The Chair (2014) s01e01 Episode Script
The Experiment
I have been on this whole YouTube grind for eight years now, and it's every day literally making a new video every day, making podcasts.
I'm ready to do a movie.
I'm ready to do something bigger than just the Internet, you know? I've wanted to make movies my whole life.
I know it sounds cheesy, but I've been waiting for a long time and I've been working really hard, so I'm very, very excited that I finally got a chance to do this.
I feel like I've bitten off a lot in terms of making a movie and also being filmed while making a movie.
To me that feels like a huge challenge.
And it might not be the case for everyone, but I knew that this was basically pushing myself beyond my comfort zone.
I think a lot of you guys watching this show are actually gonna like my movie and I think you're gonna be surprised.
Or I hope you're gonna be surprised.
Because I think it's gonna be great.
I'm just making a pledge to be super-honest and share with this camera because that's what I signed up for.
I'm ready.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
"The Chair" is two directors shooting a movie from the same source material.
And action! Hands in the air! I don't see everybody's hands in the yeah! And action! Ideally, they'll be very, very different from one another and explore that in a really cool way.
All right, go huge on this one.
"The Chair" is something I don't think anybody's ever tried to really do before, which is to explore an idea from two very different points of view.
"The Chair" concept really came out of "Good Will Hunting.
" Before we ended up with Gus Van Sant, who directed the movie, we worked with a couple different directors.
Mel Gibson was one, Michael Mann was one.
And so I've always been fascinated by trying to set up a situation where you can actually see how two different directors would take the same material and turn it into two separate movies.
What if you could really show that to people? A lot of people think that they can direct a movie, but until they're actually in the hot seat, in the director's chair, they don't know what it's like.
Barf! Cut! Great! You're campaigning to get her back, and she keeps batting you down.
Being a first-time director is crazy.
There's a lot that you have to absorb and a lot that you have to get used to in making quick decisions.
And now everything that you're doing is being documented.
Every choice that you're making is being chronicled.
Sometimes those things can overwhelm you, and I think the competition aspect makes it even more dramatic.
And that winner gets $250,000.
In the 25 years I've been in Hollywood, I've produced movies and television, but this experiment is different in that both movies are going to be made for a super low budget.
When I was putting this together, I hadn't made an independent movie in a while.
You know, the lowest budget movie I'd made in the last five years was $20 million.
That's not really low-budget.
So part of me thought I'd need some producers sort of used to doing that and how that works.
One of the names that kept coming up was Zachary Quinto.
Chris Moore came to my business partners and me, and I like his perspective.
I like how he thinks about the business and I really like the idea.
Zachary is an actor and a producer.
He most famously is Spock in the new "Star Trek" movies.
And his production company Before the Door has produced, in my opinion, some of the better independent or smaller movies over the last, you know, four or five years.
Before the Door consists of three main partners.
That would be Zachary Quinto, Neal Dodson, and myself.
What attracted us to the project of "The Chair" was the experiment itself was very appealing.
It's brave and it's new.
I've never seen anything quite like it before.
God, okay, this is going to be fun.
My name is can I look at you or should I look - You're looking at me.
- All the time.
Okay.
My name is Anna Martemucci.
And what am I saying again? I had always been a writer.
I went to NYU for screenwriting.
A classmate would direct a little 10-minute play I wrote.
I would always be enraged and I would always think they were doing the shittiest job.
I really wanted to direct my own words.
And I wouldn't allow myself to do it.
That seemed so far away a possibility, that I would ever have the, like, gumption to tell a bunch of people what to do, that I hid out as a writer.
Before anything else, Anna is a writer.
She prides herself on her writing.
She does it every day.
She's good at it.
She's a really, really talented writer and actress, actually.
Has a lot of easy humor but also pathos in her work.
"If you do this to me, if you hurt me, I will kill you and then I will kill myself.
" - That's right.
- And l I meant it.
- Yeah, I know I know you did.
- I did.
I meant it.
Anna really is, in my opinion, an example of independent filmmaking in the way it traditionally is, where you struggle.
You don't make a ton of money.
She started by interning for various companies and filmmakers that she really liked.
She worked for a company called Big Beach which produced "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Everything is Illuminated" and a bunch of other movies.
Anna, I can't claim to be unbiased about.
Her husband and I have been best friends for quite some time and we went to college together.
My husband Victor and I met on a film job.
It was my first, like, real job out of NYU.
"Everything is Illuminated," which was Liev Schreiber's directorial debut.
He said it was like wearing a suit of nails.
We've collaborated with their film collective which is called Periods Films.
- What's up, buddy? - Oh, well, you know.
I've been in a couple of their short films.
We produced the first Periods feature called "Breakup at a Wedding" which Anna wrote with Victor, but Victor directed it.
Victor directed and we co-wrote it with his brother Phil.
And I produced it and also acted in it, as did both Phil and Victor.
So it was just like a crazy combination movie.
She was there for every day of the edit of that movie.
She helped raise the financing for that movie, et cetera.
So she was an intimate part of that filmmaking process, but she did not direct it.
She had a relationship to the independent side of the film business in a sort of "pay your dues, work your way up through the ranks, learn from those who've come before you," and you could tell that she was soaking it in like a sponge.
I was raised with this idea that, like, "Just do it, and it'll be great, and follow your passion.
" There's an economic truth that you have to negotiate.
I still at this point have not been able to make a living off my art.
And I know that I would not be in the place I'm in right now if I had not basically won the lottery.
We saw it as an opportunity to encourage her to find her own voice as a director.
She had always had a yen to direct.
And I have friends who have been trying to be directors for seven years, and, like, they're brilliant and everything about their work screams that they need to direct their first feature, and it still doesn't happen.
Anyone who's vaguely in the film business knows this.
Ultimately, Anna realized it was probably the quickest way for her to get a chance to direct a movie.
The fact that Chris Moore thought to make sure to have one of the directors be female I think is incredible.
The way that we all kind of be human together and understand the world around us is through stories.
That's how we come up with our notions of what's right and wrong and what's good and bad and how we experience it's just such a huge thing, storytelling.
Chris thought it was something that should happen.
He met her, he pitched it to her and thought, "You know what? She's the perfect counterpart for what Shane is gonna do.
" Oh, my G what the fuck are you eating? Oh! My name is Shane Dawson.
I am from Long Beach, California.
And I have been wanting to make movies my whole life.
It's a video shoot! Because of my YouTube channel, a lot of people think I'm really, really confident and I just wear wigs and do voices all the time.
Do you think you're a good person? You guys should shoot porno here! Unfortunately, somebody already does.
Yee-haw! The whole YouTube thing is almost a character.
The real Shane is not confident at all.
I had tried the Hollywood thing.
I had auditioned for every stupid fuckin' Disney show, commercial.
Didn't get anything.
I got a lot of, you know, "suicidal teenager," which I guess I just put that out there.
But I wanted to do comedy and I saw YouTube as kind of my way of doing my own thing.
I had a really shitty childhood, so I would, you know, make videos and watch movies and do things like that to get away from it.
And then around high school, YouTube came around and somebody said, "Oh, you should upload your stupid videos that you make with your grandma on YouTube," so I did.
And kind of took off.
I have about 10 million subscribers.
He has 10 million people that are interested in what he's putting into the world.
If I had 10 million subscribers to my channels, I think I'd probably have a certain amount of confidence about my ability to speak to a fan base as well.
This kid learns how to capitalize on himself and has been able to grow his subscriber number so incredibly high that it rivals a cable network.
Shane makes a living based on YouTube views.
And I tip my hat to the fact that he's managed to turn that into a business.
It's all funded by me.
It's it's all all my employees are paid by me.
It's the whole business that's on my shoulders.
Shane is really a prime example of the modern-day landscape.
I think he represents in a lot of ways this moment in time we're having what do people do who've been doing YouTube videos for six years? It was fun when you were 17, but then how do you turn it into a career? The reason I strongly believe in Shane he can combine over-the-top comedy and heart and do it in a way that millions of people like over years.
You can't get a better resume than that for somebody who you want to give a chance to make a movie.
