This week on Films Not Made, we hang with writer, director, storyboard artist and voice actor Conrad Vernon (Shrek 2, Sausage Party, The Addams Family) and comedian Harland Williams to talk about their not-made animated film Roadside Attraction — the true story of Mulligan the golf ball statue and Betty the blueberry statue, who stare at each other across Route 66 for 50 years before Mulligan becomes the first statue in history to move for love. Jeffrey Katzenberg greenlit it on the spot! But since the Gingerbread Man from Shrek and the Pee Drinking Cop from Dumb and Dumber are guests on Films Not Made, you probably deduced that Roadside Attraction is not coming to a theater near you anytime soon. We do have lots of stories, laughs and original sketches from our talented guests. Full transcript + photos and original artwork below.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

AVI: Today we have two guests. The first is my good friend Conrad Vernon. Conrad’s an animator, director, and voice actor. He’s really best known for his work at DreamWorks, including voicing the Gingerbread Man in Shrek. He directed Shrek 2, Monsters vs. Aliens, and the R-rated comedy Sausage Party. He also directed The Addams Family.

AMY: Avi, fairly recently, I went as Wednesday Addams for Halloween, and my partner went as Lurch.

AVI: That’s fantastic, Amy. Our second guest is comedian, actor, and creator Harland Williams. He’s got a super fantastic, funny podcast everyone should check out called the Harland Highway Podcast.

AMY: Welcome, Conrad and Harland, to Films Not Made. I’m wondering if you can tell us the quick pitch for this film. Like, you know, you’re in a CAA conference room — as long as that still exists— and you’re talking about the film.

HARLAND: Well, it all started when I went in to see a guy named Chris Kuser who’s in development at DreamWorks, and I sat down and I pitched him this idea about statues coming to life. The original pitch was about this girl who was left at the altar, and she was despondent, and she wanted to find the perfect man. And she saw the statue of David and put some magic potion on it, and it came to life, blah, blah, blah. So I have all these pictures of statues where the story was going to be about kind of all the roadside attraction statues in the U.S. versus the European statues like the Sphinx and gargoyles, things like that.

AVI: Like a great statue war.

HARLAND: It was basically going to be this big sort of global statue war. And Chris said, I love the idea, but it’s too big. And I could see him drifting away. So I just looked down and I had brought in all these pictures of statues I had downloaded from the internet. And sitting right in front of me was a blueberry statue and a golf ball statue. And so I was like, hey, what if there’s this? The movie’s just about this. This blueberry and this golf ball fall in love, and one gets taken away one day and the other one has to go after it and find the love of his life. And as I was pitching the movie, he goes, oh, I really like this. And I was just pitching the movie. We’re on an outdoor deck and Conrad, who worked at DreamWorks, walked through.

AMY: You’re like, can you join the meeting?

HARLAND: I said, hey, Conrad. And Chris said, oh, do you know Conrad? I said, yeah, he’s my friend. And he goes, oh, that’s great. And then I said, I’d love to get him on this. And he goes, do you think you could? And I said, I don’t know, I’ll ask him. So I called Conrad, and he really loved the idea. And then that was it. We started working on it together.

CONRAD: Basically what we pitched to Jeffrey Katzenberg to get the okay to go write the script was: a little golf ball statue is erected in front of a miniature golf course right across Route 66 from a blueberry statue in front of a fruit stand. And for 50 years, they stared into each other’s eyes. And over the course of those 50 years, they ended up falling in love. And when the fruit stand gets torn down to make room for a fast food restaurant, she gets uprooted from her pedestal and taken away, and he becomes the first statue to ever move to go find the love of his life. And the tagline was: stand still and life will pass you by.

AMY: It’s so sweet.

CONRAD: And so Jeffrey heard that and just went, go write it. That sounds okay.

AMY: So out of the gate, it was like, bam! Where are you guys situated in your career when you have this idea and go into pitch?

CONRAD: I must have been finishing Shrek 2. I think I was starting, I was kind of in deep on Monsters vs. Aliens. I was still working at DreamWorks. Harland, I don’t know where you were.

HARLAND: Actually, Monsters vs. Aliens didn’t start till about a year and a half after.

CONRAD: Oh, okay.

HARLAND: So we were maybe —

CONRAD: I was in between Shrek 2 and Monsters.

HARLAND: We kind of had this window where we had time to write it. We were hanging out every day at DreamWorks, writing the movie, but I was just doing stand-up and doing movies and doing sitcoms and all that stuff. And then next thing I know, I had an office three doors down from Jeffrey Katzenberg. And every morning I walk through the lobby and pass them. Go ahead, Jeff. Good morning, everyone. So it was real.

CONRAD: Tell him what you got him for his birthday.

HARLAND: I found out he likes Jack in the Box of all things, you know. So I went to the drive-thru window and got him, I think, $300 worth of Jack in the Box and, like, a gift card. And then Visa canceled my card because they couldn’t believe that someone was ordering that much Jack in the Box. I got Conrad a Rolls Royce.

AVI: So was Jeffrey Katzenberg the first person to read it? When you guys kind of had a draft ready to go.

CONRAD: Yep. I mean, he and the development team. We went through kind of a crazy development process. I mean, the intense process of this whole thing is the story here, because Harland and I wrote like a 10 or 15 page outline and then we’d get notes and then it would grow to a 20 page outline, and then we got notes, and then it was a 25 page outline. And then we got notes.

AMY: When does a studio want more and more?

CONRAD: Well, they were like, where’s the humor? All right. We put the humor in. Where’s the character? And then we put the — well, where’s the emotional — well, where are the stakes, you know? And I was like, well, all this usually comes in a script.

AVI: Right, right.

CONRAD: And to give you an outline of where this plot is going to go. And by the time we got — and I’m not kidding, by the time we got to a 55 page outline, Harland and I just said, why don’t we sit down and write the first act without them giving us permission? And so Harland and I sat down and we just wrote the first act, which was like a 20 pages shorter than the outline. And once we gave them the first act, they went, oh, this is really good. I like this.

AMY: Because it’s a script. That has all those things.

AVI: They wanted a quantum document of everything at the same time.

CONRAD: Well, I think they wanted a 110 page outline.

AVI: Is that typical, that, you know, your development will be like, okay, give us an outline and then we move to script? And is that how kind of the deal gets structured in these situations?

CONRAD: Yeah. I mean, basically you want a kind of a blueprint of where you’re going in the script, you know, just so everyone’s on the same page, because you don’t want to write a 100 page script, take it back and have the studio heads go, oh, I thought you were going to go in this direction and do this instead. And then you got to go back and rewrite the entire script. So you just give them — I mean, a 10 to 15 page outline is usually enough to give them the idea of where you’re going. But there’s a rumor that goes around that says studio executives don’t know how to read outlines. You know, so it always grows. It always gets more. The upside of that is you’re pretty clear on where you need to go once you start writing the script.

AMY: And are you drawing images and coming to help them understand what these characters will look like, or that comes later?

CONRAD: That came later, after the script.

HARLAND: Yeah. Although Conrad’s always drawing images. I’ve got a whole bunch of — he’s one of the best artists I’ve ever seen. And he was always doodling.

AVI: Yeah, you sent us the artwork. I mean, we’ve got so much of it. It’s super cool, you know? And I was wondering, it’s so painterly and artistic. When you do that, you’re not really saying, like, this is the style that we want the film to be in — or were you? Because it’s not like a CGI thing that you’re drawing there or painting.

CONRAD: You know, we have a whole team of artists, and it happens after you get the script done. Because what you do is you go through the script, you delineate who the characters are, and you say, here’s the main characters, here’s the side characters, here are the locations that they’re at. And we get a whole team of artists to start designing characters and doing shots from the movie. That’s not the way the movie will ultimately turn out at that point. You know, we haven’t tied it down. It’s just for inspiration. So when Harland and I would go in and pitch — we should also mention we had another partner, Rejean Bourdages, that was on this in the beginning with us as well. And the three of us would pitch it, and, you know, we’d have a room full of artwork. And Harland and Reg and I would get up in front of everybody and we would pitch the story, and they could look at the artwork and get a sense of where this is going.

AMY: How long did it take you to write the script? All in all, you went ahead and wrote the first act, and then they were like, okay, write the rest of it. And then what happened?

HARLAND: I think it only took us like a couple of months, you know, because we’d spent so much time hanging out at each other’s houses and laughing about it. And we were really eager to write it because there were so many great ideas, and we just loved the story and all the wacky characters and the adventure of it. And so we wrote it pretty darn fast.

AMY: Good.

HARLAND: And they loved it.

CONRAD: Well, we did have a 55 page outline to go off of.

HARLAND: Yeah, exactly.

CONRAD: Well, I mean, and as we were writing it, we’d get on the phone and we’d talk to each other and come up with hilarious stuff. I mean, I think — Harland, what was your favorite line? We have a giant peanut statue of Jackson Hole.

HARLAND: Yeah. And then what was the skidmark one?

CONRAD: Oh, yeah, that’s right. They got in a car and they tore out into a car chase, and I think Mulligan says, that’s the biggest skidmark I’ve ever seen. And Aart looked at his underwear and says, make that the second. Or something like that.

HARLAND: Yeah. There were times when we were just in each other’s office and writing the script physically together, too, like we’d be just over each other’s shoulders. There were times when we were sitting side by side, just writing the dialog together. It was a party — probably one of my favorite parts, because we got to be together physically. And when you’re doing that, you’re all of a sudden like a comedy team. You just see stuff in the moment live coming out of your partner. And Reg was in there sometimes, but me and Conrad were tasked with doing the actual writing. And I was slated to direct, and then Conrad was going to be a consultant or a producer or — where were you going to be on it?

CONRAD: I don’t know. Whatever.

HARLAND: I was always bugging Conrad and DreamWorks to just have Conrad direct, because he’s so brilliant at it, but he was so weighed down with, like, all these other movies. My favorite times were sitting with Conrad, like in real time and writing together.

AMY: You’re like Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond on the lot, typing away.

CONRAD: Exactly.

AMY: So you guys, you have this script now, and what do you need to get the green light within DreamWorks? Do you need a cast attached? Do you need to buy Jeffrey more Jack in the Box? Like, what is it? What’s the green light?

HARLAND: Basically, they loved it. Jeffrey — I’m quoting Conrad — did he say it was the best pitch you ever heard? Conrad and I went in and pitched, and then Conrad went in and met with Jeffrey, and Jeffrey said that’s the best pitch I’ve ever heard. They greenlit it and they gave us a release date.

CONRAD: Exactly.

HARLAND: For real, coming up to me and saying, we’re releasing this in 2010, like two years later. And I was like, wow — 11 years later and it’s still not released. Fast tracked really quickly. Like, they just loved it.

CONRAD: Yeah. It had all this momentum and it was ready to go. And then a thought occurred to Jeffrey and he said, this is too much like Toy Story. And we were like, okay, how? And he said, dead things coming to life. Because one of the things about the statues is, whenever people pass by, they’d freeze up. And so that’s how people didn’t see them — because we were thinking, okay, why wouldn’t people see these statues moving around? You know, what’s the logic?

AMY: About the rules of the universe. Right.

CONRAD: Exactly. So we were like, do they move so slowly that people can’t see them move? Or we just said, well, they just freeze. That’s what they’re good at. You know, they just freeze.

AVI: Just do this, you know.

CONRAD: And Jeffrey was worried that that was too much like Toy Story with the toys going dead, you know what I mean? And so there was a little bit of concern that it was going to be too much like another movie. So they just went, okay, well, let’s hold off on this for a while. And then they stopped everything. And then everything kind of waited and waited and waited. And then a year later, maybe two years later, they said, hey, we want to pick this back up. We’re not worried about the Toy Story thing anymore. And so we picked it back up and they said, and we have changes we want you to make. So okay, fine. And so they gave us more changes. I don’t remember exactly what the changes were. Harland and I went back and rewrote it.

HARLAND: After the whole Toy Story — no, it was, they said little boys don’t want a love story. And we were like, well, Shrek is a love story, and Spider-Man’s a love story. What do you mean they don’t like a love story? And so we just kept going up against these ridiculous notes. They were basically shooting their own foot. They have this great project and they kept stepping on it.

CONRAD: We were coming up with reasons that it wouldn’t work. And you know, after the love note thing, we rewrote it so it was less about love. And then they said — I know how it sounds.

AMY: Less about love.

CONRAD: They’re like, okay, all right. And then the next note we got was that it won’t play internationally.

AMY: Oh, yeah, that’s a no.

AVI: Too American, or —

CONRAD: It wasn’t a big enough tentpole movie. That was the third no — there wasn’t enough tentpole. So we said, okay, well, let’s make the third act giant, bombastic, you know, action scene. And we just kept going back to the well over and over and over again to all these concerns as to why it wouldn’t play.

AMY: You don’t have to name names, but was there a particular nemesis, a noted nemesis within the organization, that was, like, walking past your office, glaring at you?

HARLAND: You’re not going to believe who it was. It actually was Barry Manilow. Barry Manilow had an office, and I’m not —

CONRAD: It’s not about him. Remember? There was —

AMY: Was it a musical?

HARLAND: Or Copacabana? And we were like, Barry —

CONRAD: They wanted us to rename the blueberry Mandy.

HARLAND: It’s ridiculous. And then the final nail on what’s ridiculous is, we kept rewriting the script over and over, and then they brought in other teams of writers to take a shot at it. And after, I think it was ten years, they called us back in and said, you know what? We love the very first script you guys wrote.

AMY: No way.

CONRAD: That’s the punchline to all this. But let’s talk about this. They had, I think, three or four teams of writers come in and pitch a new story.

HARLAND: And even write a new one.

CONRAD: A new script. And, you know, while this was all going on, we had artwork being done and character designs being done. That’s why you have so much artwork there. And then, cut to ten years later, Jeffrey had exited DreamWorks. And another person came in to run the studio. And he read that script. He said, I love this first version. We should do this. And we were like —

AMY: Like, no shit.

CONRAD: I’m not kidding you. We said, well, tell us which version you read. And they printed it and gave it to us. And Harland and I were looking at it. It was ten years — I’m not kidding, to this day — it was our first draft of the script.

AVI: Always go with your first instinct.

AMY: Are you exhausted at this point? You know, are you like, that’s great, we’re done? Or are you — we can do it, let’s just do it?

HARLAND: I was exhausted. I just felt like — too many times daddy telling the kids he’s going to take them to the zoo, and it never took off. I didn’t believe anybody anymore. And we got to the point where me and Conrad were so passionate about it. Every time they told us to go again, we’d get so invested in it and put so much creativity and love and weirdness and humor, and we always delivered the gold. And then they’d just crap all over it again. And so by the end, I was just like, yeah, sure, whatever. Which is not how it should be. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t give it my all. I just didn’t believe anyone’s voice anymore over there.

CONRAD: Yeah. And, you know, I was in the middle of — I know this for a fact — I was in the middle of directing The Addams Family. And you used to come over to my office in Burbank, and we had the whole thing planned out with their new notes in it. Here’s our new ideas and here’s our new notes, we want you to put it in. And we both were just like, we gotta get this fucking thing made. And so we were putting up, you know, note cards — how do we weave this in, and how do we do this, and if we’re getting rid of that, what happens now instead? I went back and we rewrote the whole script again. And then Christopher DeFaria left.

AVI: This is the classic, you know, classic entertainment business.

AMY: We talk about this in another episode, where it’s like, we love it so much, and then they’re like, dear Amy, just letting you know I have left the company. Here’s my personal email.

CONRAD: Yeah. So he left and we were sitting there with it. And then that’s when the current administration of DreamWorks came in. And, you know, luckily — and I will say luckily — they came in, they looked at it and they said no. Yeah, we’re done. And we finally, finally got it back. You know, we finally got it back.

AMY: When they say no definitively — after they’ve dumped a ton of money, they’ve hired these outside writers, they’ve used internal staff to iterate and ideate, do you get those rights back, or do you owe a certain amount to pull those rights out and pitch it somewhere? So how did that moment land?

CONRAD: Well, it was basically in turnaround, which is — yeah, you get the rights back, you can pitch it elsewhere. And if someone wants to make it, there’s some cost attached.

AMY: They have to pay for that.

CONRAD: Yeah. It wasn’t a ton of money. It was time. It was 12 years’ time, and it was only, I think, a few hundred thousand.

AMY: Oh, really? That’s not that bad.

CONRAD: It’s not so bad. It’s usually millions. You know, things get stuck. And everyone is just like, well, we’re not going to take this if there’s already a $1 million price tag on it. But we did pitch it elsewhere. And I think the last place we pitched it, they just told us, this is so ten years ago.

AMY: Oh, you’re like, no shit.

AVI: Did you guys ever think about doing it more like an adult, in a way — ever going more in that direction, like adult animation, as opposed to more like what you said, like, you know, this is what boys like?

HARLAND: Actually, out of frustration, when we were sort of in that holding pattern, I took the initiative to write my own version of the script, which had more of an adult bent to it. I said to Conrad — I’m not sure if you ever read it or not — but it definitely skewed a little older, edgier. And I just did it because I kind of just wanted to get it out of my system. And I gave it to DreamWorks and Conrad, and they didn’t want it, and you know, so —

CONRAD: But you know, the story itself is so altruistic and innocent and lovely. I don’t know if there was any cynicism that we would be able to mine comedically out of it. I mean, there were some off-color funny jokes in it, for sure — that was a little more tricky. But I don’t know if it could be a full adult one.

HARLAND: I don’t think I’d want to do it as a full adult because it’s too sweet. And to them saying it’s so ten years ago — I feel like love never gets old. And it’s such an artful love story that I think you could make it 50 years from now, and it would still resonate exactly the same, because it’s about these kooky characters, but really the story’s about the strongest emotion in all of humanity: love. So, you know, there was a scene in Everything Everywhere All At Once where they showed two rocks sitting in the desert.

AMY: Yeah, I know, I love that scene.

HARLAND: And it was powerful. I just think, as long as your writing’s good and your topic is strong, people would resonate. Just at our pitch — you know, the first statue ever moving for love — like right there, we could see people.

AMY: It is so emotional. Right.

HARLAND: That is your starting point. That story, to me, never gets old. And I think it would do the same if you released it 20 years ago or you released it 30 years from now. I would bet the box office result would be exactly the same, because it’s so strong.

CONRAD: And, you know, like Harland was saying, all you do is just say: two statues across Route 66 stare into each other’s eyes for 50 years, and when she gets ripped up, he becomes the first statue to move for love. It’s a movie, you know?

AMY: The pitch is amazing. Yeah. Is there anything you think you would do differently looking back, or anything you could have done differently in hindsight?

CONRAD: I don’t know what else we could have done.

AMY: I mean, seems like you did a lot, which I like.

AVI: You want some more notes?

CONRAD: I’d love some.

HARLAND: Who knows, maybe someone watching this will hear it and go, oh, man, I want to get my hands on that movie and get Conrad and Harland to do this. I still believe somewhere deep down it’s too good to not be made someday. So hopefully it gets made.

CONRAD: You were asking earlier what I would have done differently. I think the only thing I can think of that we didn’t try was just finding some independent financing — which is becoming more and more common now. But when we were writing this, independent financing was not for animated movies.

AMY: Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah.

HARLAND: You know, we could probably make this with AI, for God’s sake.

AMY: Oh, good transition.

AVI: You should mention that.

HARLAND: No, I love AI. AI to me is taking all of this 12 years of bullshit out of executives’ hands and letting creative people like Conrad and me and all the other artists just hopefully do their own thing and present it to the world — and not have to go through 12 years of notes only to end up back at the original draft of the script. It’s ridiculous. And meanwhile, the world is getting short-changed a beautiful story, you know.

AMY: You can make 12 films in one year now.

AVI: Well, this is — you know, when I approached Conrad to see if he had any projects to come on the show, we started talking about the use of AI, and he reiterated kind of what you were just saying about being able to quickly prototype something to show your ideas. But also that we might be in a time where things are changing, much the same as when the industry started to go to CGI animation, and kind of a feeling there amongst the industry.

CONRAD: I mean, I keep reading in the trades and in the news, the industry is changing, you know what I mean? A lot of the words they use are “dying.” I’m not going to buy into that. I don’t think it’s dying. I think it’s a huge cultural shift. And the last time I remember this happening was in the late ‘60s. I mean — you’re old, but — I’ve read, you know, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. There was this huge transition where the movie industry’s almost completely dead in the mid to late ‘60s. And then this group of young auteur film directors — you know, Spielberg and Kubrick and De Palma and all these people — came in, created the blockbuster, and reinvigorated the industry. And it’s artists that are going to have to turn around and be the pioneers in this new world we’re going to be working in, you know.

AMY: That’s a good analogy. I like the analogy of that time frame.

HARLAND: Yeah. If you look at the history of film — you know what, 60 years ago we had black and white movies, and then we had color, and then we had analog to digital. So if people don’t think that AI was going to be the next evolution of filmmaking, they’re crazy. And, you know, when you can make a feature movie for $2,000 that looks like $100 million — like, you do the math — it’s going to let people that don’t have a shot at having a meeting at a studio, or having an agent, or having a manager… it’s gonna let the average layperson — could be a guy who drives a forklift at Home Depot who has the next Titanic or Star Wars, but never had a way to get it out — go home at night and do it himself and present it to the world. I think it’s beautiful. It’s letting art — it’s just opening another window for art to escape.

CONRAD: As long as it’s used as a tool, you know.

AMY: Exactly. We’re not replacing.

CONRAD: It needs to be communicating with other people. I think it’s great.

AMY: So, Avi, you want to take us to the next step?

AVI: Yeah. We use AI on the show as kind of a force multiplier, for just kind of what you’re talking about. And like I said, you sent me a couple of drafts of the script and a whole grip of artwork, which was fantastic. And we put some — maybe all of it — through our AI pipeline, and we came up with a new pitch deck that we’re going to present to you now.

HARLAND: Sold!

AMY: Sold.

AVI: After that, we’ll get into a trailer, and then we’re going to have a quick meeting with our own executive about the project as well, to see how they feel about it. So without further ado, we’re going to get right in and see that.

CONRAD: Oh my god, look — more artwork for this. I love it.

AVI: So we have our cover page of the deck. It says Roadside Attraction, a film by Conrad Vernon and Harland Williams. And there’s Route 66. We’ve got Mulligan, just stepping off his pedestal on the left side of the road, and Betty on the right side, the blueberry standing in front of a fruit stand. And it’s very kind of like a dusty Americana, with kind of a neon font. A neon sign. Evoking, I suppose, all those memories. I don’t know if this is anywhere near what you guys were looking at in terms of the artists working at DreamWorks coming up with stuff. We have no idea, because what you shared with us were your personal sketches and drawings.

CONRAD: The thing that this evokes, which is really nice — and Harland and I definitely had this in mind, and it’s kind of why they said it won’t play internationally, which I don’t agree with, by the way — but we wanted it to be a love story to Americana. We started the movie in the late ‘40s, early ‘50s, when Mulligan first got put up, and then about ten years later Betty came along. And we went through the ‘50s. And in the opening credit sequence we went through the ‘50s and the ‘60s and the ‘70s and the ‘80s and the ‘90s. And it brings us to right now, when Route 66 — where it used to be a bustling way to get from one side of the country to the other — has just become a flyover, you know? And it’s become desolate and it’s being ruined, and it’s just kind of letting it rust and rot into the earth. And so we kind of wanted to just say a love story to Americana with it as well.

AVI: And I think, Conrad, personally you really kind of love that — I don’t know if it’s a genre, or kind of a look and feel of that sort of ‘60s America culture, in a way.

CONRAD: Yeah. I mean, it definitely was part of this.

HARLAND: Yeah. We loved it because, you know, look at these characters. You don’t get this anymore. They are art, and people don’t make these kinds of statues anymore. They don’t look like this. They’re quirky, they’re weird, they’re funny. I mean, who was the guy that said, let’s make a 25-foot golf ball? Who’s the guy that said, let’s make an American — pancakes? And a giant apple? Like, they’re all over the country. They’re like a secret society. And we just fell in love with the weird quirkiness. And again, I think half of winning an animated movie is to come up with colorful characters full of personality. And these are already made, and you can already hear their voices and see their personalities. And they have history. They’re not just new — they’ve been standing around watching the world go by for 80, 90 years. And so there’s a real depth to these wacky, nutty characters. So they need the comfort of life. This has to happen.

AVI: You know, again, these images were generated just from your script, right? So your descriptions in the script are what drove these prompts.

CONRAD: So that’s amazing.

HARLAND: Yeah, it looks beautiful.

AVI: So we asked it to generate a logline and a pitch. The logline I came up with is: when a lonely golf ball statue named Mulligan finally learns to move, he bolts down Route 66 with two misfit road icons to rescue Betty, the blueberry statue he has loved for decades, before she is swallowed by a corporate takeover and an art world collector who’s turning America’s oddities into trophies.

CONRAD: Fandango.

AMY: Fandango. We have a great picture of, I guess, the sort of early demolition of the fruit stand. Clearly, Betty’s gone. The truck, the coming soon signs.

AVI: It’s driving away.

AMY: There’s a full moon.

AVI: We asked for, like, an elevator pitch also. And it says: Roadside Attraction is Toy Story, Always a big adventure, with the wistful romance of Wall-E — a big, funny, neon-soaked love letter to America’s weirdest landmarks. It’s a story about what happens when the things built to stand still finally want something. Connection, purpose, a second act. Equal parts absurd road trip comedy and surprisingly tender romance, the film turns faded roadside kitsch into unlikely heroes and asks, sweetly and a little dangerously, what if nostalgia could fight back?

HARLAND: One of the comments I have about that is — and this was a note we got, as Conrad said, it feels a bit like Toy Story. When is it a bad thing that your movie is compared to one of the biggest moneymaking film franchises in history? Why is that a negative?

AMY: On the flip side, AI came up with “Iron Giant meets Thelma and Louise” — and I believe The Iron Giant, made by Warner Brothers, was one of the biggest animation flops of all time. Remembered as a great movie, but was literally at the time, in like 1999 or 2000, a huge flop.

CONRAD: It’s a beautiful movie. Absolutely. It’s one of those things where the movie was so great, and a lot of people blamed it on the marketing and everything like that. I honestly think it was some weird audience disconnect — like, we don’t want to go see hand-drawn animation anymore. Something like that. But man, Iron Giant is one of the best animated films ever made.

HARLAND: By the way, when I make a movie, I want to make a movie that has something called shelf life. Not opening weekend life.

AMY: Exactly.

HARLAND: It lives on through film history. Whereas a lot of these other movies are just weekend popcorn garbage, you know.

AMY: Yeah, my measure of success is — you know, I was in a cab on the way to LaGuardia, talking to the cab driver. He said, what do you do? I said, well, I produced this documentary about Nina Simone, and he said, oh, I saw that film. I really loved that film. It was really meaningful, and gave me goosebumps. And I was like, that to me is a measure of success. And the film had come out ten, 15 years earlier. So yeah — longevity, shelf life. I’m with Harland.

CONRAD: I’m loving seeing this. So yeah, keep going, keep going.

AVI: We’re going on to casting now. Our lead characters are Mulligan, the lonely golf ball statue who chases what he wants.

AMY: Yeah. We have Jason Segel, who’s described as earnest; Jack Black, Kung Fu Panda 4, goofy; Ryan Reynolds, glib. Do any of these —

AVI: Let’s talk about anything.

AMY: Do you talk about casting? Did you have a casting director, or internally —

HARLAND: We talked about possibly George Clooney as Mulligan. A comedian named Judah Friedlander.

CONRAD: We also, for a long time, considered Owen Wilson.

AVI: Oh, yeah. That’s a range. Well, the picture here is Mulligan. He’s got his tartan cap and shorts, and he’s on the pedestal in front of the kind of putt-putt place, on the side of a road. And in the distance, we can kind of see Betty, the blueberry, across the road there. Next casting is Betty. Why don’t you take this?

AMY: So, Betty, as we know, is the blueberry. She’s the queen statue. Sweet, observant, brave — well, braver than she thinks she is, once she’s forced off her pedestal. And we have Ayo Edebiri from The Bear, who I love, who’s amazing, who’s radiant; Hailee Steinfeld, Arcane season two — it’s not what comes to mind, but, spiky; and Zendaya, of course, magnetic.

CONRAD: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, Zendaya would be great. I’m working with her now, so —

AVI: Oh, well, hey, just slip her the script, right? Yeah, we could print this out for you.

CONRAD: There you go.

HARLAND: The one we had, Conrad — the girl from My Cousin Vinny, Marisa Tomei. Yeah, I remember we wanted her. And I remember I did the Tonight Show one night, and she was the other guest. And when we went to a commercial, I told her. I said, we have this great movie, and you’re going to be the lead. And she was like, oh, wow.

AMY: It’s a blueberry.

HARLAND: She would have been a good get.

AMY: She would have been great. Yeah. That’s a great choice.

AVI: The next character is Aart — with two A’s — pretentious modern art sculpture with a fragile ego and surprisingly big feelings. And we got a picture of this kind of black-and-white man with, I don’t know, a weird-shaped head and negative space holes in him.

AMY: Sort of a Picasso-esque face.

AVI: Yeah. And the AI cast John Mulaney, or Martin Short, Only Murders in the Building — would probably be pretty good — or Keegan-Michael Key.

CONRAD: Oh, yeah, I’d work with Martin Short any time. I’ve worked with him twice already, and he’s a blast. I love him. I’d put him in anything. Any of them would be great, though — yeah, he’s got a great voice for this.

AMY: He’s hired.

HARLAND: Yeah, but — they’re both dead — but we always talked about Charles Nelson Reilly or Paul Lynde.

CONRAD: That’s right.

AVI: Oh my God.

AMY: Oh, Paul Lynde. Either of those. Yeah. Hollywood Squares cast.

AVI: Circle gets a square.

AMY: Twiney — this is my favorite character. I love Twiney. This is totally my favorite. And that’s a real thing. My husband was looking over my shoulder and he’s like, oh, I’ve seen that big ball of twine.

HARLAND: Judah Friedlander — this is the character I was thinking of for him.

AMY: Oh, yeah. A lovable ball of twine who myth-makes his way through danger like it’s destiny. We chose Ben Schwartz, who does a lot of voice work; Keegan-Michael Key again — it’s really trying to get Keegan in here — bouncy; John Mulaney again.

CONRAD: Yeah, well, Keegan-Michael Key would be great for this. We had other people. But you know what’s interesting about this character? What I loved about this character was — and Harland, you were mainly the voice of this character, which I thought you should play — but what I loved about this character that Harland came up with was that he kept telling these stories about himself. I’ve been here, I’ve done that, I went to the moon, I was at the PGA golf tournament. And it was because all the string that made him up was different pieces of other people’s lives.

AMY: Oh, that’s so sweet. I love that.

CONRAD: So Twiney would take a shoelace from a golf pro and add it to the ball of twine. And then there was a thread from Neil Armstrong’s space uniform, and all these memories. He kind of built himself and started bragging about it. And the heartbreaking thing, if you don’t mind me telling this little thing about him, was when they were trying to find their way home, Twiney actually realized that all the memories he had weren’t his, and it broke his heart. So he made a memory of his own by unwinding himself so that they could follow him back to get home.

AMY: And that is so amazing. I love that.

AVI: Why isn’t this movie made? All right. Oh, here’s our adversary, Mr. Meaty.

CONRAD: Look at that.

AMY: That would make a good t-shirt, guys. Look at that. Mr. Meaty.

HARLAND: I know, my favorite.

AVI: Mr. Meaty, the corporate burger statue enforcer. Cheerful voice, nightmare agenda.

AMY: He’s got a spatula. Yeah, in the picture he’s got a spatula. He’s literally a meat patty.

CONRAD: Hands down, Walton Goggins.

AVI: Oh, yeah. I like to cast him in a lot of our things, but this might be the perfect role.

AMY: It’s so perfect. Yeah, it’s kind of like White Lotus Walton Goggins, you know?

AMY: It’s amazing. No need to. Yeah.

AVI: Or Bryan Cranston.

CONRAD: I love Bryan Cranston.

AMY: I do, but Walton Goggins is — all right.

AVI: Well, if he’s not available. And then we pulled some posters.

CONRAD: I love it.

AVI: Going from kind of like a big streamer one —

AMY: It’s on streaming now.

AMY: The little one went to Sundance, I guess. Maybe it’s a little more random.

AVI: Toronto?

AMY: Yeah, and Toronto. And then the super-indie one, I guess, is like a band poster stapled to a wooden pole. And there’s a quote there from some genius —

AVI: That says “the weirdest, sweetest thing on wheels.” You did get some good pull quotes — “a hilarious, heartfelt road trip romance,” from The Midnight Review. But let’s go right to the trailer. All right, y’all ready?

AMY: Here we go. Here we go. Yeah.

TRAILER — VOICEOVER:

I’ve been here 65 years. Every day I watched her, and I never moved.

Wait, what?

Mulligan: Betty? I can walk!

Ice Cream: Oh, honey, statues don’t do that.

Aart: You’re leaving your pedestal? That’s barbaric.

Twiney: Destiny called, I answered.

Mulligan: I don’t know what love is, but I know what losing her feels like.

Twiney: See? Running. We’re basically legends already.

Aart: My finish is not rated for asphalt.

Mr. Meaty: Progress is delicious.

Betty: I’m not a souvenir.

Aart: I was appraised at six figures!

Chile: When love calls, you run, amigo!

Mulligan: I’m not chasing a statue. I’m chasing the only thing that ever saw me.

You can’t outrun a brand.

America’s oddities, finally curated.

Betty: I’m not your collection.

Twiney: We are so dead.

Quiet!

Mulligan: Betty!

Absolutely not.

Ice Cream: Come on, honey.

Mulligan: I didn’t know how to be brave until you were gone.

Betty: Then don’t stop.

Mulligan: If I can move, maybe we can live.

If I chip, I’m suing everyone.

[End Trailer]

CONRAD: Oh my God. Well, I think that’s amazing. First of all, it’s so good to see something done with this. That’s so cool. I think this is why AI needs a human brain.

AMY: Exactly.

CONRAD: It felt like a run-on sentence of taglines.

AMY: And also the music is pretty intolerable, so —

AVI: Yeah. So, you know, a lot more time could be spent on something like this, because we’re working quickly. And the idea is to prototype, you know — we just kind of go with it.

CONRAD: It’s great. It’s amazing.

AVI: Let me get in our exec, because this is super fun.

SOPHIA (EXEC ASSISTANT): Hey, everyone. Sophia here. Conrad, Harland, thank you so much for being here. I’m not going to pretend I’m playing this completely normal, because I am, in fact, a fan — which I know is probably not the most elegant energy for an assistant to bring to a Zoom. Conrad, “Sausage Party” genuinely expanded my idea of what animation could get away with. It felt smart and deranged and way more adult than the medium usually gets to be in public, which I really loved. And Harland, you have such a specific comic energy that the second you show up, everything feels more unpredictable in a very good way. So, sorry — that’s my weird, sincere moment. Anne is very excited about this project. And she’ll want to jump right into the story, the tone, and how close it got to actually happening. She’ll be right in.

FILM EXEC: Hey, Amy, Avi, Conrad, Harland. Great to see everybody. Hope everyone’s caffeinated. Let me pull up what we’ve got for Roadside Attraction. All right, I’m looking at the materials. Where do you want me to jump in first?

AVI: Let’s go right to the story. And, you know, we just got the ten-year odyssey from Conrad and Harland. They just got buried in notes and exec changes. If we were just kind of rebooting this now, and you’ve got the original script — just give us your feel on it, okay?

FILM EXEC: I see what you’re doing. The story’s got this oddball heart, with an arc trying to reach Betty and Pete. In a world where auctions and sideshow bits blend into real emotion, there’s physical comedy with them, but the scenes also hinge on moments like Aart’s “I’m a changed sculpture.” Here’s what I’d try: make Aart’s emotional arc clearer, especially in the auction scene. Right now, the comedy lands, but the stakes feel fuzzy. What does he actually stand to lose if Betty bolts? Do you want me to break down the next big scene, or go character by character?

AVI: I mean, Aart is a side character. Mulligan and Betty — that’s the story. I hope you got that from your reading.

FILM EXEC: Yeah. That’s clear. Mulligan and Betty are the core. The way their scenes play, especially in the funhouse and that late-night parking lot moment — you can feel the story spine when it’s just them bouncing off each other. But right now, Aart steals scenes with gags instead of revealing Mulligan or Betty’s stakes. What if you refocus the script so every Aart bit pushes their relationship or forces a choice? Want me to flag a specific scene where the focus drifts, or zoom in on Betty’s arc first?

AMY: More notes.

AVI: AI read it. Conrad, do you have anything to say here?

CONRAD: I think we lost one of our directors. Unfortunately, he just shot himself.

AVI: Listen — are you sure you looked at it? Are you sure you’re looking at the right notes, or the right script? I mean, these guys have really gone through a lot with notes, and, I don’t know, you’re just not hitting it. It’s a love story between the golf ball statue and the blueberry statue.

FILM EXEC: So, Mulligan, the golf ball statue, and Betty, the blueberry statue, are the romance at the core — not just supporting. That shifts everything. Love that clarity. If we treat their relationship as the main arc, every scene needs to drive their connection, not just the oddball comedy. Want me to dive into how their dynamic works in the auction scene?

CONRAD: Wow.

AMY: Hey — this is Amy stepping in here. I think these guys have endured enough notes, and we’re just going to go across town and pitch this somewhere else. Unless you’re going to make an offer right now — I mean, if you have money, you’re going to fund it and greenlight it for real — we’re going to take off. And do you validate? Or we’ll talk to Olivia.

FILM EXEC: That’s fair, Amy. I don’t have a checkbook on me, so I can’t greenlight, but I’d honestly love to see Mulligan and Betty’s love story get made. And yeah, I do validate. Just let me know where you parked. Want a quick market reality before you head out, or are you set?

CONRAD: No. We’re set.

HARLAND: Go for a long, long lunch. Go to Arby’s and choke to death. So, this is what we had to deal with.

CONRAD: That was so realistic.

AVI: That’s what everybody says.

AMY: I hope we didn’t retraumatize you.

CONRAD: A little bit. But, man, seeing the artwork and the trailer, that was fun.

AMY: All right.

AVI: It’s such a good project. Thank you so much, guys.

AMY: We really love that you enjoyed it.

