Take 111 - Producers Marc Benardout, Hugh Broder - He Went That Way

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Any of us who've been in it for long enough, our entire career has been littered with jobs that we didn't get, projects that we thought were gonna go for shore, dozens of unproduced script littering for.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

All of us are running into both major and minor failures in Hollywood every single day.

SPEAKER_03 0:26

This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Like everything in our business here and I will be told by my manager.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

And I probably liked it. And I remember thinking like what that's it for me. I do my one bit job when I've realized what that will be. It's never one bit job. There will be other jobs.

SPEAKER_03 0:58

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SPEAKER_01 1:20

Dan, I I think this is where they actually want me to talk about how much I love it. And I do love it, it's great. It's collating function transformed me from the messiest writer in Hollywood to well, ever so slightly less messy. My wife might have other things to say about that. Sitha listeners can get a free month of scriptation by going to scriptation.com backslash Sitha.

SPEAKER_03 1:43

And for those of you who don't understand slightly drawly American accents, that's scriptation.com backslash S-I-T-H-A. Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. I am, as ever, your non-entertainment co-host, Dan Rotstein.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

And I am your still in the entertainment business co-host Noah Evelyn. On today's podcast, I'm thrilled to introduce writer, producer, and director Mark Benedood to the podcast. He both directed and produced such feature films as Cinner, as well as produced the feature film He Went That Way, starring Jacob E. Lordy and Zach Quinto, out in theaters now and will be available on demand tomorrow. Mark is accompanied by his producing partner, Hugh Broder, also the producer of He Went That Way and Emoticon, amongst others. Welcome, Mark and Hugh.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Hello. Hello, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_03 2:46

So look, thank you very much for coming on. So I should reveal before this starts that uh Mark and I are friends. So um we may gang up. I don't know, actually, what Mark's relationship with Hugh is like, but I'm definitely going to mean be mean to Noah and Mark and gentler with Hugh, and obviously Mark's English as well. So 50% of this podcast will be done at a high intellectual and politeness level. So um, gentlemen, thank you very much for coming on. So this is the second time we've had people on sort of almost more specifically about a particular film. So sort of more of a sort of case study and how to get something made. Um so let I think the the place to start is uh your movie is uh obviously it's based on a true story and which and quite a sort of unlikely true story. So can you give us the let's start with Hugh actually if you don't mind. Q, can you give us the sort of the 90-second elevator pitch on your new movie and then we'll sort of take it from there?

SPEAKER_04 3:45

Um I can. We like to say, imagine a story uh about a ice skating chimpanzee and his trainer who happened to just be driving across the country and pick up a fellow who has just murdered three people. And the uh relationship that ensues over the next couple of days of driving from Las Vegas to uh Kalamazoo, Michigan.

SPEAKER_03 4:15

When you've got monkeys and serial killers, sorry, chimpanzees and serial killers, um obviously it's I'm glad you corrected yourself.

SPEAKER_04 4:23

Yes, thank you for correcting that.

SPEAKER_03 4:24

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Because you know the difference, you know the difference between a monkey and a chimpanzee is that a monkey has a tail and a chimpanzee doesn't. So did you know that before shooting this?

SPEAKER_04 4:37

Hell no. Yeah, no, no, but that's the beauty of being in the business we're in. You learn something new on every production, and that's what we took away from this one, among other things.

SPEAKER_03 4:48

And and I I think this is right, because I I want as there is a there is a lot in here. There is obviously, you know, there is killing in the movie itself, obviously, but one of the things we're gonna touch on later on, there were actually some deaths during production as well. Um but just in terms of the serial killer part of this, uh there were some prison visits as part of getting sort of working out how Bath to tell this story. Um so I let's start with some prison visits and let's see where we get to from there.