What Hollywood waits for is to see if you somehow can read the larger audience or if you only know your audience.
And right now the YouTube audience is very specific for two reasons.
One is it's all super-low budget and the other is they're short.
And so nobody's actually being judged on storytelling.
The guys that are out making something like "True Detective" or "The Killing" or, you know, "Seinfeld" that lasted or "Simpsons," 22 years.
Those guys have figured out how to tell stories over time, how to that's a different skill than four-minute short videos.
The experiment of "The Chair" needed someone from that new media generation to say, "What would it be like if this guy was given an opportunity to make a legitimate film?" Shane, to me I guess being the person who did choose to offer him this opportunity, Shane Dawson, in my opinion, sort of represents the new wave of filmmakers.
Okay, and step in front of the camera.
All right.
And action! And cross your arms.
- Great! Cut! - And cut! This opportunity means everything.
It's been my dream my whole life.
It's been my dream that somebody would give me the opportunity to do it.
And it's my future.
And if it's amazing, then I'm going to be a director for the rest of my life.
If it's terrible, I'm going to have to hide away for a little while, and then come and try to make another movie.
- Okay, cut.
- Cut.
To decide to be a director of a movie when there's another director who is making the same movie pretty close to the same time in the same place you know, that's actually a challenge to get somebody to want to do that.
I felt like I had to make it a very honest and pure competition, so we created rules.
R-rated or less.
Has to be 85 minutes or longer.
They have to stick to the plot of the script.
And I asked them to keep the character names so that the audience can follow that this version of Scott is the same character originally that is that version of Scott.
And the only time that I can step in is if they're doing something totally irresponsible with the money or if I think they're not actually going to be able to deliver a feature film.
Because we have to deliver two feature films and we gotta be able to release them.
Each director has to prep in Pittsburgh.
Then each director shoots for four weeks in Pittsburgh.
And both directors have final cut for their films.
Most first-time directors would not get final cut.
That is one of the pieces that hopefully makes it attractive to directors.
Make a movie, which I've been wanting to make my whole life: Make a movie that I have final cut on.
Getting final cut on this movie is one of the major reasons that I was interested in doing this.
The fact that I would be able to rewrite it and then final cut is kind of unheard of for a first-timer.
I want to make stuff that a lot of people can relate to, but I want to do it in a way that's, like, a little bit different or a little bit that you haven't seen before.
Total control, final cut.
It's exciting, terrifying, and I'm actually really pumped to see her movie.
If I was just watching this show at home, I would be really excited to see both movies.
I think it's a cool idea.
Final cut always surprises people.
There's this age-old thing in Hollywood that the talent's somehow crazier than the investors, or the distributor, or the studio executives.
And my experience is that they're all equally crazy.
Nobody has cornered the market on making dumb creative decisions.
Nobody has cornered the market on making good creative decisions.
The fact that I was able to have full creative control was so awesome, 'cause that's really what I'm interested in.
I have never heard a director say that their debut movie, they had total control over.
When I heard that that was the case I mean, sign me up.
And the fact that it's not my money.
When I heard it was somebody else's money I'm in Pittsburgh.
Let's do this.
The most surprising piece of my little journey to get this project off the ground, I could convince people that the concept was great.
And I have this stupid arrogance.
I'm like, "Well, hell, if you like the concept, I've made 30 other movies.
At some point, just trust me.
It's gonna turn out, and let's go.
" But what happens is a lot of times then people go, "Okay, we like the concept.
Everything's good.
What's the script?" And so at a certain point, I realized I needed to pick a script.
There's a young producer.
His name is Josh Shader.
He loves story, loves script.
I'm Josh Shader.
I'm the producer of both movies that are part of "The Chair" project.
With everything I do as a producer, it's always developed from scratch.
So it's about sitting in a room with a writer and saying, "What do we want to make a movie about?" Which is a really exciting place to start.
When I first met the writer, Dan Schoffer, what we kept coming back to was this idea of the first Thanksgiving after going away to college.
The original script was an ensemble teen comedy in the vein of "Dazed and Confused" or "Can't Hardly Wait" about a couple who's been dating throughout high school.
They go to college and they decide to stay together.
And then when they come back for Thanksgiving break, one of them gets dumped.
And the entire movie took place from Wednesday, the day that they got home, to Sunday, when they went back to school.
It's a comedy, it's a drama, it's a coming-of-age story.
"Coming-of-age" is a good genre for the first year of "The Chair" because people have all seen a coming-of-age movie, whether it's "The Graduate" or "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" or "American Pie," or whatever.
So they'll have something to relate to when they vote.
I'm not gonna lie.
When I found out that we had to direct something from a script that we had not written ourselves, I did not sleep for about a week.
I've never directed anything that I haven't written, and to have something handed to me was terrifying.
In order to convince directors to come do this process and to have an honest competition, the directors had to have the right to re-write it.
You're telling a story.
That involves the scriptwriting, the casting, locations.
The person who that sort of surprised the most was Dan.
Dan maybe is in the most difficult position of anybody else on this entire project because he had to let his script go to these two different places.
First of all, thanks, everyone, for coming.
The idea of this was for you guys to meet.
I wanted to be at the first meeting to share my thoughts.
I think it's also an opportunity for the three of us to throw in our two cents.
At the end of the day, it's still your movie.
It's your movie, so you don't have to listen to any of us, but when you suggest a really crazy idea, we might storm out of the room just for effect.
I've had two wildly different experiences with both directors.
Okay, so I made this packet for you.
Yeah, I'm gonna use bread.
My two main favorite characters are Scott and Tori.
Here's Scott, here's Tori.
Tori and Scott are our main characters.
And then you have Joel and Heather and Will and Janie, which is a lot going on.
For Dan, there was nobody who could really override the directors and what they wanted to do with his script.
It's so big and there's so many characters and there are so many locations that I kind of just want to scale everything down a little bit.
The emotional beats were all spot on, which is some of the hardest stuff to do.
The stuff that I kind of want to overhaul is like jokes, dialogue.
She changed all the dialogue.
She, like, didn't use any of my dialogue.
But the scenes are essentially the same.
I would love to keep pretty much your entire structure.
I didn't really write anything, I just reconceptualized and kind of figured out the movie that I would wanna make.
Okay.
I'd like you to be part of it, but I can't promise how the directors are gonna treat you.
You're going to have to forge your own relationships with each of them.
You're going to have to turn in your rewrites.
And once you do that, they may never speak to you again.
Are there big things that are in here? Like, did you get rid of any of those storylines? - Yeah.
- Heather get rid of her in the first scene.
Shane ended up cutting two characters.
I killed two characters.
- Killed completely? - Yeah, I murdered them.
Anna ended up cutting two different characters.
I killed two characters.
Rather than being separate stories so that we have these three separate storylines, we have two storylines, four main characters, and then this one kind of like antagonist character.
Dan's face at the beginning was like, "What?" It is very significantly different.
Yeah, I'm just trying to keep all the - All everything in your head? - Yeah.
This is a huge undertaking.
It's like we've kind of changed everything.
Uh-huh.
Some of the characters are the same, but, I mean, how do we do this? I don't think we have to worry about the dialogue and those specific jokes and all those runners yet.
It's just about getting the new story on its feet.
Because it's definitely a new story, it's definitely new characters, it's definitely new arcs, and it's about putting that on paper.
Working with Dan the writer has been great.
I have never collaborated with a writer before.
This is the first time and it went really smooth.
I mean, he gave us a very dramatic script.
It was a dramedy more than it was a comedy.
That's not my style and he was very open to helping me switch it up into more of a broad, bigger, crazy comedy.
It's still similar to my original script in many ways.
It's just got more gags.
And I actually feel like I learned a lot from Shane in doing that and, like, kind of sharpened my comedic skills.
Ever since I heard about this project, I just assumed that I would be in the movie, because acting, directing, and writing is that's my thing.
I decided to cast myself as Scott.
He's one of the lead characters.
And I can't imagine my debut movie not having me in it, especially for the audience, because that's that's what they've been watching for so long.
