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TSP Ep 120 Part 2: Follow-up Interview of Filmmaker Josh Ampuero
32 Plays7 months ago
In this second half, Tom, Steve, and Josh discuss his latest short and how to navigate YouTube as a filmmaker.
So come along with us as we learn a thing or two!
You can find Josh's YouTube Channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/@JoshMakesMovies1
And his latest short here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYVgERaSAEg&ab_channel=JoshMakesMovies
Recommended
Transcript
Breaking into Mainstream Media
00:00:00
Speaker
Yeah, I was hoping you would continue talking about Joel Haber. Do you know him? Do you follow him? No, I've never heard the name. YouTube? Yeah, YouTube. Okay, yeah. That's the thing about YouTube. There's just so much content on YouTube and so much good content. That's the worst part.
00:00:19
Speaker
Yeah, I actually recently found a guy on YouTube and he had a film that was picked up by Shutter and he was a YouTuber and he did stop motion animatronics and puppeteering and stuff. And he got a, they like pretty much found his YouTube or something and now he has, it's called like stop motion, I think.
00:00:44
Speaker
It's in theaters now, and he only has 40,000 subscribers, and he's putting out some of the craziest shit. Only, you know how many subscribers we have? Negative two. No, we don't even count ourselves.
Timing and the Oscars: A Unique Opportunity
00:01:00
Speaker
I wanna give him a shout out, but while I'm looking that up, Josh, why don't you go ahead and talk to us about- Well, are we recording already, or? Yes. I paused it, yeah.
00:01:11
Speaker
Well, I was just gonna, well, I don't know if you want to pause it real quick or. No, I just edit it out. Oh, okay. Well, I just, I don't know if, do you guys want to talk about like the, the shit that I lost? Like we, I'll keep, we'll keep, I'll talk about the Oscar show. No, no, no, it's up to you, man. Yeah, no, I can talk about both. I'm just saying, I don't know if I don't want to keep you guys from. Yeah, let's talk about the drive crashing.
00:01:32
Speaker
Okay. But we, but we can, or we can go to the Oscar short first, whatever you want. I just want to talk about the Oscar shorts because that's coming out and that way we can, you know, maybe generate some traffic for you. But what do you want? Like, should, do I talk about like, cause he, cause he just, he also brought up a good point about like the punch line. So like, do you, do I reveal, am I going to reveal like what,
00:01:53
Speaker
what it is or, cause I mean, by the time I- But yeah, let's talk about, so you have a film that we helped you with. You want to get it out in a couple of days because it's going to be timely for the Oscars. Now, naturally the Oscars take a couple of days to settle in. So maybe there's a little budging around where you, maybe you can have three days, four days, but certainly it's a current event.
Creating Comedic Spoofs
00:02:16
Speaker
And we helped you on this project. What is this project? So, well, specifically it was tied to the Oscars night of 2022, which is when the world famous, the slap heard around the world. That was a slap. Okay. That was 2022. I remember that night cause Tom was like, Oh, she'd do it a bit. I thought, Oh, I was gonna slap twice in my life. And that was a real one. Um, so, you know, um,
00:02:43
Speaker
Uh, that, that, um, that kind of, so that happened obviously, but I, I don't remember if I watched you as quick as I, if you got slapped. Yeah.
00:02:57
Speaker
by Will Smith that night, what would you have done? Man, that's a good question, you know? Would you have beat his ass live all the time? No, I don't know how to fight, the fuck, I would've gotten my ass beat, but I would. Will Smith works out. I think I, I hope I would. He was all these. He's thinking like a bee, ow, ow, ow. Shit.
00:03:19
Speaker
I hope I would have been brave enough to, you know, say something witty, you know, say something clever. Well, Chris Rock handled it like a champ, right? He just took it like, boom! But he could have said, he could have been like, well, that was real entanglement, you know, or something like that. But I mean, how can you think like, you know, at the moment? Exactly. So, you know, I think I would have probably done the same thing. He did keep the show going, but I would have, I would have,
00:03:47
Speaker
like to at least respond in some way, you know, in some, some type of jab, my verbal wit. No, I wouldn't have whipped anyone. I was, I don't know how to fucking, uh, the proverbial whoop that ass.
00:03:59
Speaker
Um, but yeah, so, so that happened. And, and I honestly, I don't remember if I watched it, I watched the slap live, but earlier on in the ceremony, um, something else, um, they, they did, they, they did a montage. And, um, I don't remember if I watched it live or if I watched it on, on YouTube later. I think I watched it live because I remember, um,
00:04:29
Speaker
I'm trying not to give too many details out, but when they gave the montage, they neglected to mention...
00:04:39
Speaker
one actor's name that is part of this well-known franchise. And I, I, I picked it out just because I'm a film nerd, but I was like, what montage is this man? I'm telling you, I don't, I'm trying not to give details, you know? But does that give any secrets away from it? Okay. Okay. All right. Sure. It doesn't,
Algorithm vs. Storytelling
00:04:58
Speaker
right? Yeah. So it was, it was the 60 years of Bond montage, right? Oh, okay. Okay. So they didn't mention one of the actors who's, who's portrayed James Bond.
00:05:08
Speaker
you motherfucker
00:05:13
Speaker
We can cut it out. We can cut it out. Steven's drunk. We're half a bottle of whiskey in, by the way. So I remember watching that. And I caught it because I'm a film nerd, but I'm not that big of a James Bond fan. But I was like, oh, there's going to be a whole community of people pissed off because they didn't mention one guy's name. There's going to be so many people who are pissed off. And then the slap happens.
00:05:38
Speaker
And I was like, oh, this is kind of funny, you know? And so I know a friend of mine who's a super big James Bond fan, and I start texting him this message like, can you believe what just happened? And this was, you know, after the ceremony was done. So I was- Can you believe what happened? Exactly. Yeah, that's slap. No, fucker. No, no. So that's my point though. I wrote it out as a whole paragraph.