SPEAKER_04 5:24

So the the yes, the genesis of of of this film started with a book I had found 19 years ago while in a used bookstore uh back home in Michigan. And um, it happened to have been written by uh my freshman year poetry professor. But when I saw it its spine on the bookshelf, I didn't recognize the title as one of his books of poetry. So I pulled it off the shelf, and all of a sudden I'm reading about two brothers who are serial killers who did not participate in each other's crimes. And oh, by the way, about the woman who was married to both of them at separate times, and oh, by the way, the one brother adopting his other the other brother's children while they were both in prison. And this one little four-page chapter called Mike and the chimpanzee, which is what the movie eventually became, because the story Mark and I had dreams of telling the whole family's story, but you were not gonna do that in a 90-minute movie, and um I got a little bit ahead of myself because you asked about the prison interviews. Um the the book had used all pseudonyms for all these guys because my poetry professor, who's now writing about serial murderers and what makes them tick, had gotten a grant from the college to write this book back in the 70s, and um with the understanding that he would use pseudonyms, he actually interviewed in prison both brothers because they were still in prison in the 70s. This was in the 70s now, and he interviewed the woman that was married to both of them. And when I told Mark about the story, he said, Can we go? Do you still stay in touch with your professor? Well, I hadn't. We got in touch with him, he invited us up, and he basically handed us his boxes of research, which included these interviews he had done 30 years earlier. So we got to listen to these two guys tell their story. Um and then of course, we only you know we only told this the story of the three-day journey across the United States, but but yeah, we have the we we still have the interviews.

SPEAKER_03 7:59

I look 19 I think that the the the episode we did just before uh just before Christmas uh was it took somebody 17 years from their first meeting to getting the film made. So so you win by by two years. Um 19 years is a is a is a long time, um, obviously. Um presumably there were uh many occasions where you thought this would never get made.

SPEAKER_04 8:26

Yeah, I mean I'll I'll jump in, Mark, then I know I'm talking a lot, but the one thing I did want to say when you started talking about the years, here's the great irony for us. The movie came out on January 5th, uh, you know, obviously 2024. It was January 5th, 2005, that Mark and I sat at a dinner on that production in Copenhagen, and I told him this story. So it really was 19 years in the main, and it literally was, well, let's do something with that. Mark, I'll let you take it from there.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Yeah, I mean, it was interesting because you know, um, I was producing commercials at the time, and Hugh was uh an agency producer. And commercials, you know, you have a production company producer and agency producer, and you worked, you know, hand in hand together to you know to produce the commercial. And I just finished directing a movie called Cinner, and we were talking about you know what I was going to do next. And and I asked Hugh, you know, has he read anything interesting? And he told him told me about this book, Lou Karamazov. And so, you know, it was a really interesting process. And you know, as Hugh mentioned, we flew to Kalamazoo, we met Conrad, we went to all the places that you know uh featured in the book, and then we felt that it was such an incredible story between these two brothers, and that that it was such a screwed up um upbringing that that they that both of them had, and you know, evaluating that you know, them both of them being serial killers, we figured, well, there was a you know psychologist that that figured out that you know one was born a serial killer, one became a serial killer, and so we thought that's a really interesting premise to you know to to hang on to make the movie. We then tried, I mean, yes, it took 19 years, but it wasn't like a solid 19 years of trying, you know. We then tried to get the book set up, you know, making a movie as everyone knows, it's all about the timing. We couldn't get it set up, and then we put it aside for a couple of years and we tried again and we couldn't get it set up. And we then we sort of you know figured that we would take this one chapter, Mike and the chimpanzee, try to get that um written as a screenplay, and we managed to find a very talented writer, Edwin We know, who just uh written something uh called monologue, monogamy, sorry, um and he wrote that, then we tried to set that up, and that didn't get set up, and then we sort of put it aside. And in the meantime, we're doing our sort of you know our other jobs, you know. I'm producing commercials and TV, and Hugh's doing you know his agency work as well. And so then we came back to it, and then I think it was about 2017 we were like, okay, we have just got to do this. This is getting silly, you know, this story needs to be told. And then in 2019, you know, I had a family tragedy. My son was killed by a drunk driver, and I kind of sort of ducked out of commercials. I'm like, I can't really, you know, handle this anymore. I want to just do a uh film and I just want to tell this story. And then Hugh and I sort of sat down and we thought, okay, what are we gonna do? A friend of mine is a financier in London. Um, he has a company called Headgear. I went to school with him, and you know, I was talking to him and I said, I, you know, Phil, I really would like to make this movie. And he said, Well, let me try and help you. And then at that point, it sort of, you know, the process started working pretty quickly. And, you know, 20 2019 to now, you know, it still feels like it's a long time because during that time, we then had to go out to cast, we then had to get it financed, we then had to, you know, find a director, and you know, we then had to wait for the director for the actors to be free, you know, their schedules. And then eventually, I mean, we didn't shoot the movie until the end of 2021. But it wasn't quite sailing because you know, Jeff was a first-time director, even though he was a super experienced commercial director. He was a first, he would have been a first-time feature director. So that just kind of added, you know, added another issue to it. But um yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