So Scott, who was the coolest kid in high school and, as we discussed, he wasn't, like, the football player guy.
We want to do something with the Internet, like you.
How do you feel about, specifically, like he made videos.
- How do you feel about that? - It's a little too on the nose.
It is? I don't hate the on-the-nose version in a weird way.
I think that there's something interesting there.
But if you're uncomfortable with it, that's a different story.
Yeah, I think for people who are gonna see this movie for the first time and really judge me for the first time as a filmmaker, it's gonna look a little like, "Oh, he was afraid to take a risk.
He just played himself.
" But what if the videos are of a different tone and they're not like your videos? They're just other videos or I mean, what does that even mean? It means they can be any it means they can be anything.
You have a very specific style and he could have a different style.
In the first script, Scott was kind of a jock and kind of a cocky, arrogant guy who learns to to not be such an asshole, basically.
In this new version, he's a guy that's dealing with letting go of the past and looking to the future and not obsessing about his problems in the past.
And that's something I can really relate to.
He was unconventional.
He's not your classic kind of archetypal cool kid in high school.
He was cool, and he dated, like, who was kind of the archetype.
Heather was like a cheerleader.
She was the most beautiful girl in school I actually think that's cool that, like, it's not the jock dating the cheerleader tool.
It's the cool guy getting the hot girl, but it's a different cool guy.
I like that dynamic.
- Yeah.
- Okay.
So, I've been working with Lauren for about two years.
It feels like 10.
I needed a producer.
It was my first time doing something bigger budget with a 30-people crew and I just needed somebody to help me.
I was right.
It's "The Grudge," the real-life "Grudge.
" He took his YouTube empire, if you will, as far as he could, and, honestly, it was like he was at a breaking point.
I mean, the guy had gone to the hospital for exhaustion, which he would tell you about.
I mean, it's not in, like, the Lindsay Lohan way, like, really, it was like had burnt out.
And he couldn't do it himself anymore and he wanted help.
I took a lot of that off of his plate and he's able to concentrate more on the creative side.
We knew that it was a match.
A really weird match.
Mmm Mmm, feels good.
Feels really good.
Oh, throw it in her face.
Mmm, she likes it.
Mmm.
That's my new favorite game.
You're catching it.
Good job.
Guys, these are my men.
This is Victor Quinaz.
He's my husband and writing partner and filmmaking partner.
And Philip Quinaz, his brother.
My brother-in-law.
He's, you know, an integral part of the filmmaking team and he wrote "Breakup at a Wedding" with us, and so we're the team.
We love working together.
Let's go through the characters first.
In Dan's previous draft, he took an uptight guy and pulled the rug out, which I think is a very sort of clear transition.
Mm-hmm.
But what does it look like when you take an easy-going, laid-back guy and make that guy feel insecure? Because that way he can get a sense of what that version of Scott is.
And is that what you're going for? Is that what you're going for, yeah.
That is the movie I want to make.
That's the journey I want to explore, is that guy rather than the uptight guy.
To watch that go from someone having their ultimate power on when they're 17, senior year of high school, and then the transition where they've just lost it and they're like They're like, "I gotta go back.
" Now that we have this new version of Scott, like, he can be confident about it.
He can go to, like, "Let's hang out.
We had fun last night.
- Why are we not hanging out?" - Sure.
Sure.
Like, he suddenly has a purpose again.
The arc, though, of Scott beyond his personality traits is that he's trying to reclaim his past, and in this one weekend, he's got this ticking clock that's rushing to reclaim it.
And then I think in the end of that, it's really about letting the past go and saying, "I can be someone else.
" What you've told us that you want is a more character-driven, reality-based sense of humor, something that's truly revelatory in what we are as human beings in that weird moment of transition.
And we haven't necessarily seen it on a movie screen before.
With Anna's script, it just became clear that, like, she wanted to take the reins of the writing.
Her answer was, you know, "I need to go back and I need to work on that myself.
" The more time Anna spent with Dan's original script, the more she struggled with it.
I don't think the script is bad.
Some of the dialogue is not great.
I like the tone and I like the characters and there's lots of great jokes courtesy of Phil and Victor.
Other times when I finish the script and I felt like I'm done with the script, I'm ready for it to be read by people, I feel ownership over every scene.
I thought about it and this is the best scene I could write.
And that is not the case with this script.
There are definitely scenes where I'm just like not sure how I would shoot this.
But I just wish I had my head wrapped around it a little more.
She wasn't going to be able to put her voice into Dan's words.
She wanted to tell it in her words.
This is where I kind of here's our little board.
And then this is the actual structure of the movie Act 1, Act 2, Act 3.
Really helps so that you know what's happening in each section.
Otherwise it's just like this giant clusterfuck in your brain.
Are you sad Daddy's gonna leave you? Are you gonna help me pack? Nope? Okay, great.
So, I am leaving in the morning to Pittsburgh.
And now comes the fun time where I have to pack up all of my shit.
As you can see, I have a lot warmer clothes because the weather is going to be so cold that if you pee outside, your penis will actually freeze and fall off.
I'm really excited because I feel like this is it.
This is my movie that I've been waiting to make for my whole life.
And I've been making YouTube videos for seven, eight, I don't know a long before you were born.
At least I have enough socks! That's a start.
That's it.
Here we go.
Pittsburgh! Duh! Why don't you introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Heidi.
I'm driving, trying not to crash, but I'm the production manager for Shane.
Yes, she is the production manager.
She just picked me up at the airport and we are on our way to the hotel.
To that sounds wrong.
We are, on well! Thanks for picking me up.
No, we're on our way to the hotel to talk about what we gotta do in the next four weeks of pre-production, one of which is what? Lots of things.
Like casting is one of them.
- Hiring crew another.
- Mm-hmm.
- Locations.
- Mm-hmm.
- Food is very important.
- Mm-hmm.
Where Shane is going to stay permanently.
Also Okay, also how many pairs of pants I'm gonna have to wear because it is -25 degrees outside most likely.
That's true.
That has happened here in Pittsburgh.
So, like, five pairs of pants.
Five, maybe six.
My bulge is gonna look huge! - Huge! I'm psyched.
- We're ready to go! - Let's go! - Go! - Go! - Match my tone.
- Go! - Go! Oh, go! Okay, I'm done.
So you might be asking yourself, "Why are we in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania?" Pittsburgh is the place that we wanted to bring these two stories to life.
It's a gorgeous, unique city.
Pittsburgh's a city that's really easy to double for other places, but also Pittsburgh in and of itself is just a cinematic city.
There's a group of people here who want to build up the infrastructure for filmmaking in Pittsburgh and they were willing to actually put their money where their mouth is, and so we actually raised money in Pittsburgh.
There's a lot of pluses for what we're trying to do with the city of Pittsburgh and hopefully bring more work to the city.
If we can establish regional production centers where filmmakers come to make these kind of projects, we'd actually get better movies.
L they don't oh, there he is! One of the things I wanted to talk about was, like, the fact that we're making this project, all of these projects so closely in affiliation with Pittsburgh and places in Pittsburgh, people in Pittsburgh, talking about the decision to sort of set it just outside of it what about it in Pittsburgh? I thought about doing a Pittsburgh movie and doing it like "Ferris Bueller" style treating Pittsburgh how Ferris Bueller treated Chicago.
But at the end of the day, like, the true essence of the movie that I wanted to make, I feel like is a smaller town story about kids who are, like, either leaving the small town or not leaving the small town.
I grew up in Central Pennsylvania, you know what I mean? In State College.
That's where my adolescence was, so I was like, "Oh, my God.
How cool that I get to write a movie about adolescence when I actually grew up there.
" That's a small thing, though.
The real reason is that I fell in love with the name "Hollidaysburg" as a title because it's the movie, you know what I mean? Like, they're going home to a place that is Hollidaysburg.
It's just where you go for Thanksgiving and Christmas now.
It's not actually your home anymore.
I just want a key being Pittsburgh-centric.
It's a part of the story, an inherent part of the story.
