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Ep 118: Retro Satallites with the Bragg Brothers
54 Plays2 years ago
The Bragg Brothers talk with us about their Roger Sharpe movie, "Pinball" and they challenges they faced making a movie during Covid lockdown
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:07
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.
00:00:09
Speaker
We are on episode 118.
00:00:10
Speaker
I am Josh Roop.
00:00:12
Speaker
With me, my co-captain, as always, Scott Larson.
00:00:15
Speaker
And Scott, it is an amazing day.
00:00:17
Speaker
I'm excited for our
Pinball Machines and Recommendations
00:00:18
Speaker
guests.
00:00:18
Speaker
But before we get going on that, I want to just throw this out there.
00:00:21
Speaker
I know there's a bunch of pinball machines floating around right now.
00:00:24
Speaker
It is time to buy, if you haven't so far, Venom Shipping.
00:00:27
Speaker
This game is exploding on media right now.
00:00:29
Speaker
If you haven't checked out these videos, they're amazing.
00:00:33
Speaker
Also, Zach can get you any other game you want.
00:00:35
Speaker
Isn't
00:00:35
Speaker
You don't want just Stern.
00:00:36
Speaker
You can get Galactic Tank for it.
00:00:37
Speaker
So you can get all those Pulp Fictions coming out here soon.
00:00:40
Speaker
I mean, you haven't got your hands on these games.
00:00:42
Speaker
It is now time to you can even trade in and trade up with Zach.
00:00:46
Speaker
And he is also selling used games and shipping them nationwide.
00:00:50
Speaker
So go check out his supply.
Introduction of Meredith and Austin Bragg
00:00:52
Speaker
Scott, who do we got with us today?
00:00:54
Speaker
Well, Zach also is on the hunt for me too, because I have a friend who's looking for a black night sword of rage pro.
00:01:01
Speaker
So if you guys have any, any hookups looking for home use only, but shoot me a text, I'd be interested.
00:01:08
Speaker
Okay, so we have Meredith and
Braggs' Background in Comedy
00:01:11
Speaker
Austin Bragg.
00:01:11
Speaker
And just in case you don't know who they are, they are the people who brought you Pinball the movie.
00:01:18
Speaker
And so this is actually, it's great because it's such a niche thing.
00:01:22
Speaker
And ironically, so I work in a hospital and one of the surgeons came up to me the other day.
00:01:28
Speaker
He's like, you know, I was flying to Hawaii.
00:01:31
Speaker
And I saw a show on Delta and it was about pinball.
00:01:36
Speaker
And I thought of you.
00:01:36
Speaker
And I'm like, yeah, our friends did that show and it's a great show.
00:01:40
Speaker
So we want to welcome Meredith and Austin Bragg.
00:01:44
Speaker
And I want to know how this all came
Involvement with Channel 101
00:01:47
Speaker
about.
00:01:47
Speaker
So first off, introduce yourselves.
00:01:50
Speaker
Tell us how you got into movies, how you got into your day jobs.
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Speaker
And then let's transition to figuring out.
00:01:57
Speaker
This is such a niche topic that everybody in pinball knows about.
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Speaker
But outside of pinball, very few people know about it.
00:02:05
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm Meredith Bragg.
00:02:08
Speaker
I'm Austin Bragg.
00:02:12
Speaker
Let's see, we've been, we've been, we grew up as comedy nerds.
00:02:15
Speaker
So watched a lot of sketch comedy when we were kids.
00:02:19
Speaker
This would be 90s, early 2000s, so...
00:02:23
Speaker
you know, obviously SNL, but kids in the hall, the state, Mr. Show thought of British comedy, Monty Python and the like.
00:02:32
Speaker
And, um, we just really liked it.
00:02:33
Speaker
And so when Austin was in college, he put on a sketch show much to the chagrin of my professors.
00:02:42
Speaker
Yeah, they were, they're used, they had a little black box theater called theater to at James Madison university, which is where he went.
00:02:49
Speaker
And, um,
00:02:50
Speaker
typically students would put on Ibsen or, you know, homeless Hamlet, something like that.
Inspiration from Pinball's Illegal History
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Speaker
And, uh, Austin put on the big honking sketch show and, uh, it went very well and sold out.
00:03:03
Speaker
And, um, they, how many, you had like four, I think.
00:03:06
Speaker
We had four different shows in the black box and a couple of others scattered around campus.
00:03:11
Speaker
So part of that, there was a movie theater on campus, and we created trailers to go in front of the movie theater.
00:03:20
Speaker
So I was working at a public access station.
00:03:23
Speaker
I had already graduated.
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Speaker
I was working at ABC Radio, but also a public access station at the same time.
00:03:27
Speaker
And they gave us access to equipment.
00:03:29
Speaker
And so we made short little trailers to show before the movie to help advertise the film.
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Speaker
And I think that's when we sort of fell in love with it, the form.
00:03:40
Speaker
When he graduated, Austin took over my job at the public access station.
00:03:46
Speaker
So we continued to have access, get a key.
00:03:48
Speaker
And so
Making of 'Pinball the Movie'
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Speaker
we could get in the middle of the night and play with their equipment.
00:03:51
Speaker
And we made a number of shows, sort of shorts, and we made a documentary about Star Wars.
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Speaker
And
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Speaker
It was about that time that Austin found Channel 101, which maybe you can explain that, Austin.
00:04:05
Speaker
Yeah, Channel 101 was created by Dan Harmon and Rob Schraub out in L.A.
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Speaker
And then one popped up in New York out of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.
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Speaker
The idea is that people, you know, people are getting access to equipment.
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Speaker
It was becoming cheaper and easier for people to make things on their own.
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Speaker
So what they did was they created Channel 101, and the idea was...
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Speaker
People created five minute television shows and then they screened them in front of an audience, a live audience, and the audience then voted on their top five.
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Speaker
And the top five shows were supposed to come back a month later with a new episode of that show.
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Speaker
And they would be pitted against
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Speaker
you know, the five returning shows and five new pilots every month.
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Speaker
And so we had a couple of different shows that we did there.
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Speaker
That was sort of our filmmaking school was creating one series in particular, went on for a couple of years called the Defenders of Stan.
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Speaker
And it got the attention of Warner Brothers.
00:05:13
Speaker
Warner Brothers saw it and they brought us in to talk and bought the pilot and we shopped it around town.
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Speaker
It never went anywhere, but that was our first inclination that, oh, maybe we can do this and it's not just for all of our friends to have a good time.
00:05:28
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:30
Speaker
And so as far as pinball, we had had a short film that was to premiere at Tribeca in 2020 called A Piece of Cake, which is about the difficulty in finding those little silver confectionery, silver confectionery balls called drages.
00:05:46
Speaker
You'll see them on like Christmas cookies and wedding cakes.
00:05:48
Speaker
The difficulty of finding those in California, they are effectively illegal.
00:05:52
Speaker
Seriously?
00:05:53
Speaker
Yes.
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Speaker
If you ever get like a canister, you'll see it says not for sale in California.
00:06:00
Speaker
Okay, that's new to me.
00:06:02
Speaker
So confectionery balls are illegal in California.
00:06:05
Speaker
Only certain kinds.
00:06:06
Speaker
Only the silver kind.
00:06:07
Speaker
The silver reflective confectionery balls.
00:06:10
Speaker
I believe the gold ones are also anything that has metal.
00:06:14
Speaker
They might be.
00:06:15
Speaker
Okay, it's just like, so have you guys gone to Disneyland in the last
Community Support and Success
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Speaker
10 years?
00:06:20
Speaker
Yes.
00:06:20
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:21
Speaker
So have you seen the sign that has like, yeah, the sign that says Disneyland uses substances that are known to be carcinogenic.
00:06:29
Speaker
And it's like by proposition, something I can't remember.
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:34
Speaker
It's just, it's so ridiculous, but I'm sure this is like an outgrowth of all that too, right?
00:06:39
Speaker
Those signs are everywhere.
00:06:41
Speaker
Yeah, they are.
00:06:42
Speaker
It's on your sticker.
00:06:42
Speaker
Okay, I love it when you get a pinball machine.
00:06:46
Speaker
This pinball machine has used stuff that is known to cause cancer in California.
00:06:50
Speaker
I'm like, wow, I'm so glad I don't live in California.
00:06:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:57
Speaker
So somewhere around the time that was supposed to premiere at Tribeca in 2020 and COVID happened, so we ended up having a very wonderful but virtual film festival run with that film.
00:07:07
Speaker
But I am sure at some point we typed in...
00:07:10
Speaker
illegal silver balls into Google and the picture of Roger popped up playing in front of the city council.
00:07:17
Speaker
And that was, you know, I feel like Austin and I are sort of the Ripley's believe it or not of weird laws.
00:07:25
Speaker
We just collect these things and we have a Google doc where we will throw weird ideas that maybe they'll become a documentary.
00:07:30
Speaker
Maybe there'll be fodder for some short YouTube video.
00:07:33
Speaker
Maybe there'll be something more.
00:07:35
Speaker
And this was on that list.
00:07:37
Speaker
So we put it on there.
00:07:37
Speaker
We assume that's where we found it.
00:07:40
Speaker
And so around the time that around February 2020, I just cold emailed Roger.
00:07:45
Speaker
We're trying
Roger Sharpe's Influence
00:07:46
Speaker
to figure out what to do next.
00:07:49
Speaker
The production company, MPI Films, that funded A Piece of Cake, a short film, had asked us if we had any feature ideas.
00:07:57
Speaker
And so we called up Roger and I spoke to him for about three hours.
00:08:02
Speaker
That's it?
00:08:02
Speaker
Just three hours?
00:08:03
Speaker
Well, that time.
00:08:04
Speaker
And at the end of it, I called Austin.
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Speaker
I said, I think this might be a feature because he had told me everything else.
00:08:10
Speaker
He told me about Ellen and Seth and GQ and writing the book and all this.
00:08:14
Speaker
So it became, we didn't come from at this as pinball people.