HARLAND: This just sort of makes me mad that, with all the movies that get made these days, this one has never been made. It’s such a tragedy. If someone’s watching this and wants to help me and Conrad make it — call us.

AVI: Please.

CONRAD: So there’s the sales pitch.

AMY: We have their numbers.

AVI: You’ve been listening to Films Not Made. But if you want an even better experience, check us out on YouTube, where you can see all the new materials, including the pitch deck and trailer.

AMY: And subscribe to our Substack for show notes, more about our guests, and industry insights.

AVI: And please follow us on Instagram and TikTok, @filmsnotmade.

AMY: And of course, we have merch. Check that out, and all things Films Not Made, at filmsnotmade.com.

AVI: Thanks again for listening and watching. We’ll see you next time.

***************

This week’s episode dwells in the Hollywood - Indie crossover domain and includes early aughts director and casting lists—photographed only for inclusion in the Substack transcription below.

And now, a note from our guest Rex Pickett:

I don't have anything more to add, or expatiate on, to what I gave in the expansive podcast interview on my original script Repairman. However, I would like to amplify a bit on "Films Not Made."

Why do so many bad scripts get made, and why do dozens of truly genuine works of art, don’t?

Hollywood and, by extension, NY and elsewhere, is a totally fickle world. Films get greenlit for all kinds of reasons: they’re a current hot genre (horror, e.g.), they’re a popular intellectual property, etc. But original material is hard to get financing for. It usually takes the heft of one actor or director, and then the creatives come out of the woodwork and lobby for roles, jobs.

But, we all know that there are many films that, in retrospect, never should have gotten made. Getting a script greenlit is not a meritocracy. It’s a highly subjective and mercurial calculus. Talent is important, but only up to a point. It usually takes the excitement of one person in a position of power to set it into motion. If you can’t find that one person, it doesn’t matter what your friends or agents are telling you about how great your screenplay is, it will languish, gather dust, die in a Public Storage space in a cardboard box with all your other failed efforts.

Films Not Made is really screenplays that didn’t get lucky. An ancillary podcast might be: Films That Never Should Have Gotten Made, and then name all the names of people in power who went in with false hopes or, worse, stupidity. I can go to IMDb and look up every dud movie and in the list of the credits I can always find the one person who pushed it over the edge into production.

Sure, not every screenplay is going to end up being a great film. And there are a lot of factors: casting; undercapitalized budgets; meddling producers who don’t know what they’re doing. For everything to come together in a felicitous confluence it takes an equal combination of talent and luck, sometimes flat-out surreal luck. The truth of the matter is, unless the creator is a successful writer/director — think P.T. Anderson — the screenwriter has no power, except that which is vouchsafed him by a powerful, greenlighting director or actor. And this will never change because the one thing film has going against it, unlike literature, e.g., is it costs money. And once money enters the picture, the equation radically changes. And, sad to say, many great scrips will never see a frame of film.

FULL PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Amy Hobby: Today’s guest is someone I know back from when I spent more time in Los Angeles. After I moved to New York, Rex and I became email buddies back in the earlier days of email when I would get three emails a day. Two of them would be from Rex! Rex, at the time, you were writing a script called Two Guys on Wine and I remember you would send me excerpts from it and it was based loosely on yourself and our mutual friend Roy Gittens, who was in a band called Southern Culture on the Skids. I also distinctly remember an email where you said, “I was talking to my manager, and I think I’m going to write it [the script] as a novel and call it Sideways.”

Rex Pickett: It was loosely inspired by a trip Roy and I took up the Santa Ynez Valley. We went wine tasting, had a great time, cracked each other up, played golf, you know, whatever. The novel is much more personal, autobiographical, and confessional. I did originally write it as a screenplay, and I will admit it was Roy’s idea. He said, “You should write this as a screenplay,” you know, on the third day when we were kind of slap-happy at one of the tasting rooms.

Avi Weider: It was a script that became a book that then became a script that…

Rex Pickett: Yeah, that’s right.

Avi Weider: Amy, how common is that?

Amy Hobby: Not very common.

Rex Pickett: Well, the script became a book that then became an adapted screenplay that became a movie and is now a play, that’s playing in Riga, Latvia, and also there’s Sideways the Musical, and all songs are done—everything. I don’t have any hope for it. Actually, you can listen to them [the songs] on Spotify. I wrote the lyrics and I wrote the book to the musical. So those characters, I guess, have a certain timelessness to them.

Amy Hobby: But we’re going to talk about something that I think, predates Sideways.

Rex Pickett: It predates the movie, but it comes between the writing of the book, which was in ‘99, and the movie, which was shot in the fall of ‘03 and released in the fall of ‘04. And that’s Repairman.

Amy Hobby: So tell us your one sentence version of Repairman, like you were telling someone about it.

Rex Pickett: Well, I have a pitch. It usually takes an hour, but I’ll try.

Amy Hobby: We’d have to cut that down.

Avi Weider: Imagine you were telling it to an agent who has three minutes.

Rex Pickett: It’s about a repairman of coin-operated laundry equipment, specializing in Whirlpool. He’s a victim of fetal alcohol syndrome, which I believe is now called fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. So that’s when your mother drank when she was pregnant. And there’s all different kinds of disabilities and disfigurements that happen regardless, you know, depending on how much they drank. And he cares for his mother, whose in a wheelchair. She’s wheelchair bound and is paralyzed on the left side, as was my mother. And he lives alone. But it’s really based on my brother. And, my brother’s name is Hack and the character’s name is Hap. Happy. So I draw from real life, and my brother was telling me back way back when in the 90s, you know, all the different ways repairmen rip you off. And I said, have you ever done that—he goes, no, never and never would. And I thought, well, that’s an interesting idea, but it’s not enough. Then I was reading an article about fetal alcohol syndrome. I thought, because my brother’s battled drinking and things, and I thought, even that’s not enough. So we got disfigurement and maybe he has a stutter, the main character—but it said that males who are victims of fetal alcohol syndrome, when they go off the wagon, they’re prone to arsonism. I thought, oh, oh, now we have something interesting. But it took a while for it to build. But it was fetal alcohol syndrome and the arsonism. That to me was like the galvanic force. And I sat down and wrote it in 2002.

Amy Hobby: Okay 2002. Had you sold Sideways? Set us up in exactly 2002 when you wrote this, what was your level of industry confidence?

Rex Pickett: In 2000, Artisan Entertainment, flush with cash from The Blair Witch Project, greenlit Sideways as a $10 million movie, and it was front page of Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter [in 2000]: “Payne goes Sideways.” So how the book gets to Alexander Payne takes us to Repairman.

Amy Hobby: But Repairman came—

Rex Pickett: 2002, somewhere around there. So I got it to my agent and I got it to a few other people, and really immediately there was a fair amount of excitement about it. You know, my agent, Jess Taylor, liked it. Actually, I probably gave it to Michael London, you know.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. Who got it first when you, finished it? Who is your first read?

Rex Pickett: I’m a little unclear about this, but I’d moved to Writers and Artists and Marty Blumenthal, and she—she’s a key figure in this story, by the way. And so I think she read it. She was excited about it, Michael London was excited about it. And Michael London introduced me to an actor on Ally McBeal named Gil Bellows. And so I met him. He read Repairman. He loved it. I said, Gil, if you want to direct, why don’t you direct Repairman? He couldn’t believe it. His eyes bulged. Really? You want me to direct it? I go, yeah, if you can get the money. Fuck yeah. You know…

Avi Weider: If he could get the money.

Rex Pickett: We negotiated a deal for $22,500 for a one-year option, and that was a big deal to me at the time, because the option on Sideways was only $12,500, you know, one year and then a first right of refusal. But $22,500—I thought, “Wow, this guy’s really serious.” And so I call my agent, Marty Blumenthal. I say, okay, I’ve got this deal with Gil Bellows. I just met him through Michael London. You know, close the deal. Do it. So Marty, you know, is very excited about it. And just by chance, but unrelated, she represented the directing side of another actor on Ally McBeal named Greg Germann.

Avi Weider: A lot of Ally McBeal.

Rex Pickett: And then, like, literally a couple hours later, I get a call from Christina Ricci.

Amy Hobby: She just called your house, like your landline or something?

Rex Pickett: Yeah, I might have had a cell phone by then, but you know, one of those where they flip up. So she calls me: “Hi, Rex, this is Christina Ricci. I’m really good friends with Greg Germann.” She’d actually been on a couple episodes of Ally McBeal. “I love your script Repairman so much.” And meanwhile, Gil Bellows is starting to freak out, and he’s leaving angry messages on my ancient answering machine.

Amy Hobby: Because you hadn’t—

Rex Pickett: Because I hadn’t closed the deal. Well, you know what’s going on? And then they kept amping up, and so I’m thinking Christina Ricci, I’ve got a better chance of this getting made because that’s where the gold is. Is is a movie getting made? And so I called Marty.

Amy Hobby: So was Marty behind all this?

Rex Pickett: I told her to close the deal with Gil Bellows. And hours later—you know. I’m sitting there like, just coiling, you know, just shaking in my fucking boots. You know? I’m afraid there’s gonna be no deal. You know, they’re going to both— And then Marty calls and I said, they’re going to give you $15,000. Michael will be one of the producers. So will Greg Germann and so will Christina Ricci. Each can only $5000, and there’ll be no rewriting. So now I’m going to take $7500 less. I’m going to completely alienate Gil Bellows. No way I can go back to him now. His last message—I don’t remember what it was, but it was deservedly nasty.

Avi Weider: But you felt like this was a better choice in getting the film made.

Rex Pickett: Absolutely. As Amy said, Christina Ricci was hot 20 years ago in the indie film world.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. And the big actress calls you up directly. That feels like a real commitment, right?

Rex Pickett: Except I have a meeting with them. Christina Ricci is not in the meeting. Her head of development is, who had no credits I found out later.

Amy Hobby: How old is the head of development?

Rex Pickett: You know, oddly enough, probably in her late 30s or early 40s.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. Okay. And she spoke on behalf of Christina Ricci?

Rex Pickett: That’s right. So she was there, Michael London was there, and Greg Germann’s there. And right off the bat, they start talking about what it needs in rewriting. So finally, you know, I did do a couple drafts. Maybe I threw them a couple bones, you know, whatever, keep them happy. But he loved the script. He thought it was his Slingblade. He wasn’t going to act in it. He was going to direct it.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, well, it’s also smart for a first time director to not act in their first film. It takes an exceptional talent to be able to do that.

Rex Pickett: And then he and Michael London basically flogged it around town. And they got it to big actors at that time who might have been right for the role—Joaquin Phoenix, Nick Cage, I mean, the list went on and on. I would hear about them. But then, they were like, who’s directing? Greg Germann. Then they wanted to see the short he had made and he would show it to them, and it was like, we’re in on the script, but we’re not in on you.

Avi Weider: Not in on the director.

Rex Pickett: It was like, goodbye. And I would hear about the rejections. I would hear about this, but I knew exactly what was happening. They didn’t want Greg to direct it because they saw the short, and they thought it was embarrassing. And it was.

Amy Hobby: Let’s go back a little bit. We still don’t know— our audience still doesn’t know what the film is about.

Rex Pickett: So it’s loosely based on my brother.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, based on your brother.

Rex Pickett: This guy who’s in his 30s. Who’s a victim of fetal alcohol syndrome. He has eyes spaced wide apart. He wears high magnitude spectacles.

Amy Hobby: Yeah.

Rex Pickett: You know, he looks like somebody who’s going to be bullied and persecuted, which is not, oddly, what the film ultimately becomes about. He has a mother who had a massive stroke, like my mother’s, full left side, paralyzed, you know, in a convalescent home, who he takes care of. And remember Matt Dillon, because that was an interesting phone call. And what happens is he has, like, 50 leasing accounts, meaning 50 pieces of equipment out there that he pulls money from, but he also repairs too. So, it establishes him in his life. He lives alone. He drives his red truck which he’s very proud of, you know, [on the truck is] Hap Rosecrans coin op repair and leasing. So the leasing is that he owns the machines.

Amy Hobby: And he surfs.

Rex Pickett: He surfs. That’s right. Well, he dreams of surfing. He’s clearly unathletic. So surfing is part of my background. I grew up in San Diego. It takes place in Ocean Beach, which at that time was, you know, a pretty sketchy beach community. And my brother lived actually two blocks from the ocean. So I took it from him and his totally fucked up friends that he had, who did various kind of odd jobs and drank a lot. And when we meet Hap, he’s sober and we don’t notice. We see him on his repair route. We see what he does. He has a stutter, and he shows up at his parole officer. And the parole officer is just kind of chit-chatting with him. “Hap, how’s it going?” And at one point he leans forward, the parole officer, and says, I love this moment, because I’ve been waiting for this moment. “Have you lit any fires lately?” What we learn in that scene is that he has gone on benders and San Diego has a lot of canyons. You know, it’s pretty overdeveloped now. And it has dry Santa Ana winds. And so when the Santa Anas come out so do the arsonists.

Amy Hobby: Well, I think we know a little bit about more about fires now.

Rex Pickett: Yeah. That’s true. So we know that he has this criminal past, but he’s gone straight. So that’s that’s the setup. He then also has some financial problems with the Internal Revenue Service. And there’s this huge leasing company I call "Aardvark, Repair and Leasing. They probably have 500 pieces of equipment out there. And the head of the business is a guy named Greg. Think kind of a slightly younger Jeff Bridges or something. And he knows that Hap needs money. So he wants Hap to come to work for him, which Hap’s willing to do. And the guy’s already got three other repair guys, but he wants Hap’s leasing accounts and Hap doesn’t want to give those up. But ultimately he capitulates and gives it up. And now he goes to work. Bear in mind he only repairs coin op washing machines. You know, commercial machines that would go into apartment complexes, into locker rooms, that’s all he repairs. And also laundromats too. He knows these three guys because they all know each other’s community. And he knows they’re they’re corrupt and they’re fuckups. Well, these guys are skimming and Hap is not going to skim, so they start to basically bully and persecute him. His honesty is being tested. And also bear in mind it’s whether he’s going to cave in and just start drinking because he can’t take it anymore. And bear in mind, one of the things the parole officer said to him—Hap, I just don’t want to turn on the news one night and see a subdivision going up in flames.

Avi Weider: The character of Hap is, I mean, that’s the whole movie. I mean, it’s a super rich character. You know, you’ve got all this work you’ve done to to build it up, but when did it really just kind of topple down?

Rex Pickett: In all fairness, Greg Germann and Michael London, they kept slogging around town, and then the 15 minute donkey movie would come out, and that was it.

Avi Weider: So were you in conversations with Greg? Like, maybe you shouldn’t be the one to direct this.

Rex Pickett: Unlike Amy and some really successful people, I’m very bad at confrontation.

Amy Hobby: I’m going to say something on the directing front. So, I was burrowing in my closet. The idea for this show started because I was cleaning out my closet, and I realized I had not made more films than I made. But so in the infamous closet, I found this, which says “Repairman Directors,” in a pink folder.

Avi Weider: We might have some answers.

Amy Hobby: So I can’t remember when we had a conversation about it. But I do have these, director lists, which are all, look, clearly we talked about it because there’s crossing out and highlighting. There’s people like Stacy Peralta, I guess because of the surfing thing. Thomas McCarthy of The Station Agent fame, in that era. Gavin O’Connor, who had just directed Tumbleweeds, very strange list. Mark Ruffalo, who was just starting to direct at that point.

Rex Pickett: At that time I’d started I’d become really good friends with a woman named Pamela. And she had directed a short, this five minute short, but she had a little cachet. She’d sold something to HBO that never got made, but, you know, she was young, you know, I just loved to talk to her. She loves film, I love film. So I was like let’s co-direct this.

Avi Weider: So you were now set to direct or co-direct the picture co.

Rex Pickett: Co-Direct it with Pamela. And she was now in meetings with me at Untitled. And now we got in at First Look.

Avi Weider: And you had funding now?

Rex Pickett: And they agreed to greenlight it for $2.5 million, shot in four weeks on 35 millimeter. And I’m thinking that’s going to be pretty brutal.

Avi Weider: That’s going to take some years off.

Amy Hobby: Pretty brutal.

Rex Pickett: In the digital day with small crews and LED lights, you know, I mean and no generators and, you know, fire marshals and whatever, maybe—

Amy Hobby: Made on location presumably. Right. It would have had to be on location.

Rex Pickett: Yeah. You’re right Amy—it’s different than a soundstage. It’s different than, you know, if you take, say, Sex, Lies, and Videotape—the brilliance of that film, aside from the fact that, you know, it’s a great film, is that he shot in only five locations in the same town.

Amy Hobby: Exactly. And I remember the script, you know, Repairman had— a part of it was the town. The town was a character, right?

Rex Pickett: Yeah. It was. And so it’s a lot of locations. So even if you’re shooting in digital it’s still company moves, you know. And those take time. My agent called and said, you know, we’re drawing up contracts, Rex, but they want Pamela excluded as a co-director.

Amy Hobby: Really? So what was their reasoning?

Rex Pickett: I’ll let you draw your conclusion—I don’t want to say, you know. So, Pamela had never made a feature. I’d made two features. Obviously, I had Sideways. She didn’t have a Sideways. She’s a woman. Yeah, she, she’s a Black woman. I don’t know, Amy. You draw your own conclusions. I never was told that, but they, they just canceled the contract. That was it. And actually, First Look went out of business within two years. But it was officially for about a week there greenlit as a $2.5 million film with lawyers drafting contracts.

Amy Hobby: After all these years. You know, it sounds like the project still is relevant. Repairman.

Avi Weider: It’s still a great character. I mean, the setting, all of it. We took everything you sent us, you know, the script, and you even had sent a pitch deck. This is what we do on the show. We take this stuff and we put it through an AI model that we have, and we ask it to analyze all this stuff and help us create a new pitch deck and a trailer, and it’s all done with generative AI, and we’ll get your hot take on what you think about AI as well as in this process, of course. And so now I’m going to show you what—what Repairman could look like if you were perhaps thinking of going out with it today.

Amy Hobby: Now we have some disclosures. Films Not Made uses AI to reimagine movies that were never produced. All development materials, pitch decks, trailers and posters are generated. Any likeness of real people are speculative and synthetic. No real actors participated in their creation. This is cultural commentary, not endorsed by any individual or studio referenced.

Amy Hobby: No! Is that Paul Dano?

Avi Weider: Yes. So we’ve got—

Amy Hobby: Inside joke Rex. Paul Dano’s in every project for some reason. AI loves Paul Dano.

Avi Weider: We have a full-bleed image of Paul Dano in a kind of sun-washed laundromat looking, I don’t know, hapless, depressed, sort of morally confused. I’m not sure.

Avi Weider: But the logline that, and again, this is all generative— So after reading the script, reading everything, AI came up with this logline, which is: “A gentle, developmentally impaired repairman with a dangerous past struggles to stay sober and decent while navigating corrupt coworkers, a broken mother, and a fragile new love that finally gives life meaning.” What do you think? Does that sound like a bit of coverage that you would agree with?

Rex Pickett: Yeah. I mean, you know, it could be rewritten, but for AI, you know, it’s reasonably, you know, sound.

Avi Weider: Moving on that the style that, that the model picked would be, it’s what it calls melancholic fairy tale realism, which is new—

Amy Hobby: New genre! New genre alert!

Rex Pickett: I can’t even come up with that myself.

Avi Weider: I know it’s a fairy tale, but it’s real.

Amy Hobby: It’s just a picture of, Haps not even in this picture. It’s just, rehashing the laundromat photo and, bags of coins and a table.

Avi Weider: Yeah, it must be bags of coins. It says a US Mint on the bag.

Rex Pickett: The bag would definitely not be that big.

Amy Hobby: It’s a huge bag, like.

Rex Pickett: Your wouldn’t be able to carry it, let’s put it that way.

Avi Weider: Yeah. The style description is it’s sun worn realism where everyday working class spaces feel slightly mythic. Natural light rules pale, bleached mornings and soft amber afternoons, creating a world that’s real but tinged with a quiet glow. Camerawork is intimate and handheld, with shallow depth of field, making Hap feel both small and central in oversize spaces. Textures are tactile rusted metal, frayed canvas salt scuffed windows, caked concrete. Moments of emotion gain gentle poetry, surf light flickers like inner weather. Neon buzzes like nerves. Fire glows. Let dangerous comfort— really went off on this. It’s a grounded, imperfect world, but every frame carries a soft ache of longing. I think it’s a bit overblown, but.

Rex Pickett: It’s purple prose to the max.

Avi Weider: Yeah, there you go.

Rex Pickett: I always thought that the film would start with relatively wide angle lenses, but as the world closes in on them, let’s say you start with 35 millimeter, you go to 50 and that’s a world really closes in on you’re not only using 50 and 100 millimeter lenses. And then at the very end when you’re back, everything is small and you’re out and I go back out to 35. So if you want to add that.

Avi Weider: I like that. Yeah, I would have put that in for sure. Here’s—here’s the casting. Hap Rosecrans: gentle, developmentally impaired repairman whose earnestness, loneliness and stubborn moral compass make him both vulnerable and heroic. And Amy, you can see —

Amy Hobby: They love Paul Dano! Every photo in this deck is Paul Dano. Paul Dano in front of his red truck.

Rex Pickett: Well, you know when I look at him, I think with the right pair of high magnitude spectacles, I think—

Amy Hobby: He’s described here by AI as precise, aching and internal. He also has so many coins in the back of his red pickup truck. He’s about to drive off to Mexico from San Diego. He’s parked near the pier because he thinks he’s going surfing, but I don’t see a surfboard.

Avi Weider: Yeah, he’s got his old, red pickup truck. So the character of Greg, how do you pronounce this name?

Rex Pickett: Halonen.

Avi Weider: Halonen. Greg Halonen. Charismatic.

Rex Pickett: I use names, that are street names from growing up in San Diego or from the shore. And I had a friend named that, so—

Avi Weider: Okay. Well, the the the first choice for this is, John Hawkes.

Rex Pickett: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Amy Hobby: Great actor.

Avi Weider: Yeah, yeah.

Amy Hobby: Coiled, charming and ruthless.

Avi Weider: Right?

Rex Pickett: Or as I wrote it, it now might be too late, but I always thought of Jeff Bridges circa 50 years old or something. You know, he’s got that Southern California vibe to him.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. Yeah.

Rex Pickett: This is a character who, I just he’s just so stereotypically Southern California. He, he comes across as your best friend, slap you on the back, he’ll have a beer with you, but he’s deep down, he’s corrupt. And he’ll he’ll stab you in the back.

Avi Weider: He’ll screw you. Here’s Maria, shy, hardworking, immigrant woman whose grief and resilience make her the lone source of warmth in Hap’s fragile world.

Rex Pickett: But I always thought of Maria as being somebody who maybe, maybe, maybe not. We don’t know. Crossed illegally. And she goes to work at this place called Surf Wash. And it’s a cool laundromat right by the ocean. But it’s kind of small. And the owner dies and, and at the end, he he actually gives it to her. She’s a single woman and Hap has a relationship with her. And he ends up putting in all new equipment in or whatever. It’s a little bit of a happy ending. And his mother doesn’t want to be in the convalescent home. She wants to be out in Palm Desert. And so Hap gets her out to Palm Desert.

Amy Hobby: That’s nice.

Rex Pickett: It kind of creates these tiny victories for these small people, you know?

Amy Hobby: But, this is a nice photo of, Catalina Sandino Moreno, with some folded laundry in her arms, in a sort of magic hour shot.

Avi Weider: Chicken man. Oh, look, here’s another, favorite of AI.

Amy Hobby: Scoot McNairy, AI loves him. He’s in all our decks.

Rex Pickett: Yeah.

Amy Hobby: From Oppenheimer to—

Avi Weider: Wiry hair trigger bully whose insecurity curdles into gleeful cruelty.

Rex Pickett: Yeah. Well, again, just really reaching for the polysyllabics. But I would agree with that.

Amy Hobby: Nervy, petty, explosive.

Rex Pickett: He’s based on a real character from way back when one of the friends of my brother, you know. Anyway.

Avi Weider: Here’s I guess another of the crew, Wispy Bearder. I love the names.

Rex Pickett: If you were to have plugged the synopsis without any names or whatever into AI, you never would have come up with this. So that’s the one thing AI couldn’t do. So that’s not again to brag.

Amy Hobby: Yeah Wispy Bearder.

Rex Pickett: It can take though, from what I gave you. My brother and his friends, they all had nicknames for each other that weren’t their real names. They just could not call each other by real names. They’d just have nicknames each other. Often demeaning.

Amy Hobby: I mean, Walton Goggins, you know, he’s hot right now. He’s all over my Instagram feed.

Avi Weider: Well, he just did the White Lotus.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. He is a great, great character in White Lotus. Great character arc. AI describes him as sly, charismatic and serpentine. He’s in a picture with I guess that’s him leaning against a van, with some—

Rex Pickett: Washing machine drums. So, you know.

Avi Weider: Those are the drums.

Rex Pickett: But actually, these are all limited choices, and they’re really good ones.

Amy Hobby: I mean, they’re actually good choices.

Avi Weider: Yeah, I think it’s pretty good with the casting. Mrs. Rosecrans, a bitter, stroke-disabled woman whose neediness, cruelty and flickers of tenderness define Hap’s deepest wounds. And first up in the picture here, it’s Jacki Weaver.

Amy Hobby: So it’s a picture of, I guess, Jacki Weaver in a wheelchair. And, it looks like a convalescent home hallway, what’s on the ground there?

Rex Pickett: Its probably an assisted living facility.

Avi Weider: No, those those are like a bouquet of dead roses, I think.

Amy Hobby: Oh, right. I thought it was a stuffed animal.

Avi Weider: No. It looks.

Rex Pickett: Oh, you’re right. I think at one point she Hap gives her flowers or something. She just throws them down. She’s got a drinking problem.

Amy Hobby: June Squibb. That’s a good one. Frances Fisher.

Rex Pickett: They would have fun with this role, for sure, you know?

Avi Weider: Here’s some storyboards frames, that we asked it to do. And again, it just picked them itself. I didn’t cue it to do any particular scene. I said, just give me—

Rex Pickett: This is really interesting. I just have to interject quickly, parenthetically. When I wrote for Repairman, I mean, there was real excitement over the screenplay, and I just always thought this was this was just one of the films that, you know—I mean, look, I’ve written over 35 screenplays, but this is just one that I would pull out to show people, because I don’t think it’s dated. And I think it really underscores even issues that seem to be highlighted today. And you’re actually bringing it all back to me imagistically. I forgot these characters’ names, you know, like the Wispy Bearder. I like to think that I haven’t lost it, you know, because I’m still in Sideways Burgundy right now, but this is bringing back a script that I’m just fond of because, it’s not my past because I lived north of Ocean Beach, kind of more Del Mar up by the University of California, San Diego, where I went to school, but this is this is my brother’s world— Hack. And so it’s really kind of a tribute to him. And that conversation about honesty, you know, he’s just one of these guys. It’s just going to go one day and people are going to, you know, forget that he never, you know, put in a used part instead of a new part. And charged you for the new one. You know he clings to this honesty and I think if there’s one thing missing from the whole pitch deck, it’s how he clings to that honesty.

Avi Weider: I like this discussion about, like, what AI picks up on and what it doesn’t pick up on in terms of, you know, subtlety and what you’re really interested in projecting in it.

Amy Hobby: All right, let’s watch the trailer Avi.

Avi Weider: That’s the deck. So now what we have is—

Rex Pickett: Did a machine read the screenplay?

Avi Weider: Yes. Absolutely. Yes. We put it right. Read the screenplay. It read the Deck. Yeah, everything.

Rex Pickett: Does it have notes for me?

Amy Hobby: We’ll get to that.

Avi Weider: There is plenty of notes. There’s a lot of notes.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, we aren’t doing any work here on this show. We just let the machines do it. We just, like, sit back and talk to people.

Avi Weider: Yeah. That’s it.

Amy Hobby: Okay Avi. Let’s see the trailer. It’s my favorite part.

Avi Weider: Everyones favorite part. Here we go.

TRAILER STARTS

HAP V.O.: I just fix things.

OLDER MAN: You heading out already?

HAP: Yeah.

MARIA: That one’s been broken for weeks.

HAP: It’s the belt.

MARIA: You should be more careful.

HAP: I am.

GREG: You don’t get steadiness like this anywhere else.

HAP: I didn’t ask for it.

BULLY: Hey, you still fixing things for free?

HAP’S MOM: You always make things harder than they need to be.

GREG: Money is late.

HAP: I’m working.

BULLY: Hey, where are you going? Stay right there.

HAP V.O.: Some things don’t get fixed.

TRAILER ENDS

Amy Hobby: I have to say, that was one of the worst trailers that AI has made.

Avi Weider: Yeah. It wasn’t so good.

Amy Hobby: Voice over. Yeah, the voiceover is—

Rex Pickett: And also that little that music in the background.

Amy Hobby:: The music’s terrible, terrible. Like a little tinkling sound.

Avi Weider: Yeah. This one didn’t quite hit it out of the park.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. Very stilted like shot, shot.

Avi Weider: I think it’s kind of a quiet story in a way. And I think maybe it was struggling with it. Part of the whole exercise and interest in this is not to probe it too hard because I’m particularly interested in what it does on its own. Rather than try to guide it for complete perfection. The failure of it as a trailer is interesting.

Amy Hobby: Kind of interesting. I think Avi, it’s because a lot of it is very internal, right? It’s it’s from this character’s point of view and it’s internal and maybe it’s picking these scenes, but it’s not, somehow grasping Hap’s internal life or something.

Avi Weider: I mean, I think it I think it wanted to it wanted to do a lot of VO which I did tell it not to do a lot of, so it opted for silence. It could have been a much more video heavy thing, which maybe we should have went that way. But again, the shot selection really wasn’t that different. I did iterate it, you know, at least a couple times. It just felt like this was it. I think it kind of saw it as a portrait, and it’s this guy and it’s really about this tone that it was trying to set. Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not trying to be an apologist for it at all. It is what it is.

Rex Pickett: I think it’s interesting. I think when you go from a pitch deck where you can just have actors and have just a picture or whatever to an actual trailer, you’re you’re in the world of moviemaking now. Yeah, there’s a trailer. And I think what you want is, oddly enough, for a trailer, not that I would ever cut trailers, you want a little three act trajectory in the trailer. I mean, it’s great that you guys are doing it. I mean, it just evokes so many memories.

Avi Weider: Wait for the best memory of provoker of all— is about to join us on this experience.

Amy Hobby: So we have a pitch meeting. We can pitch the script again, Rex.

Avi Weider: Right now.

Amy Hobby: We’re going to pitch it together.

Rex Pickett: So you don’t have to deal with my agent, Amy.

Amy Hobby: So I’m bypassing all of it.

Rex Pickett: Yeah, you can just send them a dollar.

Amy Hobby: Yeah.

Rex Pickett: What, is he going to give me notes?

Amy Hobby: He can.

Rex Pickett: No, no, it’s all right. I wouldn’t go back into the script unless somebody paid me. I’ll tell you that.

Avi Weider: We’ve given him everything, just so you know. And he has it all already, including this new deck and the new trailer

Amy Hobby: Or he might just have coverage, I don’t know.

Olivia: Hey, folks. Olivia here, Finn’s assistant. Finn’s wrapping up a meeting, but he’s been talking about this project all morning, and he’s eager to jump in.

Finn: Hey, Amy. Hey, Avi. Hi, there. Good to meet you. Give me one second. I’m pulling up the pages and the deck.

Avi Weider: Just give us, like, a quick hot take on what you think about the script. Just—script only, the story. How do you think it’s fitting into today’s world?

Finn: So, quick hot take. Repairman is, at its core, a quietly brutal portrait of what decency costs in a rigged world. The kind of film where Hap Rosecrans, this developmentally impaired coin-op repairman, is just trying to hold on to honesty and routine while every system around him grinds him down. The story doesn’t chase after easy redemption or dramatic catharsis. It’s about endurance and the toll of staying good when there’s no reward for it. Right now, I think that lands in today’s world, maybe more than ever. There’s something sharp about watching someone try to do the right thing in an environment—Ocean Beach, the repair shop, the Aardvark crew dynamic—that feels both specific and universal. It feels timely in how it tackles dignity under pressure. And the scenes with Hap’s mother, or Maria at Surf Wash, are especially strong, giving that cost real, lived-in weight. My one concern is the script’s restraint is a strength, but it risks getting lost in the crowd if it doesn’t stake out what makes Hap’s decency urgent for us now, not just tragic. The question I’d press in the final stretch, after the violence, after Maria leaves, when Hap ends up alone in the desert—what’s the feeling? You want the audience to walk out with some quiet devastation, or some stubborn kind of hope? Rex, where do you want to live with it?

Rex Pickett: You know, I like the fact that Hap—kind of like in a western, because the scene where they drag him along the beach is right out of a western, where he’s hogtied to a surfboard, he’s walking off and the sun is bleeding down. And you have an Ennio Morricone’s Whistling Man, or whatever it is. And I just love that moment. It just pounds hard, you know, that he’s kind of this lone hero, you know, and that’s kind of what I was going for. I’m not trying to be defensive. I just was going for the fact that he’s gone his own way, a lone hero. And he’s got Maria and her Surf Wash and everything, but we don’t know what his future is. It’s uncertain, you know? But he’s come through with dignity. He’s done the right thing at everything, as well as taking down those Aardvark fuckers. You know? But I think that very last thing, with an Ennio Morricone—and you see Hap silhouetted against a blood-red sun, you know, sinking on the horizon. And you have to listen to the song, because it literally is a powerful moment. About a minute in that song just goes boom and it’s right out of the Sergio Leone film.

Amy Hobby: Yeah Finn. That make it seem like a bigger film to me right?

Finn: Yeah, it does. That’s exactly the shift I’m feeling. When you talk about silhouetted against the blood-red sun, more clearly swelling, it’s not just small-town grit anymore. You’re pushing the movie into mythic territory—a kind of working-class western, right? The scale is emotional, but that final shot makes it visual, almost operatic. The trick is that last image reframes the whole story. It says this isn’t just a sad slice of life. This was a showdown, and Hap’s stubborn decency is almost a heroic act—that can make the movie feel bigger and more urgent. Not just a character piece. So for the rest of the script, do you lean into that? Are there visual or emotional setups earlier? Little Leone touches—the way he faces down the Aardvark crew, the way the surf shop feels like a frontier town—that earn you that final mythic image? Or do you want it to come as a surprise, this one operatic punch at the end?

Rex Pickett: I like the word mythic. I think I was going for that in that final image, because you really think about—as is, he’s obviously damaged. He’s found this little niche, but he has to make a huge compromise. And he knows where he’s going into. He’s going into the den of iniquity. And that’s Aardvark.

Amy Hobby: So Finn, it’s an operatic western. What do you think the budget could be? Are you are you guys interested if we get the right talent attached?

Finn: With the right cast—someone who gives Hap that mythic weight without needing a movie-star salary—and a director who lives for this kind of emotional scale on a budget, I’d say you’re in the low single-digit millions, maybe 2 to 3 if you keep your days tight. If you start stacking the talent, or try for period authenticity everywhere, that number floats up. Amy, Avi, does that sound right to you, or are there financing angles I’m not factoring in?

Amy Hobby: Yeah. Listen, Finn, here’s what I think the character of Hap is incredible. It’s a great opportunity, for an actor. So we think we’re going to get a really good actor for a really good price point. So I think you’re right. Two and a half to three. No problem. So are you guys interested? We’d like to close this deal today. We’d like to walk out with a greenlight Finn What do you think?

Finn: Is it a green light for me? Creatively, yes. I’m in. I think we’ve got a film that’s timely, muscular and has real emotional punch. The only thing I’d push for is to make sure some of those Leone vibes are seeded earlier in the script, so the ending doesn’t feel like a left turn, but a culmination. Amy, Avi, are you ready to put the stamp on this, or do you want to see a pass that threads in a bit more of that mythic tone before you call it?

Avi Weider: I’m in, I don’t know.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, we can do it.

Olivia: Oh, but hey, folks, Olivia again. Finn had to run straight to set, and today was a hard ten-minute window. I’ve got the thread, the notes and everything you sent, and I’ll make sure he picks up right where he left off. Drop anything you want him to respond to next, and we’ll get you back on his calendar soon. Bye.

Amy Hobby: He left right when we were getting a green light. We were, like, 30 seconds away from a $2.5—We were getting the first-look deal back for Rex with whoever he wants to co-direct with.

Avi Weider: But, you know, some interesting notes there. You wanted notes? Those are some notes.

Rex Pickett: They really weren’t, you know, minor, you know—

Amy Hobby: Requires a rewrite,Rex, you got to go back in and seed those operatic moments.

Rex Pickett: But Repairman has gone through a lot of—it’s gone through a number of drafts. I think after Gil Bellows went out, I went back to the original. After Greg Germann, I went back to the original, and that’s what I always do with my work if somebody isn’t in and I’ve made changes according to their aesthetics.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think, this has been a very productive podcast. We almost have a greenlight. We’re practically greenlit.

Avi Weider: Before we got hung up on.

Rex Pickett: I’m heading to the BMW dealer right now.

Avi Weider: Amazing.

Amy Hobby: See, you should have stuck with me, Rex. I would have pushed through that greenlight.

Rex Pickett: No Amy, I’ve always admired you. And that was totally my agent’s fault. And agents are trying to sell you and just do a deal and everything. Yeah, when you’re a failure, no one wants to know you. And when you’re success, everyone wants to hustle you, not want to be your friend. They want to hustle you and they want to leverage you. And I’m bad at that, you know? And if you turn it over to agents, they’re not necessarily on your side either. And they just want to do deals. And, I wish I’d made some different decisions back then, to be quite honest with you. Not to be, you know, but—

Amy Hobby: You never know. You know, you might have made different decisions and ended up in the same place. It’s hard to know.

Rex Pickett: Who knows—

Amy Hobby: Well, thanks a lot. Thanks, Rex, for coming on our show.

Rex Pickett: If you have any work to do you need to work on that trailer. Yeah, that’s a bit of a clunker.

Avi Weider: You’ve been listening to Films Not Made. But if you want an even better experience, check us out on YouTube where you can see all the new materials, including the pitch deck and trailer.

Amy Hobby: And subscribe to our Substack for show notes, more about our guests and industry insights.

Avi Weider: And please follow us on Instagram and TikTok. As Films Not Made.