But at the same time, I get what you're saying creatively and where you're coming from.
I don't I don't feel like they need to live there.
Like, where are you in the budgeting and scheduling and all that stuff? Right now our, like, main concern is securing a DP and a production designer.
We're gonna be all on the ground the whole team will be on the ground in Pittsburgh on Monday.
I know you have another draft right now.
Is that right? I'll have a real, like, "Anna-vision" draft in hopefully, like, two days.
- Three days.
- Okay.
We're gonna start shooting your movie when? - And you're still writing? - I know, I know.
When I'm in the middle of writing a script like this, I have, like, a really weird paranoia that someone will just steal my computer or my computer will just explode, so I keep emailing Victor and I the drafts.
Are you going home? I'm going home to eat some leftovers, and - To write.
- write the second act.
I'm so Sean Akers, thank you for saying that there is a nine-page scene in the middle of the movie.
It's not a bad scene, it's just a long scene.
- Right.
- And I just wonder if there's a way to break that up or to interrupt it in some way so the flow of it doesn't get too boring.
Is it questionable giving you notes at this point, Anna, like What do you mean, like, "We need this script to be locked" - kind of thing? - Yeah.
We need to make a budget for you.
You want to be able to go out to Pittsburgh on Sunday - Yes.
like, with a locked script Yes.
with not worrying about that side of it.
You know that you can write some of this script with those those guys just using your style of filmmaking.
Right.
We say this all the time.
There are three different movies.
The movie you write, the movie you shoot, the movie you edit.
You just need to get through Phase 1, you're done.
And right now, Writer Anna is just going fucking crazy.
Turning Director Anna off and being like, "Shut up.
Write!" Because I've been telling myself, like, "Eh, it's not really happening yet.
Like, I don't have to be a director just yet.
Oh, okay, I'll answer this email and I'll do this and I'll make this choice.
" You were a director from the first minute that you agreed to become part of this.
I know and that is what's so hard, because I've - You are a director.
- been a writer for so long.
But you've been a director for so long, too.
I saw you I saw you controlling your husband when we were making that movie.
Oh, he's gonna murder you.
You were the woman behind that movie behind that movie, "Breakup at a Wedding.
" - Available on iTunes.
- That you secretly directed behind your husband's back.
You got it.
You got this.
To the right and up the hallway.
Okay.
- Hey! - Hey! Look at this, it's like "Project Runway.
" Hi, how are you? - Wow, oh.
- Hey, guys.
- Hey, guys.
- Mr.
Shader.
- Oh, my God! - Welcome.
Is this the first time you've been in here? - Yeah.
- Yeah.
So we find ourselves here in Pittsburgh making a low-budget indie movie, and that means that the crews that we're hiring are less experienced and younger.
This is what indie film is.
It's getting young people that are hungry and talented and giving them an opportunity.
And it's nerve-racking.
For me, the most nerve-racking decision in this whole process was hiring the DP.
All right, so this is Frank.
- Hello.
How's it going? - Shane.
Nice to meet you.
- It's good to meet you.
- I'm Lauren.
Nice to meet you.
- Thanks for coming in.
- I'm Josh.
I'm Frank Paladino.
I'm 24 years old and I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
So Frank is the guy I hired to be my DP.
He does a lot of rap videos.
So, perfect fit.
When I first spoke with Heidi a couple weeks ago, you know, she was talking about the two different directors' styles and I was immediately attracted to is it Anna? Mm-hmm.
I was immediately attracted to her script.
But once I read your treatment, I thought, you know, "Superbad.
" And I think "Superbad" is a perfect movie.
It's literally an exact representation of our generation.
I know nothing about her movie, but I definitely wanted to go raw teen comedy.
- I mean, that's my audience.
- Yeah.
It's like I'm not gonna try to make an artsy movie.
It's like, let's let's do a glory hole scene in the first five minutes.
He came with clear ideas of what he wanted to do, of references he brought clips from other movies.
He showed us things he had done that look similar to what I want.
He just had it all.
And I knew right then that he was the guy.
The "Mean Girls" look, is that something you think we could do on this budget? Oh, yeah.
I know Lauren was very nervous at first, as was I, about hiring crew.
Not just because it's Pittsburgh, but because it's people we haven't worked with before.
Coming here and meeting a bunch of new people, and hiring them off a very awkward interview I wish I could do a test day where I have everybody come in and we film for a day, and then I fire people who aren't great and hire new people, but that's not Hollywood.
We have to shoot in a mere four weeks, and that means I might not be able to have this DP that I want that I'm about to talk to.
So that's very sad.
But we'll see.
We're gonna find out right now if Hillary Spera is available.
It's just so nice to know that someone can shoot, like, a lower-budget full feature and get it done.
It's very comforting.
Hey, Hillary! It's so nice to meet you.
It's very nice to meet you, too, totally.
- Thanks for making the time.
- Oh, no, please.
Thank you.
I'm being filmed, just to let you know.
- There's a great time.
- How's it going, guys? The DP is, like, a hugely important part.
I think the director and the DP kind of become, like, a two-headed monster when you're actually in production.
My biggest fear, I think there are a lot of moments that I have very clear ideas of how to shoot or how I would like to shoot them and what they look like.
And then there are others where I'm like, "I don't know.
" I really need some guidance here.
I need to figure out exactly where I would place the camera and how to tell this story in the best way possible.
This is an area where I would love for my DP to kind of, like, be in on it with me and bring me ideas, and we can hash it out.
Do you mind staying in a big house with us? Oh, I'd love to! Lt'll be me and Phil and Josh and Julie.
You will love them.
You already love Julie.
I've been really lucky the last couple of years.
I've worked with some really amazing women, so I'm, like, really interested in that aspect, too.
I can't believe how game you are.
The TV show aspect freaks a lot of people out.
Somehow everything, I hope, will end up being positive.
Because even if I have a freak-out, some little girl will see that it's okay to have a freak-out and you can still do your job.
Exactly.
So we're definitely the underdogs in terms of, like, winning the competition.
The other guy, who's also making this movie, he's a YouTube star.
- His name is Shane Dawson.
- Oh! Our side of things is representing the New York scene, - independent filmmakers.
- Yeah.
This is a major moment in this process for me.
So happy.
Thank you, Hillary.
Well, thank you.
Thank you.
And I guess I'll talk to you soon.
Okay, we'll be in touch.
- Okay, cool.
Take care.
- Bye-bye.
Have a good day.
Confidence in this project just went through the roof because of Hillary Spera.
I didn't ask her how to pronounce her name, but I think it's "Spear-a.
" Just based on, like, the amount of rewrites Shane is doing just with the WGA, just the rules, like, I've spoken to his attorney a bit about it.
- Mm-hmm.
- I don't really understand when is it decided if he's done enough that warrants A, credit, B, he has to join WGA.
Like, all these things because we have this parameters now.
The original draft is based on Dan's draft.
He has been hired to rewrite this draft based on directors' notes.
So when that draft gets turned in, which it hasn't been turned in yet, that draft will be the official - Second draft.
- Second draft.
- Right.
- At that point, if we're talking about you having notes or dialogue polish or jokes, that is something that is sort of par for the course, and So we're gonna pretend like everything I've done to the script so far - We're not pretending anything.
was just notes? Because I rewrote every sentence of dialogue.
A, I don't think that's true, every sentence of dialogue.
- I mean - But, B I think I rewrote it.
- But he's had, then, to but he's - Like, I sent him a rewritten script.
But that's you giv but that's you giving notes on a Final Draft document.
To your question about credits, the WGA decides credits.
So, unless Shane is officially hired as a writer, that and you guys pay for that out of your budget, then there will be only one writer on the movie, which is Dan.
I like Shane.
You know, I respect him as a director.
He's mentioned that he might want some kind of co-writing credit on this movie, and I have tell you that's absolutely ridiculous.
Shane contributed, you know, to the final screenplay.
He had thoughts, he had ideas, and he was certainly involved.
But he was never contracted as a writer on this.
And this is why the WGA it's why they have guidelines.
We work together as a writer and a director.