00:06:06
Speaker
intentionally being vague about who it was that I was upset about. Yeah, that's cool. I was like, this guy has so many followers on social media because it was a celebrity that didn't say the name. He can't get away with this level of disrespect. It was like this whole block paragraph and I sent it to him and I was like, they didn't mention this guy's name. And I was sitting there looking at that, I was like,
00:06:34
Speaker
I should make a Facebook post about this or something, like make this whole paragraph so that people think I'm talking about Will Smith and then at the end I just hit him with the punchline, oh no, I was mad about something else. And I was like, yeah, but it's a whole paragraph, like who's gonna read all that shit? Like, you know, maybe I should just go on someone's, on the James Bond groups and I'll post it and get some laughs out of it. But then I kept thinking about over and over and I was like, no, like,
00:07:01
Speaker
Wherever I post is gonna be this giant paragraph. Why not just make a film out of it? Why not just make a movie out of it? So then we came up with the fact of this guy calling a press conference. And that paragraph that I texted my friends served as the basis for a portion of the guy's monologue. So basically what I said to my friend is what the guy says in the monologue.
Quality vs. Quantity in Filmmaking
00:07:24
Speaker
Just because he's a well-known celebrity doesn't mean he should be able to get away with this level of unprofessionalism, you know?
00:07:30
Speaker
So it makes everyone think, oh, he's going to introduce Will Smith is going to come up and apologize for what he did. And then boom, he's not introducing Will Smith. It's someone else, you know? And so that's where the whole impetus for that came from. And so hopefully I'm hoping that by releasing it on Oscar's night, it gets, you know, some the YouTube algorithm helps us out a little bit. And, you know, hopefully I can get some of my friends to comment on it real quick.
00:07:57
Speaker
and, you know, help push that. And, uh, yeah, so that's, that's where that wasn't. And so I asked you guys to come and help out because I wanted, I wanted some professionalism on set for sure. I wanted to do the green. Well, I was going to ask, so we did show up on set and we flashed, uh, the lead actor drew with a flash triggers to simulate, uh, cameras going off.
00:08:24
Speaker
Did we do a good job? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, it looks great. Yeah, I think I really, I really like it. And yeah, but you guys also did the lighting, you guys helped out with the green screen, you know? I think we helped out with audio too. Yeah, well, we used my mic, but you, you know, you... I think we...
00:08:42
Speaker
We used a hidden mic, right? Like the actual mic he uses was the mic we used. Yeah, nice. Yeah, nice. So yeah, so that was, you know, so you guys came in and I knew that I wanted people there because it was just gonna be way too much for me to do by myself. You know, I knew I wanted people behind the scenes.
00:09:04
Speaker
So, and it, we, we did it and it came out really cool. I'm really excited about it. I'm hoping that it's, uh, the people will respond positively. But as we've already mentioned in this podcast, if they don't, well, you know, fuck you guys. I made it for me. Well, there you go, everyone. Because you had talked and, uh, this isn't the first time you've, uh, been a little like late to the current events, the current event kind of thing. Um,
00:09:35
Speaker
And you said you just make it for yourself and like, you know, because you're there and you remember.
00:09:41
Speaker
Is there an aspect of when you're doing it that you're like, I know I'm not gonna make it, but I still
Future Perception of Event-based Films
00:09:48
Speaker
gotta do this because I truly believe in the project. I mean, obviously that's why you shot it. But I think about, especially with the podcast, when we look at the numbers, when we even miss two episodes, not in a week, the viewer, it just nose dives. Does it really?
00:10:07
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know how to look at analytics. We could lose like 50% of our viewers if we don't release a weekly one. What 60%? 60% to like 30% or whatever. Did we get that many? Yeah.
00:10:18
Speaker
Hey, according to Zencaster. Yeah. Okay. Hey, Josh, you're going to have 60 people listen to this. Yeah. But, but like there was a time when we were, you know, we were cresting over a hundred and then like, you know, like, cause we'd like take home, we would take a winter break or something like that. No, we were cresting over thousands. Yeah. That's why Zencaster took us on. Yeah. And then they were all robots. Yeah. Russia.
00:10:42
Speaker
Yeah. But then it's like, so I guess what I wanted because there's like a point where it's like filmmaking versus like YouTuber. Do you see a distinction there? Like where it's like a YouTuber is like, I got to release consistent content. Right. Right. I have to do X, Y and Z. Like you mentioned algorithms. Like, yeah. Who gives a fuck about algorithms? Like we're filmmakers. Like, yeah, it's like
00:11:05
Speaker
People aren't gonna like Wally's like videos of me like spinning come out of my mouth in space No one's gonna watch that. Well Stephen watch it cuz I forced him a lot But like I do stuff weird stuff like that like I'm not gonna an algorithm isn't gonna be favorable to me. Yeah but like do you see a distinction between that and like cuz it's like if you had released a
00:11:28
Speaker
uh, the short that we're talking about, um, the night after the Oscars night, right? That probably could have had a huge engagement. Um, but obviously we're two years later, like, yes, the Oscars are happening, but it's like a completely different kind of situation. Is that something that, um, you're thinking about and number two, do you see a difference between being like a YouTuber and filmmaker?