For clarity's sake, we'll we'll uh we'll separate this a little bit from pre-production into production because this is a sort of a fascinating story and some backstory between Dan and I. Dan had texted me one night as we're kind of trying to figure out our guests for the coming year, and he's like, you know, I I think he calls it footy. I play footy with somebody or football or definitely not soccer, with somebody who has this fascinating story, 20-year journey of telling this, of making this movie, and all of these things went wrong along the way. You know, I think this would be a good guest. And I was like, Yeah, that does sound fascinating. And as I'm hearing you guys tell this story, what's resonating with me as a longtime writer is that you you stuck with it. I mean, so many people, before you even get to principal photography, which I'm sure is its own whole thing, people would have off-ramped. You know, you can't get it set up, they're gone. Most producers are gone. You write a script, it doesn't get set up, most producers are gone. You guys are deciding, for whatever reason, to keep this thing going. Then 2019 comes around, it sounds like, which is also COVID, where you're finally getting the money and the world goes into quarantine. So at some point, you know, you guys get a director named Jeff and you guys go into principal photography. Were you convinced the movie was gonna happen? And I mean, was there doubt still until you started shooting, or were you guys just in your head, like you said, you'd mentioned final songs? You knew this movie was gonna get made. It just was a matter of when.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

I mean, it's a good point. Just to step back on it, the reason we just kept on is that the story is the premise is so fascinating and so bizarre that it's just too good not to be able to tell it. Um and and I think the thing is, you know, we yes, there was COVID, and yes, there was financing issues, and yes, we had to worry about certain, you know, reaching certain castes and getting the right caste and getting our money. But at the end of the day, we just knew that this story was so bizarre that it had to be told. And you know, we I've read thousands of scripts over the years, and I'm sure you have heard hundreds of hundreds of stories, but this one story just would not go away in our minds. And you know, that this Hugh and I just kept talking about it every single time we would, you know, we would catch up.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

The the um yeah, this is this is also fascinating. And and you know, people uh you know are wonder online, come talk to me, you know, like how does a movie get made? I mean, mean meaning like it's just so hard all along the way, so many people say no. And yet it sounds like how a movie gets made is you have two producers like the two of you who just stick with it, who decide this movie's gonna get made and we're gonna make it no matter what happens. So let's why don't we go into the start of production? Because I heard things started to go sideways there as well. Like when, like, what were you doing as producers to keep this movie on the track, on the tracks, and where where are some places that this movie started to like fall off the tracks and you guys had to adjust to keep this thing going?

SPEAKER_04 15:29

It's it's hard to know the exact some of the exact moments, but you know, in my memory, obviously, the once Jeff was into it, we sort of felt that perhaps you know, because Jeff and Mark are in LA, I'm in New York, we all work with people who do films, we're always rubbing elbows with DPs, this, that, and the other thing, people who are all in the movies. That you start telling people about this, it starts to gain a little bit of his own momentum. Mark and Jeff were with a production company who had done longer-length things. We thought we could leverage that. But, you know, you the minute you start talking about, well, do you guys have any money? That's the first place it goes off the rails. Because no, we didn't, you know. Um, not to be deterred, however, you know, Jeff had a lot of contacts in the Australian film community because that's where he's from. Um, and also works back there, worked back there, I should say, and he started reaching out to people there. Uh um, Mark, as he said, reached out to the finance year in London. How do we do this? I really want to do this. Um the one moment that was a plus was when I think it was Jeff who brought us Jacob. Am I right, Mark? I think, or Jeff had a contact.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Somebody knew No, I think what it was is um the uh financier sent it to a sales agent to basically ask them what they thought of the script, and the sales agent thought this is an incredible script. Uh read a script as good as this for a while. Then it's get it to a casting director. And the casting director read it and loved it, and she said, This would be great. There's a couple of really good um young actors that could play Larry Rains, a serial killer, and one of which is this really hot guy from uh a TV series called Euphoria. You may or may not have heard of it, and we were like, Yeah, I've heard of it, you know. But and um we'll send it to him, and then we'll send it to a couple of other people for the role of uh Jim, which is the role that Zach Quinto played. Literally, I think it was sent to like four people, and both Jacob and Zach said yes, they loved it, they wanted to talk to us, and then Jacob spoke to Jeff, the director. That's what it was, yeah. And that momentum started, sort of, you know, the ball rolling. However, it's great to have these two actors attached, but we still at that point had no money. So then they had to take it to Cannes, and they you know they took it to the market at Cannes, tried to pre-sell it. You know, we sold the rest of the world to Universal, and that still left a huge gap because you know, with the you know, when you go and do a movie as independent as it as it is, or as it turned out, you know, you still have these inflated so you know dreams of doing, you know, having a bigger budget, you know. So our budget was, you know, it was a $10 million movie at one point. And you know, that whittled down, you know, as the process, you know, as you get the nose and as you get the you know, the obstacles thrown at you. So in the end, you know, and we had like a 50-day shoot. In the end, we shot the movie very, very low budget. Um, and it we shot it in 17 days, you know. So it was, you know, it was a process, but you have to go through that process because you're not gonna say, okay, no, fuck that, I'm not gonna do that now. Just, you know, you you the ball is already rolling and the train has left the station. And you, as a producer, you have to keep everything on track, and you just have to, I wouldn't say compromise. People use the word compromise, compromise is not the right word. You just have to use a business head, and you just have to say, yeah, it's the business, and this is what we're gonna have to do. And whether or not, you know, we really want to do it, we've got to find the best way to do it, you know. So that's kind of our process. And I was in LA and Hugh was in New York, and you know, we worked out a way of sort of you know communicating on a daily basis. Hugh's speciality um in New York was on the post-production side, and my specialty was on the production side. So there was this beautiful sort of you know, a sort of symbosite, symbiosis of um being able to have like really savvy production. I mean, you know, we've both been doing this for a very, very long time, and we know how to do things, you know. There were certain times where people would say, can you do, you know, can you do this or should we do this? And you know, especially from the director, you know, that's the other thing you have to do as a producer. You have to give the director as much as as much as he wants, but you still have to make him stay within the guidelines that you have. And that's that is you know, the way you do that best is by having is having built a relationship with that person, you know, and Jeff and a respect, a level of respect.