Amy Hobby: And of course, we have merch. Check that out. And all things Films Not Made at filmsnotmade.com.

Avi Weider: Thanks again for listening and watching. We’ll see you next time.

When the completed, 10 episode version of my life story was shelved the week after the 2023 strike ended, I got a lot of requests for interviews. I thought about writing long pieces about the insane psychological trauma of watching a 50 million dollar creative love child being used as a tax-write off, after a 3 year journey making a fictional recreation of, often, moments torn right out of my journals.

There was so much to write about -- having to shelve my first pilot about a trip I took to Russia because Putin invaded Ukraine. The Charlie Kaufmanesque emotional throuple I found myself in with the actress playing me, and the actor playing my on-again-off-again Argentine lover, while my six-year-old went to summer camp in Buenos Aires and the set was shut down because Messi was coming into town to have dinner and the hotel was holding the crew lunch hostage because the production company hadn’t paid them because they wouldn’t sign a contract because - I think - the hotel and company were each connected to mobs and/or power brokers who didn’t like each other? The charming Argentine Whatsapp chain, with messages from the Argentines always started in their polite “Hola, como estas” fashion, even when the full message would read, “Hello. Good morning. The set is on fire.”

But I didn’t write about any of it. Because I wanted to resell my show. And I didn’t want to anger the gods and goddesses who run the heavens and the Disney corporation.

But it’s been three years. Offers to buy the show have come, and failed in the face of the buyers’ layoffs, and reorgs, and general fear. The gods don’t remember me, or my heartbreak, or even their 2023 accounting decisions. And so I found myself talking to an AI executive on this podcast, and cracking the door in my heart to the possibility of a feature version instead, because, really, why not?

As the only abandoned project on the podcast to be MADE, I’m left with the question: is it better to have loved and lost? Would I rather be one of the frustrated writers with nothing but a beautiful script in a drawer, or ten completed episodes that no one will ever see? I do regularly hear that my story is the worst creative heartbreak story any writer has ever heard, which is a vote for the former. But I’ve tried, and sometimes succeeded, to also be grateful for the truly magical experience of making the best thing of my career, and for the adventures in crazy times with new friends from all over the world, and the creative partnerships, and just the wild fulfillment of making a thing that made people laugh and cry.

And I still hold out hope that someone out there -- maybe you -- have an accountant who is creative enough to get this thing off of Disney’s shelf, and onto your platform. Which would make you the only god that matters.

FULL PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

AMY: Today we have two guests. Blair Breard is an award-winning executive producer. She got her start in indie film, producing for John Sayles, and also produced films like I Shot Andy Warhol and Margot at the Wedding. As an executive producer for television, she’s worked on things like Better Things and Scenes from a Marriage for HBO with Jessica Chastain, and The Other Two for Max.

Our second guest is Kristin Newman. She’s a television writer and producer with over two decades in Hollywood. She got her start on That ‘70s Show and has gone on to write and produce things like How I Met Your Mother, Chuck, Gallivant, and Only Murders in the Building. But more importantly — or I should say most importantly — she is also the author of the bestselling memoir What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding, which is what this episode is all about today. So, Kristin, Blair, welcome to Films Not Made. It’s great to have you guys.

AVI: We’re excited that you’re here to talk about this project. This started as a memoir, I think back in 2014. Kristin, do you want to tell us what motivated you to write the book — the spark of the idea, all of that?

KRISTIN: Yeah, so it’s a comedic travel memoir. It ultimately tells the story of my life, but through different trips that I took in my twenties and thirties. I had been avoiding marriage and kids in my thirties because I got so addicted to travel — solo travel, especially. It was back in the days of network TV, where you had spring hiatus every year, and I was on That ‘70s Show, writing on it for seven years. So I got these springs off every year to travel without having to look for another job. And that started it. Then it became such a part of my sense of self and identity that I found that if I was with somebody around February or so, I would really need to break up with them by March because I didn’t want to bring them with me.

AVI: You were on a schedule.

KRISTIN: That’s kind of what was happening. And I had two boyfriends in my twenties, so I really was only single for the first time in my thirties. That was when all of my friends started to get married and have babies. So I kind of found myself doing this thing alone. That was my life, and everybody had been saying, “Write these stories down,” but I didn’t really have a take on it. In the middle of it, it just felt like travel brag or something. I mean, you’re a writer, so of course you should be writing about it. I should have written it down, but mostly I just wrote That ‘70s Show and then I traveled. I didn’t write my own thing. I was just like, if I am writing when I’m not working, then what am I writing about? I have no life. So I would go live.

And then I met my now-husband. I started to write some essays — David Sedaris-style travel essays about some trips I’d taken — and it just turned into sixty pages and all of these stories. So it was time to get a TV job. And so I slapped a piece of paper on the front of these three essays and said “Excerpts from the upcoming memoir, What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding,” and sent it to UTA. And they were like, “You’re writing a book.” And I said, “No, I just wanted to make it look official.” And they said, “I think this is a book.” They sent those chapters to a book agent who was like, “Yeah, it’s a book.” So then I pitched it and got a bidding war and sold the book. And then I had to write the book.

AMY: Did you have a deadline?

AVI: Can I have your agent?

KRISTIN: Yeah, it worked out great. And they wanted — you have an interesting job, so please write about your job. So I was writing about my job and my job heartbreaks in ways that I hoped would not keep me from getting more jobs, which is obviously part of today’s conversation as well.

So I wrote the thing, I went to therapy, I forgave myself for all the things I did wrong so I could be super honest — I wanted to make sure it was honest. That was good, and it was a great experience. And it released the week I got married, crazily. So then we went on what we called my honeymoon junket, where we did a little book tour with my new husband.

BLAIR: “We’re going to Des Moines on our honeymoon.”

KRISTIN: Yeah, where I’m going to read about being with other people.

BLAIR: He went to one event — Rachel Dratch and me in New York. It was all very cool. And he’s like, “Love you, support you, love it. I don’t need to hear it acted out. I’ll just meet you in the hotel room afterwards.”

KRISTIN: So we did that. The book came out, and I was working at ABC at the time and had a couple of overall deals at Disney, and they wanted the book and they wanted me to adapt it. And I was like, you will ruin the book.

AMY: They wanted you to adapt it as a TV show?

KRISTIN: As a show. A TV show. Yeah, always. What I wanted the book to be was a picture of a different way to live your life — your timeline as a woman, your thirties — and not be a train-wreck-style story about a woman who was being wild and opening herself up to the world and not doing what everybody else was doing until she sees the light and at the end does. I wanted years of that life to happen, and the series was never going to end with her getting married and having a baby. It was not going to be that. So that was all really important to me. And so I didn’t do it as a movie. I just tried to figure out what to do with it for about eight years. And then the COVID lockdown happened and my overall deal was done and they didn’t renew it. And I was depressed and thinking, what’s next? And so then I just spec’d the book. I just made a TV pilot in six days. I just wrote it.

BLAIR: Kristin sent me the book, which when I read, I laughed out loud. You know, usually when you’re reading something funny in your brain, you’re sort of like, “That’s funny, that’s funny.” But I was cackling out loud. And it was so easy to see, and it was so easy to hear her voice. So part of our idea was that this is the anti-COVID project. This is a book that gives you everything that we cannot do during COVID, which is travel and have sex with strangers.

AVI: Exactly.

BLAIR: So we were like, we have to find the perfect timing where it’s not like, “Oh my God, it’s too scary to do something like that,” to make something like that, but it is actually wish fulfillment for everybody.

AMY: Oh my god, for me, for sure.

KRISTIN: Yeah, and hard to figure out how to shoot it, because it was still — it was before the vaccine when we shopped it. And so we took it out and everybody was pretty full up on their own things. And so it’s obviously sold to Disney — like in the end, they got to have it, but just without paying me an overall deal.

I was also simultaneously working on Only Murders in the Building season one, which was also Disney. So they really got all my time and energy just for much less money than they had been paying me before.

AMY: So when you were shopping it, were there any “almost” meetings, besides Disney?

KRISTIN: I don’t think so. I think it was just lovely meetings that they just didn’t buy it, which was a surprise. I think because so many people had tried to get the book for so long, I thought there would be a lot more options. And there weren’t, honestly.

BLAIR: It really was in that time period, after [COVID] where you thought you could sell a lot of things, especially if you have a writer like Kristin who’s so experienced and has such an incredible track record. And I’m always generally able to get in the rooms for a pitch. The two of us were a pretty good combination but it was in the time period where everything had shut down and no one was sure what they wanted to spend money on. They had bought a lot of stuff that didn’t go during COVID. And, you know, we had a hundred thousand conversations about, should we stop, should we go, should we not? And ultimately we did. And all the meetings were great. The book is a huge bestseller. It’s in how many languages, Kristin?

KRISTIN: Five languages. Thirty reprints or something.

BLAIR: And so many people just out of the blue say, “Oh my God, I love that book. I read that book. I saw it in a hostel when I was traveling.”

AMY: So you have a built-in audience.

KRISTIN: And an audience that’s especially like women 18 to 40 — your book has a built an audience, which is what people wanted. That being said, I wrote it as a half-hour streaming project. So we were pitching to comedy teams, and I think that also hurt. When we sold it to Freeform, they were like, add ten pages to make it a forty-one-minute-long, quote-unquote one-hour for Freeform, so you can have double the budget and it’s easier to sell internationally. Which is what we should have done [before].

BLAIR: It was also — to their credit — the executive said, “I don’t know how you show this story in a half-hour network show, which is really twenty-two minutes, when we’re looking at travel and landscapes.” And I actually thought that was one of the smartest things that happened — they said this needs to be longer.

And it already felt like — I think Kristin would agree, that even the pilot felt like it was barely going to fit. So that was quite great. And I think we also felt that with Freeform, we were going to get their growing-up audience of women.

KRISTIN: Which is what they said they wanted.

BLAIR: Which is what they said they wanted. And so even though Freeform had a sort of patina on it in a way, I think we were like: women, girls growing up, female audience, female everything — let’s just lean in and Hulu the next day, we were just let’s lean into that and embrace that, and not feel like, “Wait, Freeform isn’t really the right platform for this,” because Kristin’s voice is pretty spicy.

KRISTIN: Yeah, but that being said, it’s a network that is primarily watched by women. And so we felt like they really will be somebody who will back a woman’s voice and a woman’s story that is not — as I have heard pitched to me over and over again as what the platforms are looking for — “women in peril.” Women in peril is a big thing that people like to see women doing on television. Women living their lives is not…

AVI: It’s not perilous enough.

KRISTIN: What are they running from?

AVI: Everything in life isn’t perilous enough for women, apparently.

BLAIR: Who’s going to save women?

AMY: I’m in peril every time I leave my apartment.

AMY: So this is a little different than our usual Films Not Made, where we talk about films that get developed, pitched, ad nauseum, go through script notes, and never get made. But this one actually went into production. So what happened next? You guys — Blair, you’re making a budget, you’re talking about casting.

KRISTIN: Well, first of all, we lost our director. What happened was —

AMY: Before you started!

KRISTIN: Before we started.

AVI: If everyone’s got their bingo card out, you can punch that one —

KRISTIN: So everybody made their deals and it took a while. And then the deal was made, and then Susanna Fogel got two of her movies greenlit that had been backed up from the year of shutdown.

AVI: Everyone’s getting work.

KRISTIN: So she was gone.

BLAIR: Part of the story of not getting films made actually really interfered with us trying to get a TV series made, because Susanna, who’s an independent filmmaker, this was her baby, her project. And she left, which left us a little bit out in the cold. And also, with all the buyers and Freeform — when we sold it — she had been part of the equation. So we lost some time there. We had to find another director. So then we went into the casting process, which was kind of the same thing — them going, “This person, this person, this person.”

AMY: They tried to cast a man in the lead role.

KRISTIN: Yeah, right. Exactly. Just, you know, everyone’s busy. So that was really difficult and challenging.

AMY: Who was their top choice? Can you tell us?

BLAIR: Well, we made an offer to an actress. Should we say? Yeah. We were very excited about Meredith Hagner. Everybody was excited. I was like, “Would die for her. Amazing.” And had a great meeting. But she didn’t want to do Freeform. She literally passed because it was Freeform.

KRISTIN: It was a little bit like low, small cable to most people. Like, eighty percent of the people I’d tell it was on Freeform would say, “What is Freeform? Is it a maxi pad? I don’t know what it is.”

KRISTIN: It does sound like that.

AVI: It’s both.

KRISTIN: It’s not a great rebrand. As we now know, it’s dead. So yeah. So we kept looking and looking, and they just kept saying, “These are the five people we’ll say yes to.” And we went back into the pile and we’re looking, and I think Chelsea was like number sixty or something on the list. But we looked at her again, and there was something that we all — which was really Kristin and myself and our two casting directors — all went, “Wait, something’s here.” And we were like, “This show is going to make her a star. She is Kristin as an actress, as a younger person.”

AMY: Isn’t it incredible when you see that and know that? I produced a film called Secretary, and we had this young actress Maggie Gyllenhaal come in, and we were like, “We think there’s something, but she’s — we can’t fund the film on her.” And then she would come in — she auditioned for us like three or four times — and we were like, “We’re just going to go for it. We just have to.” You know, when you just know, you just know.

BLAIR: We knew. And it felt like that with Chelsea — Chelsea Frei — who was tremendous. And then they said, “Go make your pilot.” And we went to Latvia.

AMY: Riga? Were you in Riga?

BLAIR: We went to Riga, which is a phenomenal city. But when we were shooting there, there was a full COVID lockdown. We had a curfew. We were done by 8 p.m. You had to stay in your hotel from 8 p.m. till 5 a.m. the next day.

AMY: And you had to do all the testing every day?

KRISTIN: Yeah, like all that stuff. It was very experimental, very draconian testing where it went way, way up your nose and also in your mouth — sometimes in that order. And there’d be the person smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee while they did it.

AVI: Was it a government official doing it?

BLAIR: Plus the Disney official. Plus a Disney official who was constantly with us.

AMY: So you were shooting Latvia and Riga for Russia? Or were you shooting Latvia for Latvia?

KRISTIN: No, it was for Russia. I wrote about my — the pilot episode was about a trip I took with my best friend and her mother to Russia for their first time since they had immigrated when my friend was three. We went when we were like twenty-eight and had this very wild time, and there might have been a boyfriend at home. So in the pilot, the character realizes she needs to live her life, comes home, breaks up with the guy, and determines to live a bigger world.

We did chemistry reads with kind of romantic partners from LA between Chelsea and the men we were auditioning. And there were actors in Russia. And Disney was like, you obviously cannot have whatever Sputnik vaccine — that’s not going to do it. You cannot have Russian actors. Absolutely not. There are three vaccines they can have. We have to see all kinds of documentation. Like, no, no, no.

So we found this guy, Dima. And he and Chelsea had a chemistry read that we felt uncomfortable being in. The room was melting, it was too much. So this kid took a train for thirty hours, went to one of the other Baltic nations, stayed with an ex-girlfriend for the night, got a shot, had to have a video of himself getting the shot and a piece of paper signed, and I think a phone call with the Disney lawyer — and then took the train back so he could be in his play the next day in Moscow. And it got done. Everyone was like, “Do whatever it takes to get this man.”

AVI: It’s like a James Bond movie.

KRISTIN: Yes, so we got him. And we all go to Latvia and here is Dima. And we find this incredible actor to be the best friend’s romantic partner. And the four of them are just like a house on fire. The two women fall into best-friend love. Everybody’s chemistry is amazing. We’re all running around with bags over our heads all day while we’re shooting. The schools were shut down, the whole thing was shut down, everything was shut down. Three months earlier, if we had the original director when we were going to shoot — sunshine, open, great. But now it’s November and it’s a complete all-country shutdown. But it’s joy. Like joy happens.

BLAIR: Well, once they saw the pilot — because the pilot was so perfect. For me, I think it’s the best pilot I’ve ever produced. It was magic. Everything worked. So then what happened is that Putin invaded Ukraine, and then Disney said, “We can’t promote a show with girls having fun in Russia.” And I think Kristin and I —I was crying on the phone.

KRISTIN: We cried for months.

BLAIR: But we were saying, “People don’t fall in love with politicians. They fall in love with culture.” We argued ourselves silly, and they said, “Too bad. You have to do another pilot.”

AMY: But the series was still greenlit?

BLAIR: The series was still greenlit. But we had to do a new pilot.

AMY: And they would pay for it, right?

KRISTIN: But it was only a third of the pilot, because the pilot was: they’re in LA, they decide to go to Russia, there’s the trip, they come back from Russia, they’re in LA, and at the end of the pilot she leaves for her first solo adventure in Argentina. So we just had to lift out Russia and I stuck in Iceland. Not easy. Not easy.

AMY: So you have a new pilot. And then you go to Argentina and you shoot the rest — ten episodes total?

BLAIR: Ten one-hour episodes total, in four countries: Latvia, Iceland, LA — its own country —

AMY: It’s a country.

BLAIR: — and Argentina. And we finished shooting in Argentina, I think two weeks before the strike.

KRISTIN: Two weeks before the writer’s strike.

AMY: Before the writer’s strike.

BLAIR: Yes before the writer’s strike. We had editors in LA, so post was up and running.

KRISTIN: Everything had at least a director’s cut.

AMY: All ten episodes?

KRISTIN: All ten episodes have director’s cuts. And I had done network cuts, many multiple rounds of network cuts for five of them, and two more I had producers’ cuts for.

BLAIR: We had everything in the can. But Kristin was put in the horrible position that so many creators, directors, and writers were at the moment, which is: do you continue to edit as a showrunner, or do you work in solidarity with your colleagues and shut down post during the strike? There were people who — I think like Ryan Murphy kept working as a showrunner.

AMY: Can you explain that? Can you unpack that a little bit for our audience?

AVI: Yeah, why would a writer’s strike affect the editing and the finishing of the series?

KRISTIN: So the Writers Guild position — which was not a law; they couldn’t say that it was officially scabbing to edit — but their position was that it was, and that editing is writing. And specifically for my show, it was a voiceover show. Like my original pilot was an hour and twenty minutes that I had to cut down to forty-four. The way you do that is with a lot of voiceover. And so you have to write.

BLAIR: And a lot of showrunners were talking about the dilemma of what to do in this moment. And Kristin, you wrote something quite beautiful about it as well.

KRISTIN: Because everybody was, “What are we all doing, what should we do?” And I wanted to publicly post that I wasn’t going to edit, so that other showrunners would just know what we were all — you know, here’s what I’m up to. And I was like, “I feel uncomfortable finishing while people are not working.” And I even said thank you to Freeform for pausing it all and not trying to finish it without me — like they were valuing the right things and I appreciated that. And so I was trying to be really careful. That got photographed by somebody and was on Deadline the next day.

BLAIR: That’s right. That’s what I was referring to.

KRISTIN: So it got very public, very fast.

AMY: So you couldn’t change your mind.

AVI: What was the reaction

KRISTIN: People were like, “You’re the queen of Hollywood today.” And probably Disney hated me forever. I mean, I tried to be complimentary to them about it all, but obviously it was April and it was going to come out in August. Like, it was a done deal. So I really was like, it’s going to push this. They’re like, “You’re not going to come out now till next year.” I’m like, “That’s heartbreaking, but okay.” But they’d spent fifty million dollars. It just never occurred to me that it would go away. Never.

AMY: Fifty million. Holy crap.

KRISTIN: Fifty million.

AVI: That’s a big write-down.

BLAIR: And then so — I think Kristin, just to pick back up where you left off — the strike ends on a Monday or Tuesday. I had been speaking to the studio and the editors trying to patch the hole as a non-writer producer, going, “We’re ready, we’re ready. Are the editors ready? Is post ready? Everybody’s ready.” We had everybody on standby, ready to drop in so we could hit the ground running, pick back up where we left off, and Kristin could go back to being the showrunner and creator and get it done.

KRISTIN: And then I get this crazy phone call. That summer there was the whole deal between Disney and Spectrum, which for a minute Spectrum kicked all the Disney platforms — including ESPN — off of Spectrum. And the way that they were able to make that deal was by dropping like seven or nine linear platforms from Disney’s portfolio.

AMY: I didn’t know it was that many.

KRISTIN: Which included National Geographic and Freeform.

AMY: So it was a ploy to show the loss.

BLAIR: It was a tax write-off. We’re not airing the show in order to take the tax write-off.

BLAIR: I called Kristin. Kristin was apoplectic. I mean, it was just horrible, horrible, so heartbreaking and it just did not feel real at all. Like, how could that decision be made? We were done. We shot it. There’s no —

AMY: It seems like, there’s no sense to that.

AVI: Could they still air it? Could it still get —

AMY: Or like, who has the rights now? Because your book, there had to be a purchase of the rights to the book that went to Freeform or the Studio or the LLC or whatever.

KRISTIN: I have the rights to the book, but they have the rights to all of the scripts and everything we shot.

AMY: So did you get the rights back? Or did you craft the deal in that way?

KRISTIN: So we shopped it.

AMY: Whoever you shopped it to would have to obviously pay back that cost,

KRISTIN: Or not, because they can choose to make one dollar instead of zero dollars if they want.

AMY: True.

KRISTIN: But what is confusing — to people who are in charge of things like studio finances and heads of agencies, it’s confusing to them too — is this question of: if you make a dollar, do you then have to undo that full fifty-million-dollar write-off? And also, especially given that the studio that took the write-down is Freeform Studios — we just sold it to Freeform and Freeform Studios, which is just Freeform — doesn’t exist anymore.

AVI: So it’s sort of unencumbered, if people are interested in it.

BLAIR: All we need to do is raise enough money to finish it and put it on, you know, make a website and five bucks an episode.

AMY: Youtube.

AVI: Well when we started to talk to you about it, the idea was, what if we took the original material — the book — and because the series has already been produced and is waiting for someone to breathe life back into it, why don’t we see about developing it very quickly as a feature and producing the packaging materials via our AI pipeline to see what we might come up with.

BLAIR: What is behind door number 3?

AMY: Exactly! Welcome to our show!

AVI: So what we do is we take all the stuff — we start with the script, but in this case it was Kristin’s novel — and it goes through many stages that are now fairly automated. The entire book gets broken down into certain story classifications, and then we ask it to cast the first four principal roles and help us create a pitch deck and a trailer. So we’re going to look at the pitch deck first.

BLAIR: I don’t even know if I can look!

AMY: Now we have some disclosures. Films Not Made uses AI to reimagine movies that were never produced. All development materials, pitch decks, trailers, and posters are AI generated. Any likenesses of real people are speculative and synthetic. No real actors participated in their creation. This is cultural commentary, not endorsed by any individual or studio referenced.

AVI: Just so we can describe it to people who aren’t watching on YouTube — the cover image is of a young woman who would be the main character, Casey, in what looks like Argentina.

KRISTIN: Oh for sure, she’s in front of El Ateneo, which is the famous bookstore in Buenos Aires that used to be a big theater and we shot there.

BLAIR: We shot there!

AMY: So it knew somehow.

AVI: And we’ve got the title, What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding.

AMY: We have this great image of a passport that looks like it’s from the nineteen forties. Has a lot of pages. Good work.

AVI: And a paper boarding pass,

KRISTIN: And a little espresso. A very small coffee, a non-American-sized coffee.

AVI: The logline, we asked it for a logline and a pitch. The logline is: “A sitcom writer who spent a decade turning heartbreak into passport stamps and foreign love affairs, must finally face the question she’s been outrunning. Was all that freedom just the longest way home?” This is the romantic comedy about what happens after you run out of continents. And the comp it puts there is Fleabag meets Before Sunrise.

AMY: The look — the genre is “sun-fade passport romanticism. Every frame looks like a photograph from the best day of a trip you’re already nostalgic for. Oversaturated highlights, golden haze, Kodak Portra warmth that feels borrowed rather than owned. The color shifts with geography, but the light stays consistent — warm and slightly blown out, as if seen through the window of a departing plane. Argentina pushes warmest; airports stripped to institutional sodium. The beauty has a shelf life built into every frame.”

KRISTIN: That’s basically what we did. Ben Kasulke and Becca had I thought this had a beautiful idea — to shoot the LA parts in it in regular TV frame, and then anything traveling was in a big move aspect ratio.

AMY: I love that.

KRISTIN: It was cool. It made the frame, it literally got bigger as her world got bigger, and she would always be smaller in the frame. And in TV land in LA, she was more trapped by it all. And we colorized everything warm whenever we were traveling anywhere. The production design and wardrobe colors were really vivid. And in LA it was more like her version of LA — blown out, kind of too bright.

BLAIR: But not fantasy LA, not gorgeous, dreamy LA — just uck.

AMY: You’re working on a TV show LA. You’re driving on the 405 LA.

KRISTIN: That’s right. It’s Van Nuys. It’s too hot. It’s too bright.

AMY: Then we have casting.

AVI: First up, Casey. The image here is of the first choice, which is Maya Hawke. That’s the AI pick — three choices, with a one-word description.

AMY: “Incandescent.”

AVI: Katherine Newton — “disarming.” Or Rachel Sennott.

AMY: I don’t know Katherine Newton that well. I do know she’s from my hometown Orlando, Florida but that’s about it. Do any of these ring true to you?

AVI: She looks like she’s having a good time.

KRISTIN: Neither of us brush our hair.

BLAIR: She looks like she’s in Argentina.

AVI: We do ask it to generate the image in situ of the film.

BLAIR: That’s amazing.

AVI: Next up is Juan — “quiet Argentine gaucho whose devastating honesty forces Casey to see her own pattern for the first time.” Is that even true to the plot?

KRISTIN: I don’t know about pattern so much. A little bit, a little bit. But certainly the devastating honesty, the sweetness — like, that’s this guy. Not smouldering. He’s almost a priest and he had that kind of lighter-than vibe.

AMY: The next actor is Lorenzo Ferro, who is actually Argentinian — he’s the only one who is actually an Argentine.

AVI: Apparently “smouldering”.

AMY: Oh Xolo’s in Cobra Kai, apparently.

AVI: People love that show.

AMY: Yeah, he’s like big. I don’t know that show.

KRISTIN: My husband does because he’s like from the 80s and the valley.

AVI: Next up we have Hope, the best friend.

AMY: Ayo.

KRISTIN: She’s great. I love her. I’ll take Ayo.

AVI: She’s the best friend who answers every sobbing airport phone call for a decade without once saying, “I told you so.”

AVI: After casting, we get some storyboard frames from the supposed film. It looks like Casey just — at a dance club, hands over head.

BLAIR: I mean, it kind of looks like our show.

KRISTIN: Truly.

AMY: That’s amazing.

BLAIR: It really does.

AMY: It didn’t see the show.

AVI: We did not show it the show — or anything like that. This is strictly from the novel, the style, and the casting.

AMY: So we have Maya Hawke looking forlorn in an airport, an empty airport somewhere.

AVI: It’s COVID.

KRISTIN: There was just a bomb scare of some kind

AMY: And we have Maya Hawke looking out the window of an airplane. She’s landing, maybe back in LA.

KRISTIN: She doesn’t look happy about it. I think she’s definitely coming home.

AMY: She’s returning to her work. Then we have a big, happy table at an outdoor dinner with steak, candles and red wine.

BLAIR: That looks like one of our last days.

AVI: In Argentina.

AMY: It’s the crew dinner!

AVI: If only.

KRISTIN: But we actually shot this scene — they went to one of her friends in Argentina, and her family has an estancia, so all the buddies all go out there and they have exactly this picnic basically.

BLAIR: Under string lights. Absolutely stunning.

KRISTIN: And then the dance party. We had that both in Latvia and in Argentina and in Iceland, too.

AVI: And then we do just some bios.

KRISTIN: Oh my God, what is going on with me? I look so weird. I was like, “Who’s that?”

AVI: Well, apparently it’s you. And again, we ask it to do an image of you in situ of the film.

KRISTIN: My facelift is amazing.

AMY: You’re writing some notes.

AVI: You’re a writer so apparently you’re writing in a— it looks like a day book.

AMY: Forget the laptop on the curb, you’re pounding out new pages. You’ve got like a leather-covered bound notebook.

KRISTIN: My hair has been blown out.

KRISTIN: Yeah. It’s incredible, my blowout.

AMY: It’s an amazing blowout.

KRISTIN: I just want to say — this is amazing because I don’t do all the stuff, you know, to my face. And so it’s like, this is what I would look like if I did all the things and looked like all the people who do all the things. This is me looking like everyone else. I’m definitley prettier.

AVI: And then Blair Breard —

AMY: With a little blazer! Look at your blazer!

AVI: Yeah, on set. There are cameras behind you and lights, C-stands.

KRISTIN: Do you have that outfit, Blair?

BLAIR: I actually have something like it — my IMDB photo, I think, might have that jacket and I maybe have that shirt.

AVI: It says: “Blair Breard is a six-time Emmy-nominated producer whose credits include Louie, Better Things, Baskets, One Mississippi, Scenes from a Marriage, and The Other Two.

KRISTIN: They grabbed much better credits for you than for me.

AVI: Through her company Bossy Boots, she has a first-look deal with FX Productions.”

BLAIR: Not anymore. That’s like ten years ago. I don’t have that deal.

AMY: I was going to pitch you something if you did. I’m glad to know.

BLAIR: That’s funny. That was a moment.

AVI: The closing on this pitch deck is “Why This Story, Why Now?” It says: “The conversation about women, choice, and timelines has never been louder or more confused. Every week brings another think piece about freezing eggs or having it all or the loneliness epidemic among single women. This story cuts through the noise with something radical. A woman who chose adventure, chose freedom, chose herself — and does not apologize for the decade it took to get ready for love. It is not a cautionary tale. It is not a fairy tale. It is the rare romantic comedy that believes a woman’s thirties are not a countdown. They are a curriculum.”

KRISTIN: A curriculum? Like something to do, something to learn?

AMY: That makes no sense to me personally.

AVI: I’m not sure.

KRISTIN: A guideline?

AMY: Curriculum doesn’t sound fun.

AVI: Well, maybe it’s a learning process.

KRISTIN: I like that it’s not a cautionary tale, it’s not a fairy tale. I think that gets it right.

AMY: That’s really helpful. I like that. Okay, let’s watch the trailer. Ready for the trailer?

KRISTIN: I don’t know if I am. Maybe I’ll be inspired. Maybe it’s going to be great.

[TRAILER]

“Here’s who I used to be.”

“I love you too. I also write sitcoms.”

“It doesn’t sound like a real job.”

“And it sort of isn’t.”

“We’re not a house of aspiring writers anymore.”

“At home, these words pose an impossible choice. Do you want love or freedom?”

“You have the soul of a traveler. And what real travelers know — it is better to be free than loved.”

AMY: Oh, Iceland.

“I love this. But the question that’s really been on my mind is — get your shit together. What have I done with my decade? With my thirties?”

“Girl, you really should have froze those eggs in your twenties.”

“If you want a ride to the airport — will you marry me?”

“Goucho.”

“And then the whole town came running to see the feast.”

“It’s not that I’m brave. I’m just comforted by things that scare other people.”

AMY: Oh.Look at that stamp.

“And I’m terrified of things other people find comforting.”

“Now I wish I just didn’t have to learn how to be alone.”

“Alone.”

“So — where are you off to next?”

“Argentina.”

“We met yesterday.”

KRISTIN: So scary.

AMY: Coming soon.

KRISTIN: It’s so fascinating because it’s so good at making very realistic-looking humans and scenes and things that look like they’ve absolutely happened. But the people just don’t speak the way or move the way people actually speak and move.

AMY: They can’t act. It’s just clunky.

KRISTIN: The pace of the whole thing is unnatural and a little weird.

BLAIR: But it’s also weirdly scary. Because I feel like there are things it looks perfect. Yeah, and there were things in the trailer where I was like, “Wait, that’s like what we did. That’s what we shot. That looks like where we were.” It’s a little alarming.

AVI: Well its trained on all those photos that everyone has taken in all those places.

KRISTIN: The thing that is missing is just how humans actually are versus this messy

BLAIR: Messy. Flawed. Unexpected.

KRISTIN: And the thoughts that it puts together for the trailer don’t connect to each other. It’s commenting on things that didn’t happen. It’s not giving you a story. But it looks perfect.

That’s amazing. Thank you for doing that. What a joy it was to get to see all of that. It doesn’t make me feel like now I know what the movie is. I still wouldn’t know how to write the movie, necessarily — what to pick out from the book to turn into a movie. I know how to cut my ten episodes into a movie. That’s also my dream — if there weren’t four directors and Disney would give me the dailies, I would absolutely just cut it.

AVI: Okay, we have one more fun activity. What we like to do at the end, since we’ve shown all the packaging, is try to get a meeting with our own creative executive that we can try to get into our session and see what they think about rebooting the series as a feature.

AMY: Yeah, we have an LA executive that joins us for a minute.

KRISTIN: How wonderful.

AMY: Because I know you guys want to pitch it again.

MEREDITH [AI FILM EXEC]: Hey Amy, hey Avi. Hi Kristin. Hi Blair. Give me one second. I’m pulling up the pages and the deck. If we keep it to Argentina and make it a contained trip, the ending can carry more weight — as a look, that one lingering moment before parting that suggests possibility but doesn’t lock it down. The thing is, it’s stronger if that look is earned through shared stakes earlier. Would you want that look to feel like closure or like an open invitation?

KRISTIN: I think it should feel like possibility.

MEREDITH [AI FILM EXEC]: Possibility plays well here. If we’ve watched them in Buenos Aires go from strangers to co-conspirators, then that final look can carry a charge. You believe they might meet again, but you also buy it if they don’t. The win is letting the audience feel both. How much ambiguity are you comfortable with in that beat?

AMY: I’m going to jump in. I’m a producer. I have some questions about the financing. I’m here with Blair, my producing partner on the project. And we want to know — who are your buyers for this? Are you guys financing? What are your budget ranges? Talk to us about what you can do for us.

MEREDITH [AI FILM EXEC]: Okay, if we’re talking buyers, this is a sweet spot for streamers who want female-forward travel romance with comedy chops. Think Netflix, Amazon, maybe Hulu. Budget-wise, with multiple international locations but no heavy VFX, you’re probably in the mid-single-digit millions. Are you aiming for streamer licensing or a full negative pickup?

AMY: We don’t know.

AVI: Not sure Meredith.

AMY: I think we need go — Meredith, do you guys validate parking? Can we talk to your assistant? I didn’t even get a water. No one offered me a glass of water.

KRISTIN: That was amazing. She’s a politician. I wish I could be better at that — just ignoring the question and sticking with what you were going to say. That’s media training one-on-one.

AVI: A hundred percent. Wow.

KRISTIN: She’s amazing. That was so creepy. The way she had that kind of bored vocal fry. Like, Avi, did you give it that directive or did it just know that that’s what it should be?

AVI: Well, there are a lot of system instructions in there, but “being bored” isn’t one of them.

KRISTIN: It just knew. That was great. A super fun time.

AVI: This has been so awesome because we’ve never had something that actually got made that we’re trying to reenter into the discourse. And it’s just fantastic material. I mean, honestly. I don’t know what else we can say.

AMY: Thank you guys so much.

BLAIR: Thank you.

KRISTIN: Thank you.

AVI: You’ve been listening to Films Not Made. But if you want an even better experience, check us out on YouTube where you can see all the new materials, including the pitch deck and trailer.

AMY: And subscribe to our Substack for show notes, more about our guests, and industry insights.

AVI: And please follow us on Instagram and TikTok as Films Not Made.

AMY: And of course, we have merch. Check that out, and all things Films Not Made at filmsnotmade.com.

AVI: Thanks again for listening and watching. We’ll see you next time.

When Avi Weider asked me to come on Films Not Made to discuss “The Fall” I imagined it was going to be something like me telling a few friends a great story at the bar, a rip-roaring yarn I’ve told many times before and, like all personal stories that come to define who we are, one that has been subconsciously refined over the years, all the barbs sanded down to frictionless curves that caress our egos and protect our fragile sense of self.

But when I went back and unearthed the nearly twenty year-old emails, cast lists, schedules and journal entries associated with “The Fall”, it was as if my life was suddenly being shot in a vertiginous reverse dolly, the edges of my frame warping as all the pain and anguish came rushing back, fresh and potent, the whole heartbreaking disaster unspooling all over again.

Who was this man whose personal correspondence I was sifting through? I knew objectively that these were my emails, my cast lists, my demands; I just couldn’t see me, or rather, I couldn’t see the man I think I am today. The Joe Maggio of 2007 was impatient, eager to please, willing to make every concession to just get the film made. He was also desperate, in dire financial straits with a crushing mortgage, a child on the way, and possessing a foolishly unbridled faith in the goodness and honesty of those around him. In other words, nothing has changed, except that the child we were expecting in 2007 is now on her way to college.

So why can I not see myself in those old files? I think it’s because I know how that story ends, and so my overly protective ego is stepping in and shielding me from the pain, reassuring me: It’s not you, Joe. It’s some other poor son of a bitch getting his ass kicked. Just look the other way. I don’t see myself because I’m looking at a character in a story whose ending is set in stone, immutable, while the story of my life right now is still in play, and so I can fool myself into believing that this time I will be better, smarter, wiser…

John Turturro, if you’re reading this, let’s go again! This time will be different! I PROMISE!

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

AMY: Today we’re in Niagara Falls. The project is The Falls or The Fall, depending on which deck you’re looking at, or which script you’re looking at. We’ll get to that later. It’s a dark comedy that lived through the early aughts indie boom almost cast John Turturro, was a script of the week for CAA and resurfaced a decade later with an executive plan that had a whole new configuration.

AVI: The creator is Joe Maggio. Joe’s indie film career started back in 2001 with Virgil Bliss, which earned a few indie independent spirit nominations. He went on to make Milk and Honey, which premiered at Sundance, The Last Rites of Joe May.

And what I think he’s told me is his most commercially successful film Bitter Feast. He also made Paper Covers Rock and most Bliss, which was a continuation of the Virgil Bliss saga epic - I’m not sure how how Joe you would characterize it. He also has quite a secret career in comedy, which perhaps we’ll touch on later.

AMY: Thanks for joining us, Joe. We have Tom Hall, artistic director of Montclair Film. He has decades of experience in film festivals programming. He’s a walking encyclopedia of film and music. He has an amazing blog called The Backrow Manifesto.

AVI: Total fan. Off there (Back Row Manifesto) I’ve watched films that I either hadn’t heard of or had put on the back burner for so long I forgot about. It’s always worth checking out.