00:11:58
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, um, sorry if that was a stupid fucking question. That's okay. That's a great question. Yeah. I don't, I don't think, um,
00:12:07
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, if you do like current event type of thing, yeah, you definitely, you'd wanna get it out within a timely manner. But I also look at it as if it's going on YouTube and hopefully it's gonna be there forever, people watching it 10 years down the road,
00:12:30
Speaker
aren't gonna know when it was released, aren't gonna know when it came out. If they remember the event that happened, right, and then they look at your comedy that you wrote based on that event, they're gonna be like, oh, that's kind of clever, that's really funny, you know, it's based on that thing that happened that one time, you know. So, you know, I think about it in the future, in future terms like that, and it's, and I have a little bit more confidence of, okay, well, I'm releasing it two years late, but whatever, fuck, you know,
00:12:55
Speaker
future generations will get a laugh out of it, a kick out of it.
YouTube as a Filmmaking Platform
00:12:58
Speaker
And I don't really have that big of an audience. So, you know, it's not like the hundred people are going to be like, what the fuck? You know, like when this was this was two years too late or whatever, you know. So I think that kind of leads into your second question because YouTube is kind of. I don't know, man, it's it's really it's really it's a really interesting thing. You know, it's it's it's so beautiful and it's also kind of like
00:13:25
Speaker
people like real filmmakers sometimes look down on it, quote unquote, real filmmakers. It's just, obviously I believe in it because I have all of my content on there, my whole portfolio is on there. So obviously I believe in it as a medium to get your work out there. But I see myself as primarily a filmmaker,
00:13:55
Speaker
And I think that it's good to have a little bit of the YouTuber mentality in terms of like, yeah, maybe the algorithm can help us out with this, like for this specific video. But this is like really one of
00:14:08
Speaker
maybe two or three times that I've really had that mentality. Like I gotta get this film done by this date because of the algorithm. Like I don't really generally think about that kind of stuff. And so, but I do think it's good to have a little bit of that. I think the YouTubers, I think the YouTube filmmakers who try to blend both of them,
00:14:33
Speaker
kind of suffer a little bit. You know, so like one of my one of my friends, he's a writer. His name is Jared. He's a cool. He's a cool guy. He Jared Mason. No, Jared Kaufman.
00:14:48
Speaker
So he runs a YouTube channel as well. He does a lot of writing content, you know? And so he gives me advice on like how I should be releasing or like he studied the algorithm. He studied like analytics and stuff like that. So he tells me like you should be doing this, you should be doing that. And I'm like, yeah, I should be doing that. And yeah, that makes sense to attract more viewers or attract more subscribers. But for me, like,
00:15:14
Speaker
I mainly see myself as a filmmaker, so I'm trying to, yeah, I'm trying to gain subscribers, but I'm also trying to set myself apart from other people who are doing the same exact thing as me. I follow a lot of YouTube filmmakers who make fantastic films. They make really, really good films, but their films are released like
00:15:36
Speaker
months apart, but because they have a YouTuber mentality, they're releasing a video every single week. And sometimes those videos are just like behind the scenes stuff, which can kind of be cool. It can kind of be okay. But what ends up happening is
00:15:51
Speaker
I look at them now like they've been doing this for two or three years. I have a hard time scrolling through their all their videos to find their films. Yeah. Because I have to go through all their behind the scenes stuff, all their how tos, all their, you know, tutorials and things like that. Just to find their film, you know, kind of like film, right? But what about also, I mean, I guess I push back on that a little bit, like YouTube has a playlist function or like a video section section kind of function.
00:16:19
Speaker
Yeah, it does. And I totally, and I don't disagree with that. And that could be a way to, you know, to do that. But what, so what I, what I tell my friend is, you know, I think what sets my channel apart is anyone can find my channel, anyone can go look at my channel and they immediately see my films right there. It's the first thing that they see, you know, they click on the first video. It's a film that I made, right? So they don't have to go hunting. They don't have to go looking for
00:16:47
Speaker
all that stuff. They don't have to type in certain words to find it. If they find my channel, all of my films are right then and there. So I think that sets me apart from other people. And yeah, it would probably be good for me to do a couple of updates or me talking to the camera and stuff. But I always try to find a way to inject some comedy into it.
00:17:12
Speaker
And I've done that before I've done. I've done a couple of videos where like I talked to the camera, but I always have to end it with a punchline just because that's, you know, my, my, my, my comedy brain like shaved your tits on camera.
00:17:25
Speaker
Now now who's drunk? Excuse me. I mean, but honestly, I'm just trying to inject some content into this conversation. Why don't you do that more with like BTS stuff? Yeah. You know, behind the scenes stuff like why
Behind-the-Scenes: Educational and Personal Connection
00:17:41
Speaker
not? Yeah, no, you're right. You know, I think I think there is there is a way to to do that. But why don't you do that? I think it's just because I go back to that that mentality of
00:17:55
Speaker
I'm trying to stand out from, I'm trying to stand out first and foremost as a filmmaker, you know? So that BTS kind of stuff, that's more of a YouTube. Sure, no, it takes time away, but it's more of a YouTuber mentality. Like I'm just trying to make content to put on my channel so that I have more videos to show and retain the audience. Exactly. Which there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with that, but I'm just
00:18:18
Speaker
That's just how my brain is wired, I guess, is to resist that a little bit. But there is other things, like I just got on TikTok, so I could probably start doing that. I could probably start putting behind the scenes type of stuff on TikTok or on my Instagram, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. We sound so old. I just got on TikTok. Is that what the kids say? Yeah, the TikTok. Yeah, I heard it, TikTok.
00:18:45
Speaker
Some of my co-workers were sorry. Sorry. No, it's okay. I know I didn't interjecting. It's okay. Go for it. Sorry. I was feeling it. That's why. I will say it was funny. I got two things I want to say. One thing is a little funny tangent. When we took our little break, I got a handful of ice. And when I came in, my glass already had ice in it. I got you buddy. I was like, this motherfucker. Like, to his shadow. He's like, Jesus Christ. So I just dumped more ice in his cup.