SPEAKER_03 20:35

Just a question about about the actors. So obviously um it's a blessing and a curse when you get big names because they're their diaries are full, um, because they're shooting other things and they're in demand. And also, I mean I I can only imagine, you know, the not so much necessarily them, depending on what they're like, but you know, they're they're people, once their people get involved in terms of you know how big a font their names need to be in the posters and timings to get them available for the junkets and all that stuff, must be complicated. But you know, when you're working with somebody, so obviously, like Dak Quinto's been in, you know, I imagine that the budget for probably the last season of um Heroes was probably higher than your movie uh for each episode, probably. Uh no doubt. But I feel like Star Trek would have had a reasonable size budget. Um, so you know, when you're working with people who are have been part of much bigger things, but you know, obviously they're now in your your relatively small movie, but you know, they want to be in it because it's a great story and they want to tell it. You know, what what's it like sort of working with them? Do you spend all your time apologizing that their trailers aren't bigger? Um, or you know, how do you cooperate with them?

SPEAKER_00 21:54

That's a great question. And I think you know, the key word that you said earlier is they the word one. You know, once an actor commits wants to be in your movie and they understand what level the movie is, uh, you know, it's certainly in our experience, it was very pleasant. There was not there was no stomping feet saying I need to have you know, you know, a motorhome, or I need to have this, or I need to have that. Both Zach and Jacob were the consumer professionals. And I think that's what made them the thing is they were both in every scene. So that's what made it so pleasant. You know, they didn't demand anything other than sort of you know the sort of a pro a level of professionalism that was going to allow them to give us the best performances. So, you know, there would definitely be times where, you know, if something wasn't right, they would ask for something. And if we could do it, we we would do it. And if we couldn't, we would say no. And and to be honest with you, it's it's almost like it's like it's a bit of a dance at the beginning within a negotiation with their teams and their agents. You know, there's it's like a fight, you know, you're in a boxing ring with uh with their reps and the and everyone, and then once the fight is once the fight is decided, once the decision has been made, everyone falls into line really quickly, which was you know, uh uh, you know, it was a learning process for us again, but we didn't have any issues and um after everyone committed and sort of you know said we're gonna do this, you know. I mean you hear of horror stories where that changes, but we were very lucky. We were you know a small movie, we didn't have a huge cast, but they you know, as as big as Jacob is now and was becoming, and as as experienced as Zach was, you know, they never they never uh did anything that was kind of unprofessional. So it was it was a great experience.