00:08:20
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:08:22
Speaker
But what he told us on that call really gave us something that felt like it was universal, that we had this quirky story about pinball being illegal and why, and this guy who helped legalize it in New York City through his demonstration.
00:08:42
Speaker
But it was everything else that really captured us as well, and just the way he talked.
00:08:46
Speaker
We just hit it off.
00:08:47
Speaker
And so that started a process where Austin and I ended up speaking to him
00:08:51
Speaker
during the pandemic when people would jump on Zoom and be thankful to talk to someone outside their household.
00:08:58
Speaker
We spoke with him for cumulatively days.
00:09:02
Speaker
He just gave us everything and it really became a process of us winnowing down what we thought was important for a script.
00:09:11
Speaker
And thankfully, MPI films like the script.
00:09:13
Speaker
And then because of a delay that they needed, they needed a push.
00:09:18
Speaker
They had a film on the slate, but they had to push it for actor availability reasons.
Style and Humor of the Movie
00:09:22
Speaker
And they wanted to shoot something in 2021.
00:09:24
Speaker
So we got the call late spring saying, you're up.
00:09:27
Speaker
And, you know, four months later, we were on set.
00:09:32
Speaker
It's crazy.
00:09:33
Speaker
Who wrote the script?
00:09:35
Speaker
We both did.
00:09:36
Speaker
Really?
00:09:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:38
Speaker
That's a great script.
00:09:39
Speaker
Well, and it's, it's tough too, because I think if anyone, if a complete stranger approaches you out of the blue and says, we want to make a movie about your life and it's going to be a comedy, you probably don't jump at the chance.
00:09:51
Speaker
Right.
00:09:52
Speaker
Right.
00:09:53
Speaker
you know we worked with roger and mpi sort of at the same time you know narrowing our focus and creating outlines and showing them you know where we wanted to take the story and by the time we had even a rough outline i think they were pretty much signed on which was fantastic roger really let us in and you know uh gave us gave us a little bit of license yeah which was fantastic
00:10:21
Speaker
I gotta say, I love this movie.
00:10:23
Speaker
And it's funny because I keep joking that it's a bait and switch, right?
00:10:26
Speaker
Like we think it's about pinball, but it's really a romantic comedy that just happens to feature pinball.
00:10:32
Speaker
And I think it's brilliant going from that angle because my wife, when I was like, this movie is coming out, you're going to watch it with me.
00:10:38
Speaker
She's like, please, please don't make me watch something about pinball.
00:10:42
Speaker
And we watched the premiere because they did it virtually
00:10:45
Speaker
And we were able to get the tickets and whatnot.
00:10:48
Speaker
And by the end of it, she's like, that was amazing.
00:10:50
Speaker
That was not what I was expecting.
00:10:51
Speaker
And I don't know how you guys
Balancing Comedy and Romance
00:10:53
Speaker
did it, but it's something like we get it in the pinball industry, like us in this community, we love it and stuff like that.
00:10:58
Speaker
But people outside of it, it's hard to, if you don't have any investment in the hobby, it's probably just like any other hobby, like watches or something like that.
00:11:06
Speaker
But if you can't gain an investment in
00:11:08
Speaker
from that hobby, then the topic falls flat.
00:11:12
Speaker
And somehow you guys were able to make this beautiful romantic comedy and dress it up with the interesting history of
00:11:20
Speaker
yeah, this was illegal.
00:11:21
Speaker
And LaGuardia was quite, I love how you've turned him into the villain, but it even says in the movie, Roger says, so the villain's really a piece of paper in a filing cabinet somewhere and the mayor's been dead for 30 years or something like that.
00:11:33
Speaker
It just, how was it always, I guess, getting to the question is, was it always like we're going in this as a comedy stance or romantic comedy stance or, or there was it originally like we need to do a film about pinball and then just kind of happened to gravitate towards the romantic comedy as well.
00:11:49
Speaker
I think we always knew there would be comedy involved.
00:11:51
Speaker
That's sort of our background.
00:11:53
Speaker
That's sort of our bent.
00:11:55
Speaker
Anytime you're doing, you know, this sort of independent film, these, you know, lower tier budgets, we talked about how in order to get seen, you kind of have to get weird with it,
Challenges of a Comedy Biopic
00:12:07
Speaker
right?
00:12:08
Speaker
To stand out from the crowd.
00:12:11
Speaker
So we knew we were going to get weird with it.
00:12:12
Speaker
We knew we were going to, you know, do our best to make it funny.
00:12:16
Speaker
But we also had this struggle, right?
00:12:19
Speaker
First off, it's pinball.
00:12:22
Speaker
And second off, LaGuardia is the bad guy, but from 40 years ago, you know, and he's got an airport named after him.
00:12:32
Speaker
He's not exactly your typical villain for this story.
00:12:38
Speaker
And so we knew it was going to be a little bit of a challenge.
00:12:41
Speaker
And then coupled with the fact that Roger was constantly downplaying the actual shot that he's so well known for.
00:12:51
Speaker
I think at one point during our Zooms, I literally just said, Roger, I'm going to open this movie with you saying, I don't think this should be a movie.
00:12:59
Speaker
And that kind of stuck.
00:13:01
Speaker
That turned out to be the most fun sort of outline that we came up with.
00:13:07
Speaker
And that really gave us a chance to play in and out of the...
00:13:10
Speaker
the true history and the sort of theatricality of making a movie about it.
00:13:15
Speaker
It, it, it worked.
00:13:18
Speaker
And it plays well.
00:13:19
Speaker
You guys do it multiple times during the movie.
00:13:21
Speaker
Like you said, it starts out at just a footnote.
00:13:23
Speaker
You know, let me give you the full story.
00:13:25
Speaker
I love the, you know, he finally makes the shot in court.
00:13:28
Speaker
You guys are, you know, you're, you're building up to this all the time.
00:13:31
Speaker
You finally make the shot and he's cheering and confetti's going.
00:13:34
Speaker
He's like, what are you guys doing?
00:13:36
Speaker
That's not what happened.
00:13:37
Speaker
Just constant stuff like that.
00:13:38
Speaker
It just, it plays so well.
00:13:40
Speaker
One of my favorite things that you guys did in this movie that like, it's never really, it's kind of alluded to, but it's never really talked about movies.
00:13:46
Speaker
It's a part where he meets like with the politician and he's like, you mother.
00:13:49
Speaker
And then Roger's like, wait, what kind of rating are we going for here?
00:13:52
Speaker
I don't know.
00:13:53
Speaker
PG PG 13.
00:13:54
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:54
Speaker
I'll save that for later.
00:13:56
Speaker
Like,
00:13:57
Speaker
I don't think he ever used it, did he?
00:13:59
Speaker
No, he doesn't.
00:13:59
Speaker
Oh, gosh.
00:14:00
Speaker
The thing is, okay, so I realize we're a family-friendly podcast, so I will... It was hilarious, though.
00:14:06
Speaker
Like, it was hilarious.
00:14:07
Speaker
It's in there, but I think we use a soft curse when the chairman essentially notices that Roger can call his shots.
00:14:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:24
Speaker
He says, oh...
00:14:26
Speaker
Yeah, I believe it.
00:14:27
Speaker
And we probably should have been harder because so many people have said, you never
Writing Process and Script Development
00:14:32
Speaker
said it.
00:14:32
Speaker
I was like, well, technically, when you're dealing with the rating boards, that's considered a problem word.
00:14:38
Speaker
It was good.
00:14:39
Speaker
I guess it wasn't enough.
00:14:41
Speaker
It was actually done really well.
00:14:43
Speaker
If I could do it again, I would definitely go a little harder there or underscore it somehow a little bit more.
00:14:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:51
Speaker
Anyway.
00:14:52
Speaker
It was great.
00:14:52
Speaker
It was perfect.
00:14:53
Speaker
I mean, the whole movie, it's just great.
00:14:55
Speaker
I don't know.
00:14:56
Speaker
I don't know what else to say to that.
00:14:57
Speaker
Because it's seriously like –
00:15:00
Speaker
I really thought this was just going to be, we've seen playing pinball documentaries and whatnot.
00:15:05
Speaker
And it just, this is something entirely different.
00:15:09
Speaker
Like even, let me bring up another point too.
00:15:11
Speaker
I just love to, it starts out, you know, it was the summer of 71.
00:15:16
Speaker
Play John Lennon's Imagine.
00:15:18
Speaker
You're like, no, no, whoa, stop.
00:15:19
Speaker
Too expensive.
00:15:20
Speaker
No, yeah.
00:15:22
Speaker
Too slow and too expensive.
00:15:24
Speaker
I love that style of humor.
00:15:25
Speaker
I guess that's just you guys on film, right?
00:15:27
Speaker
That's just how it goes.
00:15:29
Speaker
Well, but that's also the amazing thing about this is anybody who's talked to Roger for one minute knows that you captured Roger's personality perfectly because he is a master storyteller.
00:15:43
Speaker
He's very engaging.
00:15:44
Speaker
He's very entertaining.
00:15:46
Speaker
He also is the most indirect storyteller I've ever met where you could ask him to give a 30 minutes or 30 second synopsis of it.
00:15:56
Speaker
And three days later, he's still talking.
00:15:59
Speaker
But he's such a great storyteller.
00:16:01
Speaker
And the way you opened it, I was like, yeah, this is definitely the way Roger would tell the story.
00:16:08
Speaker
And so how did that come apart or come together that you decided, you know, we're going to do a movie about an interview, but it's still going to have him popping in and out and breaking the fourth wall?
00:16:23
Speaker
Well, first, let me say that what a wonderful characteristic to have in a subject, because sitting down and talking with him, we got so much information about his life.
00:16:35
Speaker
It was really just an incredible wealth of data that he handed us.
Capturing Roger Sharpe's Story
00:16:42
Speaker
Again, I think, you know, as for how it came about, there's a lot of us in that part of the script because we were sitting with him going through this journey over months, you know, trying to write it over Zoom.
00:16:56
Speaker
And so that interview process became part of the story in a lot of ways.