If you're not allowed to do that without a director trying to grab credit, you're in a lot of trouble.
WGA does an arbitration based on credits.
But what they're looking at are things like were any new characters added or deleted, were any new scenes or new sort of story structure.
When it comes to jokes in dialogue, that's usually considered production-polish-type stuff.
Which is fine.
I honestly don't give a fuck.
I don't care if my name's on it as a writer.
I don't care if I get paid for it.
I'm obviously not in this for the money.
I don't care.
I think her main question was just like legally, are we - Legally.
I'm more - Because l and I know you're saying it was just notes, and I get it.
And we can just say "it was notes.
" - He sent me a draft - Mm-hmm.
and I literally deleted characters and then created characters and then sent it back to him.
That's not notes.
Like, I rewrote it.
And if we want to say it's notes for WGA, I'm totally fine doing that.
No.
He is still doing a draft that he's been hired to do based on your notes.
He needs to turn in that draft.
- That's what that's what he's gonna do.
- We can decide what to do with that.
- And then what we do after that - Is up to us.
The work that you've done thus far is considered notes, 'cause that is the writer that has been hired to And it really and it is notes.
All I was saying to you is some people give notes over the phone, some people give written notes, some people want to go into the document and start typing on it, but at this point, you're giving notes.
He's doing he's the writer who's been hired to do a pass right now.
My question is I've just overheard that the other girl is rewriting her script and I'm like, is that is she doing notes? - Is she - No, she got her second draft from him.
He had to legally he was we had to legally offer him the option to write the second draft.
By the way, why I mean, this all sort of goes under, like, we're not supposed to be talking about the other thing.
Where did you say you heard it? We just I mean, I just know that's what she did.
The point of the conversation is that he had to legally be offered the right to write the second draft because he was the original writer according to WGA.
He accepted that job.
Learning to work with a writer is a skill.
Absolutely.
Saying, "No, I don't like that dialogue, let's change this," or whatever, that's your work as a director.
He wants to deliver a draft that pleases the director.
The important thing is that you're getting what you want.
If we get to a stage where you, the director are not pleased, and you don't think Dan the writer can get you there, that's another conversation to have.
I don't think that we're at that point yet, and I think you agree we're not at that point yet.
It was originally written as a dramedy.
Definitely not a comedy.
There was definitely a lot of drama.
And I said, "Let's save that drama for the mama.
" Let's bring in the poop jokes.
Like, if you insert one of Shane's jokes into my original script, you'd be like, "What the fuck was that on page five? Like, how did that get into this script?" And once he saw what I was going for, he got really into it.
I had to adapt and write in the style of Shane Dawson, which is a challenge.
You know, the joke-per-page ratio is just a hell of a lot higher right now.
I always get so jarred when I see Dan Schoffer's name.
Not that he didn't write this, he absolutely did.
He just cut something per Zachary Quinto's request.
Victor always uses this term called "pencils down," which it's just like at certain points you gotta put your pencils down.
The question for me is always, like, is it enough? That's where it gets really dangerous, where I just start overthinking.
And I'm like, "Is enough happening? Is it profound enough? Am I saying something good about life?" And it's just like, please.
It's a movie.
Oh, my God.
This feels really good.
This motherfucker has been stressing me out so much.
Sent.
Oh, my God.
I am so tired.
Oh, my God.
I have been really stressed out about this.
Really stressed out.
And I've been just dying for this moment where it's like, I have something that makes sense to me.
As a director, when I read it, I'm like, "Okay.
" "Be happy with the script.
" Check.
"Have explored both John Pope and Hillary Spera.
" Check.
I'm done.
#? Story's always rollin' #? Oven-ready meats, Shane Dawson.
Just gettin' my meat ready.
#? You hold it in your bones beautifully #? #? Music like a cool device to visit old homes #? #? Like pictures of dreams you might have forgot #? #? The contents of life you left outside the box #? #? When you was on a path that was tracked and sampled #? #? Sang along to that till the act was cancelled #? #? Let's catalogue the past, your time in front of the candle #? #? When you had a while to rap and cast a long shadow.
#? Fuck this.
Fuck this.
Why did I say I would do this? I don't know.
This was a terrible idea.
I am Rob, the guy one of the guys making this show, told me that I should film myself when I'm in a fear pocket.
And so I'm in one.
I'm definitely procrastinating because I think maybe if I don't pack, then I just won't have to leave.
Basically, the situation is that we went back and forth a bunch of times as to whether or not Victor should come along on this movie.
And at first it seemed like definitely not, and then it seemed like definitely yes.
And then it was like, "No.
" And at the end of the day, he we just really he had to stay here and make a living because we need to make a living.
I think right now the reason that I'm scared is just because I feel alone.
And I have to leave Victor.
Really sad to leave Victor.
Feel really weird that Our pri I mean, privacy is a huge thing, so one of my hugest fears with this experience is that somehow I will hurt someone that I love.
And I really need to pack.
Now I'm using this video diary as a way to not pack.
I get to go to Pittsburgh and live in a big house with a bunch of people I love and make a movie.
And all of this other shit is just being a shitty human.
Waves of fear even if you know you can do something, it happens.
How much am I gonna cry on this fuckin' thing? Fuck.
I think it's gonna be really good to get with my people.
It's so important to get out of your head, I think.
Get out of my head.
You can hear it right now in my voice.
I'm speaking as though this is like this terrible thing that's happening to me, which makes no sense.
It's an amazing thing that's happening to me, that I get to go direct a movie.
But when I do things like procrastinate all right, I'm going to continue this later.
First of all, I think the script is super funny, you guys.
- Yay! - It's really, really funny.
Laughed out loud.
But I do wanna talk about what your process was to decide to put yourself in the role.
Of course I wanna support it, but I do want to talk about the unique challenges that go with that.
There's so much I really want to do as this character that I couldn't imagine not playing it.
It's very personal to me 'cause it's a character that I really, really want to play and I just want to fucking go all out.
And l and I'm not scared about it.
And I probably should be.
They're going to use this in the show and they're going to cut to me freaking the fuck out.
But I'm 155% confident.
I don't know.
- I shouldn't be, but I am.
- That's great.
And you feel like your relationship with Lauren gives you everything you need there? Yeah, me and Lauren have built a relationship where she'll tell me if something was bad, she'll tell me if something is not funny.
And I love when people call me out on shit.
Well, you could potentially dial back some of the graphic nature of some of the jokes.
The raunchiness of it, for example.
And by even just shading some of the undercurrent of those jokes a little bit, you might be able to appeal to an even a bit of a wider audience.
Yeah, I mean this sounds really strange but it's so weird that the teenage girls that I've been catering to, they are so graphic and sexual and crazy.
And it's hard 'cause I kind of get lost in that because it's so fun to write.
But, yeah, these kids nowadays are different.
You know, "American Pie" was 15 years ago, so they're All right, all right, simmer down over there, okay? I don't like violence.
Is there any and I'm totally willing to tone down certain things.
I know Lauren is trying to get me to tone down everything, but - Not everything.
- I mean, is there a There's just some shit-eating.
- Just the shit-eating.
- I don't want you to sanitize it.
You know what I mean? I'm not asking you to sanitize it.
I don't want you to remove it completely.
But maybe I am just getting older and I'm not as interested in hearing it, but I do feel this is a project that's fostering attention on Pittsburgh.
I guess I just feel like there is a certain level of responsibility to that aspect of what we're making, talking about what a shithole the place is and that kind of stuff.
It's like, how can you express that kind of dissatisfaction, that frustration that plagues everyone in their early 20s? I see what you mean.
So you're saying, like, instead of Tori hating where she's coming from, it's more she's hating the people she was surrounded by.
- So it's not about, like - It's more we're hating the fact that she knows that she's capable of more.
I mean, look, I left Pittsburgh I stayed for Carnegie, but I left as soon as I graduated and got as far away as I could go.
And I get that feeling.
I had it myself.
But I always valued where I came from.
And it's minor things, really little, general things and take it or leave it.
I will support whatever decision you make ultimately.
That's why I'm here, so I just thought it was worth a mention.