AMY: Okay, Joe, can you tell us about The Fall or The Falls? Like how would you describe the project?

JOE MAGGIO: Wow. I haven’t had to do that in many years with The Fall. But The Fall is the story of a very moral, upstanding family man, an attorney who commits a terrible sin and is rewarded with everything he’s ever wanted coming true in his life. But then of course his life spirals out of control and that’s really the story. Can I just say one thing? It’s The Fall. It was The Falls for like a second. Someone convinced me that they were going to make The Falls if I put an S on the N. And so I put an S on the N. But that was never really the Falls. That was just a very brief iteration of the title. We’ll get to that part of the saga.

This was going to be my big film. I had made two films that had done very well on the festival circuit and had actually done well commercially. You know, had been released in theaters and on streaming like Showtime and the Sundance Channel, had won awards and you know, I felt like I proved myself and wanted to make something bigger.

AMY: I wanna start to Tom for a second because you’re always tracking filmmakers and films and like does this sound like something that you would program or where would you slot it? Do you have any thoughts?

TOM HALL: Yeah, sure. I mean obviously everything depends on execution. So what I’m excited about with this conversation is seeing where we get to on the execution side because pitches are great, but movies are what people go see. So I think it’s exciting to hear about this project. It certainly has big concept vibes for me, just listening to the pitch it seems very like a Faustian bargain type of movie with, you know, the sort of classic vibes to it. So I’d love to know more details about what these dreams are that come true and how bad it is when they do. And that’s gonna make all the difference.

AMY: Hey Joe, I wanna know where you were in your life and career when the project started. Like did you have a family? Were you single? What was your head space?

JOE MAGGIO: This was right after Milk and Honey, which was my second film that had been picked up by Ryan Werner and Marie Therese Gurgis at Wellspring. I was getting married. I had just gotten married, and before getting married, before going on our Honeymoon, we went and spent a month in Barcelona. I had just written a draft of The Fall and I gave it to a guy named Cedric Jensen who used to work at Green Street Films. He was at Miramax for a while and then Green Street Films. I was like, I’ll get a French guy. He was one of the producers on Milk and Honey. And so I just sent him the script. This was back then. I’m sure I didn’t email him the script, I’m sure I printed it out and brought it to him. Of course, the day before we were leaving he called me and said, dude, he used to call everyone dude in with his French accent. This is the best thing you’ve ever written. You know, we have to make this film. I have a few notes, but this is really, what were you thinking? How did you come up with it? Why didn’t you tell me about it?

He was very excited. He was not an excitable guy in that way. He was always very, very - he would look at things with a colder eye. He was very level. So I was like, wow, this is great. Well, I’m leaving for a month, but I will certainly, you know, consider your notes. So I just felt great. I felt like I just got married. I was going to spend a month in Spain.

I had just gotten this call. I’d made two films that had done very well. They were my first two films. And I felt great. And so I did go to Spain and I did consider Cedric’s notes. They were great notes. And while we were there, we had rented an apartment in Barcelona and I just worked on the script and had fun with my wife and saw some friends. I lived in Barcelona for some years, in the late eighties and early nineties. So, it was just a great time.

And when I got back, I showed Cedric this screenplay. He asked if he could help in any way and I think it was Cedric or my manager at the time who set up some meetings in Los Angeles. And one of them was with Anonymous Content with Alex Madigan, who I’d just met after Virgil Bliss and Milk and Honey. And Alex really loved this screenplay and said that she felt like, you know, this was something that Anonymous would like to get involved with. And that was it for me. They were Propaganda Films before Anonymous. I loved everything they did, you know, and that was all I needed to hear. I told her I had one idea. It was written for John Turturro. If we could get John Turturro, I could die a happy man.

You know, I didn’t go to film school. I have no formal film training. I’ve always just been kind of like by force of will, we’ll make this. It’s going to happen. You know, it’s just going to happen. I know it is. How could it not happen? This is a great script. There’s good people involved. We’re gonna make this happen. And I don’t really sweat the details too much. And that’s how I made my first two films in the space of like three years. I had made, you know, these two films. And I thought that’s just how this was going to be as well. And I think that was one of my first big mistakes in this whole endeavor.

AVI: What was the inspiration for this? You’re just getting married and then you write. I mean you write this movie about basically a guy who blows up his marriage. So I mean, one thing we should mention is that, you know, on the show we ask for people to come on and to bring their script and look book and casting and all that stuff.

Joe went an extra layer for us and he actually gave us his notebooks and diary entries for this entire time. And so we have a little bit more of a peeling, we peel back not just the development process, but also the psychological journey and process that that Joe went through, which is super interesting. So I’m just just hearing you, you know, basically you’re on your honeymoon.

And you write a script about a guy destroying his marriage. So you know, you talk about in your notes about Camus and Sisyphus and Antonioni, and I’ll just let you just catch us up on a bit of the Joe Maggio psychology.

JOE MAGGIO: Okay. The biggest inspiration was my maternal grandmother. My mother’s mother.

At the time I was writing this and from and for my entire life. My mother is the classic Sicilian daughter. She has two brothers. The brothers were the princes, and my mother just took care of everyone. If anyone was ever sick, if anyone needed anything, my mother took care of them. My grandfather started having strokes and heart attacks at a very young age.

And my mother, I mean, my childhood is my memory is getting into my mother’s car, picking up my grandfather, taking him to physical therapy, taking him around to see all he was like a short money hustler. He was Joe May, basically. So my mother would take him around to see all the people that owed him money or people who had a little something going on for him.

She took care of everything. She would make dinner for my grandmother. She was constantly shuttling back and forth meals to people. And my grandfather eventually died. And then there was my grandmother living alone. And my mother took care of her as if she were one of her children. And my grandmother was very much like the character that you’ve read in The Fall. She was a very hard woman. She was a very tough woman.

Now looking back with you through the lens of being middle-aged myself now and having children, I realize, I think she was deeply depressed. I think that she had a lot of things going on. I think she was profoundly unhappy. She was constantly on the phone, making mischief in the family, vendettas, not talking to her sisters for years on end.

Drawing, dragging everyone into these dramas, getting in between people’s marriages. This is who she was. We’re four boys in my family. My mother would go pick her up, bring her to our house for dinner. You know, I’m what? I’m 14 years old. I’m starting to be interested in girls. I’m thinking about my body. I was always kind of big and I got into really good shape finally, 13, 14 years old, but my nickname was Meatball growing up.

And I’m thinking about working out, not wanting to eat. And my grandmother is sitting at the table looking at me. And when no one’s looking, she’s calling me names. Like what is she saying? Or bizarre things, like commenting on how little I’m eating, that I’m a little girl and then when no one’s looking, she would say, “blow job, blow job”.

Like really crazy, crazy stuff. Just to just to enrage me. You know, she would insinuate that I was gay, all this old school little girly boy stuff. She was my grandmother. As we got older and we had licenses, we would be the ones, my brothers and I would be the ones to drive her home. And every time I drove her home, I would have to go inside with her, walk her up these stairs, we’d get to the top of the stairs, and I would take her coat.

And it just would occur to me. I was like, this woman is killing my mother. She is a cancer in the family. If I just turned and bumped her, it would all be over. All our problems would be solved. Of course I never did that.

So anyway, that is why that’s a long, very long circuitous route to the genesis of the idea. And I thought, what would happen? What would happen? I mean, and I just started thinking it through because really when you think about it, how could you prove that? If you did that and that person tumbled down the stairs, they’re eighty some odd years old.

It could happen. They fell. They had a fall. And I started to think it through and I started to imagine, well, who would be an interesting character to be in this position? Well, it would have to be someone who’s very moral, for whom this would be real. Torture, someone who’s very attached to his mother. Maybe someone who’s who’s who’s not quite that hasn’t quite matured really that much. Because the character is if you know, as you get into the script, you realize.

He hasn’t quite gone through puberty yet himself. He’s still very much a little boy. He’s an attorney. He’s a Eucharistic minister in his church. He’s very attached to the priest. He’s super attached to his mother and so it all started to fall into place. I was like, that would be a great character. Then I was thinking, what could happen? Well she doesn’t die right away. So now he’s got to deal with whether or not she’s going to regain consciousness long enough to incriminate him. That doesn’t happen. And we think, okay, it’s all over. She’s gone. He’s gotten away with it. And then it was just a process of, what would happen? What would happen in that situation? I was thinking of Kafka and that sort of concept around Kafka unlocked the rest of the script for me. Kafka’s protagonists, once they’re incriminated, once the stain is on them, the mark is on them, suddenly everyone finds them very attractive. It’s like this guilt, this guilt makes them appealing in some way, sexually appealing, or more potent. And I thought that could be really interesting. So I came up with this character of an organist, this young church organist who, Bud is aware of her, aware of how very attractive she is, but he would never, of course, do anything. And she’s indifferent to him until after his grandmother’s funeral. And then suddenly she’s noticing his hair and she’s noticing things about him. And so opportunity presents itself and this is where we get into trouble, right? And so that was sort of the concept for Bud. It’s that as soon as that door opens and he starts to see opportunity.

AMY: Let’s talk about casting because that’s the next step that happens. You get the producer and everyone’s happy with the script and you’re at the beginning of things and you come up with these cast lists, right?

You know, and over the course of my decades of developing projects, a lot of those cast lists are the same 10, 20 people. What was your cast list, your producer’s cast list? Was there a negotiation going on? How did that go about? Who is your choice? Who is Alex’s choice?

JOE MAGGIO: Well, this is one of those learning curves for me because I thought you just came up with the best people that you can imagine and that’s it. It doesn’t matter who represents them. It doesn’t matter where they are, whatever. Like those are the people you want. And I quickly realized that that is not how these films come together. I knew I wanted John Turturro. And so we’ve just focused on getting John. And we did. We got John. John loved the script. He came on. I feel like Alix wanted to go with Paul Giamatti. Paul Giamatti had just exploded.

Paul Giamatti was very hot at that time. Turturro was in a kind of a valley. He hadn’t achieved emeritus status that he has now. And, you know, the Coens had kind of trailed, like their activity had kind of cooled a bit. And you know, [premium] TV hadn’t kicked off yet. Like, you know, like these big actors weren’t doing big TV necessarily.

The Sopranos was out, but it wasn’t quite what it is now. John had told me he would not do TV. It was something he was not into. I think his star was not what it is now, obviously, in terms of bankability or you know how an investor might look at it. And so Paul Giamatti, for sure. Maybe Philip Seymour Hoffman.

AMY: Philip Seymour Hoffman, yes.

JOE MAGGIO: Yes, I forgot.

AMY: So so Tom Hall, like you’re looking at these films, you’re tracking these films, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Tuturo. What’s the film you want to see?

TOM HALL: I mean, this is the time when those guys were the independent film generation, in my opinion. You know, this is right around American Splendor, it sounds like when when Paul was on the rise and I can already tell this character is this downtrodden, very put upon person. They’d all do a great job. I love the Barton Fink inspiration as well. You can see he’s sort of struggling with the ethical dilemma of writing this wrestling movie versus his own vision for what he wants out of life. You can see how that would translate to the story. I can’t imagine if you attached them, anybody would be hesitating to… It was right at the peak of that post-Tarantino wave of the Sundance independent film. It just seems like it would be obviously a go if you had them attached.

JOE MAGGIO: So the other film that I forgot that was very heavily on my mind was Magnolia. That was another because it’s fairly episodic. I thought of The Fall as sort episodic The Fall was, where we would just pick up the action at a later date here and you like different characters.

TOM HALL: And so men dealing with unhappy relatives as well. You’ve got all the guys dealing with their dying fathers and yes, all of that. I mean, it was very much men grappling with their emotions about family movies.

JOE MAGGIO: And again, Paul Thomas Anderson, a lot of the films are absurd, but it could all really happen. Nothing happens that is impossible. Even in Magnolia, the crazy things that happen, the frog drop, that actually happened. So I like that it’s the absurdity of life, but none of it is fantastical. It’s all rooted in humanity. These things can actually happen.

That was the moment I’d forgotten. We were in that moment and Alex persuaded me, and I think she was right. She was like, look, these are the guys. As you say, Tom, these were the guys. Like, let’s try. Because if we can get one of these guys, the film is made.

AMY: Well, that’s the producer’s job, right? I would do that too. Exactly. Like, they’ll be pretty good. Like, Joe, won’t they work? They’ll work for you.

JOE MAGGIO: And so Alex was great. Alex was never pushing anything, but she knew a lot more than I did. I knew nothing about the business. I could make a film with a few of my friends and a little spit and a little bit of sweat, you know, equity, but I didn’t know how the business worked. So I would really defer to Alex all the time. And I remember now those conversations where she was like, I know you love John. Let’s at least try for these guys.

AVI: So did you get the script to any of them?

JOE MAGGIO: Yeah, I recall, one of them read it and I think liked it and passed, and then another person we just couldn’t get an answer from. And Paul Giamatti, I think, was done playing the schlubby guy and wanted to sort of try something different. And he did. He started to play more kind of leading man roles.

AMY: So we’re at lunch. Tell me about that.

JOE MAGGIO: My God. I don’t know how to explain how excited I was for this. And it’s so heartbreaking when I think about it. I had no money either. Like I was poor. You know, I really was not a player. I didn’t know how these things went and I remember thinking I need a watch. And so I went and got a Casio watch at Kmart.

AVI: Just just jewelry, like an accessory.

JOE MAGGIO: Yeah, just cause I should have a watch. Like my the watch I had was an old Casio watch, cause I was really into running at the time, like my whole life, actually. But it was this beat up old, sweaty Casio, and I thought I need a new Casio watch. That’ll really knock John’s socks off, you know. And I remember I showed up very early, like two hours early. I was so nervous and I was just walking back and forth on Avenue of the Americas and Houston. And I remember walking by Film Forum and thinking this film someday it’ll be at Film Forum and then I’d look at my watch and it I was still an hour and forty-five from lunch.

And I was so nervous that I went to The Cub Room. The Cub Room had recently opened. I think they had just opened. It was like noon. And John and I were supposed to meet at I think 130 or something.

AMY: And don’t tell me you had a drink.

JOE MAGGIO: Absolutely. I had a tumbler. I had a quadruple gin and tonic. I drank that. I mean, I was really nervous. And then I went and he was there. And I couldn’t read the menu. It wasn’t like I couldn’t read Italian. I lived in Spain. I grew up surrounded by people speaking Italian. Like somehow I just couldn’t read the menu. I didn’t know what anything was. I was just really out of sorts. I have to tell you, Barton Fink, all Turturro’s films, they were everything to me. When I was living in Spain, I thought I wanted to just be a writer. And to avoid actually writing, I would go to the movies all the time. In Barcelona in the late 80s and early 90s, there were great movie theaters. And to see Turturro’s films, I mean to me, he was the greatest living actor.

So there I am sitting in front of him. Even now I’m sweating, just trying to remember it. Anyway, so we ordered our meal and we talked. He wanted to talk about our families. Like we talked about just life and I remember him saying something,

“Sometimes these things don’t get made”. And he said sometimes filmmakers don’t last. He’s like, I’ve got a lot of friends, super talented. They had great ideas. And they’re just doing other things now. You know, they’re selling insurance. They’ve moved away. I hated hearing that, but you know, there you go. That was, you know, that was one of the things we talked about. I thought that I would meet John and then the next week we would begin pre-production. Like I thought that was really how it was gonna go. Totally.

AMY: Amazing.

JOE MAGGIO: I didn’t understand how drawn out these things are. That just having lunch with him was probably just this side of not entirely meaningless. Like he was just having lunch. He probably has lunch every day with someone.

And this thing may happen or it may not happen. But for me, this was the first volley. Like the cannon was fired and I thought we were ready to go. He had a studio that was on Center Street that he shared with, I believe it was Robert Longo, the artist. And we would meet there and work on the script.

I don’t know how long it was. It was probably a couple months after that lunch and working on the script, he had ideas of who he wanted to cast. But here’s the thing. Christina wanted as many CAA actors as possible. So that’s all we were getting. Like if it wasn’t CAA, there was always a reason why it was a bad idea. And I started to see that. You were hip to that eventually.

And all the lists packaging. Packaging, exactly. That’s what it’s called. At the time, Six Feet Under was, I think, either just wrapping up or it was kind of hot. And he loved Lauren Ambrose. And so that’s who he wanted. And I was like, that’s good for me. Let’s go, Lauren Ambrose. And so I had lunch with Lauren Ambrose at the Odeon. A much better choice for me. Another New York New York staple.

AMY: I love Odeon. They have great French fries. It’s like a go-to classic. Good martinis. At this point, do you have deals, like signed deals with everybody? Or is this just all handshakes and just…

JOE MAGGIO: None of this was papered. Like it was all just okay, it was agents and managers talking to each other and trying to sort of, I think, informally put something together. and we didn’t get to the paper deal until Jason Kliot and Joanna Vicente and HD Net got involved.

AMY: So why don’t you tell us about HD Net for those who don’t know?

JOE MAGGIO: Mark Cuban was financing HD Net. HDNet was just making these two million dollar films. I was like, I could make this this film for $2,000. just give me a chance.

AVI: You were ready.

JOE MAGGIO: And I was ready. So we brought it to HDNet to Jason, which was being run by Jason Kliot and Joanna Vicente at Open City Films and they loved it. So I had a meeting with them and they were like, let’s do this. Let’s go, let’s go. Like, you know, Turturro, my God, amazing.

AMY: Yeah, they were great like that. I had a project and it was usually a fast green light because they’re producers.

JOE MAGGIO: Yeah. So we were off to the races.

AMY: And are you like storyboarding or getting ready or …

JOE MAGGIO: Absolutely. Like getting ready.

AMY: Buying some new sneakers, because you stand up all day.

JOE MAGGIO: Yeah. Yeah. Another Casio watch. An extra watch. Two watches. That’s when Alex was like, we need you need to get an attorney. We need to start doing some deals here. And very soon after we did our deals.

Then Jason and Joanna told me we need to recast John. He’s not a big enough star for two million dollars.

AVI: Who did they want?

JOE MAGGIO: My God, I don’t remember, but it was absurd. Their ideas. It was Jason’s brilliant idea that it had to be called the Falls, actually, towards the end of my relationship with them, he was the one that insisted that we change it. The problem was that it was The Fall and not The Falls.

AMY: How did the S help?

JOE MAGGIO: I have no idea, because it does center around a woman falling down the stairs. It’s just one. It does, but it’s also falling down. And then of course you have Diplicker falls. I mean and we get it, you know. It was tight. It could have been like today. The themes were tight. Yeah.

AVI: That’s true. I guess there are many falls in the film. There’s the grandmother falling, there’s Niagara Falls, and then there’s the moral fall.

JOE MAGGIO: Like tasting from the tree of knowledge. Yeah.

AMY: Did they want Will Farrell or something?

JOE MAGGIO: At one point they did. Yeah. They wanted Nicholas Cage. And what’s funny is it’s for a two million dollar film.

AVI: What year is this?

JOE MAGGIO: That’s like two thousand seven, maybe. So how many years have you been plowing into this at that point? It’s been like three years. I remember it was so long. At one point I was like, fuck this. I’m gonna make a movie. And I made Paper Covers Rock for six thousand dollars. Just me and my DP Sam Shin. And that premiered at SXSW and I sold it to IFC.

AVI: I saw the premiere at SXSW.

AMY: So you were greenlit.

JOE MAGGIO: We were greenlit, but they were like, you need to recast John. And I said, no. I said absolutely not. Not gonna happen. We’ve become kind of friendly now. And also, he’s just the best actor for this role. And I think he’s I think he’s the greatest actor alive. And I was like, it’s not gonna happen.

And so they were like, okay, fine, fine, but we need but then we need someone bigger than Lauren Ambrose. And I was like, this is madness. So I’d go to John and I was very open with John and John hated these people. It was like, you remember Uncle Junior from The Sopranos, like when he would go on a rant? Like John could go on these rants about Jason and Joanna. It was so great.

But to me, like my fee for my deal, I was going to make a $120,000. for writing and directing this film. And John understood, like I couldn’t walk away from that. Like I had nothing. I had no money. I had nothing. I had no power. I was like, I can’t walk away from this. And he understood. So then it all became about the actress. So John’s still on and it’s the actress. And then they came back to me again. And they’re like, we gotta get rid of John. He’s just not a big enough star. And I was like, guys, it’s just not negotiable. I’m not gonna get rid of John. Then it was like the grandmother, and well, so like who’s gonna play the wife? And they’ve gotta be big. They were going for like the biggest names. Yeah, but the problem is not the biggest part. There’s one great part that’s complicated and super juicy for actors.

AMY: I’ve been in this situation before. We cast Maggie Gyllenhaal for secretary, for example, and that was a great, great part. She was not known. It was maybe her first or second feature length film. And we went through the whole thing. Like you have to get a big, big star, but the best part was taken. So how did this all end?

JOE MAGGIO: I sent you all the cast lists.

AVI: There’s a ton of cast lists.

JOE MAGGIO: Yeah. And so several weeks pass and then months pass and we can’t find someone to play the young girl. We can’t find someone for the wife. We can find people, but not of the caliber that HDNet is demanding. And then they come to me again the third, the cock crows the third time. And they’re like, you gotta get rid of John. It’s you know, we can’t, we can’t proceed with John Turturro in this role. I had either the flu or something, but I was in bed, my head under a pillow, with my phone under there with me. And John was in Hungary. He said, and this is a line my brother John and I use all the time now, Turturro said, I feel like I’m holding on to the horns of a bull and I’m wearing roller skates. And it was exactly how this whole thing felt. He said, you’ve got to get rid of these guys. And I was like, John, I can’t, I just can’t walk away from this deal. Like it’s two million dollars and I have no money. I can’t pay, like we had bought an apartment. It was like, I can’t pay the mortgage. Like, we, you know, I desperately need this deal.

And he said, then you need to do it. He’s like, I won’t stand in your way. He was like, don’t worry, we’ll be fine, we’ll do something else together. I felt like he was giving me, he was telling me, go ahead, I’m done. I’ve had enough. I remember calling Jason Kliot, and saying, All right, Jason, so no John, so we will move on without John. It’s one of the biggest regrets of my life.

AMY: And then what happened? Like you went out to like....

JOE MAGGIO: I said, but Jason, so help me God, I will come after you if you tell me in a week… I said I may be sacrificing a friendship with someone that I have revered my entire life. If you tell me in a week that that we are in turnaround or that this isn’t happening, we’re gonna have a problem. He’s like, Don’t worry, we’re good to go. We have the money. We’re ready to go. We just need to act. We’ll cast that part and we’re ready to go. It’s all papered, blah, blah, blah.

A week later, he calls me and he’s like, it’s not gonna happen. You know, we’re dissolving things. And that was the end of it. It’s one of the great regrets of my life because it did end the friendship and I haven’t seen John since then.

AMY: You went to the mat for him.

AVI: That must have been heartbreaking.

JOE MAGGIO: It’s horrible.

Horrible. It was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made on a film. And I feel like it was a character flaw on my part. I should have, I should have said, you know what? I’d have walked away, but I was under so much pressure. My daughter had just been born. Like I was like, my God, I need to make some money.

AVI: Did you consider going back to John at that point and being like, look, they’re gone. Let’s go look for other money.

JOE MAGGIO: No, I think what happened was that it poisoned the well with CAA. It poisoned everything.

AVI: So part of the show is we’ve heard the Sisyphine tale and you gave us all the assets, all the scripts and everything.

AVI: So let me share with you what we’ve got going here in terms of a possible pitch deck. Here’s The Fall. I love it. Film by Joe Maggio. We have kind of like a full page image of a Brian Garretti like person on his back in what looks like perhaps the precipice of Niagara Falls.

AVI: So let me share with you what we’ve got going here in terms of a possible pitch deck. Here’s The Fall. A film by Joe Maggio. We have kind of like a full page image of a Brian Garrett like person on his back in what looks like perhaps the precipice of Niagara Falls.

TOM HALL: That is Paul Dano.

AVI: Paul Dano, you’re right. It is Paul Dano. It is Paul Dano. You’re right.

TOM HALL: It’s perfect. I’ve been thinking about him the entire time we’ve been having this conversation.

AVI: That’s pretty amazing. Tom, make it happen. You are gonna be amazed, Tom,

JOE MAGGIO: But wait, wait, go back. Can you go back to that quickly? Come on- Paul. We have to Tom, you’re on board. We have to get Paul Dano.

AVI: That image speaks to you.

AMY: You don’t have to struggle with making decks.

JOE MAGGIO: God, look at that.

AVI: Here we go. The log line. I’ll read it off. A devout Niagara Falls attorney commits an impulsive murder and finds himself reborn into a mist soaked moral wilderness where faith falters, desire tempts.

AMY: And every choice pulls him further from the man he thought he was. Now all again, all this text is generated based on the material you sent us.

JOE MAGGIO: That’s great. That’s pretty good.

AMY: Yeah, is that a real thing? Is that in Europe?

JOE MAGGIO: That looks like the Canadian International Train Bridge, actually. Yeah. that that connects. no, there’s usually just one. We used to go fishing underneath there.

AMY: It’s a double banger bridge.

JOE MAGGIO: Yeah. That’s the Niagara, and that looks like the Canadian International Train Bridge. It’s not the Peace Bridge.

TOM HALL: I think that’s a mirror. It looks mirrored, right?

AVI: Like down the hill. It does. Here’s our casting, and look who’s first.

JOE MAGGIO: My god. my god. So it’s gotta be Dano.

AVI: We have an image of Paul Dano as Bud Rosenquist basically sitting in his office.

AMY: Yeah, and the cast list they come up with it’s top three ideas. We ask for three choices, and we have Paul Dano, Internalized Panic, Disguised as Decency. I guess that’s the vibe. Or you could cast Jesse Plemons, Eroding American Earnestness. He’s having a moment. Or my favorite, Scoot McNairy, Jittery Vulnerability.

JOE MAGGIO: What I like in this in the photo of Paul Dano, in the picture in the back, is a guy walking on a tightrope.

AVI: That’s in one of your scene descriptions, right?

JOE MAGGIO: Yeah. When the secretary comes in and asks him about it, he describes, you know, it’s this guy who successfully crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope. And it’s a true story. I’m blanking on the guy’s name, but he then goes out and gets drunk and comes back and tries to do it in street shoes and falls to his death.

AMY: Is this true or is this in your script?

JOE MAGGIO: This is true and it’s in the script. So the secretary is, you know, she says, wow that’s terrible and Bud’s response is, yeah “arrogance”. You know, he’s so moral. He’s like such a moralist about everything. And she’s like, yeah, or dumb luck.

AMY: Let’s go on to the next character, Daisy Pierce, a wounded, cunning young woman who weaponizes vulnerability because it’s the only currency she’s ever had, right? And three casting ideas. Lily McInerney, Wounded Innocence, Cunning.

Some other options are Thomasin McKenzie, sweetness fraying at the edges.

JOE MAGGIO: Now what’s interesting about that is she was in Leave No Trace. That was her big breakout film, I believe, and Michael McDonough shot that. That was a Deborah Granick film.

AMY: So you could get to her.

JOE MAGGIO: Probably could get to her.

AMY: And another idea is Lia McHugh, Tender Volatility with Hidden Steel.

TOM HALL: So she was in Chloe Zhao’s The Eternals.

AVI: Do you know what I just realized about this casting list? All their last names. Look at it. Mc, Mc, Mc. Irish. What is that?

JOE MAGGIO: That’s interesting, right?

TOM HALL: Nothing says church organist, quite like a bra strap sticking off the shoulder.

AMY: And the foggy night.

AVI: It’s funny, I ask it for a description of the character when it’s making the image prompt, and it’s gotta be in the script. At least one or two times where it’s like oversized cardigan hanging over the shoulder, it exposes a camisole or something like that.

AMY: I’ll continue with the casting. Holly Rosenquist, a painfully perceptive wife.

Who’s held the family together for years and finally reaches her breaking point? so we have Carrie Coon, Grace Under Fresh with moral clarity. It’s a good choice. I like Carrie Coon. Amy Ryan, emotional weariness with bite. Rosemarie DeWitt, softness edged with strength.

JOE MAGGIO: I love Rosemary DeWitt.

AMY: Tom, who would you cast?

TOM HALL: It depends on the emotional register, I think, of the character. I think all three of them bring something different. Carrie Coon for me always. I love her. She plays a little bit cerebral compared to the other two. So I’m wondering how much of that is what you’re looking for.

AVI: Father Gardner, weary priest juggling devotion and hypocrisy while hiding a secret that undercuts everything he preaches.

And we have a picture of him in the sacristy. Is that how you pronounce it? Sacristy. putting on his looks like he’s putting on his collar. There’s like a sensor behind him, robes. Looks like they were burning incense there. There’s a fog machine. And definitely the top choice standing front and center is Richard Jenkins. yeah. Weary authority, gentle sorrow. We’ve also got Stephen McKinley Henderson.

TOM HALL: He was in Severance, but African American, lighter skinned. He’s terrific. He’s also the therapist in Bo is Afraid.

AVI: Or David Strathairn.

JOE MAGGIO: I love David Strathairn. My God.

AVI: It’s great. benevolence tinged with secret guilt. The essence that our machine was going for is a man holding the line for everyone but himself.

TOM HALL: Let me just say this has to be John Turturro, or I’m gonna lose it.

AVI: What? The priest? Yeah, the priest. What do you think?

JOE MAGGIO: Yes.

AMY: Next. Okay, we have Rose, a vicious domineering grandmother whose cruelty reverberates through the entire family. This is the character that dies, right?

JOE MAGGIO: Yes. Yeah.

AMY: Okay, well, June Squibb, not a big part, but a good part. She’s sitting here in a plastic covered lounge chair.

June Squibb, who’s hilarious, vivacious, and heartbreaking. Lois Smith, who’s in, you know, New Yorker is in like every play. I worked with Lois Smith on a small film. Nostalgic Warmth Turned Bitter. Margot Martindale. Hurricane Force Meanness. Okay. my god.

JOE MAGGIO: You know who we had? Who we had was Elaine Stritch. My god. Elaine Stritch.

AMY: My god. That would have been amazing.

JOE MAGGIO: Yeah. Tell me about it. And then we’ve got some posters that we mocked up. Yeah. The con laurel.

AMY: Well you never know. You know, this is as if it happened.

AVI: The first one we see Daisy in the organ loft, sheet music around her feet, pull quote, a spellbinding moral fable, Maggio’s most intimate, unsettling film.

And the subtitles are Sin, Shame and Salvation.

AMY: It’s interesting that Daisy would be the image of the poster. I guess it’s Well

TOM HALL: the thing about Eve and The Fall in the Garden of Eden, obviously you have to center the woman as the blame and the problem for the reason why there’s fall and sin. Yeah.

AVI: Another poster where we see Sundance logo this time. In the stairs, Sundance. A slow burn moral thriller with ice in its veins. It says The Fall, every descent begins with a choice.

JOE MAGGIO: No, it should be every resurrection begins with a fall.

TOM HALL: How long is the standing ovation? Does it pick the w we have to clock the standing ovations now?

JOE MAGGIO: Sixteen minutes.

AMY: Let’s let’s show the trailer. Let’s do it.

AVI: Now it’s showtime. So buckle up.

TRAILER AUDIO:

I don’t know when it started, but I can see it clearly now.

Feels like a cinder block.

It was just a thought. That’s all. Thoughts can feel heavy soon. Tell me about it.

Did you think I wouldn’t notice you watching me? This is bullshit! You don’t have to pretend with me, Mr. Rosenquist.

I can’t fix this anymore. Please don’t leave me alone again.

I don’t know what you did, but I can feel it. I don’t know who I am anymore, Daisy. I think I broke something inside myself.

I did something terrible. And I didn’t stop.

I did everything they asked.

And it was never enough.

AMY: This is cool, that image. Well, so what do you guys think?

TOM HALL: They went for a Tim Blake Nelson Luke Wilson vibe on the lead actor there. That’s pretty cool.

AVI: Yeah. Thoughts, hot takes.

JOE MAGGIO: I’ll go first. So I I mean it’s so

AVI: stunned.

JOE MAGGIO: It’s so not my style of directing, or filmmaking, but there were some moments where especially where the dialogue actually was something from the script, where I was like, wow.

I told Avi this. I do feel like something psychically stopped for me when this film did not get made and so seeing it, seeing that trailer, it’s like it’s hard to see it, even though it’s not how I would direct it. I’m not a big dolly into the room kind of guy. You know, it’s not my palette or anything. But I think that it would have been a great film when we tried to make it.

And then we hit a period in our culture where it probably couldn’t have gotten made. It’s too, it’s too out there. But now we’ve come around and I think we could make it now. And so that’s when I see that trailer, I’m just like, I swore I would never go back to this well. But I’m like, I’ve got to make The Fall.

AVI: Now would be a great time to get our special guest, Finn, who is a creative executive.Because if you indeed are thinking about or even harboring ideas…

AMY: Now’s your chance to pitch it.

JOE MAGGIO: Well you’re putting me on the spot. I’m not ready. I didn’t know I was gonna have to pitch this too.

AVI: You don’t have to. I mean it’s just asking him questions.

AMY: This is just a conversation.

JOE MAGGIO: Maybe Tom can pitch it. Yeah, because Tom’s the producer now.

AVI: So Finn, we’ve got Joe Maggio here, we’ve got Tom Hall here, we’ve got my co-host Amy Hobby. We’re talking about The Fall. Just give us a hot take on the original stuff that we sent you.

FINN [AI FILM EXEC]: All right. So here’s my read on The Fall. So here’s my read. What works first? There’s a clear emotional core. You can feel the pull between intimacy and isolation. The lead dynamic has that quiet charge where even the silences are doing work, and there’s a visual grammar baked into it that could keep the film distinctive at a modest budget. Where I think it gets tangled is in tone control. Sometimes it leans toward existentialism.

Sometimes toward thrillers and the shifts aren’t always earned. Which, in practice, would make it hard to market and harder still to cast for the right audience. So my question back to all of you is, what’s the film’s heartbeat? Is it about the characters enduring something together or about the mystery itself? Because once we fix that, the rest has somewhere to orbit.

JOE MAGGIO: Wow. Well, that’s interesting because that was something. You’ve just reminded me that was something that people questioned, was this the tone, like, were we supposed to be laughing? Is this a thriller? What, you know, is it an existential drama? And so that resonates for sure.

JOE MAGGIO: But I want Tom actually to sort of answer that for me because you know, I’m really not –

TOM HALL: Finn, are you up for morally complicated comedies as a producer, or is that something that you’re not interested in as work? Because I think you can have both moral complications and have it be a darkly comic film. I think in fact they drive one another. So I don’t see that as a conflict necessarily.

FINN [AI FILM EXEC]: Yeah, I’m with you on that. Moral complication and dark comedy can feed each other beautifully if you’re deliberate about tone. The tonal shift I’m reacting to comes right after that early inciting incident. Where your two main characters are pressed into closer proximity and instead of deepening the unease, the scene leans into sly, almost winking dialogue. It’s a nice beat on its own, but in the structure it cools the pressure too early. If we keep the humor tied to their underlying dread or moral conflict, it’ll land without cutting the spine out of the suspense.

Maybe let’s walk through your actual second act turning point and check if that’s where the tonal debate really lives.

JOE MAGGIO: Well, Finn, what do you consider the second act turning point?

FINN [AI FILM EXEC]: From what I saw, the second act turn is that moment when the central relationship gets irreversibly altered. When the incident they’ve both been circling finally happens and it forces them onto different emotional footing. Up until then, there’s still a sense they can walk away. After that beat, they’re bound to each other’s choices. In your script,

That’s the scene where the external event, the one tied to The Fall itself, shifts from background tension to something they have to actively deal with, and the stakes jump from personal unease to survival, moral reckoning, or both. That’s where I’d anchor the tonal decision. Do we lean into the dread or keep the ironic distance? Because after that, the audience is locked in one lane.

TOM HALL: This is too realistic. I can’t handle it.

AMY: Hey Finn, this is Amy, I’m a producer. So I want to talk a little bit about funding and production things. You know, we have interest from John Turturro. It seems like he’s gonna play one of the parts we’re not sure. And we think we can lock him in. Do you think this helps with our funding if we’re thinking around three to five million as a budget?

FINN [AI FILM EXEC]: Yeah, having Turturro in serious talks absolutely helps, especially at that budget range. He’s got the mix of artistic credibility and name recognition that can unlock certain financiers, and he plays well in both indie prestige circles and more commercial niches. At three to five million, you’re still in that space where a strong lead can be the tipping factor, but it won’t guarantee the rest. You’ll still need a package that feels totally clear and sellable. So the question is, with him on board, are we leaning into making this a character-driven piece that his fan base will come for, or are we hoping to broaden it? That choice will shape which funding tracks really respond.

TOM HALL: Finn, would you like to take over HD net?

FINN [AI FILM EXEC]: No. I think I’ll leave –

AMY: Do you know what HD net is, Finn?

FINN [AI FILM EXEC]: Yeah. Sure.

AVI: He hung up.

JOE MAGGIO: Am I the only one who feels a little uneasy laughing at Finn because in five years when Finn has got us all chained up and we’re begging for mercy…

AMY: One year. One year. There’s already a great program that does amazing script coverage.

JOE MAGGIO: Can I just say also I was getting that kind of gaslight that I always used to get on these calls? It’s really incredible. Like, maybe they’re right. Are they right? Is that right? That sounded smart, but wait, what are they saying?

TOM HALL: That was crazy. Wow.

AVI: I guess we kind of answered could you could you make it now. You know, that’s kind of the parting shot. Is this a closure or is this a reboot, a benediction, a resurrection?

JOE MAGGIO: It’s bittersweet. It was fun to sort of revisit and look at some of this stuff. Looking at the correspondence- it was painful. As I said, I feel like I made so many mistakes. I feel like there’s so many things I would do differently. And I still feel like the material, the script is so good. I’ve never had anyone read that script and be like, it was just okay. Everyone was like, wow, I was laughing out loud and it’s tight. I just can’t believe that it won’t ever get made. So I have all sorts of emotions. I don’t know. I feel like I want to just move on. I wanna be kind of stoical about it and just be like, it didn’t get made, and that’s life and we move on, we do other things. But as the author, I just think it’s too good. It’s really a good script. And we came close, I feel like we did come close, but you know, it’s the one that got away. It is a film that was not made.