00:17:03
Speaker
And a weird touchstone that we kept coming back to discussing when we were writing this was actually The Princess Bride.
00:17:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:12
Speaker
Because you've got Fred Savage getting, you know, the story read to him by grandpa.
00:17:16
Speaker
And oh, that's a kissing book.
00:17:17
Speaker
I don't want the kissing book.
00:17:18
Speaker
But by the end, he's like, I'm okay with it.
00:17:21
Speaker
Right.
00:17:21
Speaker
And so we wanted to make sure that there was a, you know, a character should change from beginning to end.
00:17:26
Speaker
And we wanted to make sure that that was reflected in the sort of offscreen direction.
00:17:32
Speaker
I think also like, you know, bringing it back a little bit to what you're saying about this being sort of a secret romantic comedy, um,
00:17:42
Speaker
Part of this was Roger and really just how we talked with Roger and what he told us and how he kept saying the shot was a footnote and that it really wasn't that big a deal.
00:17:50
Speaker
And it wasn't that big a deal then.
00:17:52
Speaker
And it's, you know, kind of interesting and it's become a big deal now, but
00:17:56
Speaker
downplaying it.
00:17:57
Speaker
And he kept talking about how, you know, family is important families and, you know, that came.
00:18:01
Speaker
So I like, and it's no surprise that you can play pinball in New York city.
00:18:06
Speaker
Like we all know how it's going to end.
00:18:08
Speaker
So allowing us to, to delve into that side of it gave at least maybe some question in the audience's mind about what was going to happen and which way it was going to go, because we all knew he was going to make the shot.
00:18:22
Speaker
I mean, we literally say it at the top.
00:18:24
Speaker
Right.
00:18:25
Speaker
Tell us about the shot that changed everything.
00:18:28
Speaker
As far as the Imagine joke and some of that, you get about... I'm a strong believer that you get about five minutes.
00:18:41
Speaker
to get the audience engaged and tell them what the rules of the movie are going to be.
00:18:48
Speaker
So we had to fit a lot of that in.
00:18:50
Speaker
We had to fit in the fact that there was going to be an older version of Roger telling a story in which he will appear and change the circumstances and not always be happy with the choices that the movie makers are making, but also the movie makers are going to have to make allowances for him as well.
00:19:05
Speaker
It's a push and pull.
00:19:07
Speaker
And so we really wanted that.
Authenticity and Attention to Detail
00:19:10
Speaker
And so that was just a really quick way of letting people know sort of, I think all that happens in the first 45 seconds or so.
00:19:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:19
Speaker
That we're very quickly establishing what the game is going to be for the whole film.
00:19:24
Speaker
And that was just a fun one that I think Austin came up with and I loved it.
00:19:30
Speaker
I do want to know who came up with the line because I laughed out loud when I heard this where I said everything happens for a reason.
00:19:38
Speaker
Sometimes the reason is you're an idiot.
00:19:40
Speaker
Pretty sure that was also Austin.
00:19:41
Speaker
So that's Austin's two for this one.
00:19:43
Speaker
I'll take it.
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:45
Speaker
Because seriously, I was like, yep, that's totally true.
00:19:48
Speaker
Okay.
00:19:49
Speaker
I want to know how much of how much of you is in this movie because there were some moments that were authentic.
00:19:58
Speaker
Like that.
00:19:59
Speaker
So, and this is getting into me a little bit.
00:20:03
Speaker
I actually, I met my wife when I was 34 and she was 30 and she actually was recently divorced.
00:20:12
Speaker
And the conversation that she had was, it was exactly me having that conversation with my wife.
00:20:22
Speaker
I mean, I had never been married, but she, I remember it was the first week I'd taken her out for a pre-date.
00:20:29
Speaker
I love that.
00:20:30
Speaker
I took her for ice cream.
00:20:31
Speaker
And then the later I called her, I was in the middle of eating whatever crappy dinner I had prepared.
00:20:41
Speaker
And I said, oh, what are you doing?
00:20:42
Speaker
She's like, well, I'm thinking of going to dinner.
00:20:44
Speaker
I'm like, you know what?
00:20:45
Speaker
I'm thinking of going to dinner too.
00:20:47
Speaker
So I shoved that.
00:20:48
Speaker
I went to dinner.
00:20:50
Speaker
And then we were getting in, you always get into, okay, so what's going on?
00:20:53
Speaker
What's bringing?
00:20:54
Speaker
And she just paused for a second.
00:20:55
Speaker
She's like, well, I'm recently divorced.
00:20:58
Speaker
I've been, I was married for 11 years.
00:21:00
Speaker
And I was like, that is a hundred percent how that conversation goes.
00:21:05
Speaker
And so I totally identified with that conversation.
00:21:08
Speaker
So I would just say that's not our personal experience.
00:21:12
Speaker
Um, though, uh,
00:21:15
Speaker
Technically, Rosh and I had a lot of moments where we sort of looked at each other over Zoom and went, oh, me too.
00:21:24
Speaker
My wife is 70 years older than I am.
00:21:27
Speaker
She was divorced when we met.
00:21:28
Speaker
I mean, it was all that sort of
00:21:31
Speaker
We had moments that I can relate to, but that predate is straight from Roger's history.
00:21:39
Speaker
That is Ellen to a T that she knew what she wanted.
00:21:43
Speaker
And she was very clear about that from the get go.
00:21:47
Speaker
And so for us, that was super easy.
00:21:50
Speaker
That just wrote itself.
00:21:51
Speaker
Right.
00:21:52
Speaker
Yeah, I would say about 90 to 95% of all of the, everything you see, all the plot points are
Critical Acclaim and Awards
00:22:03
Speaker
100% accurate.
00:22:03
Speaker
We played with the timeline and obviously the dialogue has been shoved through Bragg Brothers' brain and then actors.
00:22:12
Speaker
But most of the data points, so the meeting Ellen in an elevator, everything with GQ, why he got hired,
00:22:21
Speaker
the fact that he was divorced and lost all his furniture, that he randomly found the pinball machine at an adult bookstore.
00:22:29
Speaker
He says he never went behind the curtain.
00:22:31
Speaker
All this stuff is true.
00:22:32
Speaker
I will say, because Roger will want me to say this on the record, the one thing that he did...
00:22:40
Speaker
We initially had a dinner date and then Roger would take Ellen to the adult bookstore.
00:22:45
Speaker
And he was adamant.
00:22:46
Speaker
He's like, I never, ever would have taken Ellen to that bookstore.
00:22:49
Speaker
Like never, that would have been terrible.
00:22:51
Speaker
I never would have done it.
00:22:51
Speaker
Like it was terrible to, you know, date.
00:22:54
Speaker
I'm not that, you know, you can't have that in the movie.
00:22:56
Speaker
Right.
00:22:56
Speaker
And we pleaded our case.
00:22:57
Speaker
We were like, we need you to show Ellen why you love pinball.
00:23:00
Speaker
Like it's important as a character thing.
00:23:03
Speaker
Here are the three, here's the love triangle, right?
00:23:05
Speaker
Here's the love light.
00:23:06
Speaker
Here are the two loves of your life.
00:23:07
Speaker
You want to introduce them in some way.
00:23:09
Speaker
And like, this is going to be the easiest way to do that.
00:23:11
Speaker
He's like, fine, but it has to be during daylight.
00:23:13
Speaker
We're like, no problem.
00:23:15
Speaker
And it is the most PG adult bookstore you've ever seen in your entire life.
00:23:21
Speaker
Yes.
00:23:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:22
Speaker
Okay.
00:23:23
Speaker
I don't know.
00:23:24
Speaker
One,
00:23:25
Speaker
we're going to get into casting later, but the guy who is the clerk at the adult bookstore was one of my favorite characters because he was the perfect like character actor, comic relief in the background.
00:23:40
Speaker
I loved his little interactions.
00:23:42
Speaker
And I also loved when they start like the romantic playing the pinball and he's like, no, no, no.
00:23:50
Speaker
What is this?
00:23:51
Speaker
The cuddling from behind.
00:23:53
Speaker
This is creepy.
00:23:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:55
Speaker
Yeah, Connor Ratliff is the adult bookstore clerk.
00:24:02
Speaker
And he is... We have so many great characters and so many great actors that we just completely underutilized because he was one of them.
00:24:13
Speaker
He is so amazingly funny and gifted.
00:24:16
Speaker
And if anyone is interested, he was actually the... Just finished a podcast...
00:24:24
Speaker
called Dead Eyes, which I highly recommend anyone, where he recounts his story and then talks to a number of people associated with it about how Tom Hanks fired him from Band of Brothers because he had dead eyes.
00:24:38
Speaker
And it all culminates.
00:24:39
Speaker
I mean, at this point, it's all on the record, so I don't think it's going to spoil that.
00:24:41
Speaker
It all culminates in the end of season three.
00:24:44
Speaker
They did three episodes where he actually sits down with Tom Hanks.
00:24:47
Speaker
And it's amazing.
00:24:49
Speaker
It's a great, great podcast listen.
00:24:51
Speaker
I thought to listen to that.
00:24:54
Speaker
Okay, I have to say it's been a year since you guys originally shown this movie to the public.
00:24:59
Speaker
Since then, you guys have received multiple awards and it's had an amazing
Role of the Pinball Community
00:25:03
Speaker
amount of praise.
00:25:03
Speaker
It holds a 95% Rotten Tomatoes score and has been voted one of the top three must-sees independent films of the year.
00:25:10
Speaker
Did you think you'd be receiving this much praise for this movie?
00:25:13
Speaker
And I guess, what was your goal starting the movie and did you achieve that goal by the end of it?
00:25:20
Speaker
I mean, clearly, no, never.
00:25:23
Speaker
This is a Bragg family trait, I'm afraid, that we will always see the flaws and we'll always be very hard on ourselves.
00:25:33
Speaker
So we never imagined this level of success that it's garnered.
00:25:39
Speaker
I don't know.
00:25:40
Speaker
As far as our, we keep saying that as you know, our sort of goal for it was always, we just don't want to get kicked out of the filmmaking club, right?