00:19:10
Speaker
Nice thank you and and the second thing I was thinking of is like I Think there's a very noble
00:19:24
Speaker
function in believing that there's a separation between all this content and film and shit. Because I kind of hate the idea of content. Right. Who wants to be a content creator? To a degree. As a filmmaker. Exactly. As a filmmaker. But at the same time, I...
00:19:43
Speaker
When I had more time to watch YouTube and stuff, I was a big fan of Corridor Crew. I haven't watched a Corridor Crew video in years, unfortunately. I don't know. Yeah, they were great. Yeah, you loved them for a while. Yeah. That was when I was working at Kohl's and I literally had unlimited YouTube time. I probably watched every video ever on YouTube when I worked at Kohl's. I was essentially paid a YouTube watcher, for the most part, and printer jam clear. Damn, that's awesome.
00:20:08
Speaker
but like they had tons of BTS. And the thing I liked about it was it always kind of felt like giving back in a sense because the thing I hate the most is sometimes when I see like, I guess you could always just,
00:20:24
Speaker
reach out and maybe you'll get a response. I mean I've gotten lucky like literally I got Lucky McKee doing stuff like that but do you feel like you have like a responsibility to like kind of give back in that sense by posting BTS? It's not just content for content's sake but also and it's the reason why we do this podcast. Originally it was always like we want to be educational and
00:20:49
Speaker
show what we've learned because we made a lot of mistakes making dickhead and we wanted to talk about that and also learn from those mistakes and you know kind of if anyone stumbles upon our show it's that you know they will have a wealth of knowledge to not follow.
00:21:06
Speaker
Yes, in a sense. Like, right. Like, hopefully we are trying to help not reinvent the wheel, like, like, you know, organization and safety and all these things. And I, Tam, I know it's already getting one. And we're going to probably do longer because I also wanted to talk about the Rust filmmaker. OK, to get into that. All right. That was something I wanted to bring up on. You guys want to talk about it? That could be the closing.
00:21:32
Speaker
The closing arguments. The closing shots. Rightfully so, I guess, in a sense. But, you know, this is also to Stephen as well as Josh, like,
00:21:46
Speaker
Is it, uh, do you feel an obligation to try to give back to a community that even though they may have like, like they don't really care? Like, I will say there's a lot of apathy. Like when you go on to, you ever talked to a lot of filmmakers, I feel like it's like 50% they're, they'll praise you and they'll give you their
Challenges in Filmmaking
00:22:06
Speaker
time of day. And 50% would tell you're a fucking idiot, like go home and kill yourself. Like,
00:22:11
Speaker
But to those, even if it's like five people that you're helping, do you feel an obligation to put in that effort? Yeah, absolutely. That BTS, that content. I know you were saying, sitting in front of the camera and just talking. I don't want to do that. That sounds like, I mean, this is why we do the podcast, so I don't have to sit in front of the camera and do those videos. You'd rather sit in front of the camera and follow it. Yeah, I'd rather shave my nipples in front of the camera or whatever it was I was talking about.
00:22:39
Speaker
Spewing cum from your mouth is what you're talking about, actually. I mean, a lot of people think it was cum, but it really wasn't. If you watched the video, it was, you know... It was cum.
00:22:47
Speaker
It was a lot of cum. Sure. It was an ad that I filmed, you know, it was. With a lot of cum. I would say I have a lot of trepidation towards that because it's like the best video I've ever made. And it's me. I thought the spaghetti video was the best video we ever made. The spaghetti one. That you made me eat over and over. You know, cold spaghetti, not so good.
00:23:11
Speaker
Cold green spaghetti. I don't know you extra. A lot of tangents here but Steven you do your one told me that the space video is the best one ever.
00:23:23
Speaker
Best whatever of what? That I've done. Better than Oppenheimer, Zone of Interest, Palestine, whatever. What was I talking about? I don't know, man. I felt like you had it. Oh, yes, yes, yes. So this is to both the... I mean, you guys probably both said yes, but is there that onus to...
00:23:46
Speaker
give back in some sense on like how I'm doing, like this is how I do things. And because I feel like sometimes those videos are more impactful than the the film itself. And how do you guys feel about that? Well, let me answer this first, since you're the guest, because you'll have a longer response. But yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's. You know,
00:24:12
Speaker
we've gone through a lot. And if we can just help someone else out along the way, I think that's something of value. Josh. Yeah, I think, um, yeah, whether the audience is bigger, small, I think definitely you owe them that. Um, I think you owe them that though. Because, well, I mean, if they're coming, if, if like, I, I think, um,
00:24:37
Speaker
You know, you guys having me on your podcast last time and this time, um, it's not really behind the scenes stuff, but I talked about like my, like my struggles or my, the things that I went through. And if people want to be involved in this type of industry, you know, I, I think I, I think we would owe them the, the half, if we've already fucked up, you know, getting here.
00:25:06
Speaker
why not help them, you know, not do the same thing? You know, why, why not help them? It shouldn't let them know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel or however you want to look at it. Is there though? I think so. I feel like we're also like pretty in the dark. Like I don't even know. I feel like we have me. I'm really starting to like, do you feel like we're all in the dark though? No.
00:25:34
Speaker
I mean, there are people that are making a living doing this. And I don't even know if they're necessarily making content I enjoy because I must like Josh would say I'm an asshole because fuck Oppenheimer is a piece of shit movie. You shouldn't
Dreams of Full-time Filmmaking
00:25:49
Speaker
like it. All right.
00:25:52
Speaker
You shouldn't like it, is that what you said? It's literally Nolan's worst movie. It's the only reason that movie... Tenet is Nolan's worst movie. No, Tenet is his worst movie. Oppenheimer is his second worst movie. Wow. Well, I'll just say Tenet's is worse. Yeah, Tenet was really fucking bad. Jesus Christ. I don't know how he was allowed to make another movie. You got to be released, you know that, right? Yeah, I know, I saw an IMAX.
