25:02
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, a lot, yeah.
00:25:02
Drew Treglia
I mean, we would shoot probably I'd have to guess we shot for 17 days. We probably shot like 50 hours, something like that, maybe more, maybe more.
00:25:11
Christian Yordanov
Jesus Christ, oh my God, dude. Like what an ordeal that it...
00:25:13
Drew Treglia
That's not that actually, actually not that bad. 50 to one is actually not that bad. It can be way worse than that.
00:25:17
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:25:17
Drew Treglia
Yeah. Or 50 to two, whatever. 25 to one. So, I mean, it's not, it wasn't that bad.
00:25:23
Christian Yordanov
And do you what what tool do you use, Premiere?
00:25:26
Drew Treglia
I shot, I cut this one on a thing called DaVinci Resolve.
00:25:31
Christian Yordanov
The Ventures. Okay.
00:25:31
Drew Treglia
I do use Premiere, but ah for a feature if something big like that, I'll use Resolve.
00:25:31
Christian Yordanov
Just curious.
00:25:35
Drew Treglia
It's a little more steady. It's little more light, reliable.
00:25:37
Christian Yordanov
Okay. Awesome. Now,
Plot Twists and Allegorical Narratives
00:25:40
Christian Yordanov
is it okay with you if we discuss some of the ah film itself?
00:25:45
Drew Treglia
Sure.
00:25:47
Christian Yordanov
So... I think people will be entertained.
00:25:49
Drew Treglia
Careful spoiler alerts.
00:25:51
Christian Yordanov
Yes, there will be spoiler alerts, but like ah I basically told my wife the whole the whole film and if she watches it, it will be just as powerful. you know In fact, I think if you tell the people some of what what um what's up, they'll be like, damn, I got to see this. like These guys are like ah ah have balls. So let's talk about...
00:26:12
Christian Yordanov
So it's ah set on a plantation and the Joneses are like the slaves are going revolt. So we need to keep them under wraps, under their tabs.
00:26:24
Christian Yordanov
So we have we have a guy coming in as an expert on slaves and and and sort of you know managing slaves that's going to do the job, right?
00:26:33
Drew Treglia
Right, right. He's gonna, there's a big catch.
00:26:35
Christian Yordanov
However... what When he arrives in his carriage, horse-drawn carriage, the dude is black.
00:26:45
Drew Treglia
Right, which they didn't know.
00:26:46
Christian Yordanov
So, yeah, and they didn't know. So this, i mean, like I was watching it on my own up here in my office and I was like laughing like this is brilliant.
00:26:56
Christian Yordanov
I cannot wait to see where this goes. So let's talk about... I think we were kind of discussing it earlier. So how did you guys decide to to kind of have this awesome twist in the story?
00:27:10
Drew Treglia
Well, the film is an adaptation of a short called The... So the movie is Jones Plantation. There's no the on the actual official title, whatever that means.
00:27:18
Christian Yordanov
Sorry.
00:27:18
Drew Treglia
Oh, I don't care.
00:27:19
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:27:19
Drew Treglia
I don't care. But I just want to let you know because the the short is The Jones Plantation. So that was...
00:27:24
Christian Yordanov
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
00:27:24
Drew Treglia
I just thought it'd be a little more macabre Jones Plantation. I don't know.
00:27:28
Christian Yordanov
Mm-hmm.
00:27:28
Drew Treglia
But... It's an adaptation of that. And in in the little animation, which that's how the whole thing started, because I i was in Acapulco in 2019, actually.
00:27:40
Drew Treglia
And I interviewed Larkin. I was doing a whole nother project or I planned to do a whole nother project. and And in the interview, which is on my YouTube channel, if you ever want to watch it, he says, I said, well, you know, the slavery today ah is is far more pernicious because, you know, but back in the day, you did the chains and the whips. You could see the chains and the whips. You could look and go, those are the guys that are oppressing me.
00:28:03
Drew Treglia
Whereas today they've tricked everybody into thinking that they're all free and because they get to vote, they they're, you know, they're, it's their government and they're in charge. When in in fact, the slavery is far, far deeper, far, it's, it's through, you know, social engineering and brainwashing and mind control.
00:28:20
Drew Treglia
So um he said, yeah, I, it's funny you bring that up. i have a short called Jones, the Jones plantation on YouTube. You should check it out. And then we went and watched it. ah The guy who was the assistant director of the film and I were in Mexico together and we watched it and then we were flying home and we came with this idea to to do the film. And I pitched it to Lark and he said, yeah.
00:28:40
Drew Treglia
And um where where was I going with that? i was, I'm rambling on. What was it? What was the question again?
00:28:45
Christian Yordanov
or Just so how how you decide that the the dude will be black, Mr. Smith.
00:28:49
Drew Treglia
Oh, yes. Jeez.
00:28:52
Drew Treglia
So, oh, in this short animation, that's why I brought that up. In the animation, everybody's white.
00:28:56
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:28:58
Drew Treglia
And I was like, because the film that I, what i my the reason why I like the idea is is because I think it's a Trojan horse where everybody's like, oh, here's this other slave movie, which actually also worked against us a little bit because a lot of people were like, oh, I can't do another slave movie. There's so many people, especially black people. Like, I'm not watching another fucking slave movie.
00:29:17
Drew Treglia
But I'm like, no, no this isn't your grandpap slave movie. You need to watch this. But you get in there, and you think you're watching slave movie. Then like, oh, wait a minute. And so this is an allegory. So. but in that everybody's white. I'm like, this isn't going to work because every, no matter what we do, everybody's going to make it about race.
00:29:34
Drew Treglia
We got to do something. And then we were like, and then I kept, we had a couple of meetings and I kept going, you know, I just, it's not going work. I got to do something about this. And I don't know why I didn't. And then one day me and Larkin were in the warehouse. I was at this warehouse at the time and we're like, what if he's black? We kind of almost said it at the same time kind of thing. We're like jumping up and down. It was like a big moment in the production.