00:25:49
Speaker
We just want to be able to do another one after this.
00:25:51
Speaker
We want to be able to keep making bigger and better things.
00:25:55
Speaker
And hopefully so far, it seems like we're in, we're in the clear on that front.
00:26:02
Speaker
I would say so.
00:26:05
Speaker
I think you guys have achieved higher, much higher.
00:26:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:08
Speaker
And there are all sorts of little, you know, other goals as well.
00:26:11
Speaker
Like one of our biggest goals was to get the pinball right.
00:26:15
Speaker
Right.
00:26:15
Speaker
Because Rogers told us specifically, he said, look, guys, I want the movie to be good.
00:26:20
Speaker
I do.
00:26:21
Speaker
But the pinball has to be right.
00:26:24
Speaker
Because otherwise people are coming for him.
00:26:27
Speaker
Right.
00:26:29
Speaker
So we, you know, we,
00:26:31
Speaker
We worked really hard to make sure that those things were correct, that we got the right games at the right times, that even the sound for the games is correct, which I gather isn't always the case.
00:26:45
Speaker
There was a lot of effort put into that.
00:26:48
Speaker
And can I just say
Memorable Filming Moments
00:26:50
Speaker
we had such an amazing experience with the sort of wide pinball community.
00:26:56
Speaker
They really came together.
00:26:58
Speaker
And, you know, obviously Roger was sort of rallying the troops, but so many people donating games for the production, just incredible, you know, loading machines from storage or from their basement onto their trucks and driving hours to set.
00:27:14
Speaker
It was really humbling, the outpouring of support.
00:27:19
Speaker
Well, we saw it on our end a little bit because we were in a group chat with with Josh and Zach Sharp.
00:27:25
Speaker
And there would be questions of like, we need pictures of this pinball machine.
00:27:29
Speaker
We can't find them.
00:27:30
Speaker
We need some just some sounds from it.
00:27:33
Speaker
And it was amazing to see that kind of length you guys are going to to make sure that history is correct.
00:27:38
Speaker
I'm taking credit for one of those because I'm taking credit because Josh asked, does anyone have Eldorado tilting?
00:27:44
Speaker
And I said, yes, I have a friend who has an Eldorado.
00:27:48
Speaker
And I had him send me the video and I sent it to you guys.
00:27:51
Speaker
Amazing.
00:27:53
Speaker
I remember that because we were, this was, was this before production started?
00:27:56
Speaker
Yeah, it was early, I think.
00:27:57
Speaker
And he's like, I just need to, I need to see Eldorado tilting.
00:28:00
Speaker
And I'm like, okay, well, I know, I know a friend with an Eldorado.
00:28:04
Speaker
It's a, not very common, but yeah.
00:28:06
Speaker
Great.
00:28:07
Speaker
That was great.
00:28:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:08
Speaker
We were trying to figure out what it actually looked like.
00:28:11
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:28:12
Speaker
so we could set up a shot and sort of before we, you know, so while we actually stepped on set and everyone standing around looking at us to, we knew what we wanted to do.
00:28:23
Speaker
So we needed to see what it looked like when you tilted that thing.
00:28:26
Speaker
That's great.
00:28:29
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:28:30
Speaker
And I should, I mean, we just, again, we got to say, thank God that Roger was, you know, signed on as executive producer and was there because he,
00:28:40
Speaker
He really showed us a lot.
00:28:41
Speaker
And we had a great pinball tech, Eddie Kramer, who was there.
00:28:45
Speaker
And I mean, they kept things working.
00:28:50
Speaker
They got machines.
00:28:51
Speaker
And even if they weren't working, sometimes we had them look like they were working.
00:28:55
Speaker
Sure.
00:28:57
Speaker
And then Roger, on a few occasions, we had something fall through and we very quickly needed to get a machine on set for the next day.
Casting and Character Development
00:29:11
Speaker
He made it happen.
00:29:12
Speaker
Like he was, it was just, it was magic.
00:29:16
Speaker
I don't think you can find one person in the pinball industry that does not have a positive experience with Roger.
00:29:23
Speaker
Yeah, I believe it.
00:29:24
Speaker
I universally liked.
00:29:26
Speaker
So that that's amazing.
00:29:29
Speaker
A couple of points that I, that I wanted to bring up that it felt
00:29:35
Speaker
It didn't feel very heavy handed, but again, it nailed what was needed in that moment.
00:29:42
Speaker
And I'm kind of wondering how as a writer you pull this off.
00:29:47
Speaker
One, casting, whoever you cast as Seth,
00:29:52
Speaker
is great because I know kid actors are the hardest because they're, they're typically not professional actors in that they, you know, they're, they're usually kids who act acting as a hobby.
00:30:03
Speaker
And so it's pretty obvious that, Oh, that, that kid's not very good.
00:30:07
Speaker
He played it perfectly.
00:30:09
Speaker
And there were some moments where like in the bowling alley, when he talks about his dad, not showing up,
00:30:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:16
Speaker
Christopher is really good.
00:30:18
Speaker
He's not a newcomer.
00:30:20
Speaker
He's been doing some acting for a while now.
00:30:23
Speaker
You could tell that he was trained.
00:30:26
Speaker
I'm just saying like finding an actor who is really able to, to do that.
00:30:31
Speaker
I mean, there was, that was a, it was a bold moment without being, you know, the, the rising stand clap at the end of 80, every 80s movie, you know,
00:30:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:44
Speaker
I mean, as far as, as far as him, I mean, that's one of the reasons we chose him.
00:30:50
Speaker
He had that, he just, he could pull off that scene really well.
00:30:54
Speaker
And that we knew that was an important one.
00:30:56
Speaker
Understated someone who looks like he's gone, you know, gone through something, but he's not necessarily sharing that with the world.
00:31:05
Speaker
Right.
00:31:07
Speaker
Just, you know, a little bit, the, the lack of the,
00:31:12
Speaker
the lack of his father figure sort of had a little bit of damage there, but it's not crippling, but it's
Crafting Emotional Impact
00:31:19
Speaker
there.
00:31:19
Speaker
We wanted to make sure it was there.
00:31:21
Speaker
And he was just really good at that, understated in a way.
00:31:26
Speaker
And yeah, that was a tricky scene to write because we didn't want it to seem too saccharine.
00:31:34
Speaker
We also knew it was important.
00:31:35
Speaker
And that scene happened, by the way.
00:31:37
Speaker
I mean, he did go to
00:31:39
Speaker
Roger really did go to the father-son bowling tournament with Seth before, you know, while they were dating.
00:31:47
Speaker
And that's why I really love the ending of that scene with, let's go, you know, it sucks.
00:31:54
Speaker
Let's go beat the pants off these happy fathers.
00:31:57
Speaker
I mean, I just loved it.
00:31:58
Speaker
It just, what a great line.
00:32:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:01
Speaker
Again, another, I think, Austin line.
00:32:03
Speaker
Damn it.
00:32:04
Speaker
You're getting all the good ones tonight.
00:32:06
Speaker
Seriously, I actually unintentionally teared up when he said his dad died too.
00:32:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:12
Speaker
And that was one of those.
00:32:13
Speaker
That was a tricky thing because we had a couple drafts where we alluded to that earlier.
00:32:18
Speaker
A couple drafts where it was much heavier instead of a little bit more matter of fact.
00:32:25
Speaker
We had a whole draft that dealt with his parents and his stepdad.
00:32:29
Speaker
And he, you know, very much, he talks about how he was grateful that he had two great dads.
00:32:35
Speaker
So it was a positive stepfather relationship.
00:32:39
Speaker
But it just, at a certain point, we needed to cut it down and we needed to really, wanted this to feel like a pinball game.
00:32:46
Speaker
And part of that is, especially when you're, we're playing, it's got to be short.
00:32:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:50
Speaker
Short and fun and fast and a little.
00:32:53
Speaker
And so we had to cut that out.
00:32:56
Speaker
So yeah, that was a, that was a tricky thing.
00:32:57
Speaker
We knew we wanted to include it.
00:32:59
Speaker
We knew it actually, you can read a lot more into the story.
00:33:04
Speaker
I think once, you know, like Roger's backstory with his father and his stepfather, but yeah, that was a, that was a tricky scene.
00:33:16
Speaker
And I, I think it, I'm really happy with it actually, especially we did not have a lot of time in that bowling alley that day.
Using Humor Strategically
00:33:23
Speaker
So we were, we were racing around and I'm,
00:33:27
Speaker
There's a little bit of movie magic, post-movie magic in that as well, but I was happy with it.
00:33:31
Speaker
And you should have said, it took us forever just to bowl a strike.
00:33:34
Speaker
I remember that.
00:33:36
Speaker
And everyone wanted turns bowling a strike.
00:33:38
Speaker
I'm like, I'll do it.
00:33:39
Speaker
I'll do it.
00:33:40
Speaker
And of course, because we also had a camera in the way, it was not easy.
00:33:43
Speaker
It was kind of fun.
00:33:44
Speaker
So I have to know, you guys...
00:33:49
Speaker
you got the initial interviews and there was a ton of interviews there.
00:33:52
Speaker
I assume you cut a lot from what Roger originally did, but did those initial interviews actually shape the direction of the movie and the meta style of, of the older Mr. Sharp being interviewed?
00:34:07
Speaker
At some point that happened.
00:34:08
Speaker
I don't know when we, the way that we write is maybe inefficient in the long run, but I,
00:34:18
Speaker
or in the short run, but I think it helps us in the long run, where we will actually do a lot of discussion.
00:34:24
Speaker
So we'll get together and we'll talk and we'll whiteboard things and we'll do all that.
00:34:28
Speaker
And then we'll go in our separate corners and our separate offices and we'll each write outlines.
00:34:34
Speaker
Sort of here's one direction.
00:34:36
Speaker
Sometimes we'll write multiple outlines, especially early on in the process.
00:34:39
Speaker
We may say, you know, by Friday,
00:34:43
Speaker
come with three different one page outlines of how the story could go.