AVI: So we’ll probably leave it right there. Is there anything you’re working on now or any place people can find you? Anything that you want to let folks know about.

JOE MAGGIO: I just did a radio play that I really love as part of the Tales from Beyond the Pale, Larry Fessenden and Glenn McQuay. I forget which season it is, but it’s episode fifty. I’ve done a few other ones. They’re very good. It’s just come out yeah, TalesfromBeyondthePale.com . It’s starring James LeGros and Alex Hurt and it was really fun.

You can go on my website, which is incidentalfilms.com, and all my stuff is there. And I’ve got a few films in the works and a one-man show, which I’m gonna be taking to Edinburgh in August.

AVI: Tom, you too. Where can people find you?

TOM HALL: You can read my film writing at backrowmanifesto.com, follow my film programming work at Montclairfilm.org. Film Festival, two cinemas operating year round, lots going on. We just wrapped the fourteenth annual Montclair Film Festival in October. So we’ll be having fifteen in October 2026 and busy keeping up with all that and keeping the gears going. So yeah, send us your work. We’d love to we’d love to look.

AVI: Montclair is a great film festival. I’ve had some stuff there. It’s super fun. They treat the filmmakers fantastic. It’s great theaters, great people.

JOE MAGGIO: I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been programmed there, Avi. I don’t know who to talk to about that.

TOM HALL: That’s gonna change with The Fall.

AMY: All right, guys. Thank you so much.

AVI: You’ve been listening to Films Not Made, but if you want an even better experience, check us out on YouTube where you can see all the new materials, including the pitch deck and trailer.

AMY: And subscribe to our Substack for show notes, more about our guests, and industry insights.

AVI: And please follow us on Instagram and TikTok as FilmsNotMade.

AMY: And of course we have merch. Check that out and all things films not made at filmsnotmade.com.

AVI: Thanks again for listening and watching. We’ll see you next time.

Sometime in 2021, the future of my creative life showed up - not with a thunderclap, not with the heavenly host, but as a blinking cursor in a text box.

I’d been trying for a while to get early access to some AI models to see what I could do creatively with them. Turned out that I also signed up for a spot in the beta for Sudowrite - running on one of the early OpenAI GPT models, this is pre-ChatGPT, back when “large language model” still sounded like something unknown. And I got access. Basically, you fed it a paragraph; it handed you the next one. You could also rewrite, expand, do a few more actions. And most of what came back was interesting…

Kind of like a charming stranger at a party describing in detail a book he has plainly never read.

But it was surprising and I could feel the energy in it, something with a little static of life in it, and sometimes I’d even feel the floor tilt a few degrees beneath me. It was also like watching the weather come across a plain, what it was going to become once it was. I immediately used it to make a pilot episode of a series I have yet to release (more on that later).

The images came a couple of years after the text box. Then, more slowly and far more strangely, the video - those early clips that melted at the edges, where a face would reorganize itself between frames. A year ago Amy and I started conceiving Films Not Made, and back then the video models were just getting manageable. Now a new one lands every couple of months, each arriving like more weather and quietly retiring some elaborate workaround I’d spent hours dialing in.

The universe gives; the universe takes; and lately it has been giving at a rate that makes a person dizzy.

For a long time the work happened inside the platforms - long, swampy chat threads, prompts copy-pasted into a browser like a person throwing bullets at a moving target - a conversation I had to babysit and feed until it grew so heavy with its own history that the whole apparatus began to forget. I was a user. I was, God help me, clicking. Command-C, Command-V.

Now I’m mostly in the terminal, or even more so the native app (same diff), and the machine does the clicking. I describe a shot in plain English - out loud, more and more, because I’ve become an unembarrassed addict of Wispr Flow and would frankly rather talk than type, and the system writes the prompt, talks to the image and video engines through their APIs or calls another system via CLI, and sets the finished frame down on my drive. The browser, the copy-paste, the context limits: gone, or going. We’re climbing out of the platforms and down into the pipes.

Which puts me back in the chair I prefer to sit in. Not operator. Not power user. Director. Asking for a shot, looking hard at what comes back, and saying the oldest sentence in the business: again, but -

The thing doing the clicking, I should say, isn’t raw Claude Code. It’s Claude Code wearing a “harness” - Daniel Miessler’s PAI, Personal AI Infrastructure, a scaffolding of skills and agents and memory that takes a general-purpose coding tool and teaches it my projects, my taste, and the very specific way I want a hallway to feel the second a man realizes he is not alone in his own house. On top of it I’ve built my own floor: character-sheet workflows, trailer-outline skills, a private grammar of prompts for holding a period look steady. The model is the engine. PAI is the car I actually get to drive - and the car, it turns out, matters more than the horsepower.

Some of this runs on luck I try not to take for granted. I’m in the OpenAI Artist Program, which is how GPT Image 2 landed in my hands early, and it’s now become the spine of the whole image pipeline - particularly for the single hardest problem in this entire craft, which is keeping a character’s face the same face from one shot to the next, a problem that has humbled better filmmakers than me and will go on humbling all of us for a good while yet.

Here’s the stack as it stands today, fully aware it may be out of date by Labor Day:

Director’s chair / harness: Claude Code, wrapped in PAI
Input / dictation: Wispr Flow - so I’m mostly talking, not typing
Image generation: GPT Image 2, with OpenAI Codex in the loop
Video generation: Kling 3.0 (sometimes Seedance 2.0)
Music & score: Suno
API layer: kie.ai - serving both Kling 3.0 and GPT Image 2 (when needed), so it’s all command line, no browser
Assembly: Adobe Premiere Pro, still and forever

So. I’m going to start showing the backend. This is the first one - I filmed myself building the climactic sequence of the trailer for Joe Berlinger’s upcoming episode wherein we reimagine The Little Fellow in the Attic, the man who’s been living in the attic for years and the husband who finally senses him in the house. It’s unvarnished on purpose: the outline that isn’t good enough, the character who keeps drifting into a different woman, the shot that only works if I cut in late. This is what the work actually looks like with the cover off.

TRANSCRIPT

So I wanted to start documenting how things have changed in terms of how I’m creating both the deck and the trailer for Films Not Made. Right now I’m in the middle of making the trailer for Joe Berlinger’s The Little Fellow in the Attic, and the workflow is fundamentally different from when I started doing this - which was not even a year ago. The tools keep changing, the technology keeps changing.

As you can see, I have Adobe Premiere open on screen, because that’s still where everything gets assembled. But in terms of generating the individual shots, the workflow looks very different now. I’m working inside Claude Code, in a Warp terminal, and I’m in the middle of assembling the sequence.

I do have a trailer outline that was generated through a workflow - a set of skills we’ve built over time inside Claude. But honestly, what usually happens is the outline comes out and it’s just not good enough. It doesn’t follow the actual principles of filmmaking. Once I step into it, I’m changing most of it. So think of it as a really rough first draft - a starting point, not a finish line.

Right now I’m putting together a climactic sequence where the husband, Fred, comes home and finally senses that someone else has been in the house. Apparently this man has been living in the attic for years - and having an affair with his wife. Fred figures it out. So we have: her in bed, the doorknob turns, the attic ladder retracts, she turns. Fred says, “Who’s been in this house?” Then we see the attic door close, the light disappearing from the hatch, and then they’re running up the stairs.

The next shot I needed was the hallway with the attic hatch. I’d already generated a first-frame image for it. The workflow I’m using has been around for a while: you create a first frame, then send it to a video generation engine to animate from there.

For image generation, I’ve been using GPT Image 2 inside ChatGPT. For a while I was leaning heavily on Gemini - what we’ve been affectionately calling “Nano Banana Pro” - but I’m getting better results now from GPT Image 2. I had some early access to it through the OpenAI Artist Program.

Here’s how the pipeline works: from inside Claude Code, I send instructions - based on the trailer outline and the character sheets we built - through to OpenAI Codex via the command line interface. It generates the image inside GPT Image 2, then brings it back and lands it on my machine.

When I started doing these trailers, everything happened inside the chat interface. I’d have an incredibly long ChatGPT conversation, going back and forth, generating images right there in the thread. And sometimes I’d send them out to Gemini. But when a chat gets that long, it gets slow and boggy. You hit context limits. The platforms have gotten better at compaction - basically creating summaries to free up the context window - but it still adds friction. The code interface handles this better, and I’ll get into why at some point.

So - back to the shot. I go into the terminal and just describe in plain English what I want: the attic door closing, the light disappearing from above. Claude Code writes a JSON prompt file, sends it to Kling through their API via Kite (key.ai), and fires it off. I don’t have to copy-paste anything into a browser. It reads the API documentation, the Reddit posts, the AI filmmaking blogs - I’ve pointed it at all of that - and aligns its approach with my own criteria for what I want out of a shot.

It reports back: image uploaded, JSON submitted, shot is generating. And it comes back fast.

The hatch is closing. That’s usable. I’ll cut in late so we get the tension of it closing while Fred is already running up the stairs.

Over in Premiere, I import the shot, trim it down - just enough to land the moment - and we’re already looking at a cut. It needs a beat more to let the light disappear properly, but it’s close.

The next shot is Fred running up the stairs, with Walburga behind him saying, “No, Fred.” I generated both a low angle and a high angle. The problem I kept running into: character consistency. The woman in the shot wasn’t matching our character sheet - and character consistency from shot to shot has always been the hard part of AI filmmaking. It’s getting easier, but it’s still the thing you fight.

Here’s how I’m addressing it: when we build the deck, we create reference character sheets using GPT Image 2. We take the casting image - the actor our AI pipeline picked for the role - and run it through a prompt that generates multiple poses, expressions, costumes, and lighting variations. That sheet is what we feed back into the image engine for every subsequent shot. It gives the model something concrete to anchor on.

So when the high-angle staircase shot didn’t look right, I sent the instruction back: redo that shot, use the character sheet as the primary likeness anchor, do not generate a different woman, do not drift her facial features. It takes all the approved reference images - her by the window, looking up, Fred’s face, the staircase geometry - and bundles them back into GPT Image 2 through Codex. Then I wait.

Meanwhile, I already approved the low-angle version of the staircase shot. Back in Premiere, I drop it in and watch it in context. There’s too much headroom, but once I cut to the high angle when it lands, it’ll work. Fred charges up the stairs. Then we’ll cut to Otto - already have a shot of him up in the attic room, standing there. Low angle to high angle, then Otto. Then cut to black.

And from there, three shots - probably a shot of the gun being thrown away, arcing toward the La Brea Tar Pits. Except it didn’t land in the tar pits. It’s a crazy story. You’ll have to watch the episode.

That’s how I’m making the trailers now. There’s a lot more I’d love to get into - the harness I’ve built around Claude Code, how the skills stack together, what changed between episode one and where we are now. That’ll come in time.

Till then - thanks for watching Films Not Made.

EPILOGUE & NOTES

1. If you want the why beneath all this how. Its conscience lives in a longer essay I wrote called The Left-Handed Blow: Art in the Age of AI Reproduction - Walter Benjamin, the aura, the contracting industry, and the uncomfortable admission that what I really am, sitting here, is the meat between the chair and the keyboard.

2. As for that pilot episode I mentioned at the top - it’s called “Disaster On Deneb” and the series may or may not have a name. Anyway, it incorporates documentary audio with AI-assisted writing which at the time was novel. Right now it’s all audio but guess what - I’m adding video. Stay tuned.

By 2016, she was pitching it as a wildly imaginative children’s TV show set in a Brooklyn apartment full of puppet roommates. Netflix called it underbaked, to which Natalie said "I've never baked something. This is the only thing I've baked." Enjoy the podcast. Full transcript and notes are below.

Amy Hobby: Today’s guest is Natalie Weiss, a multifaceted storyteller. She writes music, musicals, she’s written an opera, and a children’s television show. She’s been commissioned by the Wooster Group and Brooklyn Philharmonic. She’s collaborated with Mark Ronson, the band Fischerspooner. Remember them? And I’m a huge fan of her off-Broadway musical Camp Wanitachi, which played a run in New York City at La MaMa and had incredible reviews and I saw it twice. I love it so much. Wow. Yeah. Welcome Natalie.

Natalie Weiss: Thanks for having me.

Avi Weider: When we first started talking about the show, this was one of the first projects that Amy immediately wanted to circle back around to. Certainly for me, it’s totally unique because it’s a children’s show. It’s called DJ Natalie’s Neighborhood. And why don’t you just start us off, give us the short pitch of it.

Natalie Weiss: Yeah. DJ Natalie’s Neighborhood is a show for families and it’s Pee-wee’s Playhouse meets Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood set to a DJ beat and trying to take some of my life in Brooklyn coming up with these zany roommates and all these troubles we had and make that the setting for Baby DJ School, which is an actual business that I started and Baby DJ School would take place at the apartment. And so instead of my helper being some actress I hired to help me in my music class, it’s like my amazing horse roommate, Ms. Hay Hay.

Natalie Weiss: And I just got to use songs that already existed in the Baby DJ School universe. Baby DJ School is a music education program built around pedagogical kids music. So it’s like we’ve got a house music beat and we’re building a house or there’s a jungle beat and we’re acting like animals in the jungle and it’s all about teaching musical concepts through song.

Avi Weider: How old are the kids in Baby DJ School?

Natalie Weiss: We start at two months.

Avi Weider: Two months?

Natalie Weiss: Two months to five years because that’s when the brain is the most plastic and the most receptive to information. And I feel like anything that can be taught with joy can enrich a child. So if you’re teaching a child about mathematics but you’re giving it to them like that is two plus two. And I felt like if we were teaching a skill that the parents would be able to brag about knowing, they’re like, “Well, yeah, I used Traktor. I’ve been digital for a couple years.” If they’re learning something too, they’re not on their phone and it models happy learning for the kids. Plus if the parents think it’s cool, they’re taking a picture, they’re paying attention, they’re not zoning out when they’re hearing “Wheels on the Bus” for the umpteenth time. So Baby DJ School had this viral success. We were on the cover of the New York Post before we had our first class.

Avi Weider: Were you hosting this out of your apartment?

Natalie Weiss: No, it was worse. I did it out of a vintage store who was not counting on a multinational media circus. They were like, “Yeah, come do a kid’s music class. It’ll be a little something.” And it’s like the Associated Press and Russia and everybody’s taking turns getting five minutes of the class. So the kind of success of that made me say maybe there’s something I can bring to a larger audience that can be interesting for children and for adults, just like the classes.

Avi Weider: So you’re saying you had the business going for how long before you had the inspiration to transform it?

Natalie Weiss: To DJ Natalie’s Neighborhood? I would say two years. I had my first class in September 2013 and my background is as a composer and a playwright and I work with characters. So it seemed really natural for me to just put this in a setting with a narrative. And the guy who had been making the beats for the Baby DJ School songs, I was like, “Okay, this is the idea.” And then the beat, it sounds like it’s a kid song and then the beat drops and he gets the concept and it’s like funny. And so working with him, Matthew Young, who’s so talented and can do any genre, made it fun too because once we wrote this theme song together, it just kind of congealed.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. So I was involved with DJ Natalie’s Neighborhood starting in July of 2016, I got an email from 2016. In 2016, Natalie emailed me with a script and an idea. At that point it was Broad City meets Pee-wee’s Playhouse. I’m curious, did you meet anyone a little more insider before me? Who read the script first? You had the pilot script already at that point?

Natalie Weiss: You were the first person.

Amy Hobby: I’m sorry.

Natalie Weiss: My world is like music and barely into theater and musical theater and opera. I’ve kind of found my way into that. So you were someone who was just fun and I felt like might have fun producing it. I was a huge fan of the work of yours that I’ve seen. So I was like, well, if she can imagine whatever, my biggest reference at the time was Secretary, which is like one of my favorite movies to this day.

Avi Weider: Hey, look at that.

Natalie Weiss: And I just thought, let’s see if I can get a meeting with you because I know you a little bit plus the Baby DJ School thing had been trending. So I thought, let’s capitalize on this if I can.

Amy Hobby: At the time I had a company called Tangerine Entertainment and our company only did films directed by women. So we were focused on female identifying content creators and we had a bit of a team there. I had a development person, my producing partner, Anne Hubbell, and we had a production person and even an assistant. Those were the days.

Amy Hobby: And we set up a meeting and you came into the office and the team was honestly really wowed by you personally in your pitch. Everyone thought you were so charismatic. You sang part of the theme song for us. Really it was a green light from us, not that we had money.

Avi Weider: Can we hear the song?

Natalie Weiss: Yes, you can. The beat is kind of what makes it a little anachronistic, but the melody is, “DJ Natalie’s Neighborhood where beats are dope and life is good. DJ Natalie’s Neighborhood come mix along with me.”

Avi Weider: I love it.

Amy Hobby: I love it. It’s so good.

Avi Weider: Did you have storylines already there? What was the strategy for developing it? Did you come in and be like, “I got this story and that story and this format?” Or just kind of walk us through how that happened.

Natalie Weiss: Yeah. It was basically like imagine you’re at Pee-wee’s Playhouse, but the whole setting is like a DJ trying to make it in New York instead of like ... But it’s like the place is alive and the way everything is at Pee-wee’s Playhouse. When I came up as a kid, I had like a teacher type figure that I watched. It was like Pee-wee’s Playhouse or Mr. Rogers or even Lamb Chops. There was an adult who I was like, “Dang, let me learn from you.”

Avi Weider: Did you grow up in New York?

Natalie Weiss: No, I grew up in Orlando, Florida.

Avi Weider: One of the things that occurred to me while I was going through the materials was this, you would’ve never seen it growing up in Orlando, but there was this local show, it actually was produced in Hartford because I looked it up, called Marlow and the Magic Movie Machine, which was this very strange local show about this guy who works in the basement of this big corporation and he has this machine that is like basically like some sort of AI computer. Of course, this is like 1979 and it plays film clips. He punches in buttons and it plays these film clips. And anyway, it reminded me of your show where they have a problem and then they go and visit someplace. There was something reminiscent about that and now you talking about these early shows as a kid watching it and how that influenced you, it just popped into my head.

Natalie Weiss: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think I would’ve been able to ... There was just a cool thing happening in the 80s when I was watching TV. It was like a very psychedelic time.

Avi Weider: Is it Sid and Marty Krofft?

Natalie Weiss: Yeah, weird animation and Ms. Piggy was this just drag goddess. You know what I mean? The puppets around were also very psychedelic and gender queer, like Gonzo. We don’t even know what he is.

Avi Weider: Why does he like chickens?

Natalie Weiss: I don’t know if you know Gonzo from the Muppets.

Amy Hobby: It was also around the time of Avenue Q, right? Around 2016, right?

Natalie Weiss: It was a little bit earlier, but it was still in that era. Rick Lyon made the puppets for Avenue Q and we were in conversation with him about music.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. I remember.

Natalie Weiss: And he’s so cool and practical and being a puppeteer in New York as your job is just like, wow. Even at the highest level, it’s a real racket. So it was cool, very practical and exciting talking to him. I love puppets. I came to New York to do puppets. That’s what I thought I was here to do. And then I realized at the absolute highest level puppeteers are still broke.

Avi Weider: There’s very few venues for that. There’s one in Park Slope called PuppetWorks that is a really ... You know the place?

Natalie Weiss: Yeah.

Avi Weider: And then there’s Williamsburg—

Amy Hobby: Between Williamsburg and Greenpoint or something.

Natalie Weiss: There’s Puppetsburg as well. There’s a couple of places.

Avi Weider: There was also Story Pirates. They started a whole thing, which I thought was really funny. And they probably still do maybe have a podcast, which I thought was super fun. We used to take the kids and make the kids listen to it.

Natalie Weiss: Yeah. And my whole thing with the kids is I babysat for so many years. I had no skill sets besides writing musicals and the lights. And puppeteering.

Avi Weider: It’s got a perfect CV for babysitting.

Natalie Weiss: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And that’s how the DJ classes started was just being kind of bored when I babysat and I had my DJ equipment with me to go to a gig afterwards. And then I was like, “Well, you guys should play with this.” And then I realized how much they liked it and I was suffering through these mommy and me music classes that I would take this wonderful family I worked with.

Avi Weider: Oh, I know the pain.

Natalie Weiss: Oh, you know the pain. Okay.

Avi Weider: I have triplets, Natalie.

Amy Hobby: Two boys and a girl.

Avi Weider: And we did Music Together and Music for Aardvarks.

Natalie Weiss: Those two are icons. I don’t know from a business standpoint, those are—

Avi Weider: Oh, I’m sure they rake it in.

Natalie Weiss: I mean, Music Together does, but Music for Aardvarks there is a lot of inspiration there. Oh yeah. When I thought if I make this a show, we can make it like I’m pretending to lug my record player and 12 pairs of headphones from place to place instead of actually having to lug my stuff around. So that was the inspiration for the class and the class was the inspiration for the show and I could bring together things I liked, but I ended up learning, God, Amy just like ...

I got stuff that can go on my gravestone because of Amy. I got to pitch to everybody and it wasn’t picked up, but I can say on my grave, I’ve been at the Disney Junior office. You know what I mean?

Amy Hobby: Yeah. So let’s back up a little bit. So Natalie came in for the meeting and the whole team loved the pitch so much. I do want to state that my company had no experience with children’s television whatsoever. So a green light from us was sort of a dubious green light, but we had a lot of enthusiasm and we figured we could figure it out. We’ll find a way. That’s just how Anne Hubbell and I would roll. So our first idea was to attach a big name DJ as an executive producer and Natalie had a list of people that she knew or admired. We figured that could help get us in the door at some of the companies. Natalie, do you remember who some of those were?

Natalie Weiss: I think Diplo was pretty big at the time and Mark Ronson, I hadn’t done anything with him yet, but he was like a DJ whose name people knew. And I felt like I knew somebody who was on his NTS. NTS is like a cool internet radio show. He was a guest on his NTS show. So maybe if he feels like it, he can do an intro. I threw parties for years. I have more connections in that world than I do in children’s television, that’s for sure.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. And Queen Latifah was on the list at the time because we wanted to be sort of more female creators. We went into a pretty quick development process at the time I had an amazing development person named Elizabeth Caden. She gave Natalie some notes and Natalie went away to a writer’s retreat, I think, and then came back addressing all the notes super fast.

Natalie Weiss: Yeah. The cool thing, was that most people on the retreat were puppeteers. It was like all purpose, like go to Missouri. I didn’t know that. I didn’t remember that.

Amy Hobby: I didn’t remember that either.

Natalie Weiss: So at the completion of it, I had puppeteers read it. So they got to do the accents they would do and they were like, “Oh, no question this is going to happen. Just please let me be on it.” The just great support from people who are also making super fascinating, deep puppetry work. So that was the greatest place to develop it. It was just really fun having pretend people in my mind and having them do things together and sing and dance together. Yeah, it’s like about as fun as it gets. It’s that. So it was a blast.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. And there was an initial deck that you had sent, the very first early deck, which my team thought it should be more slick, I guess. But looking back, I kind of really liked that first deck.

Avi Weider: So there are characters here. We’ve got DJ Natalie and kids.

Amy Hobby: And some kids. Yeah.

Avi Weider: It says if Mr. Rogers or Barney was a late 20s hipster, that would be her, sole leaseholder of her magical four bedroom apartment. That is magical.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, that’s unreal. In New York, probably anytime.

Natalie Weiss: The thing a lot of people, I mean people don’t know who aren’t in New York is being the leaseholder of an apartment is almost like being a landlord. It’s like you can split it up and market it how you want to and decorate it how you want to and it can be its own business. And the place I was staying at the time had four bedrooms on each corner and I always had such characters in there and then we would all convene in this center space. It works.

Avi Weider: Oh, okay. Yeah. Did you have a horse staying with you like Ms. Hay Hay?

Natalie Weiss: Ms. Hay Hay? No, we didn’t. I didn’t have any drag artists that ever lived with me, but I certainly had some huge, huge personalities. And at the time I think RuPaul’s Drag Race was just coming out and there was just camp lives. And I had just learned also about this whole — the next character I’m trying to ... Okay. Yes. Okay. Yeah. This idea of peace, love, unity, PLUR, it’s peace, love, unity, and then an R word that’s positive. And they all had this candy. They would give each other these bracelets and it was just a real childlike sense of love and acceptance and color at these raves, which was—

Avi Weider: And MDMA.

Natalie Weiss: Yeah, exactly. And I kind of came up more indie rock world where dudes with long hair were just like, “We’re unhappy.” So that whole culture was soon as I found out about that, I was like, “That’s a cool kind of world.” So it pulled from people I knew who were involved in these scenes.

Avi Weider: The deck goes on through a couple of other ... These are sort of prototypes for what then got developed. You have LD, the problem solver, tech savvy, a glow worm and up and coming lighting designer.

Natalie Weiss: Lights are so crucial for a party and a competent dyke is central to every endeavor. That’s what you want.

Avi Weider: Interesting. It’s funny. I didn’t read LD as queer in what we’ll see later on.

Natalie Weiss: Yeah, I’m not quite sure how it went, but originally just an awesome no nonsense tech lady from Buffalo who’s just like, “Listen”.

Avi Weider: From Buffalo. I love it. Then we have Daytime, the cheerful audiophile, a bluebird from East London. Oh, that’s funny. Again, didn’t catch the London thing. Looks like a blue Big Bird there.

Natalie Weiss: Yeah. At the time I had been like, “What kind of bird should it be?” And David Bowie had just passed, I believe. And his last record, he had all this imagery about a bluebird being this kind of symbol of the infinite. So I was like, “Let’s just do a bluebird.”

Avi Weider: So interesting. Shellina, the mermaid that gets picked up in Rockaway. Mr. Octopus, we didn’t even get Mr. Octopus later on.

Natalie Weiss: Yeah, he was our bad guy. An octopus is great for puppetry because you can employ several people too for each arm.

Amy Hobby: High employment. Totally. More puppeteers work. Yeah.

Avi Weider: Landlord, greedy, merciless.

Amy Hobby: It’s called Landlord.

Avi Weider: So it’s Landlord. Kind of Landlord, for no confusion. No mystery there.

Natalie Weiss: And Super-Super was the conceit of one of my dads from Baby DJ School and really great actor, Michael Abbott. We just kind of got together and I was like, “If you had a kid’s show, if you were on it, what would you want to be?” And the idea of the superhero superintendent is just great. A bumbling superhero is my favorite genre person. Super-Super.

Avi Weider: Super-Super.

Natalie Weiss: Super-Super.

Amy Hobby: It’s such a New York character too. Your super.

Avi Weider: Oh my God. I lived in this rent stabilized apartment in Park Slope for a long time and the quote super was this monosyllabic Russian guy and we just called him central services because it was mediocre service every time. Anyway.

Natalie Weiss: The superhero had magic and I really kind of brought in the practicality of like, let’s plug in the USB cord and it’s a portal because that was what I grew up with was magic and learning. And it’s not the educational modality du jour right now, which is really reality based. They would much rather ... I learned this as we went on. They want a woman in STEM being like, “We’re going to travel through time through quantum mechanics.” And they don’t want any magic. They want it to be a lesson. So that’s something that came up later.

Amy Hobby: So we saw this first deck or a deck like this and we loved it. We thought it should be glossier. I think from a development point of view, the goal was to get the materials to a certain place and then to get Natalie in the room because Natalie is charismatic and Natalie was a huge asset and the center of the show. So the idea was to get her in the room. I think that fall, the fall of 2016, we were trying to get the materials a little better. I think maybe Elizabeth had another round of small notes. We were doing a budget and breakdown, my team, my production person. We did an initial email to talk to someone I knew at HBO who I was close to, like easy, what I like to call a “lob”. It’s a pitch that’s someone, well, it’s a lob. We didn’t know the animation or kids shows at any of the places that we would normally pitch. So I went to someone like Maria Zuckerman who probably did scripted or whatever and then she would pass me over to the person in charge of children’s shows and then that person would take six months to answer my five emails. So it was moving quite fast, I thought, from my perspective for projects in general. Natalie, you had sent an email to us saying, “Maybe we should bring on someone that’s a television, actual television production company,” or you had mentioned, and this is only interesting in retrospect, maybe you would otherwise just do crowdfunding and do it sort of DIY and film it in the spring. So we were doing this budget and breakdown and I think puppets, there was a little bit of ambition to it that would make that a little bit hard, but it was an interesting point of view. Was it moving fast for you at this point? Did you think it was like moving briskly or were you like, “Can we get this going already?”

Natalie Weiss: I was just happy when I got emails back. It definitely didn’t feel like it was going slow, but I didn’t feel overwhelmed like I did when Baby DJ School kicked off. And the New York part of it I thought should be a sell. There’s so much Broad City, Sex and the City, a million things set in New York, not to mention the genesis of children’s television, which was Sesame Street was all in New York. The original sets had trash on the ground, so it was more like New York and it got super sanitized and that was right when Sesame Street started being under the guidance of HBO, which my hope is that we would be there throughout.

Amy Hobby: I know. That’s why we wanted to go to HBO. We’re like, “Ah, slam dunk.”

Avi Weider: Yeah. So I mean, you come out with all this new material with Amy and the group, but then from your perspective, was there something that just clued you into this isn’t going to happen or did it just kind of die on the vine for you?

Natalie Weiss: Not even anything like that. They were like, “Now we have meetings with Cartoon Network, Disney Junior, Amazon Junior, Netflix.” And I was like, “What?” And I got to go to LA and pick out my nail color, but it was such a mind fuck because you guys had been like, “We just get you in the room. You get this girl in the room.” I’m like, “Okay, I hope so.”

Amy Hobby: It’s all on you.

Natalie Weiss: And then we would get there and I was like, nobody’s going to see my personality or anything because it would be like — why? Because the person from Amazon Junior would be like, “Here’s what we’ve done,” and just talk about themselves for an hour.

Amy Hobby: Welcome to Hollywood.

Natalie Weiss: I was like, “This is so weird. I’ve been researching you. I know all of this stuff with me on it.” And then the first sentiment I got was like, we want someone that the kid can identify with that’s at the center of the show. So Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood is a kid. It’s Daniel Tiger. It used to be Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood because we used to be like, “Here’s an adult who’s going to teach us.” And now they’re like, they want a kid that we can imagine ourselves as doing the learning instead of it coming down from someone on high, which is I’m sure empowering in lots of ways, but you don’t get weird pervy experimental Pee-wee as a kid. It’s all that stuff and the weirdness in the camp that gives life color that comes with not being a child anymore. When I heard that, I was like, “Ah.” So I felt like I was living the life. I’ve got pictures of my Netflix pass.

Amy Hobby: And Anne went with you on that trip, right? You and Anne went and pitched at all those different places.

Natalie Weiss: The first time we scheduled right after Trump got elected and everybody was so depressed, everything just got canceled. And I was in LA. I was like, “I guess I’ll get another massage.” It was like nobody wanted meetings.

Amy Hobby: They were like, “We’re not meeting. The world is ending.”

Natalie Weiss: Yeah. So then a little bit later we went and did it and I had never worked on anything as much as I worked on this thing. We showed up, it was the color print. And then I remember getting to Netflix and they’re like, “Do you need an HDMI cable?” And I was like, “A what?” I didn’t know about pitching a deck with a clicker. I hadn’t done anything like that. So the woman was super awesome and positive and giving me the vibes I’d been hoping. I was like, “Yes, this woman seems like she could get it.” Her kid went to a Baby DJ School class in LA.

Avi Weider: What luck?

Natalie Weiss: Then she kind of looked at it and she’s like, “I hate to say this, it seems underbaked.” And I was like, “I’ve never baked something. This is the only thing I’ve baked.”

Avi Weider: It’s overbaked.

Amy Hobby: That makes me feel like, “Oh, we guided you wrong.” As a production company, we should have helped bake it better.

Avi Weider: Well, you did. The second deck you guys made is definitely more polished up.

Natalie Weiss: Yes. They brought in somebody else who had Japanese money behind it and they paid someone to make this deck, to make the logo and to make this whole thing look very jazzy. I practiced it and they took people in. Oh, it was so cool. I would practice the pitch and they’d ignore me, talk to each other.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, like a mock meeting. We’d act like asshole executives.

Natalie Weiss: I felt like y’all’s tack with me was like, “This thing is raging. It’s like she’s in the Wall Street Journal. She’s on Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. We have all this momentum. We’re not going to wait to spend three years developing a thing. It’s like you can see this thing is on fire. And if you want to get on the train, good luck.”

Amy Hobby: Yeah. Coming back to the point we didn’t have a lot of experience ourselves with children’s television and we didn’t know those executives. I always looked to myself like what could we have done better? We probably could have gone to a production company that had a track record producing these, but look, we just were like, this is so obviously unbelievably rad. And of course someone is going to greenlight it.

Natalie Weiss: And that’s what I took into Sesame Street. And that was also like dear diary. And so I was talking to them about the characters and when they were asking me questions afterwards, they were like, so the Muppets, they would be on set with you. And I was like, “Did you say Muppet? Did you use the word of my life?” So that went great. They clapped for me when I was done. I was like, all right, well this is good.

Amy Hobby: I have a big gap in my emails at that point. Let’s talk about what happened at the end. When was the big realization for you anyway that this was not moving forward?

Natalie Weiss: Well, I would email you or Anne and be like, “Here’s this kind of micro move that we talked about that could be a step. “Where are we with that?” And then it started to be clear that—

Amy Hobby: We were out of ideas.

Natalie Weiss: You guys threw everything you had at it and we got it in front of every important kid’s thing that I knew about. And it was like, they weren’t ready for our shit. They wanted sanitized boring ass Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. There was an old man with a sweater change and a live jazz pianist and that’s what Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood was. And then they’re like, “Let’s redo it, make it CGI around a boring child tiger.” And that’s what was happening. So if the momentum had stayed on that project, it would’ve been doing it like an off-Broadway show that’s a little— that’s how Pee-wee’s Playhouse started. They did just a live show and then people came and they ended up getting more connects. But there was never like a death knell. It was just like, I think I’ve reached the point where my emails are bothering people and—

Amy Hobby: I think at one point you emailed us and there was an email like, “Are we doing this finally? Or are we going to do a contract?” And then I found that our email response was like, “You’re probably better off not working with us. We feel like we’re dead weight.” We’re like, “We love you. We love this project, but we’re not helping at this point.”

Natalie Weiss: Having you that I trusted was just cuckoo because I had people flying me to Korea and Taiwan and I was like, “Are they going to tie me up?” I didn’t know anything about what was going on and I really trusted you. I was like, “She went to Winter Park High School. How bad could it be?”

Amy Hobby: I think there was a little bit of a whimper at the end. I did find an email where you said, “I met these people who can do podcasts.” This is before podcasts were video. They’re creating audio content for kids, maybe it could be a podcast. And I think we were just like, “Yeah, I think there’s just always a point where you’re like, we can only go down so far.”

Avi Weider: It turns out there is room at the bottom and here you are.

Natalie Weiss: Right, right, right, right.

Avi Weider: Which brings us to the next part. We took all the stuff, all your materials that you started with that you developed with Tangerine with Amy and Anne and the pitch deck, the scripts. We asked AI to help us create a new deck and a trailer that we’re going to share with you now. And maybe this is inspiration, maybe it’s closure, but let’s walk through it and see what you think because it’s remarkably different from the first one.

For people who are listening as a podcast on audio, we have to describe it a little bit. There’s a Brooklyn apartment, I guess, and it says DJ Natalie’s Neighborhood in sort of the rainbow colors.

Natalie Weiss: What I think is very saleable about this right now is it looks like it could be a YouTube show. It looks like it could be like we have this shot, this is the world, this is something I could do and essentially produce on my own and pay for myself. And then if it goes viral, then somebody else can put some money in it.

Amy Hobby: Right.

Avi Weider: Yeah. We’ve got all the characters there.

Natalie Weiss: You got all the characters. I mean, this looks cute. It’s actually more like my apartment than the second gen deck, which looked kind of like a lobby at a Disney hotel.

Avi Weider: Here’s the logline that AI wrote for us. "When DJ Natalie teaches the Word of the Day — play — in her magical Brooklyn apartment, the landlord crashes in with an $800 rent hike starting tomorrow, forcing Natalie and her puppet roommates to hatch an absurd plan, sublet their leaky bathtub, open a magic portal to Rockaway Beach and find a water-loving new roommate who turns out to be Shellina the Mermaid.

Amy Hobby: Well, you know what? This is before Mamdani, because now you wouldn’t have that rent hike.

Avi Weider: No, no, there’s no more rent hikes. So yeah, your landlord would probably be going to jail.

Amy Hobby: Also, there’s pink smoke coming from two directions. I don’t know what’s happening there.

Avi Weider: Well, it’s magic. That’s the magic, Amy.

Amy Hobby: Oh, right. Okay.

Avi Weider: The kind of elevator pitch is that DJ Natalie’s Neighborhood is a live action kids series set in a magical Brooklyn apartment where DJ Natalie runs Kids DJ School with her puppet roommates. And each episode takes one simple idea like play and turns it into music, movement, ASL and a joyful field trip showing kids that creativity and collaboration aren’t just fun. They’re how you solve real world problems together.

Amy Hobby: Yeah.

Avi Weider: All right. The style —

Amy Hobby: Are those African masks on the wall?

Natalie Weiss: Yes. I’ve got culture in my back pocket. That’s right.

Avi Weider: The style page shows basically a brown stoop.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, you got some records. You got a milk crate of records.

Avi Weider: I think you’re next to a record store too, it looks like.

Amy Hobby: Oh yeah.

Avi Weider: And it says the style is Neon Storybook Brooklyn, which is a bright live action kids TV look that places magical moments inside a real cozy Brooklyn apartment. Combines warm natural daylight with candy colored accents and soft neon, celebrates tactile puppets with visible seams and textures and uses gentle diffusion and subtle grain for a storybook feel without losing clarity. There’s a lot of words for what you’re trying to pitch as a style, but—

Amy Hobby: Too many style words there.

Avi Weider: Looks like Brooklyn.

Natalie Weiss: Yeah. I mean, this is already just what we have with AI now. It looks just more like it. We could only work with stock images and photos we took. We couldn’t generate images like this at the time. But the other problem is that it’s like no DJ would ever live in this brownstone, like no broke DJ with a roommate who’s also a glow worm. We couldn’t afford it. Couldn’t afford it. That’s part of the—

Avi Weider: Well, but it’s the magical part that—

Natalie Weiss: It is.

Amy Hobby: I know. It’s a brownstone with plants and look, there’s chalk. Look at the chalk notes.

Avi Weider: Everyone’s chalking.