00:29:55
Drew Treglia
going to make the guy black. And he's a former slave and he, you know, he, we kind of touch on how he gets his freedom and, um, and then he, you know, he gets involved in the, uh,
00:30:00
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:30:09
Drew Treglia
in the dark arts and the control system. And he learns the tricks that he'd learned from his, uh, from his master, former master. And he teaches these, these, ah simple techniques of mind control and brainwashing where you can just convince the people that they're free.
Audience Reception and Societal Impact
00:30:25
Drew Treglia
He's like, you know, you're free now.
00:30:27
Drew Treglia
and they're like, oh cause I mean, we can leave. Well, yeah, you you can leave, but i don't know if you should. I mean, it's really dangerous around here, all these other plantations. You I'd like you to stay, know, why don't you stay? You can continue to work with us.
00:30:38
Drew Treglia
We'll work together. we're We're partners now. You know, now you get to vote.
00:30:40
Drew Treglia
Well, wait, it's not just the plantation owner. And then who's this other guy? No, there's only two choices. And well, no, he's just going to be here for a little while.
00:30:41
Christian Yordanov
yeah
00:30:46
Christian Yordanov
his is ah Was that his cousin?
00:30:48
Drew Treglia
He's just a manager.
00:30:48
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:30:49
Drew Treglia
has his cousin. He's he's a fur man.
00:30:51
Drew Treglia
He's a fur man. He knows fur. He doesn't know plantations. And then of course we had the third guy, we let at one of the plantation former slaves run, who was kind of like, he sort of represented the Libertarian party. That was how we saw that.
00:30:52
Christian Yordanov
Yeah,
00:31:05
Christian Yordanov
yeah.
00:31:05
Drew Treglia
and And then they just kind of embarrassed him. um But yeah, I hope that answered your question.
00:31:11
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, man like ah to just i I'm not that kind of guy to drone on and on and ruin it for the you know for folks that want to watch the film, but there's just so many like little moments where I was like, dude, this is absolute...
00:31:20
Drew Treglia
Good.
00:31:27
Christian Yordanov
Because even if a person is just a little bit a little bit awake, i and they see that when they... Spoiler alert, guys, I'm sorry. When they introduce the Jones plantation credits...
00:31:40
Drew Treglia
Yeah.
00:31:40
Christian Yordanov
And when the guy, mr Smith, explains to Mr.
00:31:43
Christian Yordanov
Jones how it works and just the joy of in the eyes. and the Legal Man is such an amazing actor. like he's just He's just like, you mean we give them the credits and then they give them back to us and they don't own anything?
00:31:57
Drew Treglia
Yeah. Yeah. yeah
00:32:02
Drew Treglia
yeah the only
00:32:03
Christian Yordanov
It's just, dude, like it just hits hits home the message in such an artful way where you're not ramming truth down people's throats and they're like, ah get away from me, conspiracy theorist, you know?
00:32:17
Christian Yordanov
Weirdo. It's just amazing. i just ah I'm so impressed by this production.
00:32:21
Drew Treglia
Well, that's what he said. It's just fancy paper ain't fit enough to wipe your ass with. We wrote me and Legal Man wrote those lines for the voiceover.
00:32:25
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:32:27
Drew Treglia
We we had fun with those. Just fancy paper ain't fit to wipe your ass with.
00:32:29
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:32:31
Drew Treglia
He starts paying them in the Jones Plantation credits and then they can borrow them too, by the way. you but They can pay interest on them. They're going to borrow them. They can
00:32:38
Christian Yordanov
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
00:32:39
Drew Treglia
with With interest, of course, you can borrow the... And um yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of Where's Waldos in there. There's a lot of Where's Waldos all over the film if you if you watch it.
00:32:47
Christian Yordanov
yeah
00:32:51
Drew Treglia
I mean, I've had people... and the it's The hilarious thing is, this is probably my dark side, is i most the people... I'd love it and get it.
00:33:01
Drew Treglia
And then there's a percentage of people that like absolutely hate it to the core. Like it's some people that aren't ready for the message
Barnum World: Satirical Mockumentary
00:33:08
Drew Treglia
and they just get like angry at it.
00:33:09
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:33:10
Drew Treglia
And some of them are hilarious. I mean, I had somebody said it made me physically ill. Yeah.
00:33:18
Drew Treglia
That's a good thing.
00:33:19
Drew Treglia
you yeah You know, you know, it's like, though I don't remember, was it Clint Eastwood who said, you know, beat me, rob me, rape me, love me, but don't bore me. Like, that's a really good thing.
00:33:19
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:33:28
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:33:28
Drew Treglia
You want, you want either they love it or they hate it. You know, what be like, oh, it wasn't bad. know, that's like the death sentence. um Yeah. and Somebody said they watched it. I think they said they watched it like I've watched it twice now and I hated it as much both times.
00:33:43
Drew Treglia
but but Who watches some they hate twice? You know, I was just funny.
00:33:46
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, exactly.
00:33:47
Drew Treglia
But, uh, yeah, that's a good thing. So some people just aren't ready for it yet.
00:33:52
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:33:52
Drew Treglia
It's an allegoriness satire of the, of the control system we live in now.
00:33:53
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, man.
00:33:55
Drew Treglia
And so when people go into it when they have all these preconceived notions, there's also,
00:34:01
Drew Treglia
It's interesting. We've had a lot of black people that have really like loved it. And like, Oh man, this is, and then there's a, there's that another percentage of them that really, really get pissed off that they made, we made the guy black, but you know, there something like that.
00:34:14
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, yeah.
00:34:14
Drew Treglia
they just, they they come in with that context of the, the mind control and brainwashing that's been fed upon them through the system. And yeah, they're just unable. People just aren't, some people just aren't ready for the message.
00:34:29
Christian Yordanov
yeah Yeah, so, okay, ah just at the risk of giving too much away, we're going to park this discussion.
00:34:35
Drew Treglia
Oh,
00:34:38
Christian Yordanov
um Let's talk about what you're working on now, and that is Barnum World.
