iTunes Exclusive Episode Spotlight Jason Bee

Hey everybody!
That's not the normally the way we start these things, but this is not a normal episode.
So welcome!
Welcome to the Clubhouse Podcast.
This is iTunes Exclusive 311.
But it's only the third of its kind, and it's really the first of its kind.
I know the math seems a little wonky.
I went to public school, don't judge me.
So here's how it works.
This is our third spotlight episode.
This is a subset of the subset.
So we do these iTunes exclusives.
We've done over 300 of them now.
We've been trying for years to kind of do something within those iTunes exclusives that
is a little bit different.
So earlier this year, we did what we called a spotlight episode for a film that we saw
during the National Film Festival called Bombs City.
Then we did another one in June.
For a press round table, we did with a comic book writer named James Venhouse, who will
be here later this week.
So we're going to have another one of those.
This is the third one.
But this is the first ever spotlight episode that does not have any pre-existing material.
This will all be live in studio.
For those of you that don't know me, my name is Rob.
I'm the executive producer of the Clubhouse Podcast, and I could not be more excited about
what we're about to do today, or tonight or whatever you're listening to this.
It's today when we're recording it, so deal with it.
It's just me.
There's no Chad.
There's no Don.
So this is kind of a one-on-one interview that I'm really excited to put forth.
You've heard me talk about this before, and you've actually heard the guy we're going
to talk about before because he's been a guest on this show a bunch of times.
He is a dear friend of mine, and we are here to talk about all things him and all things
his film.
Ladies and gentlemen, Jason B is with us.
How are you, sir?
Good, man.
Thank you so much.
Let me turn you up, Jess, a little bit.
Make sure you talk right into that thing.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Bring the music down.
So full disclosure, you and I have been friends for over two decades.
So let's just put it out there, but I had to.
Because I want people to understand that we're going to be talking about a lot of things,
and I want people to understand it.
If you know anything about me, you know that I try to be as unbiased as possible in
all things that I have to do with this show outside of Brittany Palmer because that's
a whole different issue.
But when I tell you, when we get into the main reason that we're here, I'm telling you
now what I'm going to say is completely unbiased because it's out there for the universe.
I can actually back that up.
So yeah, I mean, I, you know, one thing about about you isn't I, he's happening to call
you Jason.
It's a weird, it's a weird adjustment for me because the last show, and you said zipping
and I was like, what the hell?
Because that's how we met and, you know, he knows me by a different name too because
we had, we all had nicknames with the group of us that got together and we'll talk about
all that as this, this time goes on, but, you know, it's important that we're honest.
Yeah.
And you told me from jump street, you know, when you do this thing, I need you to be honest
and I was like, okay, and so we're going to get there in a minute, but let's go back
and start at the beginning.
It's the late 90s.
It's fuzzy.
It's, yeah, some of it is before either one of us even had the word marriage in our heads,
we met as, as tends to do with most of the people in my life in the last 20 years through
a little thing called karaoke.
I was a karaoke host for 16 years, I was a DJ for 21 years, which then led to how all this
stuff happened and all that good stuff.
But we had a mutual friend, my brother, Ken, who I love dearly and he is one of the most
wonderful people in the entire world who is almost as busy as I am.
We met at a bar that he was hosting, right, Cajun Catfish out in Rockwall, Texas, which
you've said, if Walt's could talk, we're glad they burned that place to the ground.
There's a bunch of family restaurants out there now.
But we were all just part of a bigger group of people that we all just kind of gelled.
I can't pinpoint a time.
Can I remember the first night I met him?
Because he came to my show at a different bar here in Mesquite called Sports City, which
I was a fixture at for many, many years.
But the rest of what we call the OG Wolf Pack, we all just kind of gelled.
We were all just kind of there and we all just kind of met each other.
A couple of the guys from the pack were in my wedding, Ken was in my wedding, Lonnie was
in my wedding.
Most of us still stay in contact, which I think is kind of cool as we're getting older.
Some of us have kids like a friend of the show, Gump just had a kid graduate high school.
He's got another one in high school right now, which still blows my mind.
We're a father, Ken's a father, and all of us still knowing each other.
It's kind of cool.
So let's just go back even further.
Are you a product of this area or are you transplanting?
Yeah, actually, Ken and I went to high school together.
That's South G, South Garland High School, where he lived.
He and I were roommates for about a year and our house was right by South Garland High School.
I remember that house.
Oh boy, the memories from that house too.
So you board and bread here?
Yes.
I moved here in my 20s, so when did you think that filmmaking was going to be a part of
who?
Have you always been a movie guy or was there a time where you would go, you went, you
know what?
I think I could do this.
So I started out as an actor in my 20s and I was working as a copywriter at GCE
directories.
It was called Back Then.
Oh wow.
Yeah.
Well, I was writing for a product called Quick Tips, which was you dial up a phone number
from the yellow pages and you punch in a four digit code on tires or or physicians.
I remember this thing.
Oh, whatever.
Yeah.
And you get this recorded message about how to choose a doctor or how to how to find the
right tire store for you or whatever it was and that we would write those scripts out.
And so that's what I was doing.
I was writing scripts.
I had a ton of voice actors in house as well as a production studio and one of the guys
that worked there as a voice actor had tickets or a slot to go to a acting workshop with
a casting director that was coming into town that weekend and he couldn't go because
he was going to his daughter's graduation and he told me I should go because I was always
so animated and probably just crazy and manic or something.
He thought I would be good in there.
So I went and casting director told me I had a lot of natural talent and if I wanted to
get an agent, she'd help me and by the next week, I had an agent and I was out on auditions
and extra on Walker, Texas Ranger.
Do you remember your first audition?
I don't remember my first audition, but I remember my biggest one was for the role and
primal fear that ended up going to Ed Norton.
You know what?
I could see that.
Yeah.
So I want to say that was the first time I can remember seeing Ed Norton.
Yeah.
That was his, I think that was his big breakout role.
He'd done a lot of stuff beforehand and they were really trying to get it.
American History X came after that.
Yeah.
I think so.
I think Fight Club even came before American History X.
I think.
No, I think Fight Club came after.
Okay.
But anyway, I think they were really trying to get Ed Norton's what they were doing.
So then when he was being, you know, when they were in their talks or negotiations or
we got this other guy right here, I think that's exactly what they were doing.
Not with me, but just, you know, people in general were auditioning.
We're auditioning.
Okay.
Now I'll take it.
Yeah.
That kind of thing.
I think that's exactly what they're doing.
But, you know, to my own credit, the casting director called my agent and told my agent
when you sent me this guy that has nothing on his resume, I was going to call and cuss
you out because this is bullshit, but he did really good.
I was really impressed.
So, you know, just kind of reaffirmed that that was, I guess, on the right track.
But then drinking kind of took over fair enough and that that stars in my eyes, becoming
a singer because I could drink more.
What do we always say?
The more you drink, the better I sound.
Right.
Kind of took hold of that and I also accidentally fell into this career of advertising and acting
up put on hold for about 20 years.
And then in the last layoff of the advertising agency I was in because it's just, it's a volatile
industry.
Absolutely.
Layoff after layoff in 2007, last layoff I got hit up with, I just felt like there was
something missing and I had felt that calling to get back into acting.
But I also knew at this age, if I wanted to be taken seriously as an actor, I needed
to be more than just an actor to show that I could do something beyond a stack.
Well, but isn't that the key to entertainment though?
You have to have a certain diversity.
And in the description of this episode that people will be downloading, I refer to you as
a renaissance man because not just the Danny DeVito film, seriously.
But you know, you and I lost touch for a few years and then through social media things
started to come back around.
And you and I were just talking one day and you said to me, dude, I'm doing a film.
And I was like, okay, that's kind of cool.
And you were like, no, I don't think you understand.
I'm doing a film and I was like, okay, talk to me and you're like, no, I'm totally doing
this on my own.
I'm funding it.
I'm acting in it.
I'm directing it.
I've written the script and I was like, dear God, you have my attention.
Yeah.
I think you were probably the caterer, the transportation captain, you know, and I was
like, cool, tell me about it.