SPEAKER_03 23:45

Try and find the right way to ask this question. So I'm gonna I'm gonna just ask the question. So look, we we had I remember we had um I think Noah, it was Stephen D'Souza on the sh on the podcast. Um and I remember he sort of casually dropped in that a couple of his big movie projects failed because I think the financier on one was killed in a car crash at like quite early on, and there was another one. Like he had a couple of sort of casually dropped in a couple of deaths that have affected some of his projects, but it was very much sort of he didn't go into a lot of detail, and um, but I think in a very different way. You you have had you had two deaths uh part of this story, one very much linked to obviously the the movie itself, and one linked, Mark, to your personal life. Um I'd just be interested, maybe Hugh, if you start with the with one and then Mark talk about the other. I just you know, trying to do a hard thing like making a movie when these sorts of things are happening in the background and how it changes how you think about your movie, but also you know, why you're doing the things that you're doing.

SPEAKER_04 24:59

I'm actually gonna tell it not the way you would expect me to tell it, so please bear with me. Um summer of nineteen, I took the summer off and I had gone to um northern Wisconsin to revisit my childhood, perhaps, but I worked at a summer camp and taught water skiing for the entire summer. Um however, when I first got up there, Mark and I were having daily phone calls. At that time, we didn't have financing yet, but we were already into conversations with how to do the chimp. Could we use a live chimp, etc., etc., etc. I very distinctly remember standing on the boat dock having a conversation with Mark and Jeff and some other folks. And then I sort of went dark for the summer because I was I just needed whatever, but I figured Mark would reach out to me if necessary. I'm talking about the right year, right, Mark? Um I turned off all my social media. Mark knows this story. I turned off my all of my social media. I woke up, I hadn't heard from Mark for quite some time, you know, a month or two, and I woke up the morning I was leaving to go home. I'd been away for 10 weeks, and I don't know what made me turn on Facebook. And this was August 15th, August 16th, something like that. And the first thing that pops up is Mark's Facebook post about Noah. I mean, I literally I'm in this crappy little cabin in northern Wisconsin, and I I almost shut it and went, No, I didn't just see what I just saw. So that was the one, if you will, that we're talking about that hit me the most. I'd met Noah when he was a little kid because I would call Mark up when I was out in LA on other jobs, etc. etc. Um we didn't talk for a couple more days till I got home, I think. Um, you know, let the time happen. And I I actually, oddly enough, although Dan, you led it with, well, one wasn't really directing, wasn't the movie affected the movie directly. I actually think in a way it's what got this movie made. And because four or five months after that, I finally had time to talk to Mark and sit down and really talk about things, and the conversation was I I as he said earlier in this chat, I'm not ready to go back to work. I don't know if I can, but I need to get this movie made. And it almost became Noah's movie in that sense. And I remember when we were in post-production, I don't think I'm telling stories out of school, Mark. Um we were looking for we were doing music, and I called Mark and I said, you know, the music for our closing credits does not have to be from the era. It doesn't I I hate to say this, but I don't hate to say this. Can you find something in Noah's library that would work for our closing sequence? The the movie dips to black, and the music you then hear is one of Noah's compositions, and that's where we ended up.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

Yeah, that's lovely, uh, lovely words, Hugh. Thank you. And I think and I you know, I think you're absolutely right. It had, you know, had I not had a terrible tragedy, we probably would still be scrabbling around trying to make the movie. It just was one of those things that it was a defining moment where I've just got to do this and we have to do this. And it was a very tough thing, but for me, jumping in and you know, do making a movie is is is all-consuming was a way that I was able to step away from the grief that I was suffering and still suffer and be able to concentrate on something to keep me going, you know. And I think the same thing, you know, the the second uh tragedy that we had was you know, right after we finished filming, um, Jeff, the director, went back to uh Sydney where he lives, and he was editing the movie, and we gave him three months to edit the movie, and he just you know, he caught us up on I think it was uh put us up on a Thursday and he said, I've got I've finished my director's cut. I'm so excited for you to see it. Sent us the director's cut on a Friday, and then on the Sunday, he sadly was drowned in a in a in an accident. He went in a paddleboard accident. He went off paddleboarding, had a seizure and and drowned. And the the irony, and you can't really make this up, that day was actually the anniversary of my son Noah's death, a birthday. So someone called me up and said, Oh, you know, I'm very sorry, how are you doing? And I thought they were sort of you know talking about me and how I was doing today because it would have been my son's birthday. And I said, I'm I'm doing okay, thank you for asking. And then they continued, and then they were like, Well, Jeff's family must be so upset. And I was like, Jeff's family? What do you mean? And they were like, Well, didn't you hear Jeff passed away today? And it was it was a very, it was a very bizarre moment. And you know, these moments you you can never prepare yourself for these moments. And so having a director die, you know, two days after he delivered his director's cut for for producers of a movie is is a huge issue, uh, it's a problem. And again, we took time to sort of think about you know how you know how we um how we approach the next steps. And we then took six months. We took our time to kind of finish the movie. Uh, pretty much his his cut was, I would say the movie now is like 95% the same cut that Jeff had, you know, we adjusted a few things based upon people's opinions and financiers and some some you know some focus group screenings. But yeah, it was uh it was a huge obstacle to get over. So, but you just I think that to you know, in answer to your question, Dan, you just have to keep going. You know, again, you just can't step off the train because otherwise it just becomes a I don't want to say train wreck, but it becomes you know, it just goes off the rails. And you have a we had a responsibility, we had a fiduciary responsibility for the to the uh financiers, and a responsibility to now to Jeff's you know legacy and to you know everyone that worked their asses off on the movie, so you know, you just keep going.