00:26:17
Speaker
I didn't see an IMAX. I saw that it was re-released. Yeah, I got re-released. And I'm getting off track. Okay. But what I want to say is, you know, they're back in the tunnel of the darkness where we are, you know, the tunnel of love to some people. Nolan, if you want to come on, you know, face the fire. Yeah, I got a lot of questions for Nolan. What the fuck were you thinking? Superheroes in an Oppenheimer movie?
00:26:39
Speaker
That was practically a Marvel biopic. Haven't you ever heard of Einstein? He practically had a cape with his beard. He did in that movie. It was so fucking stupid. Sorry. Sorry. That's my only problem. So the darkness that we're in, right? Yeah. To me, the light is the ability to make this what we do.
00:27:01
Speaker
It's not that we have businesses or jobs or anything. We put all our time into being creatives because every time I devote hours to just making films, being creative, it's the most rewarding times ever. When we went to the cabin in Big Bear and just really buckled down and did that cut,
00:27:26
Speaker
Like I know, I remember everyone was like, oh, you guys are just going to go up there and you're going to get fucked up and you guys aren't going to get anything done. Which was kind of true. It wasn't even true at all. Like we got fucked up. We got fucked up. But we worked. But we worked literally like 20 hours a day almost. Like it was fucking nuts. Like we completely, we did a full. I think every day was an 18 hour work day. Yeah. We did a full rough, we did a full rough cut from frame one to frame nine hundred, nine, nine thousand or whatever.
00:27:55
Speaker
We did a full rough cut. We took, we were like, you know what? No distractions. We're going to lock ourselves away in a cabin in the woods and edit dickhead. And we got, and that was probably the, one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever done. And it's like, this is what some people do like as a living. Like I, I remember we talked about a little bit, like I just couldn't imagine it. Like,
00:28:20
Speaker
I've been so, I've had my nose to the grindstone, the nine to five grindstone for, you know, decades since I was 16. And it's like, I can't imagine it. And I think it's just,
00:28:36
Speaker
I don't know how, I can't, I can't imagine that being the future, even though it's the one I want the most. Like how do you kind of feel about that? As in like, like, could you imagine tomorrow you don't, you don't, or Monday you don't go to work.
00:28:51
Speaker
You don't have to worry about your business. What you're doing is you're setting up meetings about pre-production, your location scouting, your casting. And you're getting paid to do this. You're not actually just paying thousands of dollars to people to come and help you. Because that's how I feel. I will keep paying every dime I have towards making movies because it's what I love to do.
00:29:14
Speaker
I can't imagine the reverse. I can't imagine, I've never been paid to be on set. I've never in other than like in pizza, but like, right? Like you, cause you mentioned that you had a PA job. No idea. Like I can't, I can't. Do you want to or? I don't necessarily want to or want to PA, but like to be a professional filmmaker as in that is my job.
00:29:41
Speaker
My nine, there is no nine to five. It's, I'm working on this project to get this project made. I listen to a lot of memoirs. I just finished Tippi Hedrens and Bill Freakins. I say Bill because I'm called him Billy. Oh nice, Tippi Hedren? Yeah, I listened to her memoir. I just finished it yesterday.
00:30:02
Speaker
And when they talk, you know, and they talk about like that old, the old like kind of 70s Hollywood. And she was a big part of the 60s because Hitchcock obsessed over her and brought her on for the birds. And it's like when your life is just, you know, essentially storytelling now, it's like there's nothing more rewarding in my mind.
00:30:30
Speaker
I, the people that have the privilege to do that as like a full-time job, like get on you, man. You're lucky.
00:30:40
Speaker
I don't know. There's a question there. Fuck. Yeah, I can imagine it for sure. I think, you know, I think that's, I, I, and you know, a lot of people chase after it and don't, don't ever get there. But I also talked about that last time, you know, I was like, I, I honestly, I don't think it, I don't think it will phase me if I don't ever make money off of filmmaking, because I'm going to make movies, whether I make money or not, you know, and not, and I'm going to love every second, second of it.
00:31:08
Speaker
Well, if you stay with us, we're gonna make it happen, man. I mean, you gotta believe in it, right? Yeah, absolutely. You gotta believe in that. You gotta believe that it's gonna happen, even if it doesn't seem possible. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's why it's called a dream, right? It's because you have to be asleep to believe it.
Rewriting After Loss: Persistence in Creativity
00:31:27
Speaker
Because, like,
00:31:29
Speaker
There's nothing I want more like, I mean, I used to think about like, oh, I wanted to be a pro gamer for a long time for like, if you have the fastest key strikes. Yeah. I mean, I, I was in the top eight, even though I'm faster than you, I'll just say you faster than me a circle. I'm faster than you at key strikes. I had a lot. Well, you also have one more MTG accolades.
00:31:53
Speaker
No, but I I did win a tournament in Starcraft that won money, but that was once. Met beat Maximus Black, by the way, if you have any fucker, there's only one Maximus. And he died killing Commodus. They're making a sequel to that, by the way, just to prove that you don't have to be skillful at all to make it in Hollywood.
00:32:22
Speaker
But Josh, you know, talking about all of these films and everything we do, there's always logistical issues that come into mind. And you ran into a huge logistical issue where your hard drive, because we always talk about, you know, in our research, it said always have three backups, but you lost your drive and you lost a lot of
00:32:51
Speaker
Films. Yeah. Scripts. Scripts. Scripts. Yeah. So it's not it's not the the hard drive is fine, actually. It was just a it was just a user error on my part. And I mean, wait, what do you mean a user error? Exactly. You're scary. You're scary. No, no, it was just when he told me I had such PTSD because it's something that I deal with on a daily basis. The details are actually kind of boring, but it's but that's basically the short version of the boring detail. So everyone knows.