And then you started to tell me about Donovan and I want to kind of still want to hold
on to it for a minute.
And I was like, wow, you know, this film is kind of a bold choice because it deals with
things that in my personal opinion has kind of been glossed over.
Like it's been done, but it's been done at such a 10,000 foot level that I don't know
that it's ever really been dived into.
I just missed.
And then you said, would you mind if I sent you the script for you to read?
And my first thought was like, this guy doesn't know who I am right because I'm just
a dude, you know?
And I was like, no, I'd love to read this script.
And you sent it over to me and it's sad in my iPad for a couple of days because I was
kind of like, you know, I've got a lot going on.
I was sitting in bed, couldn't sleep.
And I was like, you know what?
Jason's sent me this script and I told him I would read it and so I need to do it.
And it is also well documented on the show that my reading goes in clumps.
Like right, and I've been reading Ready Player One for about a year and a half now.
And I'm on page like 40.
Yeah.
I'm the kind of guy that will read a couple pages, put it down, pick it back up in
three months and read 50 pages in one sitting.
I started reading Donovan and I read the whole thing in one sitting because it got a hold
of me and it didn't let go.
And at that point, I said to myself, okay, this dude has something like not just because
he's my friend and not just because I love watching my friend succeed.
This is a thing and my only hope is that he gets to make this film because I mean, how
many times have you read a script and gone, oh my God.
And then you see it on the screen and you're like, that's not what I read.
I don't want to mention any names, but it's initials or dogma.
But although still a great film, the shooting script on that, absolutely amazing.
So time went on and you and I would talk back and forth and certain things and you shot
it, you shot a trailer and you released a trailer and I was like, okay, he's making
the movie he wants to make.
And then you went back and you did it over.
So let's talk about that for a minute because when you were trying to do generate interest
for this, you basically made a trailer before you made a film because you needed people
to understand this is what I'm trying to do.
Yes, so the first trailer that I made was more or less a spectrailer and it was never
meant to be.
Now for the people that don't understand the lingo, explain what a spectrailer is.
Speculative work, the hypothesis of what this could be.
This was a thing.
This is what it would be.
And the dialogue, everything about it wasn't necessarily the script.
It was ideas from the script, but it was enough to give a taste of flavor of what this
film could be.
But it was so low budget that it was obviously the quality of this trailer or whatever is
not up to the quality that I want to put out, but at least it's something visual for
you to see and kind of get an idea of what I'm trying to do because I can tell you all
day the synopsis of the movie, I can show you the script, I can sit and tell you all these
crazy fun ideas I have to do with this, but until you see what my style is and what I'm
trying to do, you're not going to get it.
So that's what the basis was on that.
And I also realized that, you know, in telling you, I'm going to fund this thing myself that
that was crazy.
There's no way I was going to be able to fund this myself and thankfully I didn't have
to and we can get that to that in a minute as well.
But that was the initial something to put together so people could see what I was trying
to do.
And from that, we went to Indiegogo and crowdfunded and raised some more money so that then
I could shoot actual footage from the script, the movie.
And this didn't happen overnight.
This was like...
Oh, you and I first started talking about this 2011?
Probably, yeah, because I started writing it in 2010.
But I just made from a spec trailer to Indiegogo to shooting actual footage of the film.
That in itself...
Two to three years if I did the math right on that.
Possibly, yeah.
Yeah, I don't even know.
And that's what a lot of people don't understand too is when we do film festivals and we interview
filmmakers and we interview producers, even people that are doing short films, like you
don't just walk into a room in 10 minutes later, you have a short film.
Movie making process is a long process and really the only time people truly understand
it is animation.
Like animation, an animated film takes three to five years, people get that, but people
understand that live action can take that long when you're dealing with post-production
and you're dealing with, you know, maybe you shot the movie over two weeks, but post
can take forever because you want it right, especially when you're doing it on your own.
Right.
Right.
I got a psychotic attention to detail like I do.
Yeah.
I call it my nice little touch of OCD.
Right.
Yeah.
But then, so I was able to shoot the dream sequences and the flashbacks from the script
with that money we raised through Indiegogo and that was stuff that didn't really rely heavily
on age continuity.
So I tried to do it smart so that, you know, especially with kids, so we worked with
my son who at the time, I think it was three when we shot the flashbacks.
And then by the time we were able to shoot the actual movie, he was four.
No, no, he just turned five because he was complaining because he had to tell everybody
was four in the movie and he wanted to use five.
You should have heard his two artisans work with kids and animals, right?
I suppose to say my name is Evan and I'm four, but Daddy, I'm five.
You're Evan and you're four.
Acting.
It's called acting.
It's just act.
So anyway, from all those shots, I put together another, not what a really spectacular
because it was actual footage from the movie, but I put together a story that I called
the prequel because then I could take these flashbacks and dream footage and set it before
the movie starts because they're flashbacks.
They happen before the movie starts.
I could just rearrange the order and tell a short film, if you will.
I think it was five minutes this long and with that, then I started going to investors
and showing it to two people and telling them, look, I'm already shooting this.
Here's what I got so far.
Here's kind of the idea of the story.
We shoot Monday, so let me know what you think.
And it was Saturday.
It was.
And that was actually how I got my two investors on board.
And let's talk about them for a minute because kind of flashing forward and then flashing
back.
We kicked off SummerBam 44 weekend with it.
On a Thursday night, a bunch of us got together at the Angelica, sold out Autorium, which
was amazing to premiere the film.
And there was a Q&A after with both you and both of your major investors, one of whom
is in the film, the other of whom kind of came in later.
Did you say you're probably two thirds of the way through by the time he came on board?
No, they actually came in together.
Did they?
Okay, I thought, because the impression I got was he was like, yeah, we're shooting
this thing.
We're almost done.
We just need you to come in here and help us out, but it was more like we're shooting
this thing.
We just got started.
Okay, fair enough.
Okay, fair enough.
I said correct it.
Yeah.
But that was why he came in because it was, we were all already moving.
Let's name check him.
What?
Let's name check him.
So Raymond King and David Vissar and two quality human beings, two by the way.
Yeah.
Raymond is.
God.
Talking about Renaissance.
Dr Raymond.
Dr Raymond King.
He was a physician for many years and he actually worked at the hospital when the Oklahoma
bombing happened.
Oh, wow.
And he was working there and he saw, do you saw some stuff?
Yeah.
I've been to that museum.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
You know, without diving too much into a store because he's not here to talk about
himself.
Which would have been awesome if I thought about it.
But, you know, like, I think it affected him so much that I think there was kind of a
higher experience or something and after that, he felt like he could probably do more
good for people from a legal perspective.
And so I think it was the next week or two.
He went and applied to law school.
That's crazy.
Put himself through law school.
Yeah.
You know, because it's not like you just go to school for a couple of semesters and you
become a physician.
So let's go back and do this all over again.
Right.
And let's do the lawyer track, which is just as long.
Exactly.
So I've been to the law school, became a lawyer and to this day, the arm coming loose over
there.
I don't know what it's doing.
All right.
Just keep talking about it.
He's a lawyer and a he's a philanthropist.
He's involved with a ton of charities.
And he's playing with my microphone.
It's just faulty equipment.
We're used to it on the show.
What we do, this whole show is held together with bubble gum and duct tape.
We're proud of that.
I don't know if anybody can hear you, but it's funny.
All right.
I think you're good.
All right.
So I'm back.
So in David is a pilot for a private citizen.
David Visser.
Whatever.
Yeah.
David Visser is a pilot.
Now, how do they know each other?
Do you know?
I also don't know.
OK, fair enough.
Because he had said like, I got to call from Raymond and we're doing this thing.
Yeah, they're really good friends.
And they've been friends for years.
And I mean, I met David at one of the charities that Raymond is part of.
So I don't know if that's where the connection is, but what I really liked is
this story he told was like, a lot of people come to me and they're like, we're
doing this thing.
Right.
But he came to me and they were really doing this.
Right.
That's what I try to get to is, you know, we weren't just coming up and say, hey, I
got this idea for a movie.
It'll be great.