SPEAKER_03 32:17

Yeah, look, I mean look, thanks for talking about it in that way. I mean, it's uh I know it's not straightforward. Obviously, Mark and I, you you and I speak a lot about this stuff, yeah. Um, but um, but thank you for for those answers. And I think it as you say, the fact that you know maybe part of the reason you got it finished uh or got it made and then got it finished is is is a tribute to them, which is um which it makes it all the more powerful.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Uh no, thanks to you. Yeah, I mean this is uh such a powerful and emotional story. Thank you both for sharing. And you know, it's very different, but I was made me think about I mean, A, making a movie is impossible, and then you had to deal with your grief on the top of that, which is you know two times as impossible. And then making me think about when I had cancer and I still worked, and I asked my employees to employers to give me as much work as possible while I had cancer, which seems counterintuitive, but I didn't want to just spiral in my room. I had I was immune compromised during COVID, I couldn't go anywhere, and I just wanted to work. And that actually that was just like one baby foot baby footstep in front of another was allowing me to just not focus on that my body's destroying itself, you know, uh with chemo.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Because in our business, what you know produces what we do is what we, you know, we put out fires, we make shit happen. And there's certain times when, you know, you can't, you know, there's certain things that you have zero control over, you know, like a death or like something, you know, something is a force majeure or whatever, whatever it might be. But because you're so, you know, you're so conditioned to just making it happen and getting it done, you just keep doing it. You just keep moving forward. It's that momentum, you know, and and they say, you know, the terrible cliched expression, it takes to finish. It really does. It just takes everyone just rallying around and just to keep moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

Um, yeah. And did I mean, did it, I guess this is a two-part question. Um, because I found that after going through something momentous in your own life, everything you're dealing with takes on a whole new, you know, you kind of you're looking at things differently, you're able to handle some things differently because like there's other bigger things that are happening in your world. And so what feels like the biggest thing in your life, which is the making of a movie or TV show, gets so somewhat put in perspective. But um, so I sort of kind of maybe talk a little bit about that. And also, um, you know, more back in the filmmaking side of things. Um, I earlier on you said you you wanted, you know, you wanted X amount of money and you didn't get it. And then you had to kind of readjust what your vision was. And then you got 17 days to shoot this thing, but you spent 20 years visualizing it. What ended up being the final product? Was that the thing that was in bouncing around in your head? Did it very much change along the way? Are you still or did or did you guys get it there? And are you happy with what ended up you know hitting the screen?

SPEAKER_04 35:14

No, well in the first place. Let me start from this perspective, right? And I'll I'll make this quick. I'm 11 years old, I'm taken on a tour of the Paramount lot. I get to sit in Captain Kirk's chair from the original Star Trek show, and I look around and I have my Brownie movie camera with me, and I go, my God, this is all fake stuff. I could make a movie back in Detroit. Flash forward 50 some odd years, and uh also a career in which on every shoot I do, we don't sometimes we get exactly what we need, sometimes we don't get exactly what we need. Sometimes people in edits are beating it up, and you know you didn't put the best thing on the screen. So I I maybe had a little bit lower expectations because I I tempered everything with, oh my god, we just made a movie. I'm not saying I had stars in my eyes, and we certainly did to Mark's point. We we messed around with Jeff's Rough Cut a little bit because we didn't think it had quite gotten there in terms of things we had talked about for 19 years. Um, you know, I have not watched the movie since June 9th. I can't. Uh, because I just like every commercial I've ever produced in my life. Oh gosh, if we had only had another $5,000, oh gosh, I can't story-wise, absolutely thrilled with the decisions we made in the script writing phase, which you know embellished creatively, had to put things in to tell the story more succinctly than it really was. Yes, very thrilled that how it came out. I think we got there. And rendering the story absolutely, but I'm gonna guess, knowing my partner, that I'm probably a little less critical than he might be at this point.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