But, yes, that's sort of what I mean.
Okay, cool.
What do you want in terms of an acting coach? Do you just want somebody to, like, have some conversations with and do a little work before you start shooting? Exactly.
I just want to make sure I'm interesting enough to carry this movie, because I feel like he's definitely the straight man, which I don't really play very often, so I wanna figure out how to make that work.
Mm-hmm.
Then what I'll do, if it's helpful to you, is I will send you some notes so I can be specific about some of the things I'm talking about.
And then you can use those to warm the fireplace or put them into where you feel like they'd be helpful.
That sounds no, that sounds great.
I think you're in a really great spot to make a really funny movie and I'm excited to watch you go on the journey of it.
Cool, thank you so much.
If anything comes up, you can just email me or call me or I'm sure we'll speak soon.
- All right, sounds good.
- Okay.
Good work, you guys.
Best of luck tonight.
Have a good day.
- You, too.
- Bye.
I think the main thing I got out of it was that I might have to tone it down.
I don't really know how to do that.
I guess I'll try.
He said raunchiness and overly sexual dialogue.
Every movie I've seen in the last five years like "Superbad" like, all these movies, are way dirtier than our movie.
It's not a question of you not speaking the truth, it's just a question of the Pittsburgh stuff.
Now I'm overthinking the script.
You can't overthink it because you're just gonna psych yourself out.
I usually never worry because it's always my money that I'm that the budget it's my money.
It's like going on my YouTube.
Now it's like, "Oh, it's somebody else's money and it's going in a theater, and it's their thing" and "Oh, shit.
" We went to this, like, fancy cocktail dinner where, like, all the investors were there.
They were all like, "And this is such a big project for Pittsburgh.
" And literally, Lauren was like, "All these people are going to be sitting in a theater watching a homeless guy eat shit.
" And watching a homeless guy's nutsack.
Yeah, like, can't wait to see the reaction.
I'm going to have to cut a lot of things out.
Is Anna's movie "G"? It's "G," right? Oh, crap.
I love Pittsburgh Airport.
It always feels like an '80s movie to me.
Is that better? I don't know.
I'm in a rental car that's extremely expensive, and I'll probably return it in a couple days to save Chris Moore some money.
I think Victor was really nervous for me this morning.
It's just really hard to believe that I could possibly do this job without him, because he's really in charge.
And now I'm really in charge.
And that is just insanely terrifying to me, which is why you'll be seeing a lot of crying and lot of emotions.
Because I'm right up against a wall of what I think I might be capable of.
How do I start this car? "Press brake and push button to start.
" I'm so tired of being alone.
That's all.
I'll talk to you guys later, whoever you are.
A huge component of independent film is faith faith in what you're doing and faith in who you're choosing to do it with.
Why am I doing this? Why am I a part of this? It was never designed to be this grand experiment where I'm going to put two people who can't do it, and we're just gonna create two fuckin' train wrecks.
I think Chris Moore is trying to do too much shit.
Is this movie happening? Right now there is no money in the bank.
Hard out there right now to get movies made.
Cut.
This is independent filmmaking in the truest sense.
The funds are being raised simultaneous to both of these films being set up.
For me, the point is to show the process of what these directors go through.
A lot of other things are gonna have to be snowy if this is snowy.
I think this movie's gonna be good if I just don't fuck up on week two, three, and four.
Fuck! Cut! For the sake of this experiment, we should also experiment with distribution and marketing.
No, no, dude.
You have final cut.
You can do whatever you want.
So when they come see the movie and they think it's dogshit, they're gonna ask you, "Why is it dogshit?" It's gonna be a disaster.
It's gonna be great for you guys to watch.
I'm ready to do a movie.
I'm ready to do something bigger than just the Internet, you know? I've wanted to make movies my whole life.
I know it sounds cheesy, but I've been waiting for a long time and I've been working really hard, so I'm very, very excited that I finally got a chance to do this.
I feel like I've bitten off a lot in terms of making a movie and also being filmed while making a movie.
To me that feels like a huge challenge.
And it might not be the case for everyone, but I knew that this was basically pushing myself beyond my comfort zone.
I think a lot of you guys watching this show are actually gonna like my movie and I think you're gonna be surprised.
Or I hope you're gonna be surprised.
Because I think it's gonna be great.
I'm just making a pledge to be super-honest and share with this camera because that's what I signed up for.
I'm ready.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
"The Chair" is two directors shooting a movie from the same source material.
And action! Hands in the air! I don't see everybody's hands in the yeah! And action! Ideally, they'll be very, very different from one another and explore that in a really cool way.
All right, go huge on this one.
"The Chair" is something I don't think anybody's ever tried to really do before, which is to explore an idea from two very different points of view.
"The Chair" concept really came out of "Good Will Hunting.
" Before we ended up with Gus Van Sant, who directed the movie, we worked with a couple different directors.
Mel Gibson was one, Michael Mann was one.
And so I've always been fascinated by trying to set up a situation where you can actually see how two different directors would take the same material and turn it into two separate movies.
What if you could really show that to people? A lot of people think that they can direct a movie, but until they're actually in the hot seat, in the director's chair, they don't know what it's like.
Barf! Cut! Great! You're campaigning to get her back, and she keeps batting you down.
Being a first-time director is crazy.
There's a lot that you have to absorb and a lot that you have to get used to in making quick decisions.
And now everything that you're doing is being documented.
Every choice that you're making is being chronicled.
Sometimes those things can overwhelm you, and I think the competition aspect makes it even more dramatic.
And that winner gets $250,000.
In the 25 years I've been in Hollywood, I've produced movies and television, but this experiment is different in that both movies are going to be made for a super low budget.
When I was putting this together, I hadn't made an independent movie in a while.
You know, the lowest budget movie I'd made in the last five years was $20 million.
That's not really low-budget.
So part of me thought I'd need some producers sort of used to doing that and how that works.
One of the names that kept coming up was Zachary Quinto.
Chris Moore came to my business partners and me, and I like his perspective.
I like how he thinks about the business and I really like the idea.
Zachary is an actor and a producer.
He most famously is Spock in the new "Star Trek" movies.
And his production company Before the Door has produced, in my opinion, some of the better independent or smaller movies over the last, you know, four or five years.
Before the Door consists of three main partners.
That would be Zachary Quinto, Neal Dodson, and myself.
What attracted us to the project of "The Chair" was the experiment itself was very appealing.
It's brave and it's new.
I've never seen anything quite like it before.
God, okay, this is going to be fun.
My name is can I look at you or should I look - You're looking at me.
- All the time.
Okay.
My name is Anna Martemucci.
And what am I saying again? I had always been a writer.
I went to NYU for screenwriting.
A classmate would direct a little 10-minute play I wrote.
I would always be enraged and I would always think they were doing the shittiest job.
I really wanted to direct my own words.
And I wouldn't allow myself to do it.
That seemed so far away a possibility, that I would ever have the, like, gumption to tell a bunch of people what to do, that I hid out as a writer.
Before anything else, Anna is a writer.
She prides herself on her writing.
She does it every day.
She's good at it.
She's a really, really talented writer and actress, actually.
Has a lot of easy humor but also pathos in her work.
"If you do this to me, if you hurt me, I will kill you and then I will kill myself.
" - That's right.
- And l I meant it.
- Yeah, I know I know you did.
- I did.
I meant it.
Anna really is, in my opinion, an example of independent filmmaking in the way it traditionally is, where you struggle.
You don't make a ton of money.
She started by interning for various companies and filmmakers that she really liked.
She worked for a company called Big Beach which produced "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Everything is Illuminated" and a bunch of other movies.
Anna, I can't claim to be unbiased about.
Her husband and I have been best friends for quite some time and we went to college together.
My husband Victor and I met on a film job.
It was my first, like, real job out of NYU.
"Everything is Illuminated," which was Liev Schreiber's directorial debut.
He said it was like wearing a suit of nails.
We've collaborated with their film collective which is called Periods Films.
- What's up, buddy? - Oh, well, you know.
I've been in a couple of their short films.