00:34:41
Drew Treglia
oh we give it to a yeah. barnummo
00:34:44
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:34:45
Drew Treglia
Yeah. and yeah um Yeah. That's going to be released in first or second week in May. I'll have those dates locked within a couple of days. I'll probably actually know that tomorrow.
00:34:57
Christian Yordanov
Okay.
00:34:58
Drew Treglia
And that one is, uh, we, we again funded through Indiegogo. Uh, and it's just, it's a, like a $40,000 mockumentary.
00:35:09
Drew Treglia
And, ah so we originally was just going to be a documentary.
00:35:10
Christian Yordanov
Mm-hmm.
00:35:15
Drew Treglia
And like you said, we were like, I went to I went to legal man's house in in Dallas and we kind of like put the, the outline of what we were going to do together.
00:35:26
Drew Treglia
uh, it just became clear that like we can make it so much more interesting if we made a mockumentary. And like you said earlier, it's like, you know, the same old, like every, I mean, I like documentaries, but how many documentaries?
00:35:41
Drew Treglia
I mean, it's just basically preaching to the choir, telling people, showing, saying this, showing that.
00:35:44
Christian Yordanov
Mm-hmm.
00:35:46
Drew Treglia
i mean they're important. I like them, but I think, Having we create this character, James Nathaniel Jones, Natty in the backstory that's not in the film.
00:35:56
Drew Treglia
He's like a distant cousin of the Nathaniel Jones, from the Jones plantation, which comes from this idea that
00:36:01
Christian Yordanov
the
00:36:04
Drew Treglia
I have that probably will never come to fruition, but it would be a, a, a television show and every season would be a different era. So you'd like started like the 1700s and, and there did Jones Joneses and then the Jones and then you move it the 1800s and probably like the turn of the century. And then the first world war and the second world war, then the sixties.
00:36:25
Drew Treglia
And then you go all the way up to the end where it's like the last season is he's like one of these whoever the Jones person is at that point, the air, he's like one of these tech guys, you know, AI runs a social media platform kind of thing.
00:36:40
Christian Yordanov
yeah dude love that love that idea
00:36:40
Drew Treglia
And, and so it would be, it would be really cool. And it would be like, are we going to be free or is this, these types of people going to lock us down forever? That's kind of like the last season, um which is the question of the day as far as I'm concerned.
00:36:53
Christian Yordanov
yeah yeah yeah dude yeah sorry please you were gonna go
00:36:57
Drew Treglia
And so anyways, go ahead.
00:37:01
Drew Treglia
No, go ahead. What were you going to say? I'm just babbling on as usual.
00:37:03
Christian Yordanov
yeah no this is awesome I mean like I'd say like probably your mind is like so many of us teaming with ideas constantly like ideas for projects something like half cooked quarter cooked right yeah yeah
00:37:18
Drew Treglia
Yeah. Yeah. I never just take so much money. That's the problem with it. um I don't ever want to do Barnum wore was fine because we shot for a week, you know, basically shot him and interviews and we basically shot it at right around where I live.
00:37:33
Drew Treglia
It wasn't bad. And then most of it's a lot of it's editing. ah Uh, but doing that Jones plantation again, ah man, I don't know. I, I don't need a ton of money. I need one to 5 million bucks.
00:37:45
Drew Treglia
There's a guy named Paul Schrader who wrote taxi driver.
00:37:46
Christian Yordanov
I've
00:37:48
Drew Treglia
i don't know if you've ever seen taxi driver.
00:37:51
Christian Yordanov
heard of it.
00:37:51
Drew Treglia
Yeah. You haven't seen that? you you need You need to up your cinema game, man.
00:37:54
Christian Yordanov
no. know,
00:37:56
Drew Treglia
Anyway, ah yeah I'm jealous that you haven't seen that yet.
00:37:56
Christian Yordanov
I know. bro and know
00:37:59
Drew Treglia
um I'd like to watch that again for the first time. But anyways, he's he's now and hes was in his 70s and he's had this like... comeback in his career where started directing a bunch of films and it's it's like really impressive it's like my kind of uh i look up to what he's doing and he's doing whatever he wants he's doing like some of you might like his films you don't like them but they're like old school like ninety s sort of just make a film for the sake of making something creative you know and he and he's doesn't there's no woke crap none of that stuff he's done a couple he did one
00:38:35
Drew Treglia
a couple of years ago, there was a little bit bigger about a guy who was a gambler in Vegas, this poker player. I don't remember the name of it, but anyways, his thing is that he says, I do one to 5 million and everybody makes a ton of money, it makes their money and I get final cut.
00:38:51
Drew Treglia
I don't have any problems. It's like, that's the, that's the secret sauce is that, that budget. And that's what I'm talking about.
00:38:55
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:38:55
Drew Treglia
You give me one to 5 million, I'll smoke anybody that's making something for, I mean, like we talked about this Amelia Perez thing. What an insult to my intelligence. What an insult to to humanity. And again, I don't generally like shitting on other films as I know how hard it is to make a film, but That's like levels of propaganda, a dark propaganda that, I mean, it would make the Soviet Union look like the Soviet Union film propaganda, like babies. It's crazy.
00:39:24
Drew Treglia
Anyways, where would you, have again, I'm lost.
00:39:25
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:39:27
Drew Treglia
i don't know why I'm, I think I had too much coffee or something. that I'm just babbling on. I'm forgetting what you originally asked me.
00:39:32
Drew Treglia
What'd you originally, had oh Barnum World, right? You asked me about Barnum World.
00:39:32
Christian Yordanov
No, dude, you're good.
00:39:34
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:39:36
Drew Treglia
Yeah, so that's going to get launched and that. So we decided we want to make a mockumentary to make it more interesting and not, you know, it may turn into ah basically a fiction film, but it is a documentary. And um so I'm finishing that now. There's still a lot of decisions to be made as far as the edit goes, but.
00:39:52
Drew Treglia
The fact is that we promised in the in the Indiegogo campaign to just launch it to the world for free. so So that's what we're going to do.