I came to him and said, hey, I'm doing this movie.
We shoot Monday.
Would you like to come out and check it out?
That's really what happened.
I was like, hey, we're shooting.
And honestly, I didn't even realize that David was the guy Raymond wanted me to meet.
Oh, wow.
We were just sitting at the same table and I was, you know, he's like, so what do you
do?
And I was talking about it.
And I was like, yeah, so we shoot Monday.
And he's like, we're told him with the location.
He's like, wow, it's right down the street from my house.
I was like, oh, we should come out and check it out, man.
And you filmed the whole thing here in the Dallas area.
Yes.
Yes.
And a lot of people will see Raymond's name as a producer, but then they see his name
in the cast.
And let's just be honest, the guy does a great job.
He does.
He does.
And so we can, let's kind of get into the film a little bit.
Donovan is the story of a man who is living with bipolar disorder.
And Raymond plays the latest in a string of therapists of doctors who's
Donovan's trying to, he just wants his paper so that he can see his kid.
Right.
That's the thing.
That's in the beginning.
That's his motivation.
I just want to see my kid.
Right.
He gets a note from his doctor to show to his ex-wife that he's staying in therapy
with a psychiatrist and with that, he's able to see his kid for the one time
every other weekend that he gets to see him.
His name is Donovan Drake and that will come into play here in a little while.
And we talk about themes.
And just so that we're clear, I'm Batman.
Okay.
Let's just be clear on that.
Okay.
But this new therapist kind of challenges him.
Right.
And says, yeah, I could do that.
But what good does that do you?
And what I dug about it, and it's, I can't have been the only one that saw this
because you've got two guys that have invested time and money into this.
This story works on multiple levels.
Because just as much for me when I watched it.
And there was a few years in between when I read the script and when I saw the film.
So I knew where it was going.
Right.
But I kind of liked the fact that I didn't go back and reread it because I kind of
wanted to forget how we get there.
Right.
You forget the pieces or not.
As much as it's about Donovan's journey, it's also about his too.
Right.
Which I thought was cool because the way you wrote it's like you could have just wrote
Donovan's story and that would have been fine.
Right.
But when I say it's been glossed over, what sets this film apart
is it looks at it from angles of other people too.
Good, bad, or indifferent.
And the boldness it takes to tell that story on the different levels that it is,
I think it's a thing that's resonating with a lot of people.
And we're going to get to the Q&A because I want to talk about the Q&A here in a few.
Yeah.
I think a big thing is a lot of times on Facebook in particular, I see people post quotes of inspiration.
And one in particular is the be kind for everyone you meet is going through their own battle
or do you know nothing about it?
Well, whatever it is, I don't remember the exact quote.
But everybody has their own version of it.
But that's the approach that I was taking.
Is that no matter the crap you're going through, someone else is also going through their crap.
And that's not to take away from your crap, but just know that we're all in this together.
And we're all intertwined.
We're all doing it.
And again, good, battering, different.
Right.
And how long did it, okay, let's just go back to the technical part of it.
How long did it take you to shoot the film itself?
So after the flashbacks and all that stuff that I got together,
and once David and Raymond came on board, it took another year to shoot principal photography.
For a film that's right about an hour and a half hour 40.
Yeah.
So again, it's not like you just go and you shoot the thing.
Right.
I mean, it takes time.
We had a lot of problems.
Our original Jessica, we lost.
That was in the first trailer.
Right.
Our original Steve, we lost.
Steve, okay.
So Jessica is the lady that comes into Donovan's life,
original mysterious girlfriend.
Yes.
And Steve is the best friend.
Some could see her as the antagonist.
Right.
But some could also see Steve as the antagonist because he's the best friend who's just like,
look, dude, this is just a thing.
Deal with it.
Right.
So you lost the Jessica.
You lost the Steve.
We lost locations.
Whether there's so many days that we had to shoot outside.
I mean, could you shoot a lot of this outside?
Yeah.
That's one of the challenges you do in a production is you're at the mercy of Mother Nature,
literally.
And that year was nuts with weather.
We had one shoot or we're going to be outside.
And it was like, it was like zero degrees outside and a freaking blizzard.
And it was like, there's no way we're going to be able to do this.
If you had done this past year, you wouldn't have that problem.
This is what are sucked in this town.
Right.
So things like that.
Okay.
So it took you a year, year and a half to film it.
How long and post before you, but let's just say before you were at a point where you were like,
okay, this is at least viewable.
So even while shooting it, I was always taking the footage and putting it into the editor and kind of laying out scenes
as much as I could until we got really heavy into shooting.
And then I was like, screw that.
There's only so much I can do.
But there was a lot laid out already.
But even even to that, we wrapped principal photography on November 13th.
I know that because it was Friday the 13th.
Oh, geez.
That was awesome.
And it took another year in post, not to the date, but another about a year in post to finish it out.
And that is also, I mean, so many technical hiccups and walls and hurdles and whatever.
Yeah, making movies hard.
When was the first time you watched it in its entirety?
I'm not sure.
Really?
Yeah, I don't know.
Is it because you just seen all the footage so many times that it just kind of blended?
I think so.
Because I can see that because when you're doing something like that and you're watching take after take after take after take after take after take after take.
At certain point, you're just like, I don't watch this.
Yeah.
I remember when all three of us, David Raymond and myself watched it together.
But I don't remember when I watched it myself because I know I did at one time.
But I just don't remember it.
Okay, that's fair.
All right.
So between the time, what point did you have the last trailer finished?
I think that was in September of last year.
When that you debuted, but you debuted it right after first of the year if I remember correctly?
No.
Oh, I may have.
What did I do?
What did I do?
I don't know.
It's on YouTube.
You know, that's the crazy thing about it.
I did so many things on this.
It's, it was very, I won't say easy, but I was, I found my superpower.
I was able to shift gears quickly and well enough that I could do all these jobs, right?
But now looking back on them, I don't know.
That's fair because, you know, I think probably that time between when you finished the film and when you show the film,
it can bore on you.
It's all 90s and nothing and it's just a matter of what needs to be done right now.
There's about four million things.
So let's handle a million and a half right now and just get it done.
And I don't know when that was or how it happened.
I just know I did it and it turned out pretty well.
Yeah, fair enough.
But I don't really have a strong recollection of doing it.
I did the other day and I don't remember what it was.
The other day I went to do something and I opened the computer up and it was already done.
I was like, oh, I got to love those moments.
You got to love those moments.
All right, so at what point does the soundtrack come into play?
That came in, I don't want to say close to the end, but probably three quarters of the way near the end.
My idea was to get a bunch of local bands to get on this soundtrack with us and feature a bunch of local talent.
And for whatever reason, it just wasn't clicking well and I just wasn't able to connect with as many people as I wanted to.
I did connect with a few.
There's a band called Moonlight Native, who's a four-worth band and they're kind of folksy.
It's a freaking awesome band.
Will Roth, the lead singer, has just this amazing voice.
Well, we've got some of the soundtrack I was able to get a cute up.
Maybe give you a chance to breathe a little bit.
Was that the one you'd like to play?
Sure, we can play that one.
All right, so let's cue that up real quick.
I don't think you'll mind.
Is older the only one they've got on the soundtrack?
Okay, so let's play that.
We're going to cue this up right now.
This is older from Moonlight Native.
This is on the soundtrack to Donovan.
And by the way, the soundtrack is available now to download.
How many tracks is this?
Is this the last track?
Oh, this plays over the Incredits, doesn't it?
Or just 12 tracks.
No, this is a very pivotal changing point in the movie.
Okay.
Oh, yes.
These guys are out of Fort Worth?
Yeah.
Yeah, he's great.
You loved me so.
You was brought enough with a love could grow.
I loved you so.
I'm taking back.
I like it a lot.
I would consider giving my love notes.
I think I may have actually offered that.
I'm not for sure.
Now, when you were putting this soundtrack together,
because there's a couple of different ways
that I've seen filmmakers do this.
In some, and I'm going to let this play underneath
and we'll just throw some other stuff out there too,
because I can.
Did you send a script to the bands?
Or did you just say, hey, here's what we're going for.