I mean, yeah, very as a as a very tame art instead, but look, I think, you know, they say when you make a movie, you make five movies, you know, the movie you, you know, the movie you write, the movie you shoot, the movie you edit, the movie you you make changes to in the movie that goes out, you know. And that's all well and good. And I will go, you know, I will go on record saying I am very, very proud of the movie we've made. I think it's a great movie. I think Jeff did an incredible job. And I think, yes, there may be people that that say, oh, well, it wasn't a director's car, or but it's pretty much close. And you know, he would be very proud of it, and it looks great, and the performances are great. I think the thing for me, you know, which sours it for me, uh the critics, you know, it's like you never know how it's going to be received, you know, you never know what people are gonna look into it. And a lot of the time, the people that are making these judgments on the movie that you've spent a lot of time half, you know, a good percentage of your life, they come up with the most ridiculous bullshit and the most ridiculous comments. And that I think is the thing that's the most upsetting about the movie. I love the movie, I'm very proud of it. And you know, if I never make another movie again, then okay, I'm I'm I'm good with that. But it's the critics, and it's you know, we've had we've had some great reviews and we've had some not great reviews, and and they're not great reviews. I know people say you should not really reviews and you should not listen to anyone, but it's human nature, you can't you can't not do that, but they hurt, and they hurt, and a lot of them are you know, a lot of them I would say 50% of them are people that should know better because they know how to make movies and they know what to get what it takes to get into a movie, and 50% of them are people that shouldn't be commenting on a movie because they know fuck all, you know. So in answer to your question, yes, I think it's it's great what the outcome, but you know, only time will tell in terms of an audience's reception, and you know, that's we'll we'll find out.

SPEAKER_04 39:46

And and I'll say this as tame as my reply might have sounded. I too am immensely proud of having made this movie and having stuck with the story and how interesting it is, and it does hurt. I mean, and you know, you have to keep telling yourselves the good stuff doesn't hurt, of course, but you have to keep telling yourselves that there's also you know, there's critics and there's trolls, and you know, it's who's saying what and this, that, and the other thing. And I won't say which newspaper it was, but I my my 94-year-old mother who attended the premiere as her first trip after COVID, got on a plane from Detroit and flew to New York, said to me, Yeah, I read that review, they spelled everybody's name right. And I was like, you know what?

SPEAKER_01 40:42

You're right. That's what mothers are good for. And this in this day of critics, too, by the way, is they don't get press if they give you a good review. They don't get clicks, they get clicks if they give you a bad review. And I do remember, uh, you know, to make you make people feel better who get bad reviews. One of my very first trips to LA, I went to the writer premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean with the writers, and they went to a lunch beforehand and we spent the entire lunch. They would read, they read out loud every terrible review. So, and this is a blockbuster massive film that people love. So, like, even that blockbuster film that everybody loves had a number of just god-awful reviews, and they read them out loud to all of us.

SPEAKER_00 41:25

Yeah, but people, it's like this in this day, sorry, that I just finished one point. In this day and age, people feel they can just criticize everyone and everything. I mean, even Jeff, the poor, poor man who's not here to defend himself. There was a couple of reviews that just absolutely pull them apart, you know. And I was like, it's just not nice. We're in this age of like everyone just just being horrible. It's like time to be nice, time to just appreciate it, time for everyone to see movies. And if you don't like it, it's fine. It's good, it's great. And it's not gonna work for everyone, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:00

Look, you know, as a as a goalkeeper who spent years playing football with Mark just ahead of me in defense, I know that he does not take criticism very well, uh, justified or or not. Um, so look, it unfortunately it's time for the final question. Uh, but just before we ask the final question, just two very quick ones, which I want a quick answer to. So the first one is did you use a CGI or a real chimpanzee in the end?