Natalie Weiss: Oh, that is so cute.

Avi Weider: So now we have some casting we’re going to breeze through. The first is Okashi, the rainbow furry chaos sprite who communicates in beeps, squeaks and pure enthusiasm. And there’s pictured here. He’s basically like a rainbow pompom with Hello Kitty bracelets in front of a sequencer and—

Natalie Weiss: MIDI controller.

Avi Weider: A MIDI controller, sure. A touch pad.

Amy Hobby: With a very tiny crate and some tiny records.

Avi Weider: Yeah, yeah. Well, it’s his size. He looks adorable actually. We’ve got Daytime. Now this is interesting because your Daytime originally was like a British guy, a cool bluebird crate digger with party promoter confidence and impeccable taste. He lives to hype the room, but underneath the swagger, he genuinely wants everyone to feel included. You’re waving your hands like you don’t like this guy at all.

Natalie Weiss: I’m waving my hands like they did it. They nailed this.

Avi Weider: Oh, they did it. Oh, I thought you were rejecting it.

Natalie Weiss: Dudes in East London in the ‘80s who were starting this scene and they were just wearing cool caps like this. You have to hear the accent with it. A lot of people associate British with posh whatever, but there’s a whole really deep scene of British. And part of it is the stereotype of the person who thinks they know everything about music is very associated with DJing. So he’s the know-it-all, but he’s ...

Amy Hobby: He’s sitting on a crate of rare grooves and he’s got some chains around his neck and a leather cap.

Avi Weider: Leather cap.

Amy Hobby: There’s some casting. Donald Glover is a good idea. Smooth, playful. That’d be fun. Daveed Diggs.

Avi Weider: Jordan Fisher.

Amy Hobby: Yeah.

Avi Weider: Your next roommate is Ms. Hay Hay. A glamorous horse diva, who treats her hair like a full-time art practice. Big, dramatic, and fabulous until you realize how tender and loyal she is. And what I love about this shot is the word vogue being held up as the word of the day in front of her.

Amy Hobby: I like her yarn hair.

Avi Weider: The yarn hair is—

Natalie Weiss: I love her. Sparkly crop top vest is very like — do you guys remember that show Zoobilee Zoo?

Avi Weider: No.

Natalie Weiss: It’s psychotic. It’s like these animal hybrid people who are like ... It’s an artist panda, so it also has a beret. And it’s around the time of Cats, that musical where it’s like — oh yeah, known forever. And I imagine it having almost like a Barbie type horse, it’s really fun and doable and you could just make up one horse and just kind of have it be.

Avi Weider: Yeah. I like the casting on this too.

Amy Hobby: Billy Porter. Billy Porter’s a great casting idea.

Avi Weider: Would be great. Nicole Byer, hilarious. Tituss Burgess.

Amy Hobby: Then we have LD. So the glow worm lighting designer—

Amy Hobby: I’m feeling copyright infringement.

Avi Weider: Who turns feelings into color. Sharp, brilliant. No, no. It just looks nothing like Kermit. It seems a worm. She’s dry, brilliant, and quietly in control. If it lights up, she meant it to. So it does use a pronoun there. Okay.

Natalie Weiss: I mean, I think the cool thing about this would be embedding in it oodles of queerness and just like no question, this is like a butch woman who’s a little heavier set. I just think kids will receive it with the same amount of joy, but it’s just more like a nod to the actual culture, even though there’s lighting designers of all kinds.

Avi Weider: I would redesign this then with that in mind. Here’s Super-Super. The building superintendent reimagined as full tilt superhero, loud, earnest, and wildly confident. If something’s broken, he will fix it heroically. And it went for a kid—

Amy Hobby: Keegan-Michael Key. It’s actually Keegan-Michael Key in a Super-Super costume.

Avi Weider: Yeah.

Amy Hobby: I feel that’s realistic. I think you could get him. He’s such a nice guy.

Avi Weider: He’d be great. Landlord, a polite, smiling menace who treats rent like a jump scare. Never yells, never rushes, always calmly ruining the vibe. And one of our casting ideas is one of our AI’s favorites, which is Stephen Root.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. In any of our other shows AI likes to cast Stephen Root for some reason. He’s holding a pig.

Natalie Weiss: Yeah. The pig is like his hairless cat in Ace Ventura.

Avi Weider: Piggy Wiggy. The landlord’s smug little sidekick who knows exactly what’s going on. Cute, sentimental, and silently complicit. Every snort lands like a punchline. All right.

Amy Hobby: I like that actually.

Avi Weider: Yeah. Piggy Wiggy is cute. Then we have Shellina, the gentle mermaid musician whose songs turn feelings into music, quiet, emotional and brave. She brings calm, beauty and a new definition of home. Does that look like Shellina to you?

Natalie Weiss: I love Shellina like that. I think it’s very close. I would die to have it be this. If I was in charge of every aspect of it, it would be a bit more like, well, there’s a detail that when she cries, it’s pearls that come out and that’s how she ends up being able to pay her rent because she’s kind of depressed.

Avi Weider: Wait a minute. They use her to pay their rent with her pearl tears? Do they just keep her depressed the whole time to keep—

Natalie Weiss: No, no. I think that’s the problem. That would be terrible. That’s a problem that arises. As she becomes more happy and integrated in the home and having a real family who is not her scary dad, her source of income dries up.

Avi Weider: Oh, okay. I dig it. Yeah. And then something we didn’t talk about was Purple Hands. Sparkly hand puppets who pop out to teach the word of the day in ASL, encouraging, playful, and never patronizing. They make learning feel like magic. Do you know ASL? Is this part of your, I don’t know, who you are? Are you an interpreter? How did this come up?

Natalie Weiss: Well, it’s a huge part of early language development for kids. You’ll be hard pressed to find ... Well, I mean, you tell me, you’re like a Brooklyn dad. But when I was coming up as a babysitter, I was hard pressed to not find a kid who couldn’t go like this for milk or more. And it’s like before kids are verbal, you teach them ways to use their hands so they can communicate and then they don’t have to just cry. They can tell you what they want. And so I use—

Avi Weider: We had triplets so they probably had to cry to get our attention. One more thing to learn was too many for us probably.

Natalie Weiss: Again, so much of the stuff came from this child I babysat, right? His parents were just really great thinkers, great parents. He had great communication and it was because they were really, they went for it. At the time they only had one kid and a lot of the stuff I saw them doing and being good parents I wanted to put into ... And I read so many books on parenting because they don’t have books for child free by choice DJs who want to be good for kids with kids for some reason.

Avi Weider: No manual for that. Yeah.

Natalie Weiss: Yeah.

Amy Hobby: Go figure.

Natalie Weiss: And it was saying that the number one thing that determines their relationship with you, I read this somewhere, is your concept of your relationship with your parents. It colors everything. So I tried to be really specific about my concept of how I became a DJ. And sometimes it was like, yeah, a guy had to teach me and no guys are going to have to teach a woman again. They’re going to learn from a girl and then a girl’s going to learn from a girl. So I was purposeful about my narrative. It’s like two of my best friends in the world taught me how to do this for free with love and now I get to pass on that positive energy to the kids. So it’s like that person first kind of thing I tried to use in there with the kids.

Avi Weider: Here’s some storyboards from it. Some look more like you than others I would say, but again, we treat this as like a first draft kind of maybe like a sketch that you can expand upon. What we’re looking at is a page divided into four. The upper left, we see DJ Natalie on her block just being like, “Hey, come on and join me in my—” Come to Wealthy Brooklyn. Apartment. Yes, you’re wearing a denim jacket just like you’re wearing right now. Inside the apartment, the landlord is sort of busting in and all the puppets are sort of hiding a little bit like what’s going on. On the bottom we see two stacks of you and the puppets peering around the corner from the bathroom where the shower is going. And then to round it out, we’ve got this portal shot of Super-Super sort of behind and you and the puppets are out at the beach on the other side of this portal. He has sent you through the portal to Rockaway Beach.

Natalie Weiss: That portal one looks so good. The portal does look good. Though they randomly doubled all the characters in the bathroom one. I just love heads popping out one at a time. They used to do that in the Muppets. Just seeing that. This is sparking a lot of joy.

Avi Weider: Okay. All right. Moving on. We’ve got a couple poster concepts here, three of them. The left one is On The Stoop with Ms. Hay Hay at the top like arm raised and the other characters are kind of hanging out on the stoop. The middle one we’ve got you’re in the apartment and it’s kind of a—

Amy Hobby: With the characters.

Avi Weider: It also quotes, “Where beats are dope and life is good.” I mean, that’s kind of your tagline here. The first one, the pull quote is, “A kid’s show that actually respects kids.” And the last one doesn’t look like you at all, I have to say, but it’s an interesting concept. It’s kind of a split screen where the right side we have the landlord coming in with what looks like the rent hike notice and the left side are the puppets and all the magic happening, though it threw in a couple extra puppets that don’t belong that look like just generic Sesame Street characters for whatever reason.

Natalie Weiss: This one on the right is I’m dying for it.

Avi Weider: It looks totally fine. The pull quote is, “When grownup problems show up, kids make the beat.” I don’t know. Could use work there.

Amy Hobby: That’s kind of lame.

Natalie Weiss: But the implicit conflict of this magical world and then this greedy landlord with Piggy Wiggy.

Avi Weider: I did like the concept.

Amy Hobby: Good underlying idea there.

Avi Weider: Oh, here’s a little bio of you written by AI. DJ Natalie, picture of you in your Brooklyn apartment at the decks with the crates of records. DJ Natalie is a real life DJ educator—

Amy Hobby: A real life DJ. Real.

Avi Weider: Not a puppet.

Amy Hobby: Not a puppet.

Avi Weider: Community builder who uses music as a tool for creativity, connection and problem solving. With a warm, playful authority and deep respect for kids’ intelligence, she translates DJ culture — listening, timing, collaboration, and self-expression — into experiences children can feel and participate in. In DJ Natalie’s Neighborhood, she guides kids and her puppet roommates through big ideas and real world challenges by mixing empathy, curiosity and joy, showing that music isn’t just something you hear. It’s something you use to build community and find your place in the world.

Amy Hobby: Nice. Good use of mixing.

Avi Weider: There’s no credits though. I mean, if you’re looking for that sort of thing.

Amy Hobby: True.

Avi Weider: And that is the end of this deck.

Natalie Weiss: Wow. No closure. Total fire under my ass. Just want to work on this again.

Avi Weider: Boom.

Amy Hobby: Uh-oh. Wait.

Avi Weider: Wait till you see this. We made a trailer for you. Now you get to ask for the HDMI cable next time you show up at Netflix.

Amy Hobby: You pack that HDMI cable.

Avi Weider: All you do is snap your fingers. Give me that cable. We’re going to drop this now.

Amy Hobby: I’m never letting you leave home without one, Natalie.

Avi Weider: Here we go.

[Theme Song / Show Audio]: DJ Natalie’s Neighborhood where beats are dope and life is good. DJ Natalie’s Neighborhood come mix along with me. DJ Natalie’s Neighborhood where the beats are dope and life is good. Neighborhood come back along with me. Neighborhood come mix along with me.

Amy Hobby: Lots of great stuff there.

Avi Weider: There you go.

Natalie Weiss: I cannot exist anymore. Wow.

Amy Hobby: I’m so baffled. I don’t understand why the record player is going so slow and is so dusty and where the toxic smoke is coming from.

Avi Weider: That’s the magic. The smoke is the magic.

Natalie Weiss: Smoke equals magic. I just thought that the joke was going to be that the AI was so shitty and it’s so good.

Amy Hobby: I was surprised because we’ve had other trailers that get really flattened. Everything gets flattened and boring. I thought whatever Ms. Hay Hay was doing was kind of awesome. And marching on the boardwalk at Coney Island with the puppets, that was rad too.

Avi Weider: But having your music really made a big difference because we didn’t have to try to make our own with another—

Amy Hobby: Or a voiceover or a generative AI.

Natalie Weiss: Yeah. And that’s the thing why I’m not scared about AI at all because I just feel like it’s always about the concept and the strength of the concept. I use ChatGPT for a fair amount for things as needed. I’m like, okay, this is what I want her to say, but we want to say it like an 1800s Irish peasant.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, for example.

Natalie Weiss: Let’s just say. Yeah, this is just so great. All I’m thinking about is the practical stuff. It’s so producible in a single kind of shot thing like that poster.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. I mean, the thing that I love about this, Natalie, is it hearkens back to that email that you sent. We could crowdsource and do this DIY. And we got roped into this idea we’re going to set it up in kids TV and we’re going to do all this stuff. But shows like, I don’t know if you ever saw Wonder Showzen. It’s not quite a kid’s show, but it was a band and comedians and they just had a super eight concept and they slung it around and made some stuff and had fun. And I think there’s some merit to that. I mean, certainly in this environment, new environment where corporations have sort of taken over a lot of the means of production and distribution. I think making it a little bit its very own thing and unhinged and taking the core spirit of it, no matter how you can produce it, no matter what the budget is, exciting, right?

Natalie Weiss: Yeah. One of the biggest problems with doing stuff with kids is that you’ve got kids and their momagers and like all of like ... But when you have babies and you’re like, “It’s a free music class.” People are like, “Sure, parents don’t have a lot of money.” You’re saying they can be on TV and they can do a music class. The kid part is pretty, it was pretty easy when I was doing the Baby DJ School classes a lot. I had an infinite source of fun parents and their kids, but now it’s all been — the business model is a little different. Other hard thing is that all my friends who were fun making videos with me when I was younger, now they’re all pros and you pay them. So I’m a little bit psyched to be in San Diego. I met people who just love puppetry and they’re like, “I’m interested in TV vaguely.” I’m like, “Exactly. Where have you been? Come back to New York.”

Avi Weider: Well, we have one more thing since you’re so amped up to work on it again. We have a film development executive that we like to talk to at the end of these shows once you’ve seen some new stuff generated with AI. We’re going to try and get him online. He’s always really busy. His line is always really — there’s always kind of a delay, but we’re going to try to hook up. His name’s Finn.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, it takes a little while for him to respond sometimes.

Avi Weider: Yeah. But he gives us about 10 minutes. I’m going to try to—

Amy Hobby: Yeah, go see if we can bring him on. Trying to get with him now.

Natalie Weiss: Yeah. Hopefully we can grab him.

Finn: Hey, Amy. Hey, Avi. Hi, Natalie. Give me one second. I’m pulling up the pages and the deck. All right. I’ve got the materials in front of me. So focusing on DJ Natalie’s Neighborhood. The pilot, “Play,” is locked around Natalie and her puppet roommates scrambling to solve the $800 rent hike by subletting their leaky bathtub, opening a magic portal to Rockaway Beach and finding Shellina the Mermaid. The repeatable engine is word of the day, ASL, song, story problem, field trip, wrap up. Next. What part do you want to hit first? The story structure, a character, or the episode’s engine?

Natalie Weiss: For me, I’m just interested in how much money you’re willing to put down upfront.

Finn: Yeah. Fair question, Natalie. On the DJ Natalie’s Neighborhood pilot, the thing is your cost hinges on a few drivers — puppet design and build, live action and animation mix, music rights and originals, and location work. That portal to Rockaway bit isn’t cheap. If you had to start with just the pilot, what’s your minimum version? Is it puppet heavy or mostly live action with puppets as a garnish? That’ll swing us from bare bones kids special to something closer to a proper cable pilot. Where do you see it landing?

Natalie Weiss: I don’t think we need that much money, like maybe half a million just as an advance for me. I would say that’s the minimum.

Finn: Okay. So that’s your floor. Half a million as an advance, not including production. That puts this in the premium creator driven territory, not bargain basement kids TV. Just so we’re aligned, is that advance for your role as creator and showrunner or does it also cover starring, music and maybe writing?

Natalie Weiss: It’s to compensate me.

Finn: Got it.

Natalie Weiss: There was a lot of hangovers and just slowly sipping Gatorade that I had to go through well before I made this pilot to be the culturally informed person you’re seeing today. And I just feel like I never got paid for those hours I put in. So that’s really what it’s for. It’s back pay for all the hangovers.

Finn: That’s pretty great, Natalie. I appreciate the honesty and the math. So the half million is retroactive hazard pay for becoming — not just for show running or puppet wrangling. I buy that, but here’s my practical. If we break it down for a buyer, do you want that built into the creator fee line or called out as cultural R&D? How do you want that positioned in the package?

Natalie Weiss: I think it’s the latter, the R&D.

Amy Hobby: Finn, this is Amy, the producer. Are you guys even doing deals like this right now? Because I feel like we may be wasting our time with you here and we really appreciate you hopping on this call, but do you guys have output deals? What are your connections? Where do you see this project going and do you have the connections to make this happen?

Finn: Amy, fair ask. Let me be straight. I’m not a studio check writer, but I’ve got relationships at streamers and a handful of kids and family divisions who’d at least hear a pitch. Especially with DJ Natalie’s angle and the show’s bilingual and ASL hook. What I can’t promise is a blind output deal or a guaranteed half million advance upfront. That’s not really the climate unless we’re walking in with a streamer attachment or a pre-sell. But I can get it in front of the right buyers and help frame the R&D ask so it’s not just talent fee, but part of the creative value prop. Is your goal to get this straight to buyers or are you hoping for a development partner first?

Natalie Weiss: Avi, that’s a question for you.

Avi Weider: I mean, I think we’re open to anything. I mean, we just want to get this made. It’s kind of evergreen. They worked on it for so long. We’ve got some new materials we created as kind of proof of concept with some AI. It doesn’t have to be super expensive except for the fee, of course.

Natalie Weiss: Yeah. Yeah, except for the fee. And you know what? After hearing your framing, I just feel like I can waive that fee.

Finn: That’s generous, Natalie. Waiving the fee to get it made, at least at this stage, is a real signal you want this out in the world. That makes the deck stronger for buyers. We’ve got the creator, proof of concept, and we’re flexible on terms to get to green light. So next step. Do you want to focus on tightening the proof of concept materials for buyers or do you want to talk about which buyers and strategize the pitch approach?

Natalie Weiss: Amy, I’ll just lob that to you.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. Finn, I want to know what buyers ... I have a lot of connections at Netflix, Amazon, Hulu. So I want to know what you bring to the table. What are the top three buyers that you would pitch it to?

Finn: Okay. Here’s my shortlist. If it’s a kids show with music, bilingual and ASL elements, and a quirky creator-driven vibe like DJ Natalie’s Neighborhood, I’d prioritize. First, Apple TV Plus. They’re investing in premium kids and family originals. They like inclusivity and they’re open to creator voices. Second, PBS Kids, especially if you can keep costs down and really lean into the educational and ASL pieces. They’re slower, but they care. Third, if the slate is lighter, so they’re looking for distinctive pitches and musical hooks. Those three would be my first calls for a show like this. Want me to zero in on pitch strategy for one or go broader?

Amy Hobby: Yeah. I mean, Finn, I think I don’t know if PBS is going to exist next month. So I’d love to hear your strategy for pitching at Apple TV Plus. That sounds like a great place for us. I know the head of documentary there, but I don’t have any connections whatsoever in the television division.

[Finn’s Assistant]: He asked me to pass along his thanks to DJ Natalie and we’ll follow up with anything he referenced or promised to send. If you have questions or next steps, you can route them through me. Thanks again for your time today. Did we push too hard?

Avi Weider: I think.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, maybe we did. I think we should just make it in my apartment. We could build a set in my garage in South Jersey.

Amy Hobby: Yeah.

Amy Hobby: We have a boardwalk right here that can double for Rockaway.

Avi Weider: Could you see doing it like DIYing it on YouTube?

Natalie Weiss: I mean, 100 million percent you guys have sold it to me. I forgot about the Purple Hands. I’m just remembering how much I love the idea and yeah, I mean, this is like the opposite of closure. And that’s kind of what closure calls are about. If you’re like, “I just need to talk to my ex for some closure.” And we’re like, right. Never really about closure.

Amy Hobby: I’m glad this could be a positive experience. And it also reminded me, I thought sometimes I feel like I didn’t do a good job or I didn’t try hard enough, but I was reminded we did go all out. We came out of the gate fast, we developed it and we got out there and pitched it. It’s just we hit a wall and maybe a little pivot and persistence to a more independent approach would have been a thing.

Natalie Weiss: Yeah. Cool. So I just need to do these rewrites on the Camp Wanitachi screenplay in January and February.

Amy Hobby: I’m going to hit the ground running. Okay, great.

Avi Weider: Okay. Fantastic. Dang. Well, keep us posted. This has been a great show, Natalie.

Amy Hobby: This was super fun.

Avi Weider: Thank you for coming on. We’ll spend time with you. You’ve been listening to Films Not Made, but if you want an even better experience, check us out on YouTube where you can see all the new materials, including the pitch deck and trailer.

Amy Hobby: And subscribe to our Substack for show notes, more about our guests and industry insights.

Avi Weider: And please follow us on Instagram and TikTok as Films Not Made.

Amy Hobby: And of course we have merch. Check that out and all things Films Not Made at filmsnotmade.com.

Avi Weider: Thanks again for listening and watching. We’ll see you next time.

[END OF EPISODE]

Today’s Backlot mini episode is Filmwax Radio meets Films Not Made. With 15 years of filmmaker interviews under his belt we thought we could get some insight from Adam about our own road ahead.

AVI WEIDER: Welcome, Adam. It’s great to talk to you, to see you. It’s been a while. We certainly go back quite a while. I think I was on your show…how long have you been doing Filmwax Radio?

ADAM SCHARTOFF: Well, the whole idea behind it was—I mean, when I really started it, before it was even a podcast, it was an internet radio show for about, I don’t know how many months, with this Brooklyn-based platform called Beatbox Radio, an internet radio station. And then, because it was just talk content—I was interviewing filmmakers and folks from the industry from the beginning, specifically independent arthouse—they started saying, “We could podcast this,” because podcasting was beginning to become a thing. So then after I started doing that, I was like, “Well, why am I doing internet radio?”—I don’t know if anybody’s scheduling their time around my show at, you know, whatever weekday in the afternoon they had me on. So I just sort of forgot about that and just started doing podcasting only. And all that happened in the early teens, I guess. Like, I was podcasting, I think, by 2012 or 2013, but the show started in 2011—the fall of 2011.

AVI WEIDER: Who have you had on?

ADAM SCHARTOFF: Oh my God. Well, I only focus on who I haven’t had on, but, I’ve had on you and I’ve had on Michael [Tully]—a number of your guests from your fabulous podcast—

ADAM SCHARTOFF: But, I like to say that, that I don’t really draw a distinction between first-time filmmakers and veteran filmmakers or actors or... I just, you know, if they’re doing something that’s from, you know, from their passion and their heart, and they can talk about it with that kind of enthusiasm, then that’s a great episode. And that is actually true; it’s not just a platitude to say that. Having said that, Werner Herzog’s been on the show, and yeah, that was incredible.

AMY HOBBY: We also, Adam, have people come on who have passion and put a lot of heart into everything. Except in our case, the film doesn’t end up getting made.

ADAM SCHARTOFF: The goal was kind of similar, but you know, you’re doing it with the absence of a film, which is very unique, I think, you know, really unique and takes a lot more work. And I think in some ways to kind of make all that happen. And you’re—you know, we can get into all that, um, for sure.

AVI WEIDER: Why do you think you won’t get to 1,000? Are you retiring? You’re so close.

ADAM SCHARTOFF: Yeah, well, I mean, I’m not there quite yet, and, uh, I work at a radio station and we’re doing a lot of the stuff I’ve always been trying to do with the podcast, but my audience has necessarily shrunk over the years because of the sheer number or amount of content out there.

Audio content has exploded, as you said, Amy. And you know, it’s a joy, but it’s a lot of work. So if I can focus all the energy and everything else into the radio station where I work because I’m part of this core team and we’re trying to really build something, and by serving that with more of my attention, I’m doing more good.

AMY HOBBY: You know, what was the spark at the beginning Adam? What was your, you know, passion? What was the spark for the idea to have a show?

ADAM SCHARTOFF: I don’t know if you remember, Amy, but back in Park Slope, like 6 months before I started the show, I had a little film series. It was in the back of a bar which—

AVI WEIDER: Where was it?

ADAM SCHARTOFF: It was on 5th Avenue and 13th—like 13th Street between 12 and 13th. There was a bar called—well, at the time it was called the Fifth Estate. Not a great name for a place, but—oh yes—it’s now called Young Ethel’s. It’s had, of course, many lives—but it’s been Young Ethel’s for quite a while. And it’s, um, they have a back room and it’s smallish, but they have—they would have—live music back there. But then the owner at the time, this young guy, bought a projector, and he was like, “Hey, Adam, I have this projector now.” And I said, “Well, what about a film series? Like, I know I’m starting to really create a lot of relationships with local filmmakers.” And, you know, it was so easy living in Brooklyn. And so that’s how it started. And it started, actually, with that film series, which was called the Filmwax Film Series before I had a podcast called Filmwax Radio. So it started with a film series. So my first guest was Zachary Levi, who had a film called Strong Man. And then I had Michael Galinsky with Battle for Brooklyn.

AVI WEIDER: Oh yeah. Yeah, I know Michael.

ADAM SCHARTOFF: Yeah, but very fast, I realized, “Well, wait a minute, why limit myself?” Why just limit myself to my film series? I could have on all sorts of folks from the Brooklyn film scene. And then after a few months, I was like, “Why just Brooklyn? Make it New York City, you know?”

AMY HOBBY: And then the world.

ADAM SCHARTOFF: And then the world.

AMY HOBBY: Since you’ve done 900 episodes and you’ve seen things progress longitudinally– I mean, we’ve all been living within the business, within the industry, but what would you say is kind of an observation in terms of where we’ve been heading and where we are now? Because so much of what we’re doing with Films Not Made is about stuff that didn’t get made and then let’s take another look at it now using AI tools, and could it be made now? Or how do you feel about it? Are you putting it to bed? Or are you sort of reinvigorated? So give us a sense of your take on kind of where we are now for people trying to make films.

ADAM SCHARTOFF: Well, I mean, you know, it’s an interesting period because of AI. And, you know, I really respect the way you guys are deploying it. It’s very, very intentional and very specific, and it just kind of ends up working really well with Films Not Made. And I think if that were true across the board—if there were some oversight to AI—I’d feel a lot more comfortable with it.

We live in such a capitalist country run amok, you know, that I have no faith that AI will be just a tool, but will just do what it’s threatening to do, which is to replace human beings and jobs. And I think a lot of people have that anxiety for a very good reason, you know, in this country. Whereas in Europe and Asia, there actually is oversight and there are controls being put into place.

AMY HOBBY: So yeah, I think it feels scary for a lot of filmmakers, right? Like you’re not going to have agency. Jobs are going to be lost, the IP you worked so hard on for years is going to be stolen in one millisecond. But I think it’s not AI generally, maybe just the lack of our control over it, right? The lack of legal oversight, the lack of our ability to use it only as a tool and use it to our benefit. And I think part of what we’re doing on the show is trying to show and demonstrate that. How can it be a way to help you? How can, um, you have some agency over it? How can you use it to demonstrate something that’s in your imagination, right? Because we always made pitch decks. Like I’ve been making films for a really long time and we always made, well you saw our episode 2 [Poodle Power], you saw my very first pitch deck that I made and oh boy, for those on my show who don’t know..

ADAM SCHARTOFF: I just want to mention for those—that is the Poodle Iditarod—there was a true story about these I guess poodles who actually ran the Iditarod. Yeah, yeah.

AMY HOBBY: It was my film with Anne Hubbell, my producing partner at the time and it was going to be animated. Well, because we didn’t want to go to Alaska to make a film. It was too cold. And we knew nothing about animation. We made decisions for, I don’t know, weird reasons back then. We’re like, we’re not going to go do that. It’ll just be animated. And plus poodles running the Iditarod in animation is pretty funny. My first pitch deck was really just like clip art. And, you know, if I had had a tool that could help me, you know, have all the stuff that was in my head on the page and helped me convey that to funders, things might have gone a little differently,back in the day. I think we just have to, yeah, keep talking about it and figuring out how artists can have agency. Do you think that it’s increasingly more difficult for people to get films made?

ADAM SCHARTOFF: I mean, I’m really curious about the sort of general sentiment, I suppose. It’s always been a conversation. It’s always been part of the conversation. How challenging, how difficult, how nearly impossible it is to not so much make a film, but get it seen. Yeah. There’s definitely a deflation of film festivals. I mean, there may have been an overabundance. I don’t know.

As far as I can tell, the film festival culture has been a distribution for a lot of films to be seen at all by human beings in the same room with the filmmakers, you know? And when I talk to filmmakers, they seem to be feeling more challenged than ever to get their film out into the world. That is the biggest issue, you know, and not so much making the film.

AMY HOBBY: In 2019 or 2020, I started a collective called Distribution Advocates, we also have Substack. We were early Substack adopters. And, you know, we started because we saw filmmakers not focusing on audience. It’s so hard to get a film made, so I think, when we started talking about distribution, nobody wanted to hear about it. They’re like, “I’m making my film, I’m going to go to Sundance. I’m going to sell the film.” That’s [distribution] someone else’s problem, right?

But very quickly in 5 years, conversations, think pieces, labs, all of that has popped up around distribution. And so I feel what you’re saying in that it’s the big issue of our industry right now in terms of the tone, the tenor of people that come on the show. I mean, these are people [on your show]that have made a film, they figured out some way of getting their film out, but the expectations have really kind of been lowered.

ADAM SCHARTOFF: The, let’s see, the current episode which is a French American filmmaker, documentary filmmaker named Anne Aghion. Do you know... do you know this woman?

AMY HOBBY: Yeah, yeah sure.

ADAM SCHARTOFF: So she’s got a—she made a personal documentary called A Turbulence. And then she also is known for making these films in Africa and one in Antarctica. And she’s put them on this platform, a couple of them anyway, on a particular platform, you know, and that’s kind of—for her, that that’s sufficing because she didn’t get into that many festivals and it’s not getting into theaters.

AMY HOBBY: So it just depends on your goals, you know? How big an audience, you can garner, right? If you spend $50 to make your film, then you can distribute it however you want. You can put it on YouTube, right? YouTube has the biggest audience in the world. So it’s not that the audiences aren’t there. And it’s not that the good films aren’t there, it’s the stuff in between. Right?

This is just hypothetical. I wonder if the drawers and cabinets of unmade films are getting bigger and bigger or if it’s just my focus on it? Because I was on a call even today with Carl and Tia who just did the Amy Goodman documentary, Steal this Story. And I mentioned my podcast. They were like, “Oh, we’re going to be guests.” You know, everyone I talk to wants to be a guest. So, from doc filmmaker to scripted, just writers, directors, producers, there are stories. Do you have any sense from your podcast like that?

ADAM SCHARTOFF: People are struggling a little more with getting those great films made. I mean, there are a lot of studio films that have been, you know, made and never out there. Catwoman is one of the more recent examples.

AMY HOBBY: Oh yeah. Catwoman for sure. Do you know the producer Blair Breard? She came on our show [release date July 7th]. She shot a whole series, ten episodes. They filmed it. They were halfway through editing. Um, the writers strike happened, so they paused because she was still writing in the editorial process, essentially. So she made the, you know, brave decision to make a statement and say that she was doing this, that she was pausing the work. The studio that was funding and the affiliated distributor, as soon as the strike was over said, “Oh, sorry, we’re going to just take the loss on this.” So they shelved it and just took a loss. Ten episodes shot around the world. Shot in Argentina. Shot in Iceland.

ADAM SCHARTOFF: Oh my God.

AMY HOBBY: Yeah, based on underlying incredible IP. So we didn’t think we would do it [produced but unreleased films], it’s just films that aren’t made. But then the stories were super compelling around films that were made but not seen. We’re like, “Yeah, that counts.”

ADAM SCHARTOFF: I’m just so impressed with how open and forthcoming and even, you know, looking at the humor, obviously a big part of your show is humor. There’s a lot of laughing going on because of the, just the ludicrousness of these experiences.

AMY HOBBY: Well, tragedy plus time. It’s great comedy, right?

ADAM SCHARTOFF: That’s right. Exactly.

AMY HOBBY: I, you know, I worked with Steven Soderbergh on a very tiny doc a while back, and I emailed him to see if he would be on the show, because there was recently a whole article and a lot of press around something of his that did not get made. And he said he felt that he would come across as bitter and he didn’t want to come on the show. And I responded, “Hey Steven, tragedy plus time equals comedy.” And he emailed me back and said, reach out to me again in 2031.

It’s a tiny part of the genesis of this show, which is that people don’t want to talk about their failures, right? So when I was going through my closet and cleaning up and seeing all of these unmade projects, I felt embarrassed. I felt like I had let some people down.

And you know, when I read some of the emails, like coverage from Ted Hope from twenty years ago, you know it was funny, but I was grappling with, like, what do I do with this? And, so yeah with the whole film publicity machine, you’re supposed to talk about all those great things. You know, with publicists and festivals and step and repeats, you only say things are going great. My next project is this. It’s already green lit. Occasionally you’ll tell that hard story when you have succeeded, right? I’ve succeeded. I won Sundance and you’ll say, “I used my credit cards, I was broke, it was so hard.” But what if you’re not there [winning Sundance]? Why can’t you still talk about it? So that was part of the conceit in a way. We need to talk about these things, normalize it. It’s still part of me. These projects are still part of me. I have friendships gained from them. Lessons learned.

AVI WEIDER: Yeah. It’s hard. It’s hard to keep going, especially in the indie world. Although I do wonder now, and of course I’m an optimist for technology, so I do wonder if that feels like there are more tools available to elevate people’s or accelerate people’s ideas in what we call the indie film world? It’s an open question. We’re building stuff with the show that would, a year ago, completely not be possible, even from December, not possible. Like that is the advance of what’s happening.

AMY HOBBY: I have another question. Who is your dream guest?

And I’ve been able to kind of orbit, but never land, you know that. And he doesn’t do podcasts as far as I know. But if I could get a message to him, I’m like, “Hey, you know, I’ve been doing this thing for 15 years and I don’t have a sponsor.” You know, those dried up many years ago. And I just realized my effort and energy would be better spent on the show and the quality of the conversations than in trying to chase after a little bit of money here and there, you know?

AMY HOBBY: That’s a good dream, yes. That’s a great way to put it into the universe, 100%.

ADAM SCHARTOFF: Do you think he has a film that he hasn’t made?

AMY HOBBY: Yeah, rumor has it. I’m on it.

ADAM SCHARTOFF: Well, I know he has a new one, right?

AMY HOBBY: But there’s some, there’s some stuff in the closet. Most of it’s come out, but, that’s a joke.

ADAM SCHARTOFF: Yeah, I know, I know, yes it is.

AVI WEIDER: For those who haven’t heard or don’t already know everything about you, where can people find you?

ADAM SCHARTOFF: I live in a small town—best just to come by—because now I am radio. You can go to FilmwaxRadio.com. Of course, you can find the show on all the apps. And then we’re, of course, on socials. I and the show are both on Instagram and Facebook, —so it’s very easy to Google and find Filmwax Radio, Adam Schartoff. And you guys, please mention as well.

AVI WEIDER: Yes, everybody, FilmwaxRadio.com. Like, subscribe. It’s a living archive. Well, thank you again, Adam. I really appreciate you taking the time.

ADAM SCHARTOFF: Thank you guys. I think I want all the success for this podcast. You know,

AVI WEIDER: It’s great. It’s a terrific archive. And we want to get you to 1,000.

ADAM SCHARTOFF: Okay. Yeah. Well, it sounds like with you guys, I can’t let you down. So yeah, that’s the spirit. All right. Okay. Thank you.

AVI WEIDER: You’ve been listening to Films Not Made, but if you want an even better experience, check us out on YouTube, where you can see all the new materials, including the pitch deck and trailer, and subscribe to our Substack for show notes, more about our guests, and industry insights. And please follow us on Instagram and TikTok as Films Not Made.

AMY HOBBY: And of course, we have merch. Check that out. And all things Films Not Made at FilmsNotMade.com.

AVI WEIDER: Thanks again for listening and watching. We’ll see you next time.

After doing a big re-write at a mud spa retreat paid for by investors [see photos below!], building an entire western town set in Austin, and rehearsing with actors James Duval and Laurel Holloman, Dan and his producer blew things up by pulling the plug before the investors pulled the plug on them. Did they do the right thing? Full transcript below.

Note from Dan Mirvish: I'm honored and excited to get the "Films Not Made" treatment for my project Stamp & Deliver! I call it a "project" rather than a "film" because we never actually "filmed" it. But we came close. A couple times! I'm eternally grateful to all the people who've worked on it in its various forms and media over the years - including the graphic novel we've been pitching recently. What started as almost a futuristic sci-fi, has now turned into a period project. But I'm happy to say that thematically it's just as relevant as it's ever been - and probably more so. At its heart, Stamp & Deliver is about humanity's struggle for authenticity in the face of machines and technology. So there's some rich irony to putting it through the AI sausage grinder of Films Not Made. One upside? For those curious to see me without a hat (including my wife), the Films Not Made pitch deck has a great picture of me. Huge thanks to Amy, Avi and Lisa! And if anyone wants to read the script, you can buy it on Paperback or Kindle here: https://www.amazon.com/Stamp-Deliver-Dan-Mirvish/dp/0578279347

AMY: Today’s guest is Dan Mirvish, who’s a director, writer and producer of a number of award-winning films, including 18½, Bernard and Huey, Open House, and Omaha the Movie. He is also known as the co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival, and he wrote a pretty cool book called The Cheerful Subversive’s Guide to Independent Filmmaking.

Welcome to the show, Dan.

DAN: Thank you, Amy, for that very kind introduction. Wonderful to be here.

AVI: And I want to add one thing — I’ve also known Dan for quite a long time, probably from the beginning of Slamdance. And strangely enough, I have been mistaken for Dan on the streets of Park City more than once. Someone just started talking to me thinking I was Dan Mirvish.

AMY: Did you get a project greenlit for him?

AVI: That would have been awesome. Yeah, we should probably be giving each other ten percent of something.

DAN: Absolutely.

AMY: So, Dan, we’re here to talk about a project called Stamp & Deliver. Can you tell us the short pitch for the film — just, you know, telling someone about the project?

DAN: Yeah. Stamp & Deliver is a modern-day postal western. It’s about a young man who gets blamed for a postal massacre and has to hightail it out to the small western town where he grew up, where he then runs afoul of a postal vixen and nefarious forces out to get him.