What can you give me?
Yeah, I mean, you know, you send scripts to people
and they generally don't get, right?
Because scripts are hard to read and they're time consuming.
And by this point, I had a trailer of some sort put together.
It may have been the teaser.
I don't know.
But, you know, I reached out to him, Will,
and said, hey, I'm working on this movie.
Here's what it's about.
Here's a trailer or teaser or whatever.
And this is the idea that I have for your song.
Would you be willing to get on board with this?
And he was all about it, man.
He got it.
And also with some of them, and I think I did this with him,
I went ahead and took the scene, even though it was a rough cut,
and put the song in there.
So he could see what it would, you know,
see the integrity of the scene with the song playing underneath it.
So he knew exactly what it would be.
And I don't know that a lot of filmmakers actually do that.
Yeah, I have no idea.
You know.
And for, when you say people reading the script,
how long are you going to take you to get a point where you said,
this is the script, I'm going to shoot.
Oh, it was over a year.
Because the people don't understand is in a normal film script,
you have about a minute of screen time per page.
Right.
So at a screen time at an hour 40,
and this is final cut, this may not even been raw cut.
Right.
That's 100 pages.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, so the...
I started writing this in 2010.
I think it was like April-ish.
And I finished the first draft in December.
And then I did another four million revisions,
and four hundred rewrites.
And the...
I think at that point it was 147 pages.
So you're pushing, you know, two and a half hours?
No one...
Not only could I not afford that, but no one is going to watch a damn movie
for two and a half hours.
From some guy named Jason B that nobody has ever heard.
You never know.
You never know.
Everybody starts somewhere.
Right.
So, um...
I...
Again, I don't remember exactly when it was,
but it was probably 2012 when it was down to 106 pages
was the final count that we were shooting.
But even when we went into shooting,
I was constantly rewriting whatever we were shooting for that day.
Just as ideas came to me or something felt like it would flow better,
and I had a issue that needed to be rewritten.
For example, there's a scene where we're at work
and the boss is on the conference phone,
and she's not actually in the room.
Right.
Well, it was because the actress had a family emergency
and couldn't be there.
But we were at that agency to shoot that scene
and everybody else that was there for that scene
couldn't be there the next day when she was also coming in.
So I was like, OK, we'll just shoot this.
She's going to be on the whatever the conference phone,
speaker phone, and we'll just shoot it like that.
And Donovan, myself, will give her shit about not being there.
There you go.
And it works.
Yeah, it works.
Yeah, it's Providence.
And you talk about Providence and how it plays a role.
Think about if you had shot this back then
and it from a technological difference.
Like the technologies move so fast that...
Right.
But from a financial aspect alone, how much more
you would have had to spend versus...
Let's talk about that.
What did you shoot it on?
We started shooting on...
Talk about technological advances right in the middle of it.
We shot it.
We started shooting it on a black magic cinema camera,
which shoots at, I think, 2.4K.
And it's nice.
It looks good.
And it was kind of the revolutionary camera
that was going to change the industry.
And it was nice.
It's very inexpensive, but it also had its quirks to work around.
And we shot all the flashbacks and the dream sequences on that
and some of the office scenes that we were already shooting
before Raymond and David came in.
We shot some of those on that.
And Chris, my director of photography,
was already kind of like looking at other gear
because this camera, while it was good,
I had some issues that he wasn't too happy with.
It shoots a beautiful orange hue.
But if you move too fast, the whole screen just kind of feels like
it takes a second to catch up with everything else
and all at the different time.
So it's weird.
But anyway, Chris ended up getting a Sony,
and I always forget the frickin' name of it.
But it shoots in 4K.
It's a Sony something or other.
I sound like a stupid director.
Well, you don't have to know the cinematography.
You just have to know what they shot.
Shoot that.
And great work by your cinematographer as well.
I mean, we shot a test at my house,
side by side, the black magic in the Sony.
Oh, really?
We were just like, yes, do that one.
That's the one you need to do.
That one right there.
And it was just, oh, we fell in love with that camera.
Just awesome.
How much did you have to go back and redo?
We only had to redo what we shot with the actor and actress
that we lost.
Oh, okay, good.
We kept all the footage from the black magic
because it was all dream sequences and flashbacks.
So I was going to treat those differently
from a color perspective anyway.
That's fair.
And the majority of the shots that were done in the office,
again, were all in the same location.
So I could treat those with pretty much the same color.
We did have one scene that was shot with the original Steve
that was in the office.
But it was kind of set in the movie on its own.
Like on the bookends, it was in different locations.
So I matched the color as well as I could and you can't tell.
That's magic moviemaking.
Yeah.
I'm a great colorist.
Hey, you know, there you go.
And especially since you're doing,
literally doing everything.
Yeah.
And as much of a struggle as you had getting every word to get,
let's talk about this cast, too.
Man.
Talk about how a lot of these people just kind of fell
in your lap in some cases.
Yeah.
They were amazing, so amazing.
Losing the actors and actresses that we did,
as much as it sucks in the moment that it happens,
it was also kind of a blessing in disguise
because then we were able to get Kelsey Deandre to play Jessica
and she was just phenomenal as the crazy.
She is the devil on one shoulder.
That is for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She's definitely the, yeah.
And then Donovan is the devil on his own shoulder on the other side.
So.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, you mentioned this while ago about who,
Jessica or Steve being the antagonist,
in which case it was neither of them,
but there were the visual representation of an antagonist
because Donovan was both the protagonist and antagonist.
That's what I was working towards.
I was working hard to do that.
So, yeah, when we've got one character that plays both,
how do you show that?
And I think Kelsey did a great job in showing
and inserting that into the image of Donovan
while she was there.
And Haley, the angel on the other shoulder,
did a fantastic job on the other side.
And that was Rebecca Francis.
And she was great.
She was great.
They all were.
Everybody was great.
Damon Carney plays Steve.
And he didn't like him.
Didn't like him at all.
But that means he did his job.
Absolutely.
And he's the typical guy who you hate him on screen.
But if you know him off screen,
he's one of the nicest people in the world.
Well, he rolled up and you write them
with the Q&A.
It's like, dude, I love you, but it's late and I have to go home.
And I thought that was just a door.
Kisses me on the head.
He was awesome.
And then he followed, I talked to him a few days later
and he apologized.
He's like, dude, I'm so sorry.
I had to do that.
But I had to get out of there.
I was such a Steve Dickhead mood.
I thought it was great.
And then the lady that played your boss,
she actually apologized to you during the Q&A.
I didn't really want to do that.
I was like, no, that's in the script.
It's fine.
Is there anything watching it now?
Was there any moment where you were like,
oh, I really should have left that in?
Are you at a point now with it that it's where you want it to be?
I think this is where I want it to be.
I thought about this.
And there was a question of the Q&A.
Was there anything that I didn't shoot
or that didn't have the budget to that I wanted to do?
And I think at the time I said, you know,
Q&As are weird.
You've kind of been a fog whenever you have them.
Because you are literally working on the fly, right?
Later when I thought about it, you know,
I did think, you know, there were a few scenes that we didn't shoot
because of budget, so they had to get cut.
But if we did shoot them, they would have been cut anyway.
And then also, I think,
if I had the budget to push it harder,
if that makes sense, I would have
made it a bit more violent for lack of a better word.
Because I don't know the amount of violence
that was in their really portrayed,
the amount of violence that's in real life.
But thinking about that, I'm on worst devil's advocate,
I'll go back to 4th all night.
But if I had done that, then I worry about the violence
overshadowing the content and the message
because then it's viewed as gratuitous
as opposed to really taking that message away.
I thought the balance was great.
I think that there will be people that will be like,
man, that kind of just that went a little dark.
And I'm like, what?
The argument is it kind of has to.
Right.
There are certain scenes in the film
that are told a little bit more abstractly,
the Vegas trip being one of them.
But it's told in a way like,
you know what happened.
Right.
But I don't have to show it to you
in a way that I'm spoon feeding you.
Right.
Which I really respected a lot.
And if you go out, you can read my personal review of it
at our website at www.theclubhousepodcast.com.