00:34:47
Speaker
And then we get together and we discuss what the pros and cons of each.
00:34:52
Speaker
And eventually we window it down to one outline.
00:34:55
Speaker
And then we do the same thing for larger treatments and the same thing for scripts.
00:34:59
Speaker
And, but I think Austin was the first one to come up with the older Mr. Sharp being interviewed and the ability, it just, it gave us a lot of freedom.
00:35:11
Speaker
it added Austin said a little bit of weird to what could otherwise have been a very standard biopic.
00:35:19
Speaker
And we really, I mean, we had spent
Production Challenges and Success
00:35:23
Speaker
so much time with Roger over zoom at that point and really, you know, grew very fond of him in our chats that it was nice to represent that on screen.
00:35:34
Speaker
And you guys hit him spot on.
00:35:36
Speaker
I mean, holy crap.
00:35:38
Speaker
My wife thought it was him.
00:35:40
Speaker
My wife was like, yeah, they nailed the actor to play Roger.
00:35:44
Speaker
She's like, oh, that's not him.
00:35:46
Speaker
Well, Dennis was actually on Roger's short list when we came down to casting.
00:35:53
Speaker
He was the one who first suggested Dennis.
00:35:57
Speaker
And oh, man, what a difficult role that is, because most of the time he's on camera, no one's paying attention to him.
00:36:08
Speaker
No reacting.
00:36:08
Speaker
We're looking.
00:36:09
Speaker
It's a hard thing to do for an actor.
00:36:13
Speaker
And then on the flip side, when he is interacting with someone, it's me off screen.
00:36:19
Speaker
Right.
00:36:19
Speaker
That's no fun for anybody.
00:36:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:22
Speaker
So hats off to Dennis.
00:36:26
Speaker
It was really great having him there.
00:36:28
Speaker
And it's been really fun, the number of people who have conflated the two.
00:36:34
Speaker
We've had folks at festivals say, wow, that Rogers had such an incredible life.
00:36:41
Speaker
Did you know that he was on Better Call Saul?
00:36:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:50
Speaker
So that's been a lot of fun.
00:36:51
Speaker
It's a full life.
00:36:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:55
Speaker
He's already completed the main quest.
00:36:56
Speaker
He's just doing all the side quests he can now in life.
00:36:58
Speaker
Exactly.
00:36:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:02
Speaker
Well, I even love, I love the humor too of like, there's a part where at the very beginning where older sharp is next to younger sharp playing pinball and you have some guy to run in like a milk crate or something like that and put it down and he steps up and he's like, ah, there we go.
00:37:15
Speaker
Now it's like looking into Mary.
00:37:18
Speaker
Just it's humor that you, you don't expect from a movie.
00:37:22
Speaker
And I've, I've got to say, like I said, I know that this is independent and you guys, I don't know what your budget was.
00:37:27
Speaker
But it astounds me watching this movie.
00:37:29
Speaker
I could have anyone watch this movie and they think it is a high quality, you know, like big, big studio made movie.
00:37:38
Speaker
Like look at, what was that?
00:37:40
Speaker
Flaming Hot.
00:37:41
Speaker
It's a similar style of what you guys did with Pinball, the man who saved the game.
00:37:45
Speaker
But that was done by like Disney or something like that.
00:37:47
Speaker
And I feel like
00:37:48
Speaker
your guys is on par or above what they did.
00:37:51
Speaker
And so you guys have really accomplished something really great with the limited resources that you had.
00:37:57
Speaker
Well, all credit to the production team.
00:37:59
Speaker
I mean, we really, we had some great people working on this show and, you know, there are going to be limitations anytime you're in this sort of low budget range.
00:38:12
Speaker
And the fact that people were signing up and, you know, willing to do that and willing to come play was,
00:38:18
Speaker
It was really good.
00:38:19
Speaker
Like having a fun movie is helpful in a lot of ways.
Filmmaking Insights and Lessons
00:38:23
Speaker
Like having something that's fun to work on, you know, that will sway people from going, I want to, I don't want to do that depressing, gritty, the drug addict show with the diet at the end.
00:38:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:37
Speaker
Even if we're going to be scraping for every dime over here, this one's going to be a lot more fun.
00:38:44
Speaker
And we had a very fun set.
00:38:45
Speaker
We really did.
00:38:46
Speaker
We kept saying, we're making a movie about pinball.
00:38:48
Speaker
If we're not having fun, we're doing it wrong.
00:38:51
Speaker
And I think part of the fun of the set is by the end of it, we had about 30 pinball machines.
00:39:00
Speaker
And whatever we would call it.
00:39:02
Speaker
for lunch or we had to turn something around and there was a break.
00:39:05
Speaker
You would just hear them all firing up and all the actors and crew and Roger and Eddie and other would just be playing.
00:39:11
Speaker
It was great.
00:39:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:13
Speaker
So, so was that kind of the crew or was that just extras at the end of the film where you're kind of wrapping it up?
00:39:17
Speaker
You're all in that room of pinball machines.
00:39:20
Speaker
You're watching Zach and Josh play pinball.
00:39:22
Speaker
Was that part of the crew or was that mostly just extras?
00:39:25
Speaker
Oh, those were background actors.
00:39:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:27
Speaker
Okay.
00:39:27
Speaker
In that end, yes.
00:39:29
Speaker
And I mean, it would have been great to get Josh and Zach, but I think we were in the middle of COVID.
00:39:35
Speaker
We shot this during COVID.
00:39:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:37
Speaker
We're basically in a bubble at that point.
00:39:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:39
Speaker
But man, I wish.
00:39:41
Speaker
I know that some people, like, we chose out of the actors we had, the ones that we thought were the best.
00:39:47
Speaker
And I know we get...
00:39:49
Speaker
We sometimes... We said we got the pinball right.
00:39:53
Speaker
That's perfect.
00:39:54
Speaker
We didn't get Josh and Zach right.
00:39:58
Speaker
So guilty admission, we were texting Josh this morning.
00:40:01
Speaker
Okay.
00:40:02
Speaker
And I messaged and I said, I love that you look like a bouncer from the Bronx.
00:40:09
Speaker
He looks like a linebacker who's about to take you out, which is funny because if you meet Josh, Josh is...
00:40:16
Speaker
He's not that guy, but it's hilarious.
00:40:20
Speaker
Yeah, we had a limited number of background actors that had cleared COVID and could step in and do it.
00:40:30
Speaker
But yeah, we didn't do him dirty on purpose, I promise.
00:40:36
Speaker
He loved that the adult bookstore was the first on the planet with a satellite dish.
00:40:44
Speaker
Oh, gosh.
00:40:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:46
Speaker
Trust me.
00:40:46
Speaker
There are a couple other things.
00:40:47
Speaker
Don't look too close.
00:40:48
Speaker
Oh, no, no.
00:40:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:40:49
Speaker
But the vibe, just what Josh said.
00:40:51
Speaker
So I remember the 70s.
00:40:53
Speaker
I grew up in the 70s.
00:40:55
Speaker
And this is exactly how the 70s felt.
00:41:00
Speaker
Like, well, OK, maybe a lot more.
00:41:06
Speaker
OK, I'm 49 now, and so I'm looking back in life, but it certainly creates the vibe.
00:41:12
Speaker
Let's just say, yeah.
00:41:13
Speaker
So one of the things we wanted to do was.
00:41:17
Speaker
We did not want to create the 70s New York of taxi driver joke.
00:41:22
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:41:23
Speaker
So when we were even just creating a lookbook, which is a sort of a document that you send out to folks to hopefully get them on board and excited and make sure we're all on the same page, we were very careful about sort of our color palettes and what we wanted.
00:41:38
Speaker
It wasn't like Dirty Harry or the – every movie in the 70s was depressing.
00:41:43
Speaker
So this is actually just growing up in the 70s.
00:41:46
Speaker
I'm like, yeah, that style was there.
00:41:47
Speaker
This is someone reminiscing, telling a story about the 70s.
00:41:50
Speaker
Sure.
00:41:51
Speaker
For a family friendly audience.
00:41:53
Speaker
That's basically what we're doing here.
00:41:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:56
Speaker
And no one's chain smoking in the movie.
00:41:59
Speaker
That was the 70s.
00:42:00
Speaker
Everything smelled like stale coffee and cigarettes.
00:42:04
Speaker
Yep.
00:42:05
Speaker
That was a Roger Rask we were happy to oblige with.
00:42:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:09
Speaker
Well, if you've looked over his pinball book, there's a picture in there.
00:42:13
Speaker
We joke that's like, it's a perfect homage to the 70s because it's a pinball machine covered in like cigarette containers.
00:42:19
Speaker
And a Budweiser can resting on it.
00:42:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:21
Speaker
Right here.
00:42:22
Speaker
Yep.
00:42:22
Speaker
That's the one.
00:42:24
Speaker
Yes.
00:42:25
Speaker
You mean this book right here?
00:42:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:27
Speaker
Mine's copies downstairs.
00:42:29
Speaker
I was on.
00:42:30
Speaker
I, I, I will say at the end of the movie, my wife, so I was watching it again with my wife last night and she turned to me and she's like, so did they cut all those interviews in the book?
00:42:40
Speaker
And I said, yeah, actually that's a good question.
00:42:42
Speaker
Cause I, I saw there was text in there.
00:42:44
Speaker
So that was one thing I confirmed with Josh this morning.
00:42:47
Speaker
I said, so did,
00:42:50
Speaker
did they cut a lot of those things?
00:42:51
Speaker
He's like, yeah, we probably still have them.
00:42:53
Speaker
So I, I, I pled with Josh to, to release the 2.0 version.
00:43:00
Speaker
Cause I want to read all those interviews.
00:43:02
Speaker
I do too.
00:43:03
Speaker
We were given, he still had some cassette tapes and he, I think, I don't know if it was Josh or Zach digitized them, but they were sending it away.
00:43:11
Speaker
So even some of when we were in,
00:43:14
Speaker
during what we call the Chicago montage, where he's in Chicago interviewing these people.
00:43:19
Speaker
A lot of those quotes were lifted, like exactly what people said.