00:33:20
Speaker
Well, no. Well, the short version is there's a better part of the story, which is why I kind of skip over the technical aspects, but basically what Tom said is correct.
00:33:35
Speaker
there was a moment where I, where I right clicked and I had a moment of hesitation. Should I click cut or should I click copy? And I clicked cut and then I pasted it somewhere where I wasn't aware that I shouldn't be pasting it because of that, that area wasn't going, it was going to basically disappear after I turned off the computer. And I didn't know that because I'm a dumb, you know, I'm an unintelligent computer user. So if I, yeah.
00:34:02
Speaker
Exactly. What do you mean? So cut and paste it into a location because I do not know computers. I cut and paste. I pasted it into a location where, um, like it's a temporary file type of thing. And I didn't know it was a temporary file. I thought it was just a regular file. So I turned off the computer. I turned it back on and it was wiped basically to be, hold on, hold on.
00:34:31
Speaker
Well, you're already fucking up your own story. I got it. I got it. I got it. All right. Details are so boring, though, is what I'm saying. There's a better part. This is very important. So it's not a temporary file. What was happening was is he was a temporary account on Windows was being generated a temporary user. And so what does that mean? When Windows generates a temporary user, it deletes every that temporary user every time the computer is restarted until you get onto a
00:35:01
Speaker
you
00:35:01
Speaker
set user account. But what would that have to do with the footage? So instead of logging into Josh's Windows account, it was logging him into a temporary account. And I didn't know that it was. I don't know why it was doing it. Like I said, this is just what he told me, and I know I've seen temporary accounts before. So Windows sometimes, when you look at a lot of porn, you gotta wipe it, right? That could be a very valid use for it. Josh, you gotta... It wasn't me.
00:35:31
Speaker
Was this a shaggy commercial? It wasn't me. Sorry, there's a dating us. The whiskey has hit us. So one thing I will say is, so if you cut and paste
00:35:50
Speaker
the original contents are going to be deleted and they don't go to like the recycle bin. They're just permanently deleted. And so the recovery of those files becomes infinitely harder.
00:36:06
Speaker
have a temporary account that deletes it and then probably gets overwritten as soon as you restart the computer and it generates a new temporary account. It then probably is overwriting the previous temporary account, which is probably deleting your files forever, essentially, probably. No wonder why you said Tom didn't help you much.
00:36:28
Speaker
So there's like, I mean, unless you have some kind of previous versions or some kind of history saved. Saved somewhere. Yeah, you're pretty well and fucked at this point. Like a lot of things had to go wrong for this to like kind of go down. So was the issue that there was only one
00:36:48
Speaker
master document being saved. And then essentially that got deleted within these temporary accounts. Well, this is where Josh can jump in as to what happened. I just want to because I just want to make sure that because this is when when people are like, I need a charger when they actually need a docking station, which is like you're asking for two different things like.
00:37:10
Speaker
But how does this pertain to scripts? So the what I cut and pasted was my folder that had all my scripts in it. So I cut it from its original location. I pasted it onto this temporary profile that I didn't know was a temporary profile because fucking computers need to fucking be clear about that shit. And so.
00:37:31
Speaker
It deleted it. So I so I have backups of certain scripts and I had sent out other scripts to people. So, you know, I had versions available from from email for like that I sent on email like the PDF versions, but I didn't have backups of everything of all of my scripts. So basically,
00:37:57
Speaker
over the last three years of what I've written, about half of it is gone. I can't recover it.
00:38:03
Speaker
and it sucks and it's tough, but honestly, it hasn't really dampened my spirits much at all. Is it because you're not focused on those right now? No, there was definitely some that hurt a little bit. I was telling Tom, I was 40 pages into my fourth feature film that is completely gone. I can't recover that, I'm gonna have to start over. I had started writing my first,
00:38:32
Speaker
half hour long series. Like I'm going to, I'm going to, I want to make a web series, but that each episode is 30 minutes long. I had almost finished the pilot and I had, um, I had started a little bit of the second episode. So I knew where the direction it was going. That's all gone. So I have to start from scratch again, but
00:38:49
Speaker
you know, but see, um, so there's, but those are like the ones that hurt the most, you know, like everything else, honestly, most of the other stuff is really short stuff. I could, I could come up, I could make them better and I could come up with some
The Art of Rewriting: Learning from the Past
00:39:02
Speaker
more stuff. Uh, I can come, I can better versions of it, um, already, but, um,
00:39:08
Speaker
What I was going to say is I mentioned earlier that last year was was pretty difficult for me. I'm not I'm not going to go into too much details about that, but I've been going through a pretty stressful time over the last couple of months. And so probably like one of the most stressful things that a person can go through. So when all of a sudden, you know, one week into 2024, I realized that all these scripts are gone, I'm just like,
00:39:35
Speaker
Well, you know, that sucks, but it didn't really feel like it could hurt me because I'm already going through some, you know, some heavy shit. You know, I'm already going through like the heavy, one of the heaviest things I'm going to have to go through. So it's like, okay, some of my scripts are gone, but I mean, all the scripts are up here. Really? They're up in my head. So all I got to do is sit back down and rewrite them, you know? So, you know,
00:39:55
Speaker
the the like when it was fought when it was first like presented as as like I talked to another computer geek friend of mine he helped me out and he's like yeah I don't think like as soon as I told him temporary profile he's like dude your shit is gone I'm pretty sure your shit is gone so as soon as it became apparent that I was probably not gonna get my scripts back the first thing I thought of was
00:40:23
Speaker
an interview that Taika Waititi did and where he talked about how his screenwriting process is he'll write the first draft of the script
00:40:34
Speaker
and he prints it out. He prints it out and he'll read over it a few times so that it becomes kind of, he kind of gets it into his head. His brain becomes saturated in his script. And then he puts that script, basically throws the script away. After he's read it a couple times, he throws it away, never looks at it again, and a year later sits down and writes the, from his memory, from whatever he remembers, he writes the final version of the script.