But thanks to this man,
who kind of motivated me,
we've talked recently about how we're posting our reviews on IMDB.
That is because of this man.
I didn't know I could do that.
Until Jason called me,
he was like, hey, would you mind?
I'm like, I don't know.
Can I do that?
I'll try it.
So yours was the very first review I ever posted on IMDB.
Because you called me a man.
You may not know this,
but your bomb city is actually the first one that yours is up.
Because I saw it on there.
Yeah.
Did I post bomb city?
Well, you may not.
You don't have to is the thing.
Because when you posted it on Donovan,
it actually went under the user reviews.
And I was able to shift it
and move it over to the critic reviews.
I don't remember how, of course.
So maybe somebody copied and pasted my review on the website.
I think you can go.
I don't remember.
It's some setting you go into
and you copy the link.
You submit the link itself.
So when Wix tells me I have a share,
that could be the share.
Maybe.
Maybe.
I'll show you.
I'll show you.
Yours is the first one I did on my own.
This is the first one I thought I did.
At the beginning of my review,
I say if there's ever a time
that we need the voice of independent film,
we're in it.
Yeah.
Because everything is so slickly produced now
and everything is,
it's just like Hollywood has become this
just, just play-to-fun factory.
We're just cranking everything out.
And some of your movies are fun as hell.
Which they are.
I mean, a huge fan.
But sometimes we need stories to be told.
And there's a sacrifice that's being made in a lot of cases.
And we said at the top of this episode
that the subject matter here
in my opinion,
from the films I've seen,
nobody has gone into it as deeply as you have.
Like you take a very real,
very raw, like this is the thing.
And I don't know that a bigger budget film
would be that daring.
Well, I think, too, that-
By the way, you want to play something else while we're talking?
Sure.
What do you want to play?
Let's play Osama Stiga.
Which means,
which means the-
I did over in Icelandic.
The opening song.
Yeah.
First song on the soundtrack.
Again, this is from the soundtrack of Donovan.
And we're going to give you all the plugs you need
because you can actually digitally download the film now
so you can watch it.
It's got kind of an early nine-inch nails feel to it,
which I dig.
Nails, depech mode,
filter.
Which, playing over the opening of the film,
like this sets the tone.
Yeah.
Like you sit down,
here we go.
Right.
But we were talking about budgets and how independent film
and the storytelling aspect of it.
Oh, yeah.
So I've seen other big budget movies covered by Polar.
But in my opinion, they always cover one or the other aspect of it.
And it's usually the mania because it's more fun.
But I never really see them hit the depression side of it
because it's such a wild gamut.
And I don't really know why that is.
But for me personally,
I felt like I had to make sure I covered both
in order to convey the ride that it is appropriately.
You know, and that was important to me.
And that also helped the pacing of the film, too.
Yeah.
Because you focus on the mania
and you're at a breakneck pace all the time.
You focus at the depression and things tend to get dragged out a little bit.
With the balance you strike in this film,
there's never a time where I found my mind wandering.
There's never a time, you know, we talk about the watch gauge
because I'm very, very conscious.
So whenever we review a film, Don will always ask me,
when was the first time you looked at your watch?
Right now, the records at an hour 15.
The first time I looked at my watch during Donovan
for a movie that's an hour 40, I want to say, what's 45 minutes?
And that's top six or seven.
Sweet.
Because the pacing on this, it grabbed a hold of me.
And it kept me focused.
And I thought about that when I was riding it,
that balance of if I hit the depression too long,
it's going to drag, if I hit the mania side too long,
it's going to, nobody's going to be able to breathe.
So that's why I did it the way I did was kind of opening in this slow burn.
I love movies, movies like that, where they start out,
and they slowly bring you in, get the slow burn,
but you know the character.
And then, all right, people buckle up, because here we go.
And that's what this does.
And we use the word mania a few times.
The production company is brilliant mania films.
Did that come before or after?
It came during my writing of the synopsis.
Okay.
The synopsis, the official synopsis, you know,
the one liner is on there, and I use that the most.
But the official synopsis is,
not of a drink, constantly waivers between a brilliant mania
and crippling despair.
And a beautiful logo too.
I love the logo.
I remember you invaded the logo.
I was like, from what I read, that's about it.
Because that logo does play a role in the film as well,
as it goes on, in a very small way,
which I thought was neat.
And the way you just kind of interweave it all together,
it just, everything has something to do
with everything else within this film.
You know, without giving it,
because I don't want to give anything away in this,
but I could tell you some stuff off air that you'd be like,
you'd be like,
holy crap, really?
Because there's some things that people don't catch,
but it's there, and it just kind of underlines everything else.
And if I tell you it and you go back and watch it,
you'd be like,
oh, that's cool.
And you said earlier,
super hero movies are great.
Right.
There is a superhero element in this film,
all the way down to the man's name is Donovan Drake.
And if you know anything about comics and superheroes,
a iteration plays a huge thing.
Stan Lee loves a iteration.
And he talks about it all the time.
Go back and look, read Richards, Peter Parker,
Scott Summers, Matt Murdock.
You know, you even go to DC, Clark Kent.
It's not literal a iteration, but it's dog on close.
Yeah.
And the reason Stan said is,
it's just easier to remember.
And then he was like,
you named him Donovan Drake.
Well played, sir.
Well played.
And you can go ahead and call me out on this one.
I didn't want to,
because I told you you could own it.
That's hilarious.
Because you were texting back and forth the week after this screening.
And you guys, after I'd sent you my review,
because I addressed that in my review,
because again, my little touch of OCD,
I look for things.
I was the kid that watched airplane like seven times.
So I could watch everything in the background that I missed before.
And you texted back and you were like,
dude, I totally didn't even do that on purpose.
And I was like, no, dude, own that.
Seriously, it's like next level stuff.
Donovan Drake.
Wow.
How do you think about that?
I mean, I had no reasons for naming him Donovan Drake.
But none of which were Stan Lee.
But awesome.
But it does tie into the superhero element
because he wants to be the hero for his son.
It's the one thing in his life that's the stabilizing force.
And we said earlier,
we did the whole, I'm Batman thing.
That does play a role in this as well.
And it just,
I could not be happier with the way it turned out.
And the one thing that kept running through my mind as the film went on.
And it's kind of weird because I didn't know this at the time.
But it's actually turned into your distribution model.
Because the thing that I heard most in my head was discussion piece,
discussion piece, discussion piece.
So kind of talk about a little,
when we went to the Q&A after the film,
where the distribution model for this has evolved into.
So, you know, for me, it was also important.
For all three of us actually,
you know, Raymond David and myself,
it was important to take this message and really do something with it.
Not just show it on screen and say,
hey, we got a cool message.
All right, thanks for coming out.
It was dead night, everybody.
Yeah, good night.
We're here all week.
Actually, we're not.
They're kicking us out in five minutes.
So it was important to do something more than the message and, you know,
give back and support others that have a like-minded message.
So with that, we reached out to an organization called OK to say,
which is a Texas-based organization that works to fight stigma
and stereotypes in mental illness and mental health,
and by making it OK to talk about it.
In the bigger picture, and not just bipolar,
but just mental illness in general,
which I thought was really neat too.
Yeah, it's not just.
And some big names behind it.
Yeah, yeah.
Mark Cuban's done a video for them in Smith.
Yeah, a ton of people.
Anyway, we reached out to them and said, hey, we're doing this premiere.
And this is our message.
And I think it's a great alignment with your message.
And what we'd like to do is donate some of our proceeds to you.
And would that be OK?
And they're like, yeah.
We can do that.
That's fine.
So in doing that, we felt like this would be really cool idea to go to different
markets and areas and align ourselves with other charities.
And do this with other organizations to help promote their message
and show our own message and jointly spark our messages
and see what we could do.
Let's pie in the sky for a minute.
OK.
You wake up tomorrow and you get a phone call.
And that phone call says, we will give you your choice of who...
We're going to give it national distribution.
What studio do you think this film aligns up with the most?
Tell you, I'm going to dig deep.
I dig deep in these interviews.
Like when you think of the final product and what you've got out there.