00:39:58
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:39:59
Drew Treglia
We're going screen it here in Phoenix and um people can can come to the screening if they want. ah
00:40:09
Drew Treglia
They can just have to come to Phoenix. I'll give people like six weeks out if they want to come. and But we're also going to screen it online at the same time. the kind of That's kind of my goal is to do like a live stream kind of thing.
00:40:09
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:40:18
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:40:22
Drew Treglia
Still working that one out, but we're just going to launch it on um onto my YouTube platform and Rumble and all the other platforms.
00:40:27
Christian Yordanov
Mm-hmm.
00:40:29
Drew Treglia
Twitter, we'll probably put it on there and people just can watch it.
00:40:30
Christian Yordanov
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:40:31
Drew Treglia
So hopefully the goal is that it'll reach... millions of people. And it's, it's when you, it's a, it's a takedown of the system.
00:40:41
Drew Treglia
This guy basically is doing a tell all and he doesn't, he's not like a good guy. He's just like, he was a film producer, Natty, and he was kind of groomed. His father worked for the Rand corporation. This is the backstory.
00:40:54
Drew Treglia
And he's just like, I'm going to do a tell. And he's like, you know, nobody's going to, they're not going listen to me anyway. It's like the people are going to listen. The people are idiots. They're going to just, you know, they're, they're all suckers. So I'm going to, I'm going to, going to put out there. It's a, it's the old, um,
00:41:09
Drew Treglia
dark arts thing where they have to tell you what they're doing. As long as they tell you what they're doing you don't do anything about it when they're off the hook.
00:41:12
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, yeah.
00:41:14
Drew Treglia
I don't know if you've ever heard of that.
00:41:15
Drew Treglia
There's a name that's yeah. Something like that. um And he's like, Hey, I'm just going to tell you, you know, what's up and people aren't going to do anything about it. You know, it's, and so they're sheep, you know, it doesn't matter.
00:41:16
Christian Yordanov
Revelation of the method.
00:41:25
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:41:27
Drew Treglia
So, and it's it's, so it's a calm, it's a comedy and ah but it's the, everything he tells you, we back up with footage. And so,
00:41:39
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:41:40
Drew Treglia
I mean, it's, I'm trying to make it as, it's the challenge is using B-roll that, or footage that epitomizes what he's saying, but it doesn't be perfect, but it's, it, it, it's going to be really tough for people to walk away from this and go, uh, you can't argue it because it's right there in front of you.
00:41:53
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:42:01
Drew Treglia
He says it and we show it, you know, one of the big,
00:42:05
Christian Yordanov
Politicians, leaders saying those things, yeah.
00:42:06
Drew Treglia
Yeah. And doing those things. I mean, we talk about repetitive content.
00:42:09
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:42:09
Drew Treglia
Repetitive content is one of the biggest tactics of brainwashing. They use with repetitive content. You know, the big one is alcohol. Every single TV show, it's the cool guy doing, he's drinking, you're drinking alcohol.
00:42:23
Christian Yordanov
Hmm. Hmm.
00:42:24
Drew Treglia
Tough guys are drinking alcohol. Where's the, the example that Jason Christoph always uses. And I think it's a good one is the Titanic, the movie be Titanic. Well, She's up there.
00:42:35
Drew Treglia
Who's the jerk? Always the jerk. The guy with the money, the rich guy, the successful guy. He's always the the the asshole, right? Who's the guy? He's the cool guy, the fun guy, the guy at the very bottom of the ship. the loser, the drifter, he's always the cool guy everybody's, and she goes down to that room, opens the door and every, Oh, it's so much fun. And she swings her around and everybody's drunk and playing the piano. And it's like, it's that repetitive content.
00:43:00
Drew Treglia
But when, in, in the news and the media, it's gotten so insane. And so we show so many examples of repetitive content. Um, people, the easiest one that people could find is the, um, Sinclair,
00:43:15
Drew Treglia
news. There's a YouTube clip of the Sinclair news, people using this repetitive content where they say it's a threat to our democracy. There has a whole, and it's like, you see, everybody's seen that, right?
00:43:24
Christian Yordanov
Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:43:27
Christian Yordanov
yeah, I've seen that, yeah.
00:43:27
Drew Treglia
So we we go on repetitive content and, and the voting and the red versus blue and everything, everything out the system runs on, we, we go into it and,
00:43:37
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:43:39
Drew Treglia
but through the, through the, through the, his angle, which is he's, and he's, he's a, he's, he's in the fiction. So he creates movies and television shows that, you know, and drama, TV police.
00:43:50
Christian Yordanov
Mm-hmm.
00:43:53
Drew Treglia
So what are most TV shows? So you've got the police. There's, there's, these are guys out there trying to stop crime and fight crime and they're working for you. And then you've got the court, the lawyers and the system isn't perfect, but we're, but it always comes through. And, you know, we're all trying to,
00:44:08
Drew Treglia
It's hard, it's difficult, but it's justice, you know, and then you've got the the medical.
00:44:12
Christian Yordanov
Hmm.
00:44:13
Drew Treglia
What is it? These hero nurses and doctors working tirelessly to make sure that you we've got to get them pulling through so that that's his thing. But there's also the and then there's the the other side of that, which is the media, which is more like the news and the, you know, the daily report of what the what they're programming you with and what.
00:44:20
Christian Yordanov
Hmm.
00:44:29
Drew Treglia
kind of narrative they want to push on you and have you focused on. And so his angle is, but he knows about all of it. So that's, he, he, he does a tell all and we, we prove what he's saying, or at least we try to.
00:44:45
Drew Treglia
And like I said, it's gonna be good.
00:44:46
Christian Yordanov
And he he kind of, he I watched the the screening of the first 30 minutes or so of the you know ah the ah ah in Acapulco.
00:44:51
Drew Treglia
Oh yeah. Yeah, that's right.
00:44:54
Christian Yordanov
And so it looks like he's just like, he's like, I'm just a cog in the bigger machine. This kind of thing. I'm just playing my role.