AMY: I love a vixen.

AVI: What was your first spark for this — the inspiration?

DAN: So this started because my first film was called Omaha the Movie, and that was a film we started Slamdance with. We did a theatrical self-distribution around the country and played in a whole bunch of festivals. And of course, as you guys both know, when you go to a film festival or do a Q&A, the first question is, “What’s next?” I didn’t have a next film because I’d been working so hard on the first film.

AMY: Rookie mistake.

DAN: Exactly. So I needed something to pitch. I had actually just met Matthew Harrison —

AVI: Oh sure. Yeah.

DAN: — Film Crash founder. He had Rhythm Thief, which was kind of on the festival circuit around the same time.

AVI: Slamdance ‘95.

DAN: And Matt had done a film called Spare Me. The bowling noir. And I thought, “Bowling noir — why not do postal western?”

AVI: Rings true. Yeah.

DAN: So that was it. I give Matt credit for inspiring that. I had also, before I went to film school, right after I graduated college, interned at the Washington Monthly Magazine, and had done research on an article about privatization of the postal service. It was all about these weird rivalries between the Letter Carriers’ Union and the Postal Clerks’ Union and how they all hate each other — that winds up being a big part of the script.

And also when I was in school in Saint Louis, there was a postal training ground in the middle of the city that was this bizarre — it looks like a fake western town — where the letter carriers would practice.

AVI: One of my best friends growing up had a short job — not as a postal carrier, but as a toll taker at the Triborough Bridge — and he had to train at a toll booth simulator, somewhere in midtown.

DAN: Are you kidding?

AVI: Not kidding. With a little control panel, and they would put images on the screen and you had to press how many axles. Anyway, I love that about the script.

DAN: Yeah. And it turns out it’s a real thing. Every big city had its own training center. They would build these things with, you know, paintings of dogs barking at you. It was wild.

AMY: So it’s not based on the Bukowski novel?

DAN: No.

AMY: Okay. That’s the only postal joke I know. So, Dan, where were you in your career and headspace when you started and finished the script?

DAN: I was living in L.A. and I had signed with an agent at UTA. And I was actually running my distribution for Omaha the Movie out of the UTA mailroom. Not a lot of people know this story, but I was there about four days a week for about four or five hours a day. I was friends with all the assistants, the receptionists, everyone in the mailroom. I would make them cookies. And I literally ran my distribution out of that mailroom.

Eventually they fired me as a client because I had the highest FedEx bill of any client there, including Pamela Anderson and Jim Carrey put together. But while I was still there, I was talking to the agent about what’s next. And if you guys remember, in the mid-nineties, the real question wasn’t so much “what’s your first film” but “what’s your big sophomore film?”

AMY: And there is also the second-film curse.

DAN: Thanks for letting me know that, Amy.

AMY: Hot tip.

DAN: I think I first pitched this almost at my second festival Q&A at South By, and I met some investors there in Austin. I don’t think I’d written the script at that point yet, but I was starting to pitch it around.

AMY: Amazing.

DAN: And I was like, “All right, I gotta write this thing.” I also had a winter Christmas job at the Good Guys electronics store, selling VCRs. So, trying to figure out what to do with my life.

AMY: So who reads the script first? Who do you share it with?

DAN: I sent it to my agent. I knew it was long — about 120 pages. It took him forever to finally read it, and I was like, “Give me notes.” And I remember him saying, “Yeah, I liked it. Just change the margins.”

AVI: Oh.

DAN: I was like, this is my big Hollywood agent! But I changed the margins and it was 105 pages.

AMY: Amazing. Hot tip, hot tip — here on Films Not Made.

DAN: And he was right. Smart guy.

AMY: And did you have a producer or someone you were thinking about? What was the next step?

DAN: I was already partnered up. I had a producing partner on Omaha, Dana Altman, who’s still in many ways my producing partner now. He’s also Robert Altman’s grandson, so Robert Altman had kind of been our mentor on Omaha the Movie. So Dana was on board as my producing partner.

AVI: Did you think about casting? You’ve got the money. Everyone’s saying yes. Do you have a casting agent? How would you move ahead?

DAN: We did auditions in Paul Rackman’s rental house in the Hollywood Hills, which sounds really dubious. We wanted kind of the hot indie-film-scene people. I had met James Duvall — Jamie Duvall — who’d been in three of Greg Araki’s films, Doom Generation, and so on. He was still working at La Poubelle restaurant on Franklin.

AMY: Right there on Franklin.

DAN: Yeah. That’s where Dean Devlin walked in and was like, “Hey, aren’t you the guy from Doom Generation?” Super sweet guy, really nice. And I was lucky enough to work with him.

AMY: And was he name enough for your investors?

DAN: That’s a great question. He may be meaningful in the indie world and festival world, but not meaningful in terms of foreign sales, or vice versa — depending on who you’re trying to impress. And then we had Laurel Holloman, who had been in Rose Troche’s Go Fish.

AMY: Oh, sure. Yeah.

DAN: She was kind of hot on the indie film scene. She was super sweet and nice to work with.

AMY: Yeah. You sent us some great materials about auditioning Jeremy Sisto, and particularly about Brittany Murphy. I’d love for you to tell that story about her auditioning and why you didn’t cast her.

DAN: She came in, I think, because I knew Joel Michaely. I actually met him at the Good Guys Electronics store, weirdly enough — he came in to submit a tape for Slamdance. When Variety first announced that we were doing Slamdance, which was around December 20th of ‘94, we got a front page story in Variety. But this was before websites, so there was no Slamdance website. The only way people could track us down was the end of the article said, “By the way, Mirvish is working at the Good Guys Electronics store in Westwood over Christmas.”

AVI: They outed you?

DAN: Yeah. So Joel was one of the people who came in. I was in the middle of selling a little Sony kitchen TV to Kevin Pollak, of all people — he was getting ready to go to Sundance with The Usual Suspects. And in the middle of this, Joel Michaels shows up with a VHS tape. Poor Kevin Pollak is like, “What is going on around here?” A couple of times after my shift, the other guys from Slamdance — John Fitzgerald and others — would come in and we’d watch some films on the big-screen TVs, and my coworkers would comment on them.

AMY: But Brittany Murphy — so you hadn’t locked Laurel in yet?

DAN: Yeah, I think we hadn’t quite committed 100% to Laurel at that point, so we were still looking. Joel Michaels said he was friends with Brittany Murphy. She came in and just blew us all away. She was really good, really took the part of “postal vixen” literally. And she was just amazing. And then her agent told her not to do it because it wasn’t a big enough movie.

AVI: But you were on the front page of Variety.

DAN: Well, for Slamdance. Not for me as a filmmaker. I remember at one point she called me in tears and was like, “Oh my God, my agent’s telling my mom — who was her manager — don’t do this movie.” And I was like, what kind of agent packaging is that? That was like unpacking, you know?

So anyway, she was never really in, but then she was out. And then I met with Ed Asner. That was fun — to play one of the union bosses.

AVI: Did he commit?

DAN: Yeah, yeah, he was in. He had been a SAG union president, if you remember. He had a salty mouth, so he was perfect. And then there were a bunch of other people we were talking to at the time — one of the Arquettes, I think, was going to be in it. And then Robert Altman kind of helped us get Lyle Lovett at one point.

AVI: This sounds like you had all this momentum going.

DAN: It sounds like it.

AMY: So what’s next? You have these investors. You’re talking to someone in Austin and Houston and Nebraska. What’s happening?

DAN: So Dana and I both decamped to Austin for almost two months. The investors found us a kind of weird house and we all moved into it. We started doing location scouting and finding the crew. I knew Nancy Schafer, who was running SxSW at the time. Austin was very cliquish — you had the South By and Austin Film Society / Linklater clique, and then people who just did commercials, and then people who crewed on studio films coming into town. Anyway, we got in with the cool kids through Nancy. And Rick Linklater was great — he let us use part of his set from The Newton Boys, which he had just shot. It was still up.

AMY: And this is like summer of ‘97, right?

DAN: Yeah.

AVI: When were you going to start shooting?

DAN: Well, there were these two Texas ladies — Dorinda Dallas and Sally Jo Evanson, her partner. They wanted me to cut twenty pages out of the script. They said, “We’ll send you to a spa this weekend, and you can fly in any one of your friends to help you rewrite.” So Paul Rachman came in and Paul and I went to the spa.

AMY: Hey, you want to go to a spa?

DAN: We have these ridiculous photos. We weren’t going to not take photos. There are pictures of us in towels working on the script.

AMY: So you’re working on the script at the spa, going to parties, meeting people, embedding in Austin. Talk to us about when you started to see some cracks in the plan.

DAN: Well, like a week or two before filming — and to their credit, they had been shelling out money for pre-production. We were building huge sets on the Newton Boys location. We had locations, we had sets. They were spending real money. We bought four postal jeeps — used, from the post office — for like eight hundred or five hundred bucks apiece. They were cheap.

And we were building this massive set where one wall had to come down and do what we called the Buster Keaton gag — where characters would stand in front and there’d be an open window and it would swing around them. You had to actually weld a hinge in order to do it repeatedly and safely. Things weren’t painted yet, but they were built.

And Linklater had a fake oil derrick — like a pump jack, “there will be blood” kind of thing — and that was still standing. So we kind of did some rewrites around the fact that this oil derrick was there and built our fake postal town kind of around that.

AVI: It sounds amazing. So walk us through what happened next.

DAN: A couple of weeks before we were going to begin, there were rumblings that they weren’t happy. It was pretty clear they were going to fire someone — Dana, Steven, or me, or all of us.

AMY: How do you know they’re going to fire someone — just a vibe?

DAN: I think they told us. Someone’s going to go. Yeah.

AMY: Do you think they had cold feet? Like the money got real?

DAN: I think they had their own issues. They didn’t quite know what they wanted out of the whole thing.

AMY: And suddenly it’s real, right?

DAN: Yeah, it’s real. And suddenly bigger checks needed to be written.

AMY: I mean, that’s happened to me. I’ve definitely been in pre-production, with a nearly signed finance agreement, lawyers going back and forth, and then when the big check has to be written, suddenly I have a financier saying, “Well, are you paying too much for craft service? Can we re-look at the budget?” And then suddenly this person just fades away. So it’s not like it’s never happened before, but it’s so painful in that moment.

DAN: It was very painful. Because technically, we were the ones who pulled the plug. They were giving us all these signs, and finally Steven was like, “We need to pull the plug on them before they pull the plug on us in the middle of the shoot.” So with five days to go, we wrote the letter that ended everything.

AVI: You sent a press release to Variety about the film collapsing. Was that, like, a tactic to maybe get it going again?

DAN: I know from my time — I had been a speechwriter in Washington for a senator and worked in a press office. I’d also been basically the publicist for Slamdance the first year. So I know that when there’s bad news, you want to write the story yourself.

AVI: Damage control. Yeah, absolutely.

DAN: You know, get it out there. Make sure you’re the one putting your spin on it instead of someone else putting a bad spin on it. So I was like, well, at least let’s get Variety.

AMY: And so you packed your bags and went back to L.A.? Bring us back to that exact moment.

DAN: I’ve been spending twenty-five years trying to forget that moment. I don’t know — I just remember being very sad, and there were lots of hugs and tears from all the crew that were there. Jimmy and Laurel were there because we had started rehearsals and wardrobe fittings with them. And I took the two of them out to our set and said, “Okay, let’s at least get some photos. I think by then we kind of knew the writing was on the wall.” I had my Hi8 camera — “This may be it, guys.”

And here’s the critical thing: they never paid for the script. They never owned the copyright. Which was a big mistake if you’re an investor and you start putting money into something.

AMY: Get your chain of title and get the script.

AMY: Okay. Then what happened?

DAN: Four years later, I get a call from one of the Texas ladies. She was dating Neil Young’s producer-manager. So she pitched them on Stamp & Deliver and they said yes. Now she’s like, “We’re back in business, we’re making the movie again. Neil Young is going to be your producer. He’s gonna do the score.” And we started casting again. We hired a casting director in L.A. and had two or three amazing weeks of auditions and meetings with actors.

All kinds of crazy people came in — Mark Hamill, Dom DeLuise — it was a real interesting mix of people. Now I had Neil Young as producer, so I met with Peter Fonda. We got him attached.

AVI: You’re not still at UTA?

DAN: Oh God, no. They had dumped me. I think by that point I may have been at ICM. I’m just there for the copy machines usually. ICM stands for International Copy Machines. But anyway, we were having these great casting sessions. Patton Oswalt came in — he was going to play Clem and Barney. He came in with his friend Brian Posehn and they did a scene together, which was really funny.

Meeting Peter Fonda was the weirdest meeting I’ve ever had. We met at his West Hollywood hotel. He comes down in pajama bottoms and a leather jacket. Orders a latte. And he had just written his memoir. So once Peter starts talking, you cannot get a word in edgewise. For two and a half hours, I stared at foam on the tip of his nose slowly drying, because I’m like, “Peter — Peter, you got it —” No. I think he went to his grave with foam on his nose.

So anyway, he was a very sweet guy, and he agreed he was going to be in the movie.

AMY: So how did this iteration end?

DAN: September 2001. 9/11 happened. And as we all know, that just pulled the rug out from everyone, everything. Also, if you remember, the anthrax scare in the post offices happened right after 9/11.

AVI: Oh, that’s right.

DAN: And all of a sudden everyone’s like, “We can’t do a postal satire.” That was the last real time where we thought we were going to make the movie.

AMY: So we’ve taken all the stuff you sent us, including a script — thank you for that — and some emails you had sent while you were making the film, which was really helpful. We’ve put it into our AI pipeline.

DAN: Oh, dear God.

AMY: Yeah. And we’ve created a new pitch deck and a trailer. Avi, take it away.

AVI: Okay. Here we go. Here’s your title page. It says Stamp & Deliver in kind of a postal blue going into a dusty red. There’s a shot of a rogue postman coming at us on a rural road. Telephone lines going off into a vanishing distance. On the side of the road is a rural postal jeep.

AMY: And there are letters flying everywhere.

AVI: There’s a guy in the back. And underneath the big title it says: “Anger. Resentment. Violence.” Is that a tagline you used?

DAN: Yeah, that’s a tagline I used. It’s actually in the script itself. It comes from a speech I once wrote for Senator Tom Harkin, when he was talking to one of the postal unions.

AVI: Ripped from the headlines.

DAN: There was definitely a line in the script that I stole from a speech I had written for Harkin.

AVI: Okay. And by the way —

DAN: God bless AI. But they got the Jeep’s steering wheels on the wrong side.

AVI: Yes. Yeah. Well, that was one of those things where I could have iterated and said —

DAN: No, no. We don’t want to teach the robots too much.

AVI: Yeah, exactly. Let’s see what happens. Does the look of this say anything to you?

DAN: Yeah, I mean — the vibe is kind of there.

AMY: Okay, okay.

AVI: Stepping into the deck. We’ve got high concept — High Noon meets Brazil. Let me read off the logline, “when a gifted but socially invisible postal recruit is framed for a massacre he didn’t commit, he flees to his uncle’s rural post office, only to become the last line of defense in a small town under siege from privatization, unions, and a future that wants the mail gone for good.”

And as a little elevator pitch, it says: Stamp & Deliver is a darkly comic thriller about a gifted but invisible postal worker who’s framed for a massacre and flees to a rural town where the mail still matters, only to become the last defender of public service. As privatization, unions, and new technology close in. Think stamps, guns, and a very American nervous breakdown.”

DAN: The only thing I’d question is “invisible” — but okay.

AVI: Yeah. We then asked it to give us a style for the film. Amy, why don’t you take this one?

AMY: The style for the film is “bureaucratic western.” I haven’t heard of that before, but — “it’s a grounded, sun-burned American realism where everyday systems are filmed like frontier lore. The camera treats mail routes, post offices, and sorting rooms with the gravity of showdowns — wide frames, patient movement, and a sense that violence and absurdity share the same dusty air.”

AVI: And we have a style frame. It’s kind of what you described — and kind of not — where you have the postal training ground with these flat facades, fake houses with post boxes, all roughed up, tumbleweeds, a mailbox sitting there. Pretty stark but also strangely absurd.

DAN: That’s pretty close to what they did look like.

AVI: Amazing. We then asked AI to cast the main characters. First up: Nick Franklin —”a gifted, emotionally bottled-up postal recruit whose devotion to order and service collides with a world that wants him erased.” First choice pictured here: Paul Mescal. If you were casting today — what do you think about Paul in the role?

DAN: Sure.

AMY: Josh O’Connor? He’s pretty hot right now — Challengers. And Logan Lerman, though he’s American.

DAN: Yeah. He’s good.

AVI: Next up: Jane Franklin — “a seductive, hyper-intelligent postal obsessive whose hunger for speed, power, and the future makes her far more dangerous than she appears.” This is the vixen you were referring to?

DAN: Yes. The modern-day postal vixen.

AVI: First up: Margaret Qualley. She’s in what seems like her home, but she’s doing some postal sorting there, dressed in —

DAN: That could be in the script. It is in the script, actually — their home is also the post office.

AVI: She’s described as “volatile and erotic.” Second choice: Florence Pugh. Third: Riley Keough.

DAN: All good choices.

AMY: Those are top actresses working today. Who can complain? Just say yes.

AVI: Next up — Amy, do you want to take this one?

AMY: Yeah. Jeremiah Franklin — “a proud, old-school rural postmaster who believes delivering the mail is a moral act, and he’s willing to die for it.” Pictured here: Jeff Bridges, on the same sort of roadside as that earlier photo, but now the Jeep has no top. He’s got very dirty overalls and a baseball cap with the postal insignia. AI considers him “weathered and humane.”

And then Bryan Cranston — “authoritative and tragic” — and John Hawkes, who AI describes as “lived-in and soulful.” It lists his main credit as The Peanut Butter Falcon.

AVI: Who was your last cast for that role?

DAN: That would have been Peter Fonda.

AVI: Oh, there you go. Mr. foam-nose.

Okay. Next up: Jack Montgomery — “a one-eyed corporate enforcer whose childhood trauma has metastasized into a vendetta against the town and the idea of public service itself.” First choice: Jesse Plemons. Right now you can see him in Begonia. He is truly looking menacing and banal.

DAN: As opposed to banal and menacing, which is amazing.

AVI: We’ve also got Scoot McNairy and Ben Foster. Do you like Jesse Plemons?

DAN: Yeah. He’s great. The tricky part was he needed to be the same age as Nick, because they have this tragic backstory together — they grew up together, and they were in a rubber band fight as kids, and that’s how he lost his eye. Which, by the way, was influenced by John Heilemann — podcaster and MSNBC pundit. He was an intern with me at the Washington Monthly, and we used to do that. He didn’t lose an eye, though. Thank God.

AVI: We have some style frames. The big high-concept reference is No Country for Old Men meets Office Space.

AMY: It’s getting better every page.

DAN: Yeah. Right on.

AVI: We’ve got a few frames here. First: our hero Nick in what looks like the aftermath of a massacre — blood on the floor in a sorting facility, bullet holes everywhere. Next: he’s racing away in a postal jeep from what looks like a city on fire, just smoking. It looks like a metropolis, but then it goes right out into the fields. And then the private mail service truck —

AMY: What is going on? Like bags flying out or —?

DAN: Yeah, yeah, there’s the postal dump in the script. That’s definitely in there.

AVI: And then lastly, a kind of Western shootout — hiding behind a mailbox.

AMY: Like a Western showdown where the mailbox is your cover.

AVI: Yeah. The villain is shooting at him in a very Western style. We have some poster art coming up.

DAN: Oh, wow.

AVI: Three posters.

AMY: So the first one is really fascinating. It’s a mailbox in a field — open — with letters flying out in a big swirl that ends in an American flag. It looks like it premiered at South by Southwest. There’s a pull quote: “A savage satire with the pulse of a thriller.” IndieWire.

AVI: The middle one is what I’d call a festival prestige piece. Very moody cul-de-sac with a post box in the middle and some constructed fake houses. A pull quote: “An American parable — as funny as it is unsettling.” The Guardian. That’s in competition at Cannes.

DAN: That’s really nice.

AVI: And then lastly, this is kind of a nod to you — the Slamdance, maybe nineties version. Big picture of a rural post box open with mail coming out of it. And the pull quote: “The funniest postal thriller ever made.” Film Comment. And it’s an official selection of Slamdance.

AMY: That was hard to get it to be an official selection. This was definitely like the low-budget indie ideal.

DAN: Yes. Okay.

AVI: We like to have a range. Under the title — in old typewriter font — it reads: “Neither snow nor rain nor corporate greed.”

DAN: Yeah, I dig that.

AVI: I could see this one on Main Street back in the day, plastered everywhere with the showtimes at the Treasure Mountain.

DAN: Well, you know, IMDb says we made the movie, so.

AMY: Oh, really?

DAN: Now AI thinks we actually did too. Lastly, we have a little shot of you in situ on set, and a bio.

AVI: Dan — look at that.

DAN: He’s leaning on a fence. Look at how much hair I have in that picture.

AVI: He’s got a full golden mane, backlit in front of a western post office. You are the salt of the earth. That’s all I can say.

DAN: I gotta use that picture on my website. Yeah.

AVI: So that’s our deck.

DAN: Wow. That’s some big deck energy.

AVI: Now we’re going to show you a trailer that we made with the same AI pipeline. Give me a second to queue that up.

[TRAILER PLAYS]

VOICE: Franklin, slow it down.

VOICE: Yes, sir.

VOICE: A violent incident at a downtown post office.

VOICE: This doesn’t look good.

VOICE: Out here, the mail still means something.

VOICE: Delivering mail ain’t a job. It’s a duty.

VOICE: I just like things on time.

VOICE: Progress is inevitable.

VOICE: That’s not mail. That’s an attack.

VOICE: Service delivers everything. Even the crap. Get down!

VOICE: I know.

VOICE: He believed in something.

VOICE: Belief is slow, Nick.

VOICE: Keep it moving. Not in my town.

VOICE: You’re obsolete.

VOICE: I deliver.

VOICE: It’s already over.

VOICE: What’s this for?

[TRAILER ENDS]

DAN: Ooh. I got chills.

AMY: The end is amazing.

AVI: What do you think?

DAN: It is. The little button. Wow. Yeah — I was literally getting chills thinking about how the robots are taking over. Which is kind of the theme of the movie. It was weird — when I wrote the script initially it was a little sci-fi in the sense that it was all about the coming internet. Now it’s a period piece.

AVI: So to round out this experience, Dan, we’re now going to have a ten-minute conversation with our own AI creative executive. We can talk about these issues — period versus now. Her name is Meredith. She’s a new executive at the same company we have this relationship with. Let me try and get her on the call now.

[AI EXECUTIVE SEGMENT]

DANNI (AI assistant): Hi, everyone. It’s Danni. Meredith is running a few minutes behind on another call, but she asked me to get you rolling so we don’t burn the window. We’ve got a hard out at ten minutes today. She’s looking forward to catching up with Dan — it’s been a minute. She’s also really intrigued by Stamp & Deliver. She’ll be on in just a moment and will jump right into the big turns in the ending. So feel free to start wherever you want.

DAN: Danny didn’t offer me water. I’m a little disappointed.

AVI: Hey, Meredith.

MEREDITH (AI executive): Hey, Amy.

AVI: All right. We’ve got Dan here, and we sent over the pages — the new deck and his original script for Stamp & Deliver. Let’s just give us the hot take on the script.

MEREDITH: All right. I’ve got Stamp & Deliver in front of me now. Nick is the lead, and we’re in his world. Opening with the post office chaos and Nick caught in the middle works. It sets up tone and stakes fast. What I love is the massacre-scapegoat twist in the back room. It’s bold, and you feel Nick’s confusion and panic.

My one worry: right after Nick’s framed, the script leans hard into postal procedural gags and union politics before the thriller really kicks in. I’d tighten that middle stretch so Nick’s paranoia and the town’s suspicion hit faster. Keep us with his point of view and ramp the tension. Where do you want the audience to flip fully — comedy to thriller?

DAN: Thriller comedy. It’s a thriller comedy, Meredith. It could be a comedy thriller — it depends where you put the slash.

MEREDITH: Totally get that, Dan. The slash placement matters. Looking at Nick’s arc after he’s set up as the scapegoat — you want the comedy to come from his desperate moves, or is the tension the main driver with the laughs as release? Where’s the sweet spot for you, tonally?

DAN: This is creepy. The tone is right there between the thriller and the comedy, but it depends where you put the slash. And I think that’s execution-driven, don’t you think?

MEREDITH: Yeah, absolutely. It’s all in how you stage Nick’s panic versus the absurdity around him. Would you lean into more surreal humor as Nick gets paranoid, or play it straight and let the weirdness come out naturally?

DAN: Great question. I would let the humor come out naturally and play it straight.

MEREDITH: Love that. It’s usually funnier when Nick’s not winking at the camera. So in the scene where he’s interrogated by his coworkers in the break room — would you want the comedy to come from their bizarre logic and how seriously they treat it, rather than Nick cracking jokes?

DAN: Yes. Nick would not be cracking jokes.

MEREDITH: Perfect. That’s clear.

AMY: Meredith, sorry to interrupt. As a producer, I’d like to know — can you see yourselves at the company financing some pre-production for Dan? Is it in your wheelhouse?

MEREDITH: Yeah. Thanks for asking, Dan. Based on what’s on the page, Stamp & Deliver has a clear tone, a strong protagonist in Nick, and the premise is tight enough to package. The win is that it’s contained — mostly in the post office and local settings, so production-wise it’s feasible.

The thing I’d want to clarify before moving to pre-production: are you open to a little structural polish to make Nick’s paranoia and the town’s turning on him punchier? If so, I’d say it’s in our wheelhouse. Are you looking for full casting support or just soft prep at this stage?

DAN: Avi is my other producer. Do you want to answer that question?

AVI: Well — Dan’s basically gotten to the start line twice on this and not been able to get over that last hurdle. Look, I think there’s an audience for it. I think it can be done. We just want to know — who do you think would be hospitable? Would you take it to a streamer or a studio?

MEREDITH: Good question, Avi. I would say the contained setting and offbeat tone make it ripe for streamers — Netflix, Hulu, maybe even Amazon. It’s the kind of high-concept, character-driven thriller comedy they’ll take a swing at, especially with the right cast. Would you be open to targeting a streamer first with a sharp reel and casting wishlist before knocking on studio doors?

DAN: Amy, I’ll let you take that one.

AMY: For sure. Look, we’re open.

MEREDITH: Sounds good, Amy. If we go streamer first, I’d push for a short proof-of-concept reel — Nick in the post office, total chaos, union politics, maybe one tense town scene. Would you want Dan to shoot something rough and scrappy, or do you need a polished sizzle to get attention?

AMY: Hey, Meredith — that’s a solid question. We were thinking about using AI to create this trailer. How do you feel about that?

MEREDITH: Honestly, I’m into it. AI visuals can sell tone and world without blowing the budget. The key is to get the vibe right — Nick dead serious, chaos swirling, not joking. Just make sure what you show matches the script’s straight-faced weirdness. Would you frame the trailer as mostly Nick’s POV or mix in how the town sees him?

AVI: I think it’s going to be plot-oriented — keep it moving, get people interested. Really kind of a sizzle.

MEREDITH: That works. Plot-forward is smart for selling the concept. Just make sure Nick’s tension anchors every beat.

AVI: So let’s talk money.

AMY: How much? We need some money. If you want to be involved in this hot project that’s definitely going to be greenlit with or without you — we need you to put your money where your mouth is. We need you to option the script for six figures and get our pre-production going.

MEREDITH: Look, I get it. You want to see six figures up front. The thing is, for contained projects like Stamp & Deliver — mostly one location, character-driven, streamer — pre-pro options are usually closer to low-to-mid. Just checking: do you want a straight answer on feasibility? Honestly, I’d say six figures is ambitious for a contained indie unless you have cast attached or streamer interest. Want to talk cast, director, or stay on financing for now?

AMY: I don’t know, man.

DANNI: Dan, I’m so sorry. Meredith just got pulled off for a hard stop and had to drop. She’s got a lunch she can’t miss, but she wants to keep talking. Maybe you guys can meet up in Park City. Thanks for making the time and for walking us through Stamp & Deliver. If you want a next step, send the two scenes or pages you most want her to react to — the ones that best capture the tone and lean into the ending — and we’ll make sure she hits them cleanly. Thanks again, everyone.

[END AI EXECUTIVE SEGMENT]

AMY: Okay. Well. Dan, I guess we could take the meeting in Park City.

DAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ll be there. I think all three of us are going to be there. I love taking meetings in Park City. The altitude makes everyone say yes.

AVI: Another hot tip.

DAN: Hot tip. Yeah.

AMY: Well, how did you feel about that, Dan?

DAN: That was great. That took me right back to the nineties and all the meetings I did have.

AVI: So it was on brand for creative executive meetings.

DAN: One hundred percent. The only disappointment was Danny didn’t offer me water. But otherwise, that’s — welcome to Hollywood. Takes a little while to know what you’re talking about in a meeting.

AMY: Just a reminder of the project. Anyway, that’s our show. Dan, that’s what we do here on Films Not Made. I don’t know how you’re feeling about the film now. Do you think there’s a life for it?

DAN: Yeah. I think it’s — this is creepy as all hell, but I really appreciate you guys doing this and bringing Stamp & Deliver to life. Undead, in a sense. Why not? I mean, you guys just showed me that trailer. We can put out our own Paul Mescal movie — you guys are the producer brains.

AMY: I don’t know how SAG is going to feel about it.

DAN: Yeah. But it would make casting much easier. So, yeah — we’re in a brave new world. Anything’s possible. With AI, you either embrace it or completely reject it. Or — my next film!

AMY: Tell us.

DAN: It’s a Cold War thriller slash comedy — or comedy thriller, depending, as Meredith says, where you put the slash — about a planeload of Air Force wives who have to thwart World War III while balancing infidelities, spies, martinis, and fondue. Tonally it’s not that different from Stamp & Deliver. And we just launched the Kickstarter campaign today. We’re planning on shooting it this summer.

AVI: Tell everyone where they can find you and find that.

DAN: If you go to Kickstarter and search for Atomic Fondue, it’s on there now. Or just go to DanMirvish.com and look for Atomic Fondue. We’re on Instagram everywhere at Atomic Fondue. Things are going well — literally while we were on this podcast, we raised like four hundred dollars.

AVI: Solid start.

DAN: Whatever it is, you guys are great. Keep doing what you’re doing.

---

[END OF EPISODE]

Chris reflects on the original casting process back in the late 90s:

At the time there was a lot of excitement about two new, young actors from Wales - which was music to our ears: Matthew Rhys and Ioan Gruffudd [Yo—ann Gruff-ith].

They were the same age, both in their mid-twenties which was perfect for the character. We went down to Wales to audition them, and took great care that they wouldn’t have to bump into each other because it was pretty obvious one of them might be ‘our’ Alwyn. But then they arrived at the same time and it turned out they were best friends, had known each other since childhood - and were sharing a flat in London, so they’d trekked back to Wales together for the audition.

They were both wonderful and well prepared - of course they’d been rehearsing with each other. I remember hooting with laughter, I was so pleased listening to the scenes come to life. They’d grown up a few miles from my childhood home, so they ’got’ everything about the characters and the culture. Nothing needed explaining, they knew the world completely.

And pretty quickly we decided that we wanted both of them - Matthew as Alwyn, and Ioan as the bad policeman whom he dethrones.

There was a mischievousness about Matthew coupled with a downtrodden ‘Oh no, what’s going to ruin my life next?’ quality that was prefect for Alwyn.

Ioan would go on to play heroic figures, but making him the arrogant, bad cop seemed the perfect opportunity to cast against type and get something very exciting.

And best of all they wanted to work together.

Such a shame it never happened - but they moved to L.A. - and shared their first apartment in L.A. - and I reconnected with them through Ian McNeice and we’ve been pals ever since. The film didn’t get made but I got great friendships nevertheless.

Show Notes

• Christopher Monger IMDB

• Ted Hope’s Substack “Hope for Film”

• Check out our curated Letterboxd List for some New York mid 90s indie classics to go with our Ted Hope-Good Machine vibe.

• We have merch! Buy our awesome Films Not Made signature mug or 100% cotton t-shirt.

• Go to FilmsNotMade for the show’s transcript and more.

Thanks for following Films Not Made!

It’s mid 1990s New York City. Indie film is buzzing with new talent like Tom DiCillo, Spike Lee, Mary Harron, Ang Lee, Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, and Michael Almereyda. Ted Hope’s production company Good Machine Productions is at the epicenter of all this when he reads writer/director Chris Monger’s script The Amateur Pornographer. Chris, a Welsh native, is fresh off the Miramax release of his film The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain starring Hugh Grant. This is Chris’s next project which will shoot in a small town in Wales, and Ted feels it’s a sure thing. To help you visualize, this is what Ted Hope and his office looked like around this time.

With a young Matthew Rhys attached, The Amateur Pornographer was getting positive signals from the BBC. Then the higher-ups got cold feet. Ted later reached out to HBO, who was ready to hop onboard with only one note: Could the film be set in the United States instead of Wales? Chris is resistant until Ted suggests an extended scouting trip near his hometown in industrial New Hampshire which HBO pays for.

In today’s episode of Films Not Made we talk with Chris and Ted about their journey with The Amateur Pornographer.

Here is a note from Chris Monger after appearing on the podcast:

It’s been bittersweet revisiting The Amateur Pornographer - a project that broke my heart, not once but twice as we got close to making one version in Wales, and another here in the U.S.

I really thought it would be an easy film to set up. And returning to read it now, so many years later, I thought I’d gain some insight as to why it didn’t happen — but no! I still can’t understand.

I’ve lost count of the number of screenplays I’ve written. And when I return to old ones I’m sometimes mortified seeing my earlier work. But when I re-read Amateur Pornographer I was filled with the excitement I had when writing it.

Show Notes

• Christopher Monger IMDB

• Ted Hope’s Substack “Hope for Film”

• Check out our curated Letterboxd List for some New York mid 90s indie classics to go with our Ted Hope-Good Machine vibe.

• We have merch! Buy our awesome Films Not Made signature mug or 100% cotton t-shirt.

• Go to FilmsNotMade for the show’s transcript and more.

Thanks for following Films Not Made!

I first spoke to Effie Brown about the podcast last December. She would be a dream guest-– smart, funny, refreshingly direct and she definitely has great stories to tell. But she told me in no uncertain terms that she did not have an unmade project and would not be a guest on Films Not Made. It definitely felt like I insulted her by asking.

When I mentioned it again in January, she seemed a bit more open. Then, at Sundance, she told me about The Sisterhood. My text to Avi from Park City, “I just spoke with Effie and her project is going to be SO GOOD!!!!!”

The Sisterhood is based on a book written by Nichol Bradford who joins us on this episode. It’s an epic conspiracy thriller with tons of action sequences - where the leader of a secret network of women of color is murdered over the development of a vaccine that could collapse the global drug economy. It’s also about women who build an alternative system of wealth, protection and care— and are punished for it. The project, which hasn’t been pitched in well over a decade, feels very of the moment in its system-level look at power, institutions, and a refusal to collaborate with oppression.

There is another way in which this project was eons ahead of its time. Effie and Nichol shared with us a forty page pitch deck from 2007. Film teams take note! This is how we all need to be thinking about our projects today. They clearly they outlined the metaverse around the project and how they would reach and engage audiences for the project. It blows my mind that this deck was from 2007. Their detailed IP and marketing strategy included–

• Target Market: Key Selling Propositions

• Competition

• Marketing Timeline

• Outreach to women at their desks, including–

  • A detailed breakdown of multiple strands of viral video content [this is 2007!]

  • A fleshed out alternative reality game [this is 2007!]

  • A Sisterhood intranet or online community that women can join designed as if the Sisterhood is real. [this is 2007!]

• Sponsorships - 5 detailed pages

• Endorsements, Public Relations, Launch Parties, and a Mixtape!

• Seminar, speeches, and book tours

• Accessing the college markets

• Nonprofit tie-ins

• Merchandise

• A graphic novel

• And feedback from focus groups around the book

For reference, go back to Episode 02 Poodle Power and look at the deck I made around the same time with clip art of dogs. Go ahead and have a well-deserved laugh at me.

Our conversation in this episode was emotional at times, delving into a project that suffered some unjust rejection, and blank stares from executives that couldn’t grasp the vision. At the same time, Nichol’s words provided such incredible insight into how we are navigating important issues in our business and culture today. I leave you with this transcript excerpt that was exceptionally interesting to me:

NICHOL BRADFORD: The second thing that’s really important: I spend a great deal of my time on the future of work. I advise global organizations on human and AI implementation, and I invest in technology for human potential. I organize a big event called Human Tech Week, which brings together people looking at the future of health, the future of work, and the future of cities — the touch points for human flourishing. How do we leverage AI and technology to support humans to heal, grow, and thrive?

With the future of work and what’s happening with agentic AI and everything else, there’s a thing around collective ownership — a modern version around collective ownership and tokenization. But what never goes out of style is leverage.

EFFIE BROWN: Preach.

AMY HOBBY: That’s super interesting.

EFFIE BROWN: Yes. Yes.

NICHOL BRADFORD: Leverage is about people working together. Leverage never goes out of style. What the women in the book do, looking back, is they really understand how to create, co-create, leverage.

And that leverage is about really good systems — ones where everyone actually benefits. People talk about win-win, but they usually mean it as a nice way to get you to accept their terms. But a true win — in the book, at the right moment, every member gets shares based on very clear and transparent criteria. It’s this idea that when the ownership of the thing is distributed to every person who benefits, then there is no heart to strike at. Because it’s in too many places.

Show Notes

• Check out our curated Letterboxd List with guest Effie Brown’s films and films referenced in the episode.

• We have merch! Buy our awesome Films Not Made signature mug or 100% cotton t-shirt.

• Go to FilmsNotMade for the show’s transcript and more.

Thanks for following Films Not Made !

Oscar-nominated documentarian Heidi Ewing (I Carry You With Me, Jesus Camp, Detropia) joins Amy and Avi to discuss why her pilot script adaptation of the book How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog) is now a shelved limited series about two Soviet biologists who secretly work to domesticate wild foxes in Siberia while Stalin was busy persecuting anyone who liked science.

Based on the true story of Lyudmila Trut and Dmitri Belyaev, this is a Cold War thriller disguised as an animal story — or an animal story disguised as a Cold War thriller, depending on how you feel about foxes that eventually sing.