Because I know who I think it would be a perfect fit for.
Who do you think it would be for?
A24.
A24 is a company that's doing a lot of really great things right now.
And they're taking films that are kind of off the beaten path.
And they're giving them wider distribution.
So I'm just going to put it out there to the universe.
I think A24 is a perfect fit for this film.
A24 sounds great.
You know, I think Amazon Studios, I think they finally got their wheels underneath them.
They had some rough patches there last year.
But they've really been coming on strongly lately.
And that's another thing is like, with a film like this,
you're not strapped to, you know, I would love to have Warner Brothers behind it.
But you live in a world now where you have things like Netflix
and you have things like Amazon and you have things like Hulu.
But also to take this film into events where you can have these Q and A's
and these discussions afterwards.
And that's going to kind of segue into the Q and A that night.
What absolutely knocked me out.
Because when you and I were talking about the Q and A,
originally I was going to host it for you because we didn't know the,
the form this thing was going to take.
So what happened to that?
Here's how it went.
Because that was the last one down there.
So I have no idea what happened.
Well, I don't, first of all, I don't know that they knew.
But once I saw you sitting between your investors,
I was like, he's fine.
I'm going to sit here in the front row in case he needs me.
I'm here.
But they were so comfortable with each other
and your comfort level with them was so good.
I was like, this is going to fly.
Okay.
Because I know that the concern that you and I had talked about
was what if there's nobody has questions, you know?
Totally.
Yeah.
But we, I literally had to look at you and point at my watch
because the manager of the Angelica who we love dearly
are my huge fan of.
Absolutely.
But he was looking to be like, dude, we're going to give him out of here.
And I was like, okay, so I'm like, point out.
And people were still asking questions.
And the thing that really knocked me out was the number of people,
not just one.
When I say number, there was four.
And there was five.
And there was six.
And there was seven of people that were just like telling you
how much this film touched them because they're going through it.
Yeah.
And that was where I was like, my boy has nailed it.
You know, because people were saying, look, I mean,
and it wasn't just like, oh, this was good for me.
It was, this is what I went through.
Like people were telling their stories.
And I think that's the power of this film.
It was so amazing.
Yeah.
And you know, in the beginning, this film was about my own journey
and my own coming to terms with my own diagnosis of bipolar,
which happened in the late 90s, probably when you were in my mat.
But it was my way to reach other people in their journey
and say, it's okay to ask for help and you're not alone.
And it's okay to talk about it.
And that's what it started out as.
But then it became so much more.
It became, at the end of the day, we all have something,
whether that's a mental illness or learning disability
or a physical condition or we're Scorpio, whatever it is.
That's my brother Kim.
Me too.
We all have something that we have to fully embrace
in order to give ourselves, give 100% of ourselves
to our loved ones.
And when I say embrace, I don't just mean accepted.
I've got this thing and deal with it.
Well, there's a difference between accepting it and owning it.
Yeah.
Own and give attention to it and almost nurture it.
Because if you fight it, you're just going to lose.
Is there for you now?
Because this was something that I was going to let you bring it up.
I wasn't going to push it in your eyes.
He started talking.
I was like, OK, here we go.
Because you and I had talked beforehand.
And when I was going to host the Q&A, I asked you just like I asked you
before we started recording today.
Is there anything you don't want to talk about?
Because when I do my interviews, whether it's here,
whether it's a film festival, wherever it is,
it's always important for me to know where the line is
with my interview week.
Because I need that sense of comfort.
I want them to feel like they can talk.
And you said, I don't know that I'm cool with
saying that this is about my story.
But I was like, OK, but if you're going to open this up to people,
be aware it's probably going to happen.
Somebody's going to ask.
Right.
And it was question two.
Which, but the fact that is it easier now?
Like once that got out there, I saw the look on your face
and you were like, and at one point,
I don't think anybody else heard it but me.
But you kind of was like, you were right.
It was like, well, you know, not my first rodeo.
Buckle up, buttercup.
Is it easier for you to talk about it now that it's out there?
Or was it just, it just happened that way?
And now I'm just kind of rolling with it.
It's always been easy for me to talk about to people one on one.
I don't have a problem with it.
I'm not hiding anything.
My biggest issue has always been twofold.
One, you know, I've got two kids.
I don't want to be that guy that's viewed upon
is that crazy guy to all the other parents.
And then suddenly they don't let their kids play with my kids
because they've got a crazy dad or some weird shit like that.
And something about bipolar itself,
because there's not a lot of discussion out there about it.
That's a legitimate honest to God's concern.
And this is stigma talking, you know.
And a lot of people don't know enough about it to get past that.
And again, when you have all these projects that just kind of gloss over it
and really don't take a look at the real effects that it has,
that it's not just, you know, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm there,
that there's other pieces to it that people that suffer with this
and fight this every day are real people too.
Right, right.
Yeah.
We're not in a corner in a freaking straight jacket.
We're looking to hurt anybody.
It's just for regular people, just like everybody else,
just, you know, our broken arms in our head.
And it takes a little longer to work with that.
So the first fold is you didn't want to have to worry about
how to affect your kids.
What was the second?
The second fold was that, you know,
it just might sound a little brash, I don't know,
but I didn't want to become the poster boy of bipolar
and that overshadowed the message in the film, you know.
Because then you also open yourself up to questions that
I really don't have the authority or experience to answer.
But it's okay to say that though.
Right.
You could do.
It's you can speak to your experience.
And I say that.
Was that a concern when you decided to play the role yourself?
Was that no?
Because I knew from my experience being in this character
that no one was going to be able to play this character.
Like I could because of my experience already with this character.
You know, I mean, there's some of the greatest actors out there
that I can't hold a candle to, but I know that I knew
where this guy was coming from, better than anybody.
Because he came out of my head.
Were there any moments where you yelled cut and you just had to take a moment
and okay, I need to get Donovan out of my head for a minute
and come back to being Jason or was that transition okay for you
because it was based on your experiences?
There were no moments like that because going back to what I said earlier
about finding that superpower enabled to shift gears.
I think that's part of because of the bipolar.
I can switch gears in my head pretty quickly
and divert attention where it needs to be in a way
that a lot of other people cannot.
So I could be in that zone of that intensity of Donovan
in a scene and when we called Cut
and I had to come out as director, it was kind of weird,
but it was cool.
I could do that.
You have your family involved in the project,
your son who was nothing short of awesome.
My favorite line of the night was,
I can't use the same language that Major did.
Well, you're just like, okay, so I raised you right.
Talk about that journey too because you got your kids in the film.
You talked about how your lovely wife who was just an absolute rock
to you through this whole thing.
Talk about that journey too because it was just as much of a journey
for them just if nothing else just supports you
and keep you motivated and moving as it was for you to do it,
write it and do it.
Right.
And I couldn't have done it like this without them.
I probably would have fallen apart if it wasn't for them
and that stability of home, you know,
that idea of home being them because we shot a lot of this in my house
so it wasn't necessarily a home at that point.
But it was home with a lot of equipment, right?
Yeah.
When I told my wife I want to write a movie,
she was like, okay.
Your lovely wife, Melanie.
Yes.
And she was like, okay.
Great.
You do that.
She didn't really know where I was coming from.
But before that, you know, again,
with the last layoff and all that,
I'd been telling her I'm missing something.
I know I can do...
My job then was a designer in websites.
And I'm a good designer.
Am I the greatest?
No.
But I'm good.
But I always felt like there was so much more I could offer.
I just didn't know what it was.
And then I always felt like I wanted to write a screenplay.
Even when I was in my 20s when I was acting in the beginning.
And then thinking about coming back into acting
and having to offer something more than just an actor,
that's where it evolved to is I've always wanted to write a screenplay,
but what I write about.
And then it just hit me.
I've had this story that's been evolving for
however many years that has had so many ups and downs
and just crazy stuff.
You hear it all the time.
People say, well, you could write a movie about my life.
And this was one of those moments.
And it's so easy to write people off to say that.
But I was, you know, I said I could do this.
But I have to do it in a way that would help people.
Because I've always loved psychological thrillers like Fight Club.