00:45:02
Drew Treglia
Yeah.
00:45:03
Christian Yordanov
The people want entertainment. I give them entertainment. is just the role I'm playing.
00:45:05
Drew Treglia
Right.
00:45:07
Christian Yordanov
I'm serving. I'm a servant, you know, this kind of attitude.
00:45:09
Drew Treglia
Yeah. Sort of like that.
00:45:11
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:45:11
Drew Treglia
Or also like, um hey man, you know, I'm, I'm living large. He's like, you know, he says in the movie says, you know, if you want to keep believing in this ridiculous paraphrasing this system, go ahead. He goes, I'm going to keep, I'm going to keep getting rich and you're going to keep paying for it.
00:45:27
Drew Treglia
Thank you for your service. He doesn't care. He just, that you know, he wants people to wake up.
00:45:31
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:45:31
Drew Treglia
He's like, I don't even support the system, but this is the way it is. And you know, people want to be suckers.
00:45:35
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:45:36
Drew Treglia
They can be suckers. I'm going to continue to get rich and live, live the high life, you know?
00:45:40
Christian Yordanov
yeah Yeah, man, I absolutely ah love this angle.
00:45:42
Drew Treglia
it's,
00:45:45
Christian Yordanov
And like I said, I'm pretty naive to to film, but this is something that I'm going to be over the the next few years.
00:45:45
Drew Treglia
Thank you.
00:45:51
Christian Yordanov
I'm just going to try to educate myself a bit more. And i have um a big folder with a lot of the classic films, like from the 20s and onwards and stuff.
00:46:03
Christian Yordanov
So, cause I, like when I saw ah the the preview of Barnum World with that sort of interview format, cause I have ah have a couple of ideas that I've been throwing around with a couple of people ah for documentaries. And then I realized, damn, this this material is so technical.
00:46:24
Christian Yordanov
um that if you put it in a documentary, you're going to bore most people to
Future Projects and Creative Inspirations
00:46:28
Christian Yordanov
death.
00:46:28
Drew Treglia
That's the thing.
00:46:29
Drew Treglia
And that
00:46:29
Christian Yordanov
So it has to be, yeah, it has to be comedy or fiction or comedy fiction, mockumentary, something like that to to get the message across.
00:46:38
Drew Treglia
what's the material you're trying to sell?
00:46:40
Christian Yordanov
So this is about, so the first one is about, it's, the topic is mostly about serotonin, how it's been marketed as the happy chemical and obviously giving rise to this huge SSRI, antidepressant industry where like 40, somewhere like 40, 42 million Americans were on SSRIs in 2019 2021 those.
00:47:05
Christian Yordanov
ah like like ten more than 10% of the population, like 15% of the population in the US are on this, which is supposed to raise serotonin. And if you look on Wikipedia, it's like serotonin is found in the venom of plants, ah sorry, in the in the spines of plants, ah in um ah scorpions, venoms, spiders. It's just like associated with just like bad stuff in in the metabolism of all kinds of like organisms, right?
00:47:38
Christian Yordanov
So how do you portray this? It's a serious topic. How do you portray to people without being too single, one-sided, right?
00:47:50
Christian Yordanov
So when yeah when I saw the way you do it, I'm like, what if we have a doctor being interviewed. But it's still a fiction. It's still a fictional thing. But it's a doctor going on a podcast and he's defending the status quo.
00:48:02
Christian Yordanov
Oh, you know, we need to raise serotonin because it's low in depression. And then you have some kind of other guy on the other side potentially playing the devil's advocate. But what about all this research? So it's it's ah it's a difficult topic to like translate into something entertaining because it's so technical, the material, and so dark when you kind of look into it.
00:48:23
Christian Yordanov
Because it comes out of the the LSD research, out of MKUltra, a lot of this stuff. There's like ties to that as well.
00:48:27
Drew Treglia
Mm-hmm.
00:48:29
Christian Yordanov
So it becomes darker. where So yeah it your audience is either the conspiracy crowd or like a few technical people. And the rest are like, well, this way. So it has to be something like what you're doing, I think, in order to to be palatable to people.
00:48:46
Drew Treglia
Yeah, well, per your project, I guess you're trying to create it for just an audience. You want to just get it out to the world kind of thing.
00:48:55
Drew Treglia
Because if youre if you're doing it for like a conference or something, obviously it needs to be maybe a bit pedantic. But if you're trying to just create some sort of a wake the people up, yeah you got to get a cheesy farmer rep guy to push it and then just contradict everything he's saying.
00:48:55
Christian Yordanov
I think so, yeah.
00:49:02
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, yeah, ah wider, yeah.
00:49:12
Drew Treglia
ah and That would be funny. And then also one little trick that I think is funny in Barnum World is that we have the... the behind the, not the behind the scenes, but like the, what do they call that?
00:49:25
Drew Treglia
There's a name for it. Like just the moments where you actually see what the guy's really like when he gets pissed off and he's big on the phone and, you know, you see what he's really like, you know?
00:49:30
Christian Yordanov
Oh, the... Yeah.
00:49:34
Drew Treglia
So those, those are funny little revealing moments of like when the camera's not supposed to be running. Um,
00:49:41
Drew Treglia
I think it's more powerful.
00:49:42
Christian Yordanov
Yeah. I mean...
00:49:42
Drew Treglia
I like, we we didn't want to just have a film where we talk about Barnum statements and show the world. It's like, okay, i already know this. Who are we reaching? The same people that already know all this stuff.
00:49:50
Drew Treglia
We wanted to create something that would be hopeful hopefully, you know, funny and entertaining that can reach people that normally might not take a look at it or engage people that want to make any more engaging.
00:49:50
Christian Yordanov
Exactly.
00:50:01
Drew Treglia
I, and the funny thing is know there's going to be people that are going to think he's a real person. That's going to be funny. I'm sure of it. I'm sure. I mean, even when you go on Grok now, they think at least but when we first shot, somehow it got on, we went on Grok and just typed in like, who is Natty Jones?