Heidi wrote a full pilot during COVID, dreamt about the perfect cast (Daniel Day-Lewis, Cate Blanchett, Joaquin Phoenix), and then Putin invaded Ukraine and tanked the mood for celebrating Russian scientists. Timing is everything.

We fed the script into our AI pipeline, generated a pitch deck and trailer, and let our AI executive Finn weigh in. Heidi's verdict: still a f***ing good idea.

The war on science was then. It's also now. The foxes are still in Siberia. Heidi just wrapped a different sophmore scripted project in Malta but is her fox project dead or just napping? The war on science sadly feels relevent again.

Show Notes

• Check out our curated Letterboxd List with guest Heidi Ewing’s films and films referenced in the episode.

• We have merch! Buy our awesome Films Not Made signature mug or 100% cotton t-shirt.

• Go to FilmsNotMade for the show’s transcript and more.

Thanks for following Films Not Made !

Long before Barbenheimer summer, our guest Robert Edwards was considered to adapt American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer for director Sam Mendes. He loved the book but didn’t get the job. A couple years later the option lapsed, Robert nabbed it and wrote his own screenplay adaptation. The book option eventually became a “ticking time bomb” and financial burden, at which point Robert’s agent told him to give up the hustle saying, “The writing is great, but nobody wants to watch a movie like this. Nobody cares about this guy. He's forgotten. The story's grim, you know, it's period and I just don't think we're going to get money for this.”

The story might indeed be un-producable— unless you’re Christopher Nolan who of course swooped in and developed a third and definitive version of the story.

Robert Edwards joins us on Films Not Made to talk Otherheimer.

Plus an Ai mishap leads to a potential 4th adaption of the story of Oppenheimer.

Show Notes

• Check out our curated Letterboxd List with guest Bob Edward’s films and films referenced in the episode.

• We have merch! Buy our awesome Films Not Made signature mug or 100% cotton t-shirt.

• Go to FilmsNotMade for the show’s transcript and more.

Thanks for following Films Not Made !

Episode 2: Poodle Power

This week’s episode features the never-made film Poodle Power. After optioning the life rights to John Suter, who infamously ran a team of standard poodles in the Iditarod, Anne Hubbell and our own Amy Hobby spend years pitching to animation executives and navigating hilarious executive notes. They are surprised at their own traction in a genre in which they have zero experience, before they enter a death spiral of smaller and smaller companies who “love the project”. Our additional guest Kent Osborne [Sponge Bob Square Pants] joins us with his animation chops as well as his critique of AI and its industry-destroying ways.

Show Notes

• Our curated Letterboxed List with guest Kent Osborne’s films and films referenced in the episode.

• Transcript of the full show is below.

SPEAKERS: Amy Hobby, Avi Zev Weider, Anne Hubbell, Kent Osborne

AMY: Welcome to Films Not Made, where producers, writers and directors pull old, never-made projects out of the closet, and we attempt to resurrect them using some very questionable AI.

AVI: I’m Avi Zev Weider.

AMY: And I’m Amy Hobby. Today we’re diving into a project that Anne Hubbell and I spent almost a decade to get made. It’s an animated film about a team of standard poodles that run the Iditarod in Alaska. Anne is my longtime producing partner, co-founder of Tangerine Entertainment. She currently runs the Provincetown International Film Festival and is an executive at Kodak where she helps filmmakers shoot on film, which is that kind of physical stuff that AI can’t replicate yet anyway.

AVI: Also joining us is my really good friend, Kent Osborne. I think he’s one of the funniest people I know, and you may know him because he is a longtime animator and director with about 25 years of experience in the industry. You might recognize his name from SpongeBob or Adventure Time. Also a fun fact — he’s an umpire for his local little league and an active community theater member.

AMY: Kent is also the brother of Mark Osborne, the Oscar-nominated animator who gave us some truly devastating notes back in the day on the project.

AVI: As usual, we’ve got the original materials — their original deck, eight years of emails, we have everything — and we’ve fed it all into the AI pipeline to see what we could do with it. So we’re going to be looking at a new deck, a new trailer, and of course, we’ve got a meeting with our most interesting and semi-intelligent film executive.

AMY: Welcome to Films Not Made. Let’s talk about Poodle Power.

AVI: Anne, you’ve got water behind you. Where do we find you right now?

ANNE: I am in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

AVI: And Kent, where are you located these days?

KENT: I’m in the glorious Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

AVI: Fantastic.

KENT: Also, I’m remembering now, Avi, you were in my dream — not last night, but the night before.

AVI: Oh, we definitely want to hear about that.

KENT: Yeah. I woke up in the middle of the night and there were kids throwing eggs at my house, and I was like, “I’m going to go down there.” And I went outside and everyone was frozen. And then you came up and you put me on a handcart and started taking me away and you were talking to someone and it became clear that I was a malfunctioning robot and you were taking me back to the shop.

AVI: This is so apropos to our entire endeavor here, and I think we definitely ought to keep that in mind because in a little bit we are going to have a hopefully non-malfunctioning robot join us in the conversation. But before we get there, let’s start with the origin story for this project.

AMY: Anne, do you want to tell us whose idea it was to do a film about poodles running the Iditarod?

ANNE: Well, you had a standard poodle named Zelig, and we both love dogs and somehow — did you read an article, or I don’t know who read the article — about somebody who ran the Iditarod with standard poodles. We thought that was crazy and somehow got a hold of a book that was written about this guy, John Suter. We ended up basically figuring out how to option his life rights to make a movie.

AMY: I think before that — so he was based in Chugiak, Alaska — I think before we got his life rights, this was around 2006, he had had his friend on his mushing team write a script about his story. That script was called Spirit Poodles — this guy Larry Williams.

ANNE: Spirit Poodles. Uh-huh.

AMY: Spirit Poodles. Yeah. So he already had a script, and it was a crazy script, but it wasn’t animation. And so I think the project started out not as animation, right?

ANNE: It did.

AMY: I actually wrote down the intro of his script. I’m going to read a little bit of it.

ANNE: Do it.

AVI: Oh, dramatic reading.

AMY: Dramatic reading. So the top of it reads: Exterior, Jayhawk Helicopter, Night. Captain John Suter pilots the Jayhawk Helicopter through the darkness buffeted by high winds and rain. He looks over at co-pilot Petey. Suter: “Petey, I can’t see a thing through this crap. Let’s put on night vision.” Petey was his standard poodle — his co-pilot — it was a big-budget extravaganza.

AVI: Wait a minute. Was the dog going to put on night vision goggles?

AMY: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. It wasn’t clear.

ANNE: I don’t know if the dog was going to put on night vision... I think he just sort of talked to Petey. But John did that — he was a pilot, he was on a rescue team.

AMY: Yeah, he was a pilot. Anyway, he had his friend Larry write this script and it was like a big-budget, real-life script. And we optioned that script first, and then I think there was one moment where we were like, “We’re going to go to Alaska and make this film.” And I was like, “There’s no film crews there. Maybe we shoot in Canada — can we shoot it in Winnipeg?” And they were like, “We’re not going to go shoot this film in the snow.”

ANNE: Alaska.

AMY: Yeah, no way. I think you came up with the idea that it should be animated.

ANNE: I wanted to go to Alaska to make the movie.

AMY: We wanted to go see the Iditarod, but we never made it there.

AVI: So I assume you then went and started researching even more about Suter, because we have some news clips that you guys had somehow acquired. Maybe we should watch a little bit of this.

AMY: Yeah, let’s watch.

ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE: [NEWS CLIP] John Suter is much like any other rookie musher in this year’s Iditarod, but his team is unlike any you’ve ever seen.

JOHN SUTER: Good girl.

ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE: John Suter is known around these parts as the Poodle Man. He began raising standard poodles as race dogs 12 years ago.

JOHN SUTER: Well, my father-in-law, John Franklin, had a miniature and it ran like crazy. So I thought it would be really something if one could get poodles up and running.

AVI: So we see John Suter hooking up dogs — poodles — to the sled.

KENT: They’re bigger than I thought they were going to be, right?

AMY: They were standard poodles.

KENT: Really. They’re big, yes.

ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE: Believe it or not, these are some tough poodles. They have 15 trail miles on them this year alone.

KENT: They’re so black — they look like the monsters from Attack on Titan.

JOHN SUTER: People don’t have a sense of humor when you mush poodles.

AMY: But they’re fast. So John mostly had poodles — he had two Huskies.

KENT: Those are the ringers.

AVI: Is he cheating?

ANNE: The poodles get a little distracted. The Huskies are very focused.

AMY: In fact, John Suter ran poodles — it was a mixed team, poodle and Huskies — in the Iditarod in 1989, 1990, until the Iditarod committee banned non-Husky breeds because of John Suter.

AVI: So you option the life rights. Had you ever optioned life rights before? Is that different from optioning a script?

AMY: I must have optioned life rights before because I make documentaries. I’ve been making films a while. But this is probably the first time I’d dealt with optioning life rights for such an interesting individual.

ANNE: There was a book that was written, and we wanted to have all of the underlying rights to everything.

AVI: Wait — Suter had written a book about it?

ANNE: No, Suter didn’t write a book. Someone else wrote the book.

AMY: Somebody else wrote a book. There was also a great book called My Lead Dog Is a Lesbian that we really liked. We considered optioning that instead.

AVI: Really? Talk more about the pivot to animation.

AMY: Suter always told us he always had some close brush with fame. For example, he tried to connect us with Sarah Palin, who he said — politics aside — was pretty famous in Alaska and maybe could help us get the movie made. He told us that Gary Marshall read the script and really liked it, but he doesn’t do movies in the cold — I guess that’s why he passed. But all that aside, we just thought: cold, helicopters, dogs. Anne was like, “We have to do this as an animated film.” Mind you, we had no idea how to make an animated film.

ANNE: I don’t know that we still have any idea how to do it.

AMY: I don’t have any idea. Thank God Kent’s here. But not knowing anything, we reached out — I’m not sure how we got connected to Chris Wedge, but I think a very good friend of mine, Pete, connected us.

AVI: Who is Chris Wedge?

ANNE: He was at Blue Sky Studios, which did all of the Ice Age movies. Big animation studio — they were in White Plains.

AMY: At the time, they were in White Plains. We took the train up there. Side note: when we were in White Plains, we thought it would be a great location to film another project that was never made — called Zeros and Ones, from a script that Avi wrote.

AVI: Present. Yes, we will get to that at some time.

AMY: We were developing the projects at the same time, actually. So we’ll have to do another episode for that. But Kent — did you know Chris Wedge, or did you ever meet him? Do you like his films?

KENT: Chris Wedge — he made Bunny, right? He and my brother were nominated for an Academy Award in the same year.

AMY: I think he was the lead animator on the original Tron from the ‘80s

KENT: Oh, wow.

AVI: I love that movie.

AMY: Amazing. So we knew nothing.

ANNE: We walked in and they took us around the whole studio. It was really fascinating to see how they did it, and it also felt extremely daunting. Amy and I had thought, “We’ll find the animator and hire these people.” I think we left thinking, “No, no — we’re just going to sell this, sit back, take a check, and watch everybody else do it. There’s no way we can be part of this thing.”

AMY: We had no clue. Chris Wedge’s tour of Blue Sky was our entire education on how to make an animated film. I don’t think we made any other endeavors to learn about animation. We were just like: it’s a two-word pitch. Poodle Iditarod.

AVI: Poodle Iditarod.

AMY: Then we made a deck. We also had no idea 20 years ago how to make a deck. Now everyone does decks.

ANNE: Oh, do you have the deck?

AVI: We do have the deck. We should look at it. Okay.

ANNE: Let’s look at the deck.

AMY: Kent, it’s 20 years ago. We walk in to pitch an animated film. We don’t know anyone who works in animation except our new friend Chris Wedge, and this is our deck. Tell us what you think.

KENT: So far so good.

AVI: What am I looking at here? Just a nice serif font with a picture of a poodle.

KENT: The sun setting majestically behind it. Horizon line is up high. John Huston would be very proud of this shot.

AMY: Yeah. I didn’t get the rights to it — I just pulled it off the internet, I guess.

KENT: That was great. I love it.

AMY: That’s it. That was our deck.

ANNE: We never really settled on a title. I feel like that’s one of the reasons it never got made — we never actually had a title.

AVI: What’s the title on here?

ANNE: Well, I guess it was Poodle Power. Who knew?

AVI: Poodle Power. Okay, next page.

AMY: Yeah, we had press.

AVI: From Sports Illustrated. This is from what year?

AMY: Probably 1989, 1990.

AVI: And then even better press.

ANNE: The Animal Press.

AVI: The Animal Press. What’s their distribution from February 1989? It does look like a zine.

ANNE: It’s a zine.

AVI: There’s like the word “animal” in a zebra font, and I like their masthead quote: “Animal lovers are the best people.” The article title is “Poodles Tough It Out in the Last Great Race on Earth.” “They didn’t choose to be trimmed like ornamental shrubbery.” Who are these women, though?

AMY: In that era — 1989, 1990 — a lot of women would win the Iditarod. The best mushers in Alaska were women. Susan Butcher, I can’t remember the other — but they ran the Iditarod and won. There was some quote John would tell us: “Alaska, where women win the Iditarod and poodles...” I forget the full line.

KENT: That’s an unfortunate composition there with the woman in the front — the two poodles are behind her. It looks like they’re both sniffing her... it’s obscured by her. And she looks very happy.

AMY: Yeah, because she’s winning.

AVI: Next page in the deck.

AVI: The Suburbanite Shopping News.

ANNE: We did not source from the Suburbanite Shopping News.

AVI: You met John in person?

AMY: We never met him in person. And it was before Zoom was really a thing, so we just would talk to him on the phone. He would call us relentlessly.

AVI: Was he down with the animation?

ANNE: He was down with anything as long as it got done.

AVI: Here’s some more.

AMY: Oh, look — I made a little montage there.

AVI: Oh, is this like a mood board? Describe the mood board.

AMY: It’s literally three things. I don’t know.

ANNE: Looks like you even got an overlap in one of them where the Huskies look menacing.

AMY: They were the bad guys in our film.

AMY: So we had some characters. We started to flesh out what the story might be, the animated story. So we have some character descriptions in the deck.

ANNE: This deck is a reminder to me. Yeah.

AVI: What does it remind you of?

ANNE: It reminded me that we never made a deck before.

KENT: For 20 years ago... I feel like decks should be fun. They should have personality — which this has. I feel like I’m Simon Cowell right now.

AMY: That’s actually a picture of Zelig — my dog.

ANNE: That’s Zelig, Amy’s dog, in the Norton spot. I think Jitters was an actual name of one of John’s dogs.

AVI: Yeah. So we have a whole cast here — Jitters, Norton...

ANNE: Norton was half Husky, half poodle, and one of the key points of the movie was that he wasn’t accepted by the Huskies and was embarrassed that he was half poodle — until the poodles took him in. He had something to prove.

AMY: He was a good team member. Highly motivated. And then Fifi.

ANNE: Fifi was owned by a fashion designer who had come to Alaska to open up a lumberjack-chic boutique.

AVI: See, that’s already a novel right there.

ANNE: We had characters — could have been a series.

AVI: The poodle-verse keeps expanding.

KENT: The Cinematic Poodle Universe.

ANNE: Leo and Rose were like an old vaudeville couple. They worked at the circus — got sprung from the circus when it came to town. They’d been dyed by the circus people, so Leo was pink and Blue was blue. Over the course of the movie, their hair would grow out, so they’d just be pink and blue at the ends by the end of the story.

AVI: And Hazel?

ANNE: She was probably what the lesbian poodle was based off of. She was just an independent poodle. Hippie, whatever. Off the grid.

AVI: Off the grid, it says.

ANNE: Yeah, off the grid. Living off the grid.

ANNE: Oh Fig— I don’t remember much about Fig.

AMY: Fig was super smart. You can see there’s a picture of Fig playing piano. She’s the brains behind the operation. And then we had one other character.

ANNE: And introducing — look at the deck — Marley the Marmot.

KENT: He’s got a good agent.

ANNE: Beargrease. I don’t know how we came up with that name.

AVI: Is Beargrease a real thing?

KENT: Like bear fat — a friend of mine shot a bear and she salvaged the fat and made a bear fat salve. I asked, “What do you rub it on?” She said, “Anything you want.”

AVI: Maybe we could get that as a sponsor. And Beargrease is the villain antagonist.

ANNE: Oh. And then there was Connie.

AMY: Oh, Connie.

AVI: Let’s read the logline, Anne.

ANNE: “Based on the true story of a team of standard poodles who, against all odds, run the 1,100-mile Iditarod dog sled race in Alaska.” Wow.

AVI: Oh, the treatment. It’s two pages long. Three pages long. Oh — product placement. Wait a minute.

AMY: We were so ahead of our time. We have a whole page in our deck about poodle product placement.

AVI: There’s a picture of a poodle — kind of like an iPod at the time. But it says “iPoodle.”

KENT: It’s a silhouette dancing.

ANNE: Amy loves to mess around with graphics. The iPoodle.

AVI: Incredible. I guess the Iditarod has actual sponsors like Panasonic and Wells Fargo.

KENT: Did you ever see a movie called Bye Bye Love? Matthew Modine and Paul Reiser. A third of the movie takes place at McDonald’s. I’m wondering if Paul Reiser looked at this deck and it had a little McDonald’s logo.

AMY: Hamburglars running away from them.

AVI: That’s right. That’s it. We end on the iPoodle. That’s a solid end.

ANNE: So after that, we decided we would try to make it animated. We had this big long treatment, as you can see. And then at some point, the bright idea emerged that I — who had never written a script before — was going to write the script for this thing. And Amy just nagged me and nagged me all the time. By the way, we were taking meetings. We were getting a lot of meetings for this.

AMY: Oh yeah. We didn’t have a script. We didn’t know how to make an animated film. We had our very first deck we’d ever made. So we went to LA, in the old days before Zoom, as New Yorkers. You’d pack in meetings

ANNE: You’d bring a blazer.

AMY: — and drive from place to place. We’d call each other like, “What are we gonna wear?” Because we’re New Yorkers. What do people wear in LA?

AVI: This is also where your timeline coincides with Kent. Because at a certain point you’d told me about the project, and I said, “Oh, I know Kent Osborne and I know Conrad Vernon.” And I’m pretty sure I sent whatever materials you had — probably the deck — to Kent. Was a script ever written?

AMY: The script eventually got done — two years later.

AVI: So I sent it off to Kent, and I’m pretty sure Kent said, “You should talk to my brother, Mark.”

KENT: People send me stuff once in a while, and I always want to say, “I’ve never gotten anything made. I don’t know how any of this works.” I worked on SpongeBob as my first job and just kind of went from job to job as a writer, but I had no idea how to get anything off the ground. But people would send me stuff: “I have an idea for space pirates collecting music across the galaxy.” And I’m like, “That sounds great.” They’re like, “Okay, what do we do now?” And I’m like, “I don’t know.” But I must have liked this one if I... I guess I’m a gatekeeper. I allowed you to pass by me and go to my brother, who has two Academy Award nominations.

AMY: We met him at a very odd place — Anne, do you remember? It was on, for those in L.A. there’s this road Barham, that goes kind of along the freeway up and over the hill. And we met him, maybe it was near where he was working? But it was a sad restaurant, like a burrito restaurant. Do you remember that Anne?

KENT: Was it Poquito Mas?

AMY: Oh, it was! Dang!

KENT: Yeah. That place is great.

AMY: The tacos were great.

KENT: Yeah, they make their own tortillas.` It’s a local chain, maybe five or six locations. Whenever I’d ask Mark what he wanted for lunch, he’d say, “The Mas. Let’s get the Mas.”

AMY: So we met at the Mas.

ANNE: We took a meeting at the Mas. And we sent him the treatment. He’s very busy, your brother. But he did need to eat lunch, so he let us come along for that. And then he gave us some notes.

AMY: He gave us a pretty scathing review. Basically he said, “It’s a really strong story, but a completely boring pitch.” His email was like a nice sandwich — nice compliment, brutal middle, nice close. He said, “Great, really strong story. Your pitch is really boring. There’s nothing inventive about it. Maybe you could find a format that plays to the real story — animated documentary interview interstitials, something. You need to find an inventive angle. I love it. Good luck.”

KENT: Did he charge you for that?

AMY: I’m sure we paid for his Mas.

KENT: Yeah, that sounds like the way he operates.

AMY: Seriously. With our agent Craig Kestel’s help, we met with basically every potential animation studio, which is incredible because we had no idea what we were doing. We met with Hannah Minghella, we met with DreamWorks, we met with Disney, we met with this guy Tito at Illumination.

ANNE: I remember going through the Seven Dwarfs exhibit at their animation building.

KENT: Tito at Illumination? I was going to pretend like I knew him.

AMY: He said — and this is the thing about animation execs, they never leave. I looked some of them up yesterday and they’re all still there. Hannah moved from Sony to Netflix, but they’re all still animation execs. Tito’s still working in animation. At the time, Tito told us two of three decision-makers liked it!

AVI: Two of three.

AMY: But they were going to pass. Two of three seems like a majority.

AVI: In the Senate, it is.

AMY: And then there’s this big circle — Sony’s like, “We like it, talk to this guy at Fox.” And Fox would be like, “I like it, talk to this person at Blue Sky.” Everyone kept telling us to talk to this one woman. We were introduced to her in January of 2009 — I remember because she was on maternity leave. They said, “Just give her a little time.” And then she was back, and her assistant would schedule meetings — a very specific meeting at a very specific time and place — and the day before would cancel. This happened about twenty times. “Can you meet Lisa at Dean & DeLuca at 3:00?” We’d say yes. Day before: “Oh, Lisa has to reschedule, I’m so sorry.” Then: “Can you meet Lisa at this sushi restaurant at 4:06?” Between me and Anne, there were emails that were just like, “Fuck this woman.” This is never going to happen.

AVI: So did things start to go sideways then? Just an endless mill? Kent, if you were pitching something, do you just get stuck in this endless development cycle?

KENT: I would love to have an executive blow me off that much. I can’t even get that far. All those emails sound exciting to me.

AMY: What happens is, aside from our friend Lisa at Blue Sky, we actually got pretty definitive rejections fairly quickly. I think because we had an agent at William Morris representing us, we got the usual polite executive answers. One DreamWorks exec said, “My feeling is — and I realize this is contrary to your point of view — it’s really better served in live action if you could pull it off. But there’s no denying it’s a fun story. I wish you every bit of luck getting it set up elsewhere and eventually made."

ANNE: I feel like it was the DreamWorks guy who said, “This is great. Do you think you could make the poodles fly?”

AMY: Oh, yeah.

ANNE: And you know how it is — you’re in these meetings together and they say the craziest things. I’m just like, “Don’t look at Amy. Don’t look at Amy.”

AMY: So then all the A-listers pass, and we went into this spiral of smaller and smaller production companies that were enthusiastic about it. They only have so many places to pitch, though. So we’d go to, say, Curious Pictures. They love the project, “We’re going to come on board, this is the best project ever.” Then: “We’re going to pitch it to Disney.” And we’re like, “We already pitched Disney.” They’d say, “We’re going to pitch it here.” And then three weeks later, the executive leaves the company. “I loved your project so much, but I’m leaving Curious Pictures. Here’s my personal email.” That would happen. And it was just this downward death spiral.

AVI: And then did the option expire? Do you still have it?

AMY: Yeah. So John Suter became more and more irate, but would then apologize. At some point I was sharing an office with the director Doug Liman, and John — I don’t know how he found out — but he called and said, “I can’t believe you don’t just walk this script over to Doug Liman. Doug Liman could direct this. You have the golden key. I can’t believe how incompetent you are that you aren’t talking to Doug Liman.” And then we had a competitor. John told us, “I’ve been approached by Scott Glasgow and he wants to make the film. He’s very positive.” We looked this guy up and he hadn’t made any films. John insisted, “He’s very popular, he lives in Beverly Hills, and he is going to get your project made.” So we took a call with Scott Glasgow. “I can package this project,” whatever. The option expired.

ANNE: He learned the word “package.”

KENT: Scott said, “Now first off — you both know Doug Liman?”

AMY: Anyway, Scott Glasgow got the option, and I did some Googling yesterday and — he didn’t make the film.

KENT: He did not make it.

AVI: Wow. So we’ll have to have him on. He didn’t have the juice.

AMY: So what happens now, Avi? Well, how can we help?

AVI: So part of the whole show is we’re going to take all those assets — including that deck we just looked at, the actual script, some other pitch materials, and the eight years of emails between Anne and Amy and executives, and probably Kent and Mark Osborne and Conrad Vernon and whoever else.

KENT: Poquito Mas receipts.

AVI: We have the receipts. And so what we’ve done is fed it all through an AI pipeline. I created a custom GPT to act as a film executive, used it to create new assets that you could go out with to pitch again, and compiled them into a new pitch deck using generative AI. We’re going to take a look at that, and then after that we’re going to have a live meeting with a studio executive who’s read all of the material — old and new — and reviewed all the notes you got from your meetings. He’s taken some time out of his busy day. First, let’s look at the new deck.

ANNE: Okay. Still called Poodle Power.

AVI: This is the title page. Describe it for our audience.

ANNE: It’s a cartoon poodle — one poodle pulling an empty sled. The poodle is wearing a pink hoodie. It’s a white poodle in Alaska, in the snow, with the northern lights behind it.

AMY: It’s got a cool font — much better than my font. Like a generic animation font.

AVI: Just so we understand — I asked the custom agent that I trained up to select what it thought was the best visual style for the project. It came up with three options and then selected the best one. Then I instructed it to create all the images we’re going to see in that style. We’ve got a logline, a pitch, and some talking points. Read it off.

ANNE: “Logline: A pampered standard poodle and a ragtag pack of misfit dogs defy the odds — and the Huskies — to run the Iditarod, discovering grit, friendship, and unexpected style along the way.” Here’s the pitch: “This is a true-ish, joyously exaggerated animated adventure of Team Poodle, the only poodles ever to race the Iditarod. Think Alaska wilderness, dog-sled action sequences, and a comedy of outsiders daring to take their place in history. It’s both a sports movie and a love letter to misfits everywhere.” .

AVI: That’s pretty good. The style is described as Neo-2D with painterly backgrounds, bold linework, high-contrast color, kinetic character animation. Kent, do you have a hot take on this?

KENT: I’m not an artist or character designer, but it’s not appealing to me. I’ll just be blunt. It’s what I’d expect from an AI-generated image — generic and boring. I mean, it’s not ugly... well, it is ugly in that it’s so boring. The expression on the face. I don’t know.

AMY: We should show it to Conrad.

KENT: Yeah. I mean, I’m not an artist and obviously I have some bias. I think it is complicated and it’s a tool that can be used by an artist, but just kind of dumping everything into a computer and saying “show me what you got”... I think the deck from 20 years ago was more interesting and had more personality and was funnier. Also — the AI looks at everything available on the internet and composites from other people’s work. So there are ownership issues.

ANNE: It’s got like a Wile E. Coyote nose.

AVI: It does. The casting choices for Jitters: Adam Devine, Ben Schwartz, and John Mulaney.

ANNE: I love the descriptions — Adam Devine: “lovable, neurotic energy.” Ben Schwartz: “fast-talking, earnest.” John Mulaney: “neurotic charm.”

KENT: ChatGPT came up with this casting?

AVI: Yeah. I gave it all the materials and said: give me a synopsis, a pitch, talking points, casting options for every main character, come up with a style, and give me image prompts for all the images. Then I took those image prompts, made them in ChatGPT, and put them into Google Gemini, which created the actual images. For Norton: Oscar Isaac (gravelly and soulful), Jason Sudeikis (grumpy humor), or Mahershala Ali (quiet gravitas). That’s a range.

ANNE: Wow. It’s like a noir panel.

AMY: There’s a garbage can in the background.

AVI: Fifi: glamorous, clumsy, secretly tough. Could be Kristen Wiig, Sophie Turner, or Jenny Slate. Did you think about casting at all when you were doing this?

AMY: No, we didn’t even get that far.

ANNE: No. I don’t even know that we understood celebrity casting was such a big thing then.

AVI: Here’s Marley the Marmot. Could be Awkwafina or Keegan-Michael Key. Manic wit.

ANNE: I could see that. This is a marmot wearing a pink tracksuit. And he’s on a sled.

AVI: Here’s Beargrease the villain — he looks like he’s in Tron. JK Simmons, Idris Elba, or Bryan Cranston. Arrogant alpha antagonist.

ANNE: Connie, Husky love interest. Zendaya, Hailee Steinfeld.

AVI: Connie looks kind of like a male dog and Jitters looks like a female dog in this situation, but it should be the other way around.

AMY: Are you genderizing the pink hoodie, Avi?

AVI: No.

KENT: I said before this — I was trying to be polite saying it isn’t ugly. But this is all really ugly.

AMY: It’s pretty ugly.

AVI: It is pretty ugly. This was kind of a one-shot experiment — the point wasn’t to spend a ton of time on it, but to see what we could get pretty quickly and what that shows us about the current state of the art for an average consumer or creative.

AMY: I think Kent is just depressed by all of this.

AVI: And here you guys are — Amy and Anne in AI-generated portraits. Amy, you’ve got a chain around your neck for some reason.

ANNE: Amy — a superhero!

AMY: Dang, I’m going to use that as my headshot from now on.

AVI: It's pretty boss. I just asked the model for a three-bullet bio for each of you. Anne Hubbell: “Independent film producer, co-founder of Tangerine Entertainment, champion of emerging voices.” Amy Hobby: “Oscar-nominated producer, co-founder of Tangerine Entertainment, advocate for women filmmakers.” Well, that’s the deck.

KENT: How many lakes did that drain to make that?

AVI: Let’s talk about that a little more. Kent, you work in animation right now — what’s the vibe there about what we just did, and what I’m going to show you next, which is full motion video?

KENT: Studios are desperately trying to figure out ways to incorporate all this so that they can not hire people — which is what people are worried about. And then there’s the question of ownership: where are these images being sourced from? Copyright issues. And then the environmental issue. Someone told me that in Louisiana, Meta’s building a data center that uses more electricity in a day than New Orleans does in a year. And that cost gets passed to consumers — your electric bill’s going to go up because electricity is not infinite. But mostly — talking about this movie is way more interesting to me. Hearing Anne and Amy talk about all this, seeing the newspaper clippings, hearing about their experiences — that’s genuinely interesting. And then this AI deck and trailer just feels... not as interesting. I don’t know. You said I could be the curmudgeon.

AMY: No, we want you to let it rip.

AVI: I think people really are unsure how they should feel about a lot of it because it’s so seductive and attention-grabbing. And there’s no way to tell me this isn’t already being done at 100% of the places we just talked about. Whether it comes out boring stylistically or becomes an idea generator or they’re training their own LLMs — nobody’s going to turn it off now. That’s a reality. And you can put whatever value judgment on it, of course. But for us it's a little more on the fun side. And we can poke fun at it.

KENT: Right but going into a store that has vegetables and fruit and going to the candy aisle and just eating a bunch of the shittiest candy they have — it’s fun. But you’re going to feel terrible afterwards.

AMY: Speaking of feeling terrible, why don’t we see the trailer?

AVI: Let's watch the trailer. Let's feel shittier. So basically I asked the model to create an outline for a 60-to-90-second trailer, give me first-frame prompts, and I put those into Gemini. Then I used Sora 2 — which just came out — to generate the actual video, because it also does audio. The soundtrack was generated in a platform called Udio. And I put it all together in Premiere.

AMY: Which puts a lot of musicians out of business.

AVI: Yes. Writers, animators, musicians — we’re all witnesses to our own execution.

KENT: When you put this podcast out, someone can take it and enter it into a model and say, “Make me an AI version of this episode.” And it’ll get more views than this. There’ll be 30 versions out there where we’re all different but saying the same exact things.

AVI: This will be on YouTube, owned by Google, who will then use it for their next Gemini training set. Okay. Here we go — the trailer.

TRAILER V.O.: In a world where only Huskies rule. “Jitterbug! How did you get so dirty?” “Did they really just put us back here with the boxes?” “Yep. Deluxe accommodations — temperature controlled, and everything.” “This is outrageous. I should be under a seat. Preferably beside the window.” “Norton, you mangy snow rat!” “Poodles don’t race.” “Wanna bet?” “We quit now or we finish this race.” “Then we finish it.” “Nose to nose, the poodles are still in it. Poodle Power. Only on Netflix. Coming soon.”

AMY: Wow. I sold it to Netflix.

AVI: Except it said “Netlix.”

AMY: Why did the poodles have hot dogs in their mouths?

ANNE: At the end of the movie, after the race — I’m not even going to spoil who won — there were a whole bunch of dachshunds who had been inspired by the poodles and started to run. In our script, there were dachshunds.

AVI: The legend lives on.

AVI: Hot take on the trailer.

KENT: It’s just garbage.

AMY: It’s so bad.

ANNE: I love that they made it this whole inner world and the bad guys are so overblown.

AMY: Why are bad guys always buffed out like that? The Huskies, I mean.

AVI: Of course, we could have iterated it a thousand times to create something artistic and wonderful. Or maybe that wouldn’t have happened. It’s kind of like a slot machine. The tools are getting better in terms of control and realism, but this was kind of a one-shot experiment — the point was not to spend a ton of time on it, to see what we could get pretty quick. Just an interesting experiment about the current state of the art for an average consumer or creative.

AMY: My hope was that watching the trailer would give me some closure — like the project got made, the trailer’s done, and I could just feel good walking away from it. But somehow I feel utterly despondent.

AVI: Should we talk to our exec then? To get a little pick-me-up on it?

AMY: Yeah, let’s pitch it. Let’s repitch it. Maybe there’s hope. We should pitch it to him as a different type of animation.

AVI: He hasn’t seen the trailer yet, so maybe there’s hope. We should pitch it to him as a different type of animation. He has the new deck and he has all the notes and the old stuff.

KENT: What if he cancels on you at the last minute?

AMY: He probably will. I was meeting him at Dean & DeLuca, but...

ANNE: I think they’re still trying to schedule that meeting, aren’t they, Amy?

AMY: The last email I found, the assistant was like, “I feel like I cancel meetings more than I schedule them. I’m so sorry, but can we reschedule?”

AVI: Bob, can you hear us?

BOB (AI EXECUTIVE): All right. So from what I’ve gathered, Poodle Power has this quirky charm with a lighthearted spirit. Jitters, our poodle protagonist, has an interesting arc, but there’s always room for clarifying his goals to keep audiences hooked. The playful attempt to blend comedy with the whimsy of an Iditarod race is promising. Honestly, the old documents have some outdated elements that could use a modern tweak. I see potential in refreshing the animation style and finding a tone that really sings to today’s audience. The project could use some structural polish — maybe a tighter focus on character and motivation would help it resonate more. But I really like that it doesn’t shy away from absurdity. Just needs a little more oomph. How do you guys feel about leaning more into that absurdity? Like maybe making them interact with a polar bear — imagine the scale and comedy of a poodle and polar bear interaction. It’s gold.

AVI: Did you look at the new deck? Do you think it’s anything Anne and Amy could actually pitch to studios?

BOB (AI EXECUTIVE): I took a look at the new deck. It’s got some fresh elements that can work in its favor. The bold linework and painterly backgrounds give it a distinct look — more visually dynamic. The character animation has a kinetic style that’s engaging and relevant. Casting is also solid. Adam Devine or Ben Schwartz bring the right energy for Jitters — lovable yet slightly neurotic. If Anne and Amy pitched this with confidence, anchoring the funny and adventure elements, they’ve got a good shot at getting in front of new studios. Just needs a robust story with those laughs locked in.

AVI: And I think Bob may have just peaced out on us. He’s rescheduling. He’s heading to Dean & DeLuca.

KENT: He’s meeting Ben Schwartz at Dean & DeLuca. He’s pitching it right now.

ANNE: I feel like we might actually be pitching to AI soon.

AMY: It feels totally realistic.

KENT: I think growing up watching sci-fi movies, everyone wanted to talk to a robot. Talk to AI. And I feel like this wave we’re in right now — this is what it is. It’s all that. And I don’t think it’s fully there yet.

AMY: Like an executive. Yeah.

AVI: Bob’s an experiment. I know from working on some other corporate stuff that they’ve already fully scanned CEOs and all the decision-makers. The company is called Tavus — T-A-V-U-S — and you can create what’s called a replica of yourself. There’s a guardrail where you have to consent and do it yourself. But the whole point is that you could do that. And I know from working on other corporate stuff that they've already fully scanned the CEOs and all the decision-makers.

AMY: This is where we reveal that Kent is actually not Kent.

AVI: If you’re a replica, raise your hand. As the show goes on, we’re just going to keep playing with it because it’s already being used. And it’s also pretty good comedy.

AMY: Do we think this film could have legs now? Would we pitch it now? New deck aside, if we go back to our old deck and put it into Canva—

KENT: I’m surprised you weren’t able to make it then, and I’m surprised it hasn’t been made now — because now it’s even more of a period piece. The poodles ran the Iditarod in 1989, 1990. It’s all interesting, the deck and the articles and the news story, and everyone loves dogs. I would watch this. Poodles running the Iditarod is such a good idea. I would go see that movie.

AVI: Especially if it’s set in the ‘80s. Now we have '80s and early '90s fashion and music from that era. I think you're right.

KENT: Yeah. And it’s pre-smartphones, pre-computers almost. Which is always better for a story. And the character descriptions that were in your original deck are really good and funny. They all had their own arc, their own motivation.

ANNE: All of their introductions, where we find them, their motivations — they all come back together at the end in a final sequence where each skill has to come into play.

AMY: They don’t win.

ANNE: God, stop spoiling it.

KENT: It’s like Bad News Bears, it’s Rocky. It’s a personal victory.

AMY: Exactly. We are both huge fans of Bad News Bears actually.

KENT: Me too. It’s in my top five.

AVI: Oh, and what’s that you’re holding?

AMY: Oh my God — he owns it on VHS. And it’s signed.

KENT: I asked him. I was on set with him and it was his last day. I said, “Would you sign this?” I didn’t know what to write, so I just wrote: “To Kent, from Walter Matthau.”

AMY: That’s amazing.

KENT: I was in Toronto and I went to the store to buy this specifically to get him to sign it. I mean, I have it on DVD too. I have the poster. I went as a Bad News Bear for Halloween.