We mentioned earlier Black Swan, American Psycho.
Primal fear.
Primal fear.
I love those movies, but they always end in tragedy, right?
We have this great first person look of this person
with this distorted view of reality.
And they're downward spiral.
And by the end of it, they're either off on a killing spree,
they're in an insane asylum or they've committed suicide.
But then again, you take that and you put the superhero element to it
from tragedy comes triumph.
Right.
And it becomes a whole different story.
And so that's what I wanted to do.
But also let's be real.
It's not a Hollywood ending either.
No, no.
And that's another piece of it that really I think resonated with people.
Yeah.
As you didn't skip down a road and the sun's setting
and we're going to go off and have a wonderful time.
Right.
There's work to be done.
I never rode a horse.
There you go.
So Donovan can't ride one either from it.
That's right.
But that was it too.
If I wanted to do this, I have to do it in a way that will reach other people
and help them.
But if I'm going to reach other people that are like me in a mindset,
I know that I have to do it in a very different way.
You can't just go to someone who's bipolar and say, you know,
you should really take your medication.
Because they want to hear that crap.
Right.
So you have to reach them in a good way.
You should go pound sand.
Right.
So, you know, in having that discussion with Melanie,
she was like, okay, we'll do it.
She was so supportive.
How much input did she hit?
Because there is an ex-wife in this that Donovan is dealing with,
which is nothing like your wife.
Let's just be honest.
Right.
You know, your wife's a very strong woman.
I'm a huge fan.
How much input did she have?
Was there a lot of honey?
Can you read this?
Am I conveying my message correctly?
Or was she just kind of like, baby, you do you?
And I'm there for you.
So, she is very blunt and honest, right?
So I, when it comes to filmmaking,
I like in our relationship to Alfred Hitchcock and Alma.
Okay.
Fair enough.
And that she pushed him to bigger things that he, you know,
he would get something so far and do great.
And her feedback would make him do it wonderful.
It's like I say about my wife.
It's like she sees the man that I know I want to be,
but she still encourages me.
Right.
And it supports me as the man that I am.
Right.
You know, so I intentionally didn't let Melanie read it
until I was almost done because I knew
that would be the strongest feedback.
Very nice.
So I went to everyone else and had them all.
She's like, wait a minute.
He's done.
You've read it.
Yeah.
So they are the pharmacists.
How have you read it?
And I have it.
Right.
So they all read it and gave me their feedback.
And I polished it as much as I could.
And then had the big one read it.
And then when she gave it a bag,
I took it a step further.
And then that's when it got to,
to where I knew it was ready to shoot.
So it's out there now.
Mm-hmm.
She was also in the last person's seat.
But mainly because of all the scenes
with the Jessica girls scared to death to show.
Yeah, that's fair.
You ready to do it all over again?
No, yeah.
Do you know what still needs to sleep some more?
Well, if the sleep is overrated, you know that right?
Do you know the next story you want to tell?
I've got a few ideas kicking around.
I haven't landed on anything.
And I know not to land on it just yet
because I know once I do,
I'll be super focused.
And I'll be like I was with Donovan.
I'm going to get this done.
And whatever it takes, I'm going to do it.
And I'm sure I'm only going to be like,
we're doing this again.
Jesus.
But it's like they say,
when you have a passion for something
and you love what you do,
you'll never work a day in your life.
Right.
Even though there's days you just want to jump out a window
with a glass still intact because
you're like, why isn't this working?
But in that moment where you were in a room full of people
and when I say a room full of people,
there was not a seat to be had in that auditorium.
It was awesome.
In 27th, whatever it was.
29th.
I was like, that was going to say I was wrong.
That part I do remember.
Because I remember you and I were even talking
that evening when I got to the Angelica.
You know, I was trying not to take too much of your time
because you had hands to shake and babies to kiss
and all that.
And it was a great event.
They had a red carpet out there for you.
There was, I mean, people just flowing in.
In that moment,
were you at the point where you were like,
I'm satisfied now or did that make you even hungrier
seeing that kind of a turnout?
I probably made me hungrier.
Because you're just like, I can do this.
I mean, you always knew you could do it
but to have that reciprocation.
Right.
You know, so the other part of the story is,
before it was completely done,
I'd submitted to five film festivals.
And it got rejected by every single one of them.
So in my head, before that night,
I was already thinking,
maybe I didn't make the movie I thought I did.
Maybe there just didn't lend on the levels
that I wanted it to.
So this could go either way.
I could go in here and everybody could say,
yeah, it was cute and go on with their married little way
and whatever.
But when it got the reception that it did
and at the end of that movie,
and the fact that almost 90% of the audience stayed
for the Q&A.
Yeah, they did.
On a school night.
Yeah.
And the screening was over.
I mean, it was about seven o'clock.
So it was the better by the time,
you know, we started late because people were coming in.
So by the time the screening ended,
it was the better part of nine o'clock.
And they had to kick us out of there at 10, 15.
And people were still wanting to ask questions.
That was awesome.
Yeah.
So when that happened,
that's when it hit me that I did this.
I did this movie the way I wanted to from day one.
I didn't have to compromise much.
Not to the point, not to compromise the integrity
of the story or anything.
You know, I had to compromise some shots
or some effects that I just couldn't afford
or didn't know how to do or whatever.
But that was minor compared to what I would have had to compromise
had a studio come in or had another actor played Donovan
or somebody, somebody what if scenarios that would have compromised so much
of what it was that I wanted to do that it didn't have to compromise
and it was on that screen and that with that audience reaction,
that's what hit me.
Yeah, I did it.
And film festivals aside,
these are the guys I did it for.
And that's really all matters to me.
And you made an amazing group of friends out of it.
Yeah.
An amazing network of people that's going to carry you for a long time.
You know, because some of these people are kind of rooted in other circles
that can help get this film out there.
And some of them making a name for themselves now as well,
which is awesome.
Because then you can just like, you know what?
I got to work with that person.
Right.
And are you still just so you're just kind of like, you know what?
I want to let this breathe for a minute before my next move.
Some of it too is that I'm running the website time.
I know the feeling.
You know, I do all of our social media.
Doing the press kid.
I'm doing the, everything else that has to be done.
I authored the DVDs.
I designed the DVD covers.
I just have to be an expert.
I'm going to talk about.
Yeah.
Just go all that finished.
So there's still so much work that I'm doing on this project that I'm not done yet.
And since the premiere, I've made eight dollars.
Hey.
The dollars were upstreet.
Right.
So I really need to sell a lot more of this.
Okay.
So let's, so you know, and that gets us to a good point where we can start to wrap up
because we've been at this for almost an hour and 15 minutes.
Of course.
So because you, you and I can talk all day.
Right.
You know, we have before.
Right.
So we're going to do it again.
Thank you.
So it's available for digital download now.
The soundtrack also available.
And did I see correctly that you're doing a bundle deal for both of those right now?
Yeah.
So the digital download of the movie is 1999.
The soundtrack, the score plus the songs, which is a huge freaking soundtrack.
There's a score side and there's a song side.
And the score is amazing too.
The score is amazing.
It was done by Peter Lobo, who is a friend of mine from New York.
He was actually in a band with me forever ago.
Nice.
We lost touch for a long time.
And then when I was putting together the spectrailer, I was thinking,
how am I going to get music on this thing?
Because I'm already doing so much.
I can't do music also.
And for whatever reason, his name popped up in my head.
His providence, sir.
And he's Polish.
So his last name is like, ungodly long.
And the fact that I remembered how to spell it was unbelievable.
Looked him up and he's in New York composing music for film now.
Wow.
And he was my drummer in a band.
Nice.
So I called him up and he's like, yeah, let's do it.
So yeah, he's unbelievably talented.
So anyway, the score plus songs soundtrack is 1999.
But if you buy both, it's $29.99.
So you saved $10 bucks by getting all three.
Yeah.
There's a DVD coming, which I'm very excited about.
Any extras on the DVD you want to talk about?
Do you want to wait a little bit?
There's not a whole lot.
I'm doing extras a little differently.