00:50:16
Drew Treglia
And they came up with this whole thing that he's this very successful producer from Hollywood. It's like, well, that's hilarious.
00:50:22
Christian Yordanov
Christ, bro.
00:50:23
Drew Treglia
Yeah. um
00:50:24
Christian Yordanov
That's love, that's love.
00:50:25
Drew Treglia
Yeah. That's, that's not a bad call. What you're talking about. you can infuse comedy and to and make it lighter, it's, it's really powerful.
00:50:35
Drew Treglia
It's really, it's really powerful. I mean, that that's what, like Charlie said, it's the only slave movie Jones plantation.
00:50:36
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:50:38
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:50:41
Drew Treglia
That's funny. Like, do I say it's funny?
00:50:44
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
00:50:45
Drew Treglia
And I, that actually also with the Jones plantation was just the fact that legal man and I, we have the same sense of humor and he's funny. And the way he was playing the character in very beginning, I'm like, yeah, we're going to, we can make this funny, make him kind of a goofball.
00:50:59
Drew Treglia
And Because know actually in the original script, he like molests a little girl. And we were like, ah, this is this is a bridge too far.
00:51:07
Christian Yordanov
Oh, Jesus.
00:51:09
Drew Treglia
Once you do this, you know there's no turning back. It's like that scene in um and Reservoir Dogs. You won't even know what this is, especially if you haven't seen it. but But he cuts the guy's ear off and you're like, oh, that character just jumped the shark as far as he's a psychopath. Once he goes to that level, it's like, ah we can't really find him humorous anymore. We're like, we're just cutting that scene out of the movie, so.
00:51:30
Christian Yordanov
Jesus Christ. Yeah.
00:51:30
Drew Treglia
Yeah. Didn't work.
00:51:33
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, yeah. That's super awesome to kind of hear about your process. How long does, just curious, both of these projects, are roughly speaking, how long did they take to kind of, from conception to completion to so do?
00:51:46
Drew Treglia
From well, conception would be, i guess you'd have to define conceptionist conception as conception.
00:51:51
Christian Yordanov
Well, minus, so when when you kind of sat down with Larkin and said, right, let's make this into a feature film.
00:51:55
Drew Treglia
oh that was four years.
00:51:58
Christian Yordanov
Four years, Jesus Christ.
00:51:59
Drew Treglia
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But now the Barnum world is more like one year.
00:52:04
Christian Yordanov
One year.
00:52:04
Drew Treglia
Yeah. And that from conception, I mean, it's, but it's a different, much, I don't i hate saying smaller film. I mean, hell it might reach more people. I mean, since it's going to be free.
00:52:12
Christian Yordanov
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:52:13
Drew Treglia
I mean, it could, my concern is, and I'm, is just, um, once you get like a million or two views, that's when they start censoring you and they show up and we we are, we're it's, it's a, it's a spray Gatlin gun. There's no, we're taking everybody out.
00:52:33
Drew Treglia
So there's everybody that's in that system. That's, that's doing well, whatever their angle is, whether they don't know any better, whether they're true believers, whether they're complete con men, whether they've been compromised, they're all getting taken out.
00:52:47
Drew Treglia
So Trump, Kamala, all those people, everybody in the, in the regime, they're gone.
00:52:50
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:52:52
Drew Treglia
yeah, all it takes is for somebody in the ken the, in the, in the, one of the, you know, uh, what do he call it?
00:52:55
Christian Yordanov
So.
00:53:01
Drew Treglia
Trump's cabinet or something to just catch sniff the film. And then they're going to go, Oh, well, what's this?
00:53:05
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:53:07
Drew Treglia
Cause, um, you know, it's and then we could get censored. So that's a concern. Censorship is definitely a concern. Uh, but you know, that is what it is.
00:53:07
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:53:16
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:53:17
Drew Treglia
We're just going to put it, it'll be on like Odyssey and all those little platforms as well. But, and I probably have it on a website too.
00:53:21
Christian Yordanov
Yeah,
00:53:23
Drew Treglia
So,
00:53:24
Christian Yordanov
yeah. Yeah, you're just doing what you feel like you have to do. it will It will happen, or whether it happens or not, yeah it won't change whether or not you do it.
00:53:29
Drew Treglia
it's
00:53:35
Christian Yordanov
So, I like that.
00:53:35
Drew Treglia
now you're just driven, you know, as a, like a man, you just have a mission. You got to have a mission or you're dead, you know? And it's just like, you're just driven.
00:53:41
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:53:42
Drew Treglia
It's like that, um, that little, don't remember what he's called. There's little, there's like these little, these lizards that are born and immediately when they're born, they have to run to the ocean and there's like nothing but snakes waiting for them to be born.
00:53:56
Drew Treglia
So they just literally come out of the egg and start sprinting to the ocean. And it's like, they have this mission. That's just, it's, it's inside of you.
00:54:02
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:54:04
Drew Treglia
I don't know what it is. And this is just my mission. I'm i'm calling the Jones plantation, the, the, the Vanguard film, the first film with a dissident artist movement. and it's the only film that this an artist movement.
Dissident Artist Movement and Media Platform
00:54:16
Drew Treglia
And, um and the process of, um I want to build a platform called drew TV and make it like a TV station. have it'll have podcasts. It'll have live streams. but We're also to have content that we create and kind of start hopefully. And then we'll probably buy content. We'll buy once we get to a certain point, hopefully financially, we can just buy regular content that people can watch and,
00:54:43
Drew Treglia
you know, just hopefully inspire people to start creating content like this. It's so powerful. i mean, people from all over the world have written me and, you know, saying that it's like changed their life and they're showing it to their kids. We had a woman, we posted yesterday, said that she, ah she homeschools her kids and she made it part of her kids' homeschooling. We got to, we have a professor at a college in Canada. I can't remember the name it It's outside of Toronto.
00:55:11
Drew Treglia
I forget the college's name, but his name is Tamari Katosa is the professor's name. And he, he taught it and at the school.