We produced the first Periods feature called "Breakup at a Wedding" which Anna wrote with Victor, but Victor directed it.
Victor directed and we co-wrote it with his brother Phil.
And I produced it and also acted in it, as did both Phil and Victor.
So it was just like a crazy combination movie.
She was there for every day of the edit of that movie.
She helped raise the financing for that movie, et cetera.
So she was an intimate part of that filmmaking process, but she did not direct it.
She had a relationship to the independent side of the film business in a sort of "pay your dues, work your way up through the ranks, learn from those who've come before you," and you could tell that she was soaking it in like a sponge.
I was raised with this idea that, like, "Just do it, and it'll be great, and follow your passion.
" There's an economic truth that you have to negotiate.
I still at this point have not been able to make a living off my art.
And I know that I would not be in the place I'm in right now if I had not basically won the lottery.
We saw it as an opportunity to encourage her to find her own voice as a director.
She had always had a yen to direct.
And I have friends who have been trying to be directors for seven years, and, like, they're brilliant and everything about their work screams that they need to direct their first feature, and it still doesn't happen.
Anyone who's vaguely in the film business knows this.
Ultimately, Anna realized it was probably the quickest way for her to get a chance to direct a movie.
The fact that Chris Moore thought to make sure to have one of the directors be female I think is incredible.
The way that we all kind of be human together and understand the world around us is through stories.
That's how we come up with our notions of what's right and wrong and what's good and bad and how we experience it's just such a huge thing, storytelling.
Chris thought it was something that should happen.
He met her, he pitched it to her and thought, "You know what? She's the perfect counterpart for what Shane is gonna do.
" Oh, my G what the fuck are you eating? Oh! My name is Shane Dawson.
I am from Long Beach, California.
And I have been wanting to make movies my whole life.
It's a video shoot! Because of my YouTube channel, a lot of people think I'm really, really confident and I just wear wigs and do voices all the time.
Do you think you're a good person? You guys should shoot porno here! Unfortunately, somebody already does.
Yee-haw! The whole YouTube thing is almost a character.
The real Shane is not confident at all.
I had tried the Hollywood thing.
I had auditioned for every stupid fuckin' Disney show, commercial.
Didn't get anything.
I got a lot of, you know, "suicidal teenager," which I guess I just put that out there.
But I wanted to do comedy and I saw YouTube as kind of my way of doing my own thing.
I had a really shitty childhood, so I would, you know, make videos and watch movies and do things like that to get away from it.
And then around high school, YouTube came around and somebody said, "Oh, you should upload your stupid videos that you make with your grandma on YouTube," so I did.
And kind of took off.
I have about 10 million subscribers.
He has 10 million people that are interested in what he's putting into the world.
If I had 10 million subscribers to my channels, I think I'd probably have a certain amount of confidence about my ability to speak to a fan base as well.
This kid learns how to capitalize on himself and has been able to grow his subscriber number so incredibly high that it rivals a cable network.
Shane makes a living based on YouTube views.
And I tip my hat to the fact that he's managed to turn that into a business.
It's all funded by me.
It's it's all all my employees are paid by me.
It's the whole business that's on my shoulders.
Shane is really a prime example of the modern-day landscape.
I think he represents in a lot of ways this moment in time we're having what do people do who've been doing YouTube videos for six years? It was fun when you were 17, but then how do you turn it into a career? The reason I strongly believe in Shane he can combine over-the-top comedy and heart and do it in a way that millions of people like over years.
You can't get a better resume than that for somebody who you want to give a chance to make a movie.
What Hollywood waits for is to see if you somehow can read the larger audience or if you only know your audience.
And right now the YouTube audience is very specific for two reasons.
One is it's all super-low budget and the other is they're short.
And so nobody's actually being judged on storytelling.
The guys that are out making something like "True Detective" or "The Killing" or, you know, "Seinfeld" that lasted or "Simpsons," 22 years.
Those guys have figured out how to tell stories over time, how to that's a different skill than four-minute short videos.
The experiment of "The Chair" needed someone from that new media generation to say, "What would it be like if this guy was given an opportunity to make a legitimate film?" Shane, to me I guess being the person who did choose to offer him this opportunity, Shane Dawson, in my opinion, sort of represents the new wave of filmmakers.
Okay, and step in front of the camera.
All right.
And action! And cross your arms.
- Great! Cut! - And cut! This opportunity means everything.
It's been my dream my whole life.
It's been my dream that somebody would give me the opportunity to do it.
And it's my future.
And if it's amazing, then I'm going to be a director for the rest of my life.
If it's terrible, I'm going to have to hide away for a little while, and then come and try to make another movie.
- Okay, cut.
- Cut.
To decide to be a director of a movie when there's another director who is making the same movie pretty close to the same time in the same place you know, that's actually a challenge to get somebody to want to do that.
I felt like I had to make it a very honest and pure competition, so we created rules.
R-rated or less.
Has to be 85 minutes or longer.
They have to stick to the plot of the script.
And I asked them to keep the character names so that the audience can follow that this version of Scott is the same character originally that is that version of Scott.
And the only time that I can step in is if they're doing something totally irresponsible with the money or if I think they're not actually going to be able to deliver a feature film.
Because we have to deliver two feature films and we gotta be able to release them.
Each director has to prep in Pittsburgh.
Then each director shoots for four weeks in Pittsburgh.
And both directors have final cut for their films.
Most first-time directors would not get final cut.
That is one of the pieces that hopefully makes it attractive to directors.
Make a movie, which I've been wanting to make my whole life: Make a movie that I have final cut on.
Getting final cut on this movie is one of the major reasons that I was interested in doing this.
The fact that I would be able to rewrite it and then final cut is kind of unheard of for a first-timer.
I want to make stuff that a lot of people can relate to, but I want to do it in a way that's, like, a little bit different or a little bit that you haven't seen before.
Total control, final cut.
It's exciting, terrifying, and I'm actually really pumped to see her movie.
If I was just watching this show at home, I would be really excited to see both movies.
I think it's a cool idea.
Final cut always surprises people.
There's this age-old thing in Hollywood that the talent's somehow crazier than the investors, or the distributor, or the studio executives.
And my experience is that they're all equally crazy.
Nobody has cornered the market on making dumb creative decisions.
Nobody has cornered the market on making good creative decisions.
The fact that I was able to have full creative control was so awesome, 'cause that's really what I'm interested in.
I have never heard a director say that their debut movie, they had total control over.
When I heard that that was the case I mean, sign me up.
And the fact that it's not my money.
When I heard it was somebody else's money I'm in Pittsburgh.
Let's do this.
The most surprising piece of my little journey to get this project off the ground, I could convince people that the concept was great.
And I have this stupid arrogance.
I'm like, "Well, hell, if you like the concept, I've made 30 other movies.
At some point, just trust me.
It's gonna turn out, and let's go.
" But what happens is a lot of times then people go, "Okay, we like the concept.
Everything's good.
What's the script?" And so at a certain point, I realized I needed to pick a script.
There's a young producer.
His name is Josh Shader.
He loves story, loves script.
I'm Josh Shader.
I'm the producer of both movies that are part of "The Chair" project.
With everything I do as a producer, it's always developed from scratch.
So it's about sitting in a room with a writer and saying, "What do we want to make a movie about?" Which is a really exciting place to start.
When I first met the writer, Dan Schoffer, what we kept coming back to was this idea of the first Thanksgiving after going away to college.
The original script was an ensemble teen comedy in the vein of "Dazed and Confused" or "Can't Hardly Wait" about a couple who's been dating throughout high school.
They go to college and they decide to stay together.
And then when they come back for Thanksgiving break, one of them gets dumped.
And the entire movie took place from Wednesday, the day that they got home, to Sunday, when they went back to school.
It's a comedy, it's a drama, it's a coming-of-age story.
"Coming-of-age" is a good genre for the first year of "The Chair" because people have all seen a coming-of-age movie, whether it's "The Graduate" or "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" or "American Pie," or whatever.
So they'll have something to relate to when they vote.
I'm not gonna lie.