So because, you know, with the advent of apps and digital technology and everything,
with the DVD on the DVD, there are deleted scenes.
And there is a soundtrack preview kind of thing.
Oh, cool.
So there's three of the songs on the DVD that you can hear and see if you look.
Because obviously if you're buying the DVD, you're not actually buying the soundtrack with it because it's a digital download.
But you can have three songs off the soundtrack on the DVD.
But also, there's going to be a URL to go to with a code.
And we're going to have more bonus features online that we can update.
Whenever we want to.
Cool.
Kind of like a BD Live when Blu-ray first became a thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So there were a few scenes like I talked about while ago that we didn't get to shoot.
Because we're kind of out of time and out of budget.
I want to shoot a couple of those scenes.
But I want to wait till you finish drinking.
Okay.
Very good.
Very well.
I want to shoot these scenes, but I want to do it with sock puppets.
Why not?
I just put up a post about a Loch Ness monster siding on Facebook just the other day.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In that vein.
I saw that.
Yeah.
The way she finished drinking is I was afraid you might laugh at it.
And I didn't want you to spin.
The last thing we heard from the end of the episode.
Dude, it was sock puppets.
And you know, you have our facility if you want to record in a commentary track.
We're more than happy to help you out.
So commentary wise, right?
Nobody really watches commentary.
Oh, I do.
I'm a huge fan of commentary tracks.
Well, I want to do commentary a little differently.
Okay.
I want to do a DT2000.
I like mystery science.
I'm a C3K.
But it's DT2000 because we didn't have the budget for the third thousand.
Nice.
Yeah.
And you're more than welcome to record it here if you want to.
That's actually another subset we're going to be doing at some point is we're going to be doing some commentary tracks to films.
But we're doing it.
Our aim is to do it just as us all sitting around a table in the living room and just talking about our love for the film.
And why we love the films.
So like the first one we want to do is the stand lot, we just can't get everybody together at one time to do it.
But well, maybe we could do something like that with Donovan.
I would love to.
And again, we said at the top of the thing, there is, yes, there's an angle here.
And I don't want to give it away because I want to wait until it's out there for public consumption.
Hill, I'm not sure.
I know what the picture you sent me of the back of the DVD.
There's something about it, the description in the DVD on the back cover.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I don't want to give it away.
But it's one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my title.
That's cool.
All right.
That alone should be by the DVD when it comes out.
Yes.
Get the digital download now.
Donovanthemovie.com.
Yes.
Make sure you go there.
There's all the social media.
I think Brilliant Mania has its own page as well.
Am I right on that?
I don't keep it up.
But it's there.
Yes, there.
But numbers is numbers, sir.
You won't get much out of it.
Donovanthemovie on Facebook is their Twitter.
Yes.
And Instagram.
Yeah, I started Instagram the night of the premiere.
There's nothing out there.
That's that's it.
But it's there.
Nobody else can steal it.
It's there.
If you haven't seen this film, you need to see this film.
And I don't say this because Jason is my good friend.
I say it because it's a quality film.
I wouldn't put this out there if I didn't believe in it.
If you listen to this show long enough, you know that integrity is a big thing with me.
It always has been my entire life.
And if I believe in something, I'm going to beat the drum until the drum cannot be beaten anymore.
I'm going to be going home for a few days here in about four weeks.
I will probably take this message with me and show it to some of my friends because this is...
Read my review.
It says everything that needs to be said.
And every, absolutely, every word of my review is absolute honest to God truth.
It's a great review also in that it succinctly tells parts of the story that I couldn't tell in the synopsis.
Oh, well thank you, sir.
That I had to steal from my home for the best kid.
So tell us about this movie.
Well, let me tell you, there's paper rattling in the background from the printout.
And if we were ever to time with Hollywood, we needed to come.
We're in it now, buddy.
That's right.
And part of the reason that I wanted to make sure we did this is when you start using your EPK,
any parts of this you want to use their ears.
Awesome.
Because that's, you know, family takes care of family.
I say it all the time.
And your family to me.
Thank you.
We've known each other forever and I could not be prouder if you do.
Like, you'd absolutely crushed this.
And I cannot wait to see what the future holds for this.
I cannot wait to see, you know, you had another screen the other night and seeing pictures
up of other people going to see the film and participating and all that.
This film is everything that you need in a film of its type.
And so DonovanTheMovie.com go there like every possible social media you can.
Again, you can get the film and the soundtrack and the score for 30 bucks.
Yeah.
It's not a bad deal, kids.
What a bargain.
That's a heck of a bargain.
And what I like about the score too is it fits the film perfectly.
But I know a lot of people that when they study for things, they like to use film scores.
That's a great one.
This is why don't keep you focused.
Yeah.
I'll keep you focused.
Oh, you want to hear another really cool.
Please, please.
This is your time.
So this was another total accident that was really cool when I authored the DVD and broke down
all the chapters.
I didn't really have any rhyme or reason for chapter other than I went through the movie
and said, okay, well, this feels like a chapter.
This feels like a chapter and so forth and so on.
There were 26 chapters.
Okay.
It feels good.
Cool.
Now I've got to name them all.
Crap.
I need 26 titles to 26 chapters.
So I'm like, all right, what am I going to do?
I'm going to glance over at the soundtrack.
26 tracks.
There you go.
There you go.
So between the soundtrack and the score.
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
So every title of chapter in the movie is either a title of or lyrics from a track of the
soundtrack.
They're not necessarily in the same order.
Nice.
But they all, they're there.
They're account of four.
It's really cool.
Now, and this is incredible.
Let's talk about the digital download for a minute because I want everybody to be clear.
When they download it, will they just download it to their hard drive or will it come through
and iTunes?
Will it come through and Amazon?
So it goes through a, you do it on your computer and it's actually delivered through a company
called VHX and it is a digital download in the sense that you download the movie to your
computer and you can either watch it on your computer or you can download as a bonus feature,
which is on there.
Do you have to pay anything extra for it?
It's a bonus feature.
The surround sound version.
And you can put that either on a thumb drive.
If you're a DVD player, we'll accept that.
Or I think you can even burn it to a disc if you know how to do that and take it in your
media room.
Or just run your HDMI out of your laptop or do that.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, you can do that.
However, depending on your HDMI cable, there might be a little bit of lag from audio to video,
which annoys the crap out of me, but you can watch it in your media room surround sound.
Or, you know, I got a Roku with a USB on it.
I can just put on a thumb drive to stick it in my Roku and roll with it.
Right, right.
So once we get off the air, there's one other thing that I told you a couple of weeks ago
that the next time we're at the house, we're going to say go.
Well, there's that.
But I actually want you to see this debacle that I did about a month ago where I actually took it upon
myself as a work project.
I actually directed and produced a film in PowerPoint.
So I want you to.
It was amazing how it turned out.
It's stupid and it's insane.
But I was like, I got to show this to you because going to your film, I was like, you know what?
I have to do this work project and I was going to have a bunch of people involved.
I was like, I'm going to try to do this on my own.
And it's because I watched Donovan.
I was like, you know what?
I'm going to try this.
If this dude's going to put this out there, I'm going to try.
That's awesome.
And again, it's so bush league.
It's just like, it's T ball to your major league baseball.
But I love the way it turned out because it was stupid and it's fun.
And we're going to watch it right after we get off here again.
Jason B.
Thank you for being here.
This is our third spotlight ever.
The first one we've ever done in studio.
And we have had so much fun.
We hope you guys have enjoyed it.
Go check out the film.
Please let us know what you thought of it.
You can email me, robbertoclubhousepodcast.com.
Give me your thoughts.
I'll forward them on to Jason as well.
Make sure you check out all of our social media.
If you guys listen to the show, you hear all the plugs.
I'm not going to do all of them this time because this is Jason's time, not my time.
So, thank you again, sir, for joining us.
Thank you.
This is going to be available within moments of us finishing this out.
So, please go check out Donovan.
It's a wonderful film.
And I don't say that because just because he's my friend.
I say that because it's a great film.
So, until next time for Jason and the Empire.
I'm Rob.
Clubhouse is closed.
I'm really thirsty.
I need to get something to drink.