00:43:30
Speaker
Same thing with Harry Williams.
00:43:32
Speaker
I mean, some of this, you know, we got caught with our pants hanging around our knees.
00:43:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:38
Speaker
you know, that's a direct quote from him.
00:43:40
Speaker
Well, I wanted to be a Disney animator, but then, you know, the ball is wild.
00:43:44
Speaker
These things were lifted from these tapes where you can hear a younger Roger asking him and, you know, dishes are clanking because they're in some diner and then it switches to an office.
00:43:54
Speaker
And so we tried to be as accurate as possible with that as well.
00:43:57
Speaker
But I would love to see, see those, that transcripts.
00:44:02
Speaker
Would you guys ever, would you guys ever consider doing an extended version of this movie?
00:44:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:07
Speaker
I wish, except I got to tell you, there is no extended version.
00:44:11
Speaker
We shot over 21 days.
Recreating Pinball History
00:44:15
Speaker
It was, as we mentioned, low budget.
00:44:19
Speaker
Still the biggest budget we've ever had.
00:44:20
Speaker
And I feel like we do need to say that.
00:44:22
Speaker
MPI Films took a risk with us for sure.
00:44:26
Speaker
So we are totally grateful for what we had, but we were very careful about what we shot and why we shot it.
00:44:35
Speaker
There is one scene which didn't make it into the end, final cut.
00:44:41
Speaker
And that's because it was a scene between Ellen and Seth before Roger met Seth.
00:44:46
Speaker
And we simply wanted to hold that to make it more of a fun reveal for the audience as well.
00:44:52
Speaker
And that scene was maybe half a page.
00:44:54
Speaker
I mean, it's very short.
00:44:57
Speaker
Other than that, we cut a few bits at the beginning, which just because we wanted to keep it snappy and fast and get to... Streamline it.
00:45:08
Speaker
Exactly.
00:45:09
Speaker
But otherwise, what we wrote is pretty much what's on there.
00:45:13
Speaker
There really isn't an extended version.
00:45:16
Speaker
There were a couple quotes that I was like, man, that's great writing.
00:45:20
Speaker
So I actually have it pulled up right now.
00:45:23
Speaker
So when he's interviewing Harry Williams, he says, the bigger risk is not taking one.
00:45:27
Speaker
Like that's, that's a great line.
00:45:29
Speaker
And another one was, I think I mentioned it before.
00:45:33
Speaker
Everything's on the, on the play field for a reason.
00:45:36
Speaker
Like there, you know, just things like that.
00:45:39
Speaker
I'm like, that's actually, those are, those are stuff that you could see on a bumper sticker.
00:45:44
Speaker
That's a really good like snapshot of life.
00:45:49
Speaker
Well, it reminds me too, where he does talk about life being like pinball, you know, you got to take your shot before the ball drains, right?
00:45:55
Speaker
We get our second chances or extra balls or whatever that, I mean, there's just so many, I don't know how you guys captured it.
00:46:02
Speaker
You captured it well and you captured it.
00:46:04
Speaker
It sounds like with very few film to, to, you know, to, to expand on, on top of that.
00:46:12
Speaker
But,
00:46:13
Speaker
You guys did a great job.
00:46:14
Speaker
How many days did it take to shoot?
00:46:17
Speaker
Because I know this was during COVID, so you were limited.
00:46:20
Speaker
Yeah, we shot for 21 days in the Hudson Valley, New York region.
00:46:28
Speaker
Typically, how long do you get?
00:46:29
Speaker
If it wasn't COVID, how long do you get to film?
00:46:31
Speaker
Us, 21 days.
00:46:35
Speaker
It's Clint Eastwood style.
00:46:37
Speaker
It's very, okay, we got it.
00:46:39
Speaker
I mean, this is our sort of featured debut.
00:46:43
Speaker
We don't have a lot of data points to really go off of.
00:46:47
Speaker
Good point.
00:46:48
Speaker
So 21 days sounds right.
00:46:51
Speaker
I know, you know, obviously, if you're shooting something for the Marvel Universe, then you get a lot more.
00:46:58
Speaker
You have a lot more CGI, too.
00:47:00
Speaker
Yeah, and time to go back and do reshoots or do test screenings with audiences and tweak things after the fact.
00:47:06
Speaker
Yeah, that didn't happen for us.
00:47:08
Speaker
We had 21 days to shoot, 10 weeks of post.
00:47:11
Speaker
The first time we saw it all put together was at the premiere.
00:47:16
Speaker
Wow.
00:47:17
Speaker
That's impressive.
00:47:19
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:20
Speaker
I thought about a little nerve wracking though, right?
00:47:22
Speaker
Sure.
00:47:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:24
Speaker
I mean, the first few festivals were, I think.
00:47:26
Speaker
Are you going to do a follow-up on Roger's book?
00:47:30
Speaker
So the next movie you release is on the next book Roger published.
00:47:36
Speaker
Are you familiar with it?
00:47:38
Speaker
The tanning book?
00:47:40
Speaker
Huh?
00:47:40
Speaker
How to Tan Without Frying?
00:47:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:42
Speaker
How to Get a Great Tan Without Frying.
00:47:44
Speaker
It's a riveting read.
00:47:45
Speaker
It's 39 pages, including footnotes.
00:47:52
Speaker
Yeah, what's that one going for on eBay?
00:47:54
Speaker
Oh, I don't know.
00:47:55
Speaker
I bought this 10 years ago.
00:47:57
Speaker
Ibox, I think.
00:47:58
Speaker
I think it's great.
00:47:59
Speaker
I think it's great.
00:48:00
Speaker
Yeah, that would be fantastic.
00:48:02
Speaker
I wanted to put a tanning joke in there, and I think we kept trying, and we never could make it land.
00:48:08
Speaker
It seemed like too much of an in-joke for people.
Impact and Future Projects
00:48:10
Speaker
Right.
00:48:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:11
Speaker
Right.
00:48:12
Speaker
Exactly.
00:48:13
Speaker
You don't want to wink too much of the audience.
00:48:15
Speaker
See what I did?
00:48:15
Speaker
See what I did?
00:48:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:17
Speaker
We did hide Tommy in the background of the marquee, the movie marquee.
00:48:23
Speaker
Oh, did you?
00:48:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:24
Speaker
I guess I didn't see that.
00:48:26
Speaker
You saw the satellite dish, but you didn't see it.
00:48:28
Speaker
Okay, I didn't see the satellite dish.
00:48:30
Speaker
I didn't at all.
00:48:31
Speaker
That was something Josh Sharp asked.
00:48:32
Speaker
I was like, anything we should ask?
00:48:35
Speaker
Ask about the satellite dish?
00:48:36
Speaker
Wow.
00:48:37
Speaker
You know what?
00:48:37
Speaker
I did do Josh dirty.
00:48:45
Speaker
That's why you intentionally made him shorter than Zach for the first time in his whole life.
00:48:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:52
Speaker
But he's jacked, though.
00:48:53
Speaker
That's correct.
00:48:56
Speaker
Oh, that's great.
00:48:57
Speaker
What was your favorite memory on this?
00:49:00
Speaker
There was the end of the first week.
00:49:04
Speaker
So we'd just really gotten gotten our sea legs under us for production.
00:49:09
Speaker
Things were starting to really groove.
00:49:11
Speaker
The first couple of days are always a little, you know, you're trying to feel everyone out and see how the crew is working.
00:49:16
Speaker
And we were shooting this, the shot.
00:49:19
Speaker
We were shooting that scene and we were in, you know, we had to pick our,
00:49:24
Speaker
use our resources wisely.
00:49:26
Speaker
And we definitely spent some money to be in that hall that we shot.
00:49:33
Speaker
Is it the actual hall?
00:49:35
Speaker
No, no, no.
00:49:36
Speaker
It's in Newburgh.
00:49:37
Speaker
It's actually an old bank that's now a museum.
00:49:43
Speaker
So we were in there and all these extras with the 70s clothes.
00:49:51
Speaker
A lot of the characters were there for that scene.
00:49:54
Speaker
It was just, and there was for the first time in my career, there was a crane.
00:49:59
Speaker
We had a crane.
00:50:01
Speaker
And we were sitting behind the monitors.
00:50:03
Speaker
Things were going well.
00:50:04
Speaker
People were having fun.
00:50:06
Speaker
I just remember thinking, wow, this is great.
00:50:09
Speaker
I did not expect to be here.
00:50:12
Speaker
If you had asked me 10 years ago, this is great.
00:50:15
Speaker
And then we shoot the...
00:50:19
Speaker
the what we call the Hollywood version of the shot from that camera.
00:50:23
Speaker
That was great.
00:50:24
Speaker
I loved it.
00:50:25
Speaker
I love that you did that.
00:50:26
Speaker
People went.
00:50:27
Speaker
It was the funniest thing.
00:50:29
Speaker
I mean, it was so amazing.
00:50:31
Speaker
We it was just gold.
00:50:33
Speaker
We loved it.
00:50:34
Speaker
And I think we shot it twice.
00:50:37
Speaker
But both times were just so it was so fantastic.
00:50:39
Speaker
So fun.
00:50:40
Speaker
So that was probably my highlight.
00:50:41
Speaker
That's one of them for sure.
00:50:44
Speaker
I just, I mean, there's plenty of memories on set that were just incredible, but I keep coming back to the community, the pinball community.
00:50:55
Speaker
And specifically, you know, we've had all of these festivals and screenings and fun things that we've done.
00:51:01
Speaker
And everywhere we go, it seems there's always an after party at a pinball arcade somewhere.
00:51:09
Speaker
And it's just been so much fun.
00:51:13
Speaker
you know, talking with everybody and meeting everyone and the reception has been really welcoming and really fantastic.
00:51:20
Speaker
It's just again, it's been very humbling and we're very appreciative.
00:51:26
Speaker
And I'll just also say like the cast we got together.
00:51:29
Speaker
Oh, the cast was great.
00:51:31
Speaker
There was nobody that stuck out.