00:55:20
Drew Treglia
And we had, we had a lot of kids in the class writing. i was like, wow, this is amazing. And, you know, this really changed my life. And, you know, So it really makes a difference.
00:55:21
Christian Yordanov
Wow.
00:55:29
Christian Yordanov
Amen.
00:55:30
Drew Treglia
So am, and most, first and foremost, you just got to make it entertaining and make it fun. It's not like you said, it's so much of the stuff that comes out in this so-called freedom space or whatever.
00:55:41
Drew Treglia
i call it the human pro human space. It's so pedantic and, over the you know it just doesn't don't think yeah i know i can't think of anything in that everybody points to like they live and what's the one with the guy fox was that called that film with the mask
00:55:47
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:56:00
Christian Yordanov
Oh, um yeah, i know what you're talking about.
00:56:02
Drew Treglia
So ah the but the at the end of the day, they're all just basically trying to move chairs around in the same room. what we It's corrupt. We've got to get the right people in and we've got to take it over. And they're usually leftists too.
00:56:14
Drew Treglia
So they love, you know, they love control systems. They just want the control system to work for them. This is the first film where it's like ah the whole thing is a scam.
00:56:25
Drew Treglia
We need to elevate our consciousness and come up with a better way to, to manage ourselves. Whether we have the capability of doing that, I have no idea, but I'm to continue to do what I'm doing.
00:56:32
Christian Yordanov
yeah
00:56:37
Christian Yordanov
yeah bro and to be honest like the one of when i i know a person is like super genuine it's like you spend you're spending a year on barnum world where i think you raised 40k on indiegogo right
00:56:52
Drew Treglia
Yeah.
00:56:54
Christian Yordanov
And then all of that effort in that year, all of the blood, sweat and tears, you're gonna release it for free because that's there's there's you're doing it for the people do something to transform their consciousness in some way. So that is like, I can't think of things that are much more you know admirable in a person to kind of qualities like that, you know?
00:57:21
Drew Treglia
Well, I appreciate that, but I don't advise that. let's Generally speaking, like you should, as a content creator, be happy to, you know, podcast and stuff. There's plenty of stuff on YouTube, but when you create like, like Jones plantation is not free.
00:57:32
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:57:34
Drew Treglia
You know, it's actually technically, if you really must watch it for free, you can watch it on to be for free with commercials, which I don't advise, but if that's what you want to do. And, but it took us four years to make that. if you want more content, if we want to create content like that, i can't tell how people in the so-called freedom space are basically communists. They're like, this should be free. This should be free. It's like, I'm not your slave. I don't work for you.
00:58:00
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:58:01
Drew Treglia
I've spent four years of my life in this. We need to sell it so we can do more. But, um you know, for this one was different. It was a smaller budget and it just seemed to fit just releasing it to the world better.
00:58:13
Drew Treglia
You know, just the concept of it. I don't know. That was just like, I thought, well, this would be just something we could just give to the world.
00:58:16
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:58:19
Drew Treglia
We, we charge for Jones. We give to the world. Then the next one we'll charge again, you know? um But I mean it's like, it's 10 bucks, but it's 10 bucks to watch Jones presentation on the websites.
00:58:25
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:58:28
Drew Treglia
You can run it for two 99 on Amazon. like, If you can't stomach it, you can always go on one of these bit torrent places and watch it for free.
00:58:32
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
00:58:36
Drew Treglia
I get it. But the thing is, don't go posting it on your your YouTube or your, you know, bit shoot channel as if it's yours or you're going to get, yeah, it's going to get yanked down. Don't steal it, you know, but you can go watch it. I don't, I don't, I told people I've had people write me all the time say, you know, a lot of times people will go on there and say their credit card declines. I will go in and send them a coupon code. So I say, got a with your credit card. Go and watch the film for free.
00:59:00
Drew Treglia
You know, I don't, I want people to see the film, but we have to recoup money.
00:59:00
Christian Yordanov
nice bro appreciate
00:59:04
Drew Treglia
We, in this community, we don't need to be broke. You know what i mean?
00:59:07
Christian Yordanov
yes that's exactly exactly
00:59:08
Drew Treglia
I understand the currency is shit, but we we don't need to be broke. We need to be abundant. We need to be able to produce our own stuff.
00:59:13
Christian Yordanov
exactly
00:59:13
Drew Treglia
We need to be the cool people that everybody wants to hang out with. So we need to have cool stuff.
00:59:18
Christian Yordanov
Exactly, man. Yeah.
00:59:19
Drew Treglia
We can't just be a bunch of brokeies running around talking about anarchy. It's not going to work.
00:59:24
Christian Yordanov
yeah Yeah, exactly. and the the hope So the thing is, whatever let's say you produce something, you should be able to put any price on it that you want, that you're confident where the market will tolerate. right So some people, i think it's just a confidence issue. or you know Why should I, like this poverty mindset, why should I charge $1,000 for my service or $50 for film or you know fifty bucks for my my film or whatever the case may be, my content.
00:59:57
Christian Yordanov
And you know we know now with the internet, kind of just information in general, that's kind of become democratized, commoditized. So it's your nolo you can't just say, oh, here's a bunch of recipes, give me money, because the recipes are everywhere all over the internet.
01:00:12
Christian Yordanov
But if you go through a lot of effort and blood, sweat and tears to produce something, whether that's art or ah film art or music or whatever, I think at that point, it's your choice if you want to ah send it out to the world for free.
01:00:27
Christian Yordanov
But if you want to like command the premium for it and you have the confidence to to sell it like that and people want the value...
01:00:34
Drew Treglia
Oh, people are going to pay for it.
01:00:35
Drew Treglia
That's they're going to pay for it. if they're not going to pay for it, then you can't do it. But if they're going to pay for it, you can. Right.
01:00:35
Christian Yordanov
you
01:00:41
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, but I think it has to do with the the value people are getting.