00:41:01
Speaker
So I thought of that and I was like, when I first saw the interview, I was like, what the fuck? Why would you why would you trash your first draft like that? You need that, you know, you need that to move to move forward. But I I remember that. And I was like, OK, you know, he he that's how the professional does it. He and he's written some pretty good scripts.
00:41:22
Speaker
It's in his head. The stories are in his head. The stories are in my head, too. So all I have to do is just sit down and get back to work. All I have to do is sit down and start typing, and they're going to come out again. So it kind of softened the blow a little bit for me. Something I want to say, Josh, too, is, and then I think about this. When we were talking about this, I was thinking about it, but I was like, I don't want to like, I don't know if this is like, I don't want to piss in the pot or whatever.
00:41:50
Speaker
Piss in the milk. And Stephen can probably attest to this when it comes to my writing, because I force him upon my writing often. And I would say that there's probably more value in having written the script than having the script itself, in that now, since you've had already gone through the work of writing the script, you're only, hopefully,
00:42:19
Speaker
getting better and better. Steven, you know, graciously, uh, produced a book of all my scripts that we did on the podcast. It's like a 450 page book, um, of my scripts that I had written on the podcast and one of the, again, the introduction or the forward or
00:42:44
Speaker
whatever notes. It's like you can see the progression of the writing from the earliest scripts to the later scripts and then hopefully scripts I'm writing now are even better or there's an understanding. And then for you, Josh, the value has already been obtained. You've already written those scripts.
00:43:10
Speaker
writing and i know this is like it sucks this is it's so shitty that this is a fact but writing is the rewriting all day long you are never done on the first version yep you're not even done on the third version yep
00:43:31
Speaker
I think dickhead. I mean, I know we keep going back to dickhead, but it's because it's honestly the biggest undertaking that we've ever done. And it was like, this is the, it was, it was monumental for us. We, and we put everything, we put everything we had in, in like, well, not everything we had, everything we had at the time. Yeah. Which unfortunately was just Halloween, but
00:43:54
Speaker
believe that that we've overly tried to we've been pushing away from that I hope in the edit as much as we can but it's just an unfortunate happenstance of we wanted to make of what we wanted to do is essentially right
00:44:13
Speaker
films that we like, essentially pay homage to the films that we love and then inserting our own personalities into those characters and reactions. Like I unfortunately find myself writing a little bit more like Bo these days than I'd like to admit in real life. And that's a little bit of an inside joke, Josh, I'm sorry. It's okay.
00:44:33
Speaker
maybe when we ever show you the film and we do wanna, I do wanna show you it to you and get your notes. I can't wait. Yeah, and honestly, I think we gotta get your opinion on this. I can't wait to see it. You always have such an insightful perspective on things. It's always such a pleasure to talk to you, man. Thank you, I appreciate that. That's kind of the problem though with the podcast though. I love hearing something. I can start to pick your brain for hours.
00:44:58
Speaker
Yeah. And like, yeah, and we're hitting almost and it's after one, but you know, I don't mind. I hope I had no one else. I don't, I just don't see for anyone else. Keep the root beer scum.
00:45:10
Speaker
But you know, like, I don't think Steven and I kind of like stopped tinkering. Well, one, we never stopped tinkering with the script. Not even until we wrapped, did we stop tinkering the script. But until, but even in moving into production, like I think we were up to 11 versions. I remember, the reason why is I remember thinking 11 versions. I remember thinking we were on like the, after we got like to like the 10th version, I was like,
00:45:35
Speaker
What the fuck are we doing? But then 11 came around and it was like, we always were twinking things. Twinking? That's a little. Twinking. Twinking. Twinking. We might have been twinking. You know, just watch the film. Maybe there's some twinks waiting for you to be held. Behold. Twinks. Fuck, I drink too much.
00:46:00
Speaker
I'm sorry. I apologize. But I wanted to say, Josh, it's okay, man. Yeah, I know. We're here for you.
Support and Community in Filmmaking
00:46:09
Speaker
And not only are we here for you, the work has been put in brother. Absolutely. The work has been put in brother. Absolutely. Without a doubt, you put in the work. Without a doubt, man. In some senses, you might be better off now because
00:46:25
Speaker
It's almost a crutch because you might have looked back and been like, oh, this is so good. But you've only grown as a person, as a writer ever since. Storyteller. And a storyteller. So those stories will start to convalesce into something even better. And you know, we're here to light it. Yeah.
00:46:53
Speaker
Well, I mean, you know, like we said, like I said, one day, one and done, but for you, baby, I'll give you three days. I'll give you three days. I don't say that to many, you know. I appreciate that. I know, you know, we haven't talked to you much about it yet, but our buddy Alex, who was on the podcast with you the last time you were here,
00:47:17
Speaker
He has this big project that he wants to do. And I say big because in reality, it's not that big. It's probably a 15 minute short and it's a reality. Mr. Rico or Uncle Rico, as Steven and I like to call it, even though Alex gets all pissy, even though it's a way better fucking title. Like we're like Uncle Rico. Yeah. Come on. I don't want to like
00:47:44
Speaker
pump my own shit. I mean, I am a goddamn good writer, you know what I'm gonna say? What can I say, Uncle Rico? I mean, I think about these things, you know, like Oppenheimer was a goddamn piece of shit. But my friend, you know, like... Yeah.
00:48:02
Speaker
We're here for you, man. I appreciate that. I appreciate that, yeah. We don't just have assholes on this show. We've had one asshole on this show, and we... Two assholes, so that's you and me. Well, I was thinking more of another asshole, though...