00:51:33
Speaker
Everyone's like, yep, that's that person.
00:51:35
Speaker
And just great people like they're just really good, decent
00:51:40
Speaker
professional human beings and really fun to be around when the cameras weren't rolling and and just lovely.
00:51:48
Speaker
Like we we, you know, hats off to Lindsay Weissmuller, who was our casting director, who really helped put amazing people in front of us.
00:51:56
Speaker
And we couldn't believe our luck.
00:51:58
Speaker
Okay, I do have a question.
00:52:01
Speaker
And we can get this if you want.
00:52:04
Speaker
The mustache is comically thin.
00:52:08
Speaker
It, yeah.
00:52:11
Speaker
It looks a little bit like Ned Flanders, but with like a, it was like a comb over version of a mustache.
00:52:17
Speaker
It varies over time.
00:52:19
Speaker
Okay.
00:52:20
Speaker
And here's the thing.
00:52:22
Speaker
You go back and you look at that shot of Roger from the set, you know, from 76.
00:52:26
Speaker
It's nuts.
00:52:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:29
Speaker
That mustache is crazy.
00:52:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:31
Speaker
That mustache looks like it has furry creatures growing in it.
00:52:34
Speaker
It needed to be a little insane.
00:52:37
Speaker
And we knew that right out of the gate.
00:52:38
Speaker
We couldn't ask Mike to grow one on that short notice.
00:52:41
Speaker
No one can grow one, much less, you know, with a couple of weeks time.
00:52:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:47
Speaker
Add to that.
00:52:50
Speaker
You know, we had some experimentation when Mike actually had an allergic reaction to the adhesive they're putting on.
00:52:56
Speaker
I mean, yeah.
00:52:58
Speaker
We love Mike.
00:52:59
Speaker
Mike was an incredible on set, an incredible presence.
00:53:03
Speaker
Like he had to shoot 21 days.
00:53:06
Speaker
He's in practically every scene.
00:53:07
Speaker
He's got that thing glued onto his face.
00:53:10
Speaker
And he was just a wonderful human being to have on set.
00:53:14
Speaker
did we get we had two mustaches we had two and one of them fell apart oh yeah we can sort of date the scenes by the the mustache yeah and you know it's this is this is part of the joy of filmmaking you never know what your problems are going to be sometimes you anticipate them sometimes you anticipate them wrongly or you know it's just it's you go to set with the mustache you have yeah
00:53:42
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, once the movie train is rolling... Yeah.
00:53:48
Speaker
There's there's only so much you could like.
00:53:51
Speaker
It's just this is what we got.
00:53:52
Speaker
This is what we got.
00:53:52
Speaker
This is what we're dealing with.
00:53:54
Speaker
We move on.
00:53:54
Speaker
There's probably not too many like giant Roger Sharp mustaches off the shelf that you can just buy.
00:54:01
Speaker
No, they're not.
00:54:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:03
Speaker
In the color that would suit.
00:54:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:07
Speaker
And during COVID and supply issues, issues, I mean, it's it was a thing.
00:54:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:13
Speaker
Definitely something we had to deal with.
00:54:14
Speaker
No, it's OK.
00:54:17
Speaker
So we knew we like we have to make this movie good enough that even if the mustache is a bit.
00:54:22
Speaker
Oh, OK.
00:54:24
Speaker
Well, it was a degree of difficulty points.
00:54:26
Speaker
That's what we.
00:54:26
Speaker
It's fine.
00:54:27
Speaker
It's fine.
00:54:28
Speaker
It's fine.
00:54:28
Speaker
There was there was some question about how much like whether we wanted to acknowledge it right out of the gate, you know, and we had some back and forth on that or whether we wanted to play with it.
00:54:39
Speaker
Sure.
00:54:41
Speaker
But in the end, I love that moment when Dennis is sitting down, pointing at the photo and saying, yes, that's me.
00:54:48
Speaker
And yes, it's a real mustache.
00:54:52
Speaker
I didn't laugh, though, on their, I think, first kiss while she went in.
00:54:58
Speaker
And she kind of parted the mustache.
00:55:00
Speaker
Because, again, this rang true for me.
00:55:04
Speaker
because I had just broken up with a casual girlfriend that I had.
00:55:08
Speaker
And I was like, you know what?
00:55:09
Speaker
I'm done for a while.
00:55:10
Speaker
And so I grew a Fu Manchu.
00:55:13
Speaker
It was a terrible Fu Manchu, but it was, and I turned to her like our, when I, when I kissed her the first time, I was like, you ever kiss a guy with a Fu Manchu?
00:55:23
Speaker
And she did.
00:55:24
Speaker
But the next night she's like, you need to go shave that.
00:55:28
Speaker
So we actually, in the script writing process,
00:55:32
Speaker
We did a mustache pass.
00:55:34
Speaker
Okay.
00:55:35
Speaker
Because it's very easy.
00:55:36
Speaker
You write, and they're going to have a big mustache.
00:55:38
Speaker
He's like, but it's going to be so big and so noticeable that we need to call attention to it.
00:55:43
Speaker
So we actually went through and added and made sure that every 20 or so pages, someone mentioned the fact that he had, like, we were very conscious that this was going to be a thing.
00:55:55
Speaker
And we wanted to sort of hang a lantern on it.
00:55:56
Speaker
Let everyone know like, oh yeah, it's a thing.
00:55:59
Speaker
Everyone understands that.
00:56:01
Speaker
And apparently, you know, the so we wrote in the the parting of the mustache.
00:56:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:07
Speaker
Like Moses, I believe.
00:56:10
Speaker
I love it when they were talking about shape.
00:56:12
Speaker
No, it's like testosterone on your face.
00:56:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:16
Speaker
That was that was Meredith.
00:56:17
Speaker
Yes.
00:56:18
Speaker
Yes.
00:56:18
Speaker
You got one.
00:56:21
Speaker
Like a testosterone flag.
00:56:25
Speaker
I literally laughed out loud at that moment.
00:56:27
Speaker
I'm like, that is perfect.
00:56:30
Speaker
And whoever you got for the flamboyant guy in GQ, he was so great.
00:56:37
Speaker
I loved watching him every time he was on.
00:56:39
Speaker
It's Brian Batt.
00:56:40
Speaker
He's amazing.
00:56:42
Speaker
Again, such a fun set, such a good group, but he was clearly having a ball.
00:56:48
Speaker
And that was a tough one to cast because the real Harry was just sort of this well-known hedonist at GQ.
00:56:56
Speaker
This big, what did they call it?
00:56:58
Speaker
A big mustachioed ball of fun, I think.
00:57:02
Speaker
He was just all about having a good time, and I think Brian really nailed it.
00:57:09
Speaker
And if you don't know, Brian was in Mad Men, where he played sort of a closeted art director.
00:57:15
Speaker
And I have seen a couple of people online talk about that, you know, in the Brian Bat universe, it's the same.
00:57:22
Speaker
He's just this is him.
00:57:23
Speaker
Which I love.
00:57:26
Speaker
He's fantastic.
00:57:27
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's the most successful actors play some version of themselves.
00:57:33
Speaker
And then that's, and so that's why you see, like, when you think about Marvel, Mike, well, there, there is only one person who could have played Tony Stark and that was Robert Downey Jr. Cause that's basically a version of himself.
00:57:48
Speaker
And, and so, and so whatever it's, everybody in the show seems to be playing a, an idealized version of themselves, which I think is great.
00:57:59
Speaker
I love his outlandish request too.
00:58:02
Speaker
The seaplane?
00:58:03
Speaker
Yeah, seaplane.
00:58:04
Speaker
I got shut down half of Manhattan.
00:58:06
Speaker
How much is that going to cost me?
00:58:07
Speaker
All that is true.
00:58:08
Speaker
It's just timespare.
00:58:10
Speaker
That is 100% true.
00:58:11
Speaker
There's a great article, if you're interested, called something about the gay GQs, from GQ, called GQ Gay 70s.
00:58:19
Speaker
Sure.
00:58:20
Speaker
And it talks about those two and sort of the push and pull between them and how
00:58:29
Speaker
Harry would just constantly keep asking for seaplanes, and they would travel to weird islands just to take a photo.
00:58:38
Speaker
They did shut down Manhattan.
00:58:41
Speaker
What he pitches during that pitch meeting about...
00:58:45
Speaker
monkey suits and Tarzan.
00:58:47
Speaker
It's in it.
00:58:48
Speaker
Like, that's why we show the photo at the end.
00:58:50
Speaker
In the end credits, like all this stuff is true.
00:58:53
Speaker
It was so good.
00:58:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:55
Speaker
We never got to find out why the photographer went into photography.
00:58:59
Speaker
That's like, he starts into it and then you're like, oh, we need to go to the go to the hearing.
00:59:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:06
Speaker
Well, there is a story there.
00:59:07
Speaker
And the story is because the real James Hamilton.
00:59:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:12
Speaker
Who was also on set a couple of times and made some cameos.
00:59:16
Speaker
He, he has a, he told a story in an interview that we read.
00:59:21
Speaker
And then we chatted with him over zoom at one point that he, he, he decided he picked up a camera and he went to a music festival in Texas and started taking pictures.
00:59:33
Speaker
And it was from those pictures that he ended up selling them to Crawdaddy and then working at the village voice.
00:59:39
Speaker
Like he just sort of, he wanted to learn how to,
00:59:42
Speaker
take photos.
00:59:43
Speaker
So he just went and started doing it.
00:59:45
Speaker
And by doing it, it became like one day he just realized that he was a professional photographer.
00:59:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:50
Speaker
But it was just him hitchhiking down to Texas.
00:59:53
Speaker
I think he hitchhiked.
00:59:54
Speaker
I remember correctly.
00:59:54
Speaker
It's a good story, but which seems very similar to Roger finding like it's not like he went out.
01:00:03
Speaker
The crazy thing when I when we talk to Roger is that
01:00:07
Speaker
it's not like he said, Oh yeah, I'm the pinball guy.
01:00:09
Speaker
And that's, that's my path.