SPEAKER_00 42:28

Uh, neither. We used a combination, we used a combination of a young girl inside an animatronic uh suit that was created by the Academy World winning company Legacy Effects. And the little girl was trained by a very famous animal choreographer called Terry Notary, who was her father. And so they spent six months, you know, studying the way chimpanzees move. And then she spent six hours every day on set having makeup and a headpiece that had, I think it was 170 servo motors in it that was puppeteered by puppeteers with wireless controllers offset.

SPEAKER_03 43:10

That wasn't the answer I was expecting. I know, right?

SPEAKER_00 43:12

And that's where most of our money, funny ironically, that's where most of our money went, you know.

SPEAKER_04 43:16

Yeah, I bet. Again, on that and that note, real quickly, relating to an earlier question of yours, what it, you know, are you proud of the movie? Whatever. This was my moment. I'm on I'm on set this week for seven shooting days with a very good commercial director. And I showed him the trailer, and he turned to me and he goes, Oh my god, what was what was it like working with a chimpanzee? And I was just, yes, it worked.

SPEAKER_03 43:43

Um, so second quick one is assuming that they've seen it, um, what does your poetry professor think of the movie given the genesis?

SPEAKER_04 43:54

We didn't even address that. Unfortunately, Conrad died six years ago. And however, at one of my college reunions, um, which I go to every five years, very small school, and we always invite he was a beloved professor at this college. And my class that year, I think this is 10 years ago, invited him to sit with us at the homecoming dinner at our table. So he sits down next to me, he says to me, if I can use the F bomb, he says to me, So Hugh, are you and Mark gonna ever make that fucking movie? So, yes, unfortunately, he didn't get to see it, which kind of bums us out, but you know, it's it it I think we did him proud too, don't you?

SPEAKER_00 44:44

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_04 44:46

And he was very interested in the process of making movies. He's a freaking poetry professor.

SPEAKER_03 44:54

So um now the actual final question. Okay so we ask every guest this question, um, which is um if you could give uh one piece of advice to somebody wanting to enter the industry, in in whatever role, I guess in this case probably producing, um, what would that piece of advice be? If you want to go first, Hugh.

SPEAKER_04 45:22

I think it's more I I think my answer is sort of um short and it's a little broader than movies in general, but you'll get my under you'll get what I'm saying, which is be nice to everyone because you just don't know who along that path you know might be interested in your project. Um share your creativity, you know, invite people into your process, if you will, you know, and and that's a little bit meandering, but that's kind of how I feel about it. I mean, a lot of people came to the party for us knowing how much we wanted to make this movie over all these years. And it's all people that, you know, for me for sure, that I met along the way, including Mark, by the way, from day one, you know, and you know, people who love to make things make them. They they figure it out. I don't know if that's advice as much as experienced, you know.

SPEAKER_03 46:31

It's a great answer. I wish somebody had told Noah at the beginning of his career to be nicer to people, I think would have made a big difference to him. Um Mark.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

Yeah, I mean, I I would say uh the the one thing you should always do is be honest with yourself and with the process, because you can get yourself caught up in a whole lot of bullshit. And if you can be honest with yourself and honest with the process, you you retain your integrity and then you're able to deal with anything because if you've got your integrity, you can deal with adversity.

SPEAKER_03 47:04

Yeah, great stuff. Look, um, Mark Banner and Hugh Breider, thank you very much indeed for coming on the podcast. I'm very excited to see the movie tomorrow. I've heard a lot about it, and I think I'm obliged to say this. I know it's only a very small part in it, but my karate partner gets shot in the head uh by Jacob at some point. I don't want to give too much away, um, but my my Josh. Um, so um, but uh thank you both very much for coming on, telling your at times quite painful story. But um, you know, I'm excited to see the movie, and I know a lot of other people are. So thank you very much for coming on this podcast. My pleasure. Thanks for having us. This is fun.

SPEAKER_00 47:44

Yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_03 47:51

Thank you for listening to this episode of Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss brought to you by Scriptation. Thank you as ever to James Launch for the music, and thank you to our loyal listeners. And if there's any showrunners out there who want to hear their fellow showrunners abused uh and ruffled around and put under the microscope so you can hear their stories of rejection failure and adversity, please send them away. If you're interested in following us on social media, oh I've lost track.

SPEAKER_01 48:29

I am at NEVslin on Twitter or X or whatever Elon Musk now calls it. And thanks to Elon Musk, I'm also at NoEveslin on Hive, Scoutable, Blue Sky, Threads, Mastodon, MySpace, French Tier, and I'm sure it's