01:00:42
Drew Treglia
I mean,
01:00:45
Christian Yordanov
So I think for, in your case, $10 or $20 to get the movie or with the do you know with your commentary on it, and like the extra stuff, I think the value exchange for the $10 or the $20 is very much skewed.
01:01:01
Christian Yordanov
It's very much disproportionate, right? So you're getting a lot of value with this film for the $10, right? So it has to do with... with the value of the product as well that people are getting for the service.
01:01:11
Drew Treglia
what's What's funny you say that because ah ah Jason Kristoff said that about he said for 10 bucks, you can is the biggest bang for your buck. You can get to learn about the system and and what's really going on.
01:01:24
Drew Treglia
He says the best.
01:01:25
Christian Yordanov
Whilst being entertained.
01:01:26
Drew Treglia
Yeah, well, being entertained, he says it's the biggest bang for your buck.
01:01:28
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
01:01:29
Drew Treglia
He's like, I offer courses and do all kinds of stuff is for 10 bucks.
01:01:30
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
01:01:32
Drew Treglia
You're it's a it's a great. especially for like normies or people that haven't thought about this stuff. It's a great first step to get in there. And again, first and foremost, hopefully, you know, it's an entertaining, it's a film.
01:01:45
Drew Treglia
I'm a filmmaker. I, you know, I've had somebody called it one time, edutainment. I almost threw up. It's not edutainment. It's a film, and but it's just a different kind of film. It's a,
01:01:58
Drew Treglia
It's a different kind of hopefully it's a new wave. We'll see. Hopefully Barnum world people will like it.
01:02:02
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, man.
01:02:02
Drew Treglia
It's a different, that's another different kind of film. um I can't think I have a both Jones plantation and Barnum world. i have a very difficult time coming up with a synopsis, you know, the Jones plantation synopsis because you give it away.
01:02:12
Christian Yordanov
Mm-hmm.
01:02:15
Drew Treglia
And Barnum World, I didn't even know how to explain it yet.
01:02:16
Christian Yordanov
Mm-hmm.
01:02:17
Drew Treglia
I still really don't. We just call it the the documentary to end all documentaries. It's kind of a joke, but um because we don't want to do a documentary.
01:02:25
Christian Yordanov
Awesome.
01:02:26
Drew Treglia
But ah I just say, if anybody asks you what the Jones Plantation, I just honestly say, what's it about? I say, I say, we all live on Jones Plantation. And then maybe, maybe if the conversation goes, like usually they get it. And then they'll say, it's an allegory and a satire of the control system that we live in through the lens of an antebellum slave plantation.
01:02:47
Christian Yordanov
Well, thank you so much for the work that you do, Drew.
01:02:49
Drew Treglia
all right, right on, man.
01:02:51
Christian Yordanov
ah Just as we wrap up, tell the listeners every all the places that they can cant connect with you, man.
01:02:56
Drew Treglia
right. Well, I'm, I'm getting active on Twitter so they can find me at at tregs man, which is two G's. And I'm going to be launching, i think tomorrow or Wednesday, I'm launching my own show. So I've got called a Maverick and the machine.
01:03:12
Drew Treglia
And it's a podcast. I'm another guy with a podcast, but um that'll launch a Tuesday Wednesday.
01:03:16
Christian Yordanov
Nice.
01:03:18
Drew Treglia
And actually the first episode Charlie. I interviewed Charlie. Yeah.
01:03:22
Christian Yordanov
sweet
01:03:22
Drew Treglia
And, um, yeah, think go to jonesplantationfilm.com and watch the movie and, you know, there we've got our, Jones has a Twitter account and, you know, all this stuff,
Podcast Launch and Social Media Engagement
01:03:33
Drew Treglia
but yeah, find me on Tregsman and go to jonesplantationfilm.com is probably the best.
01:03:33
Christian Yordanov
nice awesome some stuff yeah sweet so your podcast will be called that you're launching Maverick in the Machine you said
01:03:37
Drew Treglia
It's also on all the platforms too. If you prefer, you know, Amazon or Apple or it's on Roku TV. And if you prefer to watch it there, go for it.
01:03:51
Drew Treglia
Maverick and the machine. Yeah. And they, all the updates and stuff are going to go through my tregsman account and my drew media.
01:03:53
Christian Yordanov
Okay.
01:03:56
Drew Treglia
I've got, we've got a Facebook, a drew media, Facebook account and, and,
01:03:58
Christian Yordanov
Okay.
01:04:02
Drew Treglia
I have an Instagram.
01:04:02
Christian Yordanov
Cool, man.
01:04:03
Drew Treglia
I don't really use, I have like eight posts. I've got to get more active on Instagram. I probably will once I start clipping the show. Yeah.
01:04:08
Drew Treglia
Maverick and the machine is, it's going to be interesting. It's um kind of like this is finding people that Mavericks that succeeded inside this clown world, ah maintain their integrity.
01:04:09
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
01:04:19
Drew Treglia
did it. You know, I'll have to get you on at some point and talk to you.
01:04:22
Christian Yordanov
Mm-hmm.
01:04:24
Drew Treglia
Yeah. Um, but, it um, but it's like, kind of like this is your life for renegades and Mavericks kind of thing.
01:04:25
Christian Yordanov
Why not?
01:04:26
Christian Yordanov
We love that.
01:04:31
Drew Treglia
We don't really get into politics and, and you know, what the goings on, although we do talk about the system and the end and we know what, where would think it's going and what maybe some solutions are, but we don't really get into like day-to-day news stuff generally.
01:04:31
Christian Yordanov
Nice.
01:04:34
Christian Yordanov
Yeah.
01:04:44
Christian Yordanov
Yeah. Yeah.
01:04:45
Drew Treglia
So
01:04:45
Christian Yordanov
I think a lot of people are sick of that as well. They'll probably tune out. So that that's a good call, brother.
01:04:50
Drew Treglia
I hope so.
01:04:52
Christian Yordanov
Yeah. All right, Drew. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, man.
01:04:56
Drew Treglia
All right. Good times. Thank you.