01:00:10
Speaker
He kind of stumbled onto it and he still worked at GQ when he was designing games on the side.
01:00:16
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:18
Speaker
Like he, he was being a consultant.
01:00:19
Speaker
And so he kind of like,
01:00:22
Speaker
I don't know, evolved into the pinball guy and then doing all the licensing too, which is, again, that's brilliant to even bring it up in Imagine because it's like everybody knows, well, there was a Led Zeppelin pinball machine.
01:00:36
Speaker
They didn't do Stairway to Heaven because licensing was so expensive for that song.
01:00:41
Speaker
I mean, there are things that you think about
01:00:44
Speaker
that he didn't know at the beginning.
01:00:47
Speaker
And it's unusual to see, actually it's unusual to see an uncertain Roger because that person doesn't exist in today's Roger.
01:00:54
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:55
Speaker
Like he is, he is the most short guy, confident guy.
01:00:59
Speaker
And you know, just like, no, this is how it's supposed to be.
01:01:03
Speaker
But it's, it was fun to see him becoming that guy.
01:01:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:08
Speaker
He,
01:01:09
Speaker
He did give us some insights into sort of how he saw himself back then.
01:01:15
Speaker
And that's, and again, great for filmmakers who are trying to write a story arc.
01:01:23
Speaker
Not all of them were positive.
01:01:24
Speaker
He talked about how, you know, he really just wanted a pinball machine.
01:01:27
Speaker
That was it.
01:01:28
Speaker
He wanted to play pinball.
01:01:29
Speaker
He wanted one.
01:01:30
Speaker
As soon as he got one in his apartment, he was like, I'm good.
01:01:33
Speaker
Right.
01:01:33
Speaker
I love how he turned them down in the movie.
01:01:36
Speaker
Anyway, he turned them down twice.
01:01:37
Speaker
He's like, yeah, yeah, I'm not doing that.
01:01:39
Speaker
I got my machine.
01:01:40
Speaker
I'm good.
01:01:40
Speaker
Yeah, I'm good.
01:01:41
Speaker
And I think there's a little bit of a poetic license there.
01:01:45
Speaker
Sure, sure.
01:01:47
Speaker
But it is interesting to see that it's, you would expect that they would call and he's like, oh yeah, I'm totally in.
01:01:53
Speaker
And so I was surprised when he's like, you know what?
01:01:56
Speaker
It's no, that's not my thing.
01:01:57
Speaker
I'm not your guy.
01:01:58
Speaker
See ya.
01:01:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:00
Speaker
So I, and of course there's poetic license.
01:02:02
Speaker
It's a movie, right?
01:02:03
Speaker
But he would talk about how he used to speak in
01:02:06
Speaker
headlines.
01:02:08
Speaker
It's only now later that he speaks in paragraphs.
01:02:11
Speaker
Yeah, he doesn't speak in paragraphs.
01:02:13
Speaker
He speaks in the encyclopedias.
01:02:16
Speaker
Talked about how he was bouncing around and he wasn't, you know, definitely in contrast to Ellen, who definitely knew what she wanted.
01:02:23
Speaker
Roger sort of knew what he wanted.
01:02:24
Speaker
He wanted to write books, you know, next great American novel, that sort of thing.
01:02:28
Speaker
But he wasn't quite sure.
01:02:29
Speaker
And he was sort of bouncing on.
01:02:30
Speaker
He was a little and so that was that's great.
01:02:34
Speaker
That's catnip for
01:02:35
Speaker
screenwriters because it allows us to tell a story of someone who, you know, changes and becomes who everyone knows now.
01:02:43
Speaker
So that was great.
01:02:44
Speaker
Right.
01:02:44
Speaker
Well, I think you guys did great at juxtaposing that too.
01:02:47
Speaker
There's a, there's a moment where the Congressman has said like, you know, it's not Hemingway and, and you're like, well, they're both banned.
01:02:53
Speaker
You know, they're both banned.
01:02:54
Speaker
That was a great, that was a great transition.
01:02:56
Speaker
I wish I was that clever.
01:02:58
Speaker
There's a lot of great juxtapositions to mainstream pop culture.
01:03:02
Speaker
that that goes so well with the story that you guys had done and you and i'm glad that you guys took those moments as well i guess the only other question i have is can you give us kind of some insight to what the future holds for the brag brothers can you yeah because i would love to find out i mean as we're having this conversation um
01:03:27
Speaker
most of the entertainment industry is shut down by two different streets.
01:03:30
Speaker
Yeah, and it's ironic that we're going through another shutdown, right?
01:03:33
Speaker
And so we're, you know, we've had a very good festival run.
01:03:37
Speaker
We've talked to a lot of great people, you know,
01:03:42
Speaker
we've had some fun conversations, but there's nothing that's moving forward at the moment.
01:03:46
Speaker
So we're sort of, you know, trying to stockpile what we can on our end so that when things open back up, we're ready to move.
01:03:55
Speaker
I think the tan movie is really up, up, up there.
01:04:00
Speaker
We'll put it on our short list.
01:04:01
Speaker
Yeah, there you go.
01:04:03
Speaker
Idea board.
01:04:03
Speaker
Awesome.
01:04:07
Speaker
We, we do have,
01:04:09
Speaker
we, we have our own version of hats.
01:04:10
Speaker
We'll, we'd love to give you one.
01:04:12
Speaker
There's lots of different options.
01:04:14
Speaker
I'm wearing one.
01:04:14
Speaker
I'm wearing the 2.0 version.
01:04:16
Speaker
We have the 1.0 is no longer available, but we have 2.0 and 3.0.
01:04:21
Speaker
So we'd love to.
01:04:22
Speaker
Yeah, I know.
01:04:24
Speaker
So we'd love to get you that.
01:04:26
Speaker
And if anybody has ideas or wants to reach out to you, how'd they get ahold of you?
01:04:31
Speaker
The brag brothers at gmail.com.
01:04:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:33
Speaker
We're not hiding.
01:04:34
Speaker
We know we're there.
01:04:36
Speaker
Thank you very much.
01:04:37
Speaker
We would love to thank you guys so much for coming on.
01:04:40
Speaker
I know that you're busy.
01:04:41
Speaker
You're trying to do so many things and we're a small podcast.
01:04:45
Speaker
We just love that you were able to take time out and talk about your movie because it really, I was so excited to talk to you guys because it's just not, it was so well done and it hit all the touch points in my life.
01:05:01
Speaker
And I'm like, I totally will watch this movie again and again.
01:05:04
Speaker
Well, I got to say, and I know we've mentioned it off mic before, but I'll just say it on mic now.
01:05:11
Speaker
I am 100% sure that I listened to your Roger Sharpe.
01:05:15
Speaker
interview.
01:05:16
Speaker
Now, whether I did it before I called him as part of my research before, so that I would sort of have a pretty good grounding of what I was getting myself into when I reach initially reached out to him or just thereafter, but it was part of our research process was listening to these podcasts and you had some really, really nice deep dive into Roger that helped us.
01:05:37
Speaker
So thank you.
01:05:38
Speaker
You're welcome.
01:05:39
Speaker
I'm shocked when you told me that we were communicating through email.
01:05:43
Speaker
I was like,
01:05:44
Speaker
It's just funny because we did that as just like, we know Roger likes to talk and we had nothing to talk about.
01:05:49
Speaker
Everything was shut down.
01:05:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:50
Speaker
COVID hit.
01:05:50
Speaker
Like, okay, so what are we going to do?
01:05:52
Speaker
And we're like, well, let's, we, we haven't found anybody who's really discussed more in depth.
01:05:58
Speaker
We know the shot story, but we don't know the background of the shot.
01:06:01
Speaker
And that's, that's pretty much how that pitched to Josh when I was talking to him.
01:06:06
Speaker
I was like, how about we do this?
01:06:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:09
Speaker
Well, if you need us to interview anyone else, wink wink, for maybe a movie potential, we can do it for you.
01:06:14
Speaker
It might be out of the blue and random.
01:06:16
Speaker
Email is always open.
01:06:18
Speaker
Yeah, we have a Google Doc full of these weird embryonic ideas that start off as just a quirky photo of someone with an amazing mustache playing in front of growling city council members.
01:06:36
Speaker
All of a sudden, it's funny what actually turns out to work.
01:06:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:42
Speaker
I'm always open.
01:06:43
Speaker
I love that stuff.
01:06:44
Speaker
The truth is stranger than fiction.
01:06:47
Speaker
All right, listeners, if you want to get ahold of us, we are loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com.
01:06:51
Speaker
You can get ahold of us there or on all of our socials, which is at loser kid pinball slash, whether it be Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, we're all on all those sites.
01:07:01
Speaker
YouTube also subscribe and whatnot.
01:07:04
Speaker
If you want some swag, we do have, I'm wearing the triple drain Hydra shirt right now.
01:07:09
Speaker
You can get that through silver ball swag.com.
01:07:11
Speaker
That is triple drain stuff, but we are there as well.
01:07:14
Speaker
We've got whatever your heart desires.
01:07:17
Speaker
I think we're actually sold out on all the fabric.
01:07:19
Speaker
We got all bought out.
01:07:20
Speaker
It's pretty crazy.
01:07:21
Speaker
Oh, we need to get more.
01:07:22
Speaker
A lot of women out there making dresses out of pinball stuff.
01:07:26
Speaker
So that's really cool.
01:07:27
Speaker
I'm so excited to see that.
01:07:28
Speaker
Hopefully we'll see you at Expo.
01:07:31
Speaker
And if you haven't reached out, I will be at Expo.
01:07:33
Speaker
Scott will certainly not be there, but we'll have some fun.
01:07:37
Speaker
So anything else for us, Scott?
01:07:39
Speaker
No, we'll see you in about two weeks.
01:07:41
Speaker
And if you haven't seen it, go watch the movie.
01:07:44
Speaker
I have it on Apple, so it's on all the available forums.
01:07:48
Speaker
If you have Hulu, you can watch it on Hulu.
01:07:51
Speaker
So go hit it up there.