00:48:17
Speaker
It's so crazy that the asshole end up like posing with one of our main actresses in our film. Oh, that asshole, yeah. And I won't bring it up because networking, politeness, society. We can talk about it after the show if you want, if you're curious. Cool. But we had an interview with someone that was like essential. So I just watched
00:48:41
Speaker
Tom's going, man. I just watched a film. I just watched one of the best pictures. It was Maestro Bradley Cooper film about. Oh, you saw that. Yeah, I just I just finished watching it. Just finished it. Like before I came over. That was the one you were most excited about. It sucked. Sucked. I wasn't it gave me a lot of Elvis vibes. I didn't like the editing. The cinematography was was gorgeous, but editing was formed that with an actual orchestra.
00:49:10
Speaker
Could that account for anything? I didn't really- Not in his mind. Didn't really care. Okay, well. But, shit, maybe it was my train of thought. Oh no, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maestro, Bradley Cooper. So in the film, there's this little joke from Chile, which I found rather amusing. And it's, they have a saying in Chile, don't stand under a bird full of shit.
00:49:39
Speaker
And, uh, yeah. What was I talking about? Oh, yeah. Birds full of shit. That guy, that guy, Bradley Cooper. No, the guy, the guy, the guy that you notice right away. He was trying to shit all over us. I just felt like he.
00:50:01
Speaker
I mean, I don't know if that, I don't think that podcast like had a lot of traction or anything, but thankfully like fuck that guy in reality, man. Like I feel like he kind of, it was the only time that we did an interview where I felt like we were taking advantage of in a sense. And even though we have like, you know, we have like two viewers, we have like the smallest platform ever. And this guy was just like trying to sell, sell his self help shit. Wow.
00:50:32
Speaker
motherfucker, but Josh, you know, like I, you know, you don't have to turn a negative into a positive or whatever, man. But, you know, man, we're here, you know, we're here for you, buddy. I know, man. You know, you're one of, like I said, you're one of us. You know, I'll pick you off Tom and then we'll wrap it up with that.
Strategic Film Release Timing
00:50:58
Speaker
It's always a pleasure bringing you on because
00:51:02
Speaker
we can always pick your brain and hear your perspectives and you're a bit more educated than us going through this like with your background sincerely. So it's always nice to just talk to you and then hear perspectives on things because it's always very insightful.
00:51:26
Speaker
But back to your film that's gonna, you wanna release in time for the Oscars. Is there any more you wanted to add to that at all? No, it was just, you know. Do you think you're gonna meet the, what's your deadline for that project? I would like to release it Sunday morning. So if I work all night tonight and then all night Saturday night, I should be good to go. All I'm saying is maybe we'll watch it at my house on the projector.
00:51:55
Speaker
Yeah, that'd be awesome if we could do that as a group, but... How big of a group are you expecting? It's me and Tom. Like I said, we'll see. I mean, John's coming, Jared's coming, Stephen's nemesis.
00:52:13
Speaker
No, maybe ex nemesis now because Jared who Jared VV Jared. Yeah, Josh. So, you know, this episode will be coming up before the Oscars, so it doesn't really fucking matter.
00:52:35
Speaker
You know, it's awesome you're trying to meet these deadlines and I hope you achieve it because I think it's very important. I had a short that I did with Trump before January 6th.
00:52:50
Speaker
And then once January 6th came out, I was like, oh shit, this joke is going to land so differently. You know, like that's, that's one of the big problems with current events is you got to be so timely with them, right? Their current events. There's a reason that this episode's actually happening now because we had like our new year's episode and we had an Oscar episode and it's like, you can't just hold those episodes. Right. No, they have to be timely. And, um,
00:53:18
Speaker
Yeah, man. I'm just looking forward to seeing more of your work. You know, it's been, it's been a pleasure. It's been exciting. Always talking to you is always pleasurable. You always have like a lot of insight and it's always good having you on, man. Thank you, man. It's always a lot of fun. It's been fun. Yeah. I had a lot of fun. And you're always inspiring, man. So I hope you keep up the editing and we'll help you as much as we can. And I'll find your,
00:53:46
Speaker
Equipment as soon as I can. Thank you. I appreciate that and one thing and you know, man We don't always have a lot of time But I'll I'll give you my time buddy. I appreciate that I don't want to say I'm a great editor, but I can edit better than Oppenheimer Anyone can edit better than Oppenheimer
00:54:09
Speaker
I'm just saying I see things, man. I see the cuts. He's seen the lines. Stephen's watching me in action. I mean, I don't want to boast up to myself too much. He works really fast. But I'm a god, you know? What can I say? I like to say that I am the anti-intellectuals intellectual.
00:54:37
Speaker
I believe that. Well, Josh, where can we find you? Josh makes movies on YouTube. Josh makes movies on Instagram. Is it one? Where's the one on YouTube? On YouTube is Josh makes movies with the number one. It's my number one. My image is the director's chair in a silver with a silver background. And we will link that in the show notes. I appreciate that. And I did find the YouTuber I was speaking of.
00:55:04
Speaker
I want to add that on the end of the show at the end of the show. His name is Robert Morgan and his YouTube is Mr. Morgan's organs. If you want to see some of the coolest short films that you will probably ever will watch, check him out. Is it the stop motion? Yeah, he only has 72000 subscribers.
00:55:24
Speaker
And his film was picked up by Shutter and had a limited theatrical release. His film is stop motion. And I think you guys should go watch it. And I think you guys should check out Josh's stuff. And I think Josh should keep writing movies. Always. Always. And I think we're gonna show him Dickhead and he's gonna never be on the show again. Back it up. Cut. The end.
00:55:50
Speaker
All right. Cool. I'll be there saying that's it, Josh. Sayonara. We spared you.