When I found out that we had to direct something from a script that we had not written ourselves, I did not sleep for about a week.
I've never directed anything that I haven't written, and to have something handed to me was terrifying.
In order to convince directors to come do this process and to have an honest competition, the directors had to have the right to re-write it.
You're telling a story.
That involves the scriptwriting, the casting, locations.
The person who that sort of surprised the most was Dan.
Dan maybe is in the most difficult position of anybody else on this entire project because he had to let his script go to these two different places.
First of all, thanks, everyone, for coming.
The idea of this was for you guys to meet.
I wanted to be at the first meeting to share my thoughts.
I think it's also an opportunity for the three of us to throw in our two cents.
At the end of the day, it's still your movie.
It's your movie, so you don't have to listen to any of us, but when you suggest a really crazy idea, we might storm out of the room just for effect.
I've had two wildly different experiences with both directors.
Okay, so I made this packet for you.
Yeah, I'm gonna use bread.
My two main favorite characters are Scott and Tori.
Here's Scott, here's Tori.
Tori and Scott are our main characters.
And then you have Joel and Heather and Will and Janie, which is a lot going on.
For Dan, there was nobody who could really override the directors and what they wanted to do with his script.
It's so big and there's so many characters and there are so many locations that I kind of just want to scale everything down a little bit.
The emotional beats were all spot on, which is some of the hardest stuff to do.
The stuff that I kind of want to overhaul is like jokes, dialogue.
She changed all the dialogue.
She, like, didn't use any of my dialogue.
But the scenes are essentially the same.
I would love to keep pretty much your entire structure.
I didn't really write anything, I just reconceptualized and kind of figured out the movie that I would wanna make.
Okay.
I'd like you to be part of it, but I can't promise how the directors are gonna treat you.
You're going to have to forge your own relationships with each of them.
You're going to have to turn in your rewrites.
And once you do that, they may never speak to you again.
Are there big things that are in here? Like, did you get rid of any of those storylines? - Yeah.
- Heather get rid of her in the first scene.
Shane ended up cutting two characters.
I killed two characters.
- Killed completely? - Yeah, I murdered them.
Anna ended up cutting two different characters.
I killed two characters.
Rather than being separate stories so that we have these three separate storylines, we have two storylines, four main characters, and then this one kind of like antagonist character.
Dan's face at the beginning was like, "What?" It is very significantly different.
Yeah, I'm just trying to keep all the - All everything in your head? - Yeah.
This is a huge undertaking.
It's like we've kind of changed everything.
Uh-huh.
Some of the characters are the same, but, I mean, how do we do this? I don't think we have to worry about the dialogue and those specific jokes and all those runners yet.
It's just about getting the new story on its feet.
Because it's definitely a new story, it's definitely new characters, it's definitely new arcs, and it's about putting that on paper.
Working with Dan the writer has been great.
I have never collaborated with a writer before.
This is the first time and it went really smooth.
I mean, he gave us a very dramatic script.
It was a dramedy more than it was a comedy.
That's not my style and he was very open to helping me switch it up into more of a broad, bigger, crazy comedy.
It's still similar to my original script in many ways.
It's just got more gags.
And I actually feel like I learned a lot from Shane in doing that and, like, kind of sharpened my comedic skills.
Ever since I heard about this project, I just assumed that I would be in the movie, because acting, directing, and writing is that's my thing.
I decided to cast myself as Scott.
He's one of the lead characters.
And I can't imagine my debut movie not having me in it, especially for the audience, because that's that's what they've been watching for so long.
So Scott, who was the coolest kid in high school and, as we discussed, he wasn't, like, the football player guy.
We want to do something with the Internet, like you.
How do you feel about, specifically, like he made videos.
- How do you feel about that? - It's a little too on the nose.
It is? I don't hate the on-the-nose version in a weird way.
I think that there's something interesting there.
But if you're uncomfortable with it, that's a different story.
Yeah, I think for people who are gonna see this movie for the first time and really judge me for the first time as a filmmaker, it's gonna look a little like, "Oh, he was afraid to take a risk.
He just played himself.
" But what if the videos are of a different tone and they're not like your videos? They're just other videos or I mean, what does that even mean? It means they can be any it means they can be anything.
You have a very specific style and he could have a different style.
In the first script, Scott was kind of a jock and kind of a cocky, arrogant guy who learns to to not be such an asshole, basically.
In this new version, he's a guy that's dealing with letting go of the past and looking to the future and not obsessing about his problems in the past.
And that's something I can really relate to.
He was unconventional.
He's not your classic kind of archetypal cool kid in high school.
He was cool, and he dated, like, who was kind of the archetype.
Heather was like a cheerleader.
She was the most beautiful girl in school I actually think that's cool that, like, it's not the jock dating the cheerleader tool.
It's the cool guy getting the hot girl, but it's a different cool guy.
I like that dynamic.
- Yeah.
- Okay.
So, I've been working with Lauren for about two years.
It feels like 10.
I needed a producer.
It was my first time doing something bigger budget with a 30-people crew and I just needed somebody to help me.
I was right.
It's "The Grudge," the real-life "Grudge.
" He took his YouTube empire, if you will, as far as he could, and, honestly, it was like he was at a breaking point.
I mean, the guy had gone to the hospital for exhaustion, which he would tell you about.
I mean, it's not in, like, the Lindsay Lohan way, like, really, it was like had burnt out.
And he couldn't do it himself anymore and he wanted help.
I took a lot of that off of his plate and he's able to concentrate more on the creative side.
We knew that it was a match.
A really weird match.
Mmm Mmm, feels good.
Feels really good.
Oh, throw it in her face.
Mmm, she likes it.
Mmm.
That's my new favorite game.
You're catching it.
Good job.
Guys, these are my men.
This is Victor Quinaz.
He's my husband and writing partner and filmmaking partner.
And Philip Quinaz, his brother.
My brother-in-law.
He's, you know, an integral part of the filmmaking team and he wrote "Breakup at a Wedding" with us, and so we're the team.
We love working together.
Let's go through the characters first.
In Dan's previous draft, he took an uptight guy and pulled the rug out, which I think is a very sort of clear transition.
Mm-hmm.
But what does it look like when you take an easy-going, laid-back guy and make that guy feel insecure? Because that way he can get a sense of what that version of Scott is.
And is that what you're going for? Is that what you're going for, yeah.
That is the movie I want to make.
That's the journey I want to explore, is that guy rather than the uptight guy.
To watch that go from someone having their ultimate power on when they're 17, senior year of high school, and then the transition where they've just lost it and they're like They're like, "I gotta go back.
" Now that we have this new version of Scott, like, he can be confident about it.
He can go to, like, "Let's hang out.
We had fun last night.
- Why are we not hanging out?" - Sure.
Sure.
Like, he suddenly has a purpose again.
The arc, though, of Scott beyond his personality traits is that he's trying to reclaim his past, and in this one weekend, he's got this ticking clock that's rushing to reclaim it.
And then I think in the end of that, it's really about letting the past go and saying, "I can be someone else.
" What you've told us that you want is a more character-driven, reality-based sense of humor, something that's truly revelatory in what we are as human beings in that weird moment of transition.
And we haven't necessarily seen it on a movie screen before.
With Anna's script, it just became clear that, like, she wanted to take the reins of the writing.
Her answer was, you know, "I need to go back and I need to work on that myself.
" The more time Anna spent with Dan's original script, the more she struggled with it.
I don't think the script is bad.
Some of the dialogue is not great.
I like the tone and I like the characters and there's lots of great jokes courtesy of Phil and Victor.
Other times when I finish the script and I felt like I'm done with the script, I'm ready for it to be read by people, I feel ownership over every scene.
I thought about it and this is the best scene I could write.
And that is not the case with this script.
There are definitely scenes where I'm just like not sure how I would shoot this.
But I just wish I had my head wrapped around it a little more.
She wasn't going to be able to put her voice into Dan's words.
She wanted to tell it in her words.
This is where I kind of here's our little board.
And then this is the actual structure of the movie Act 1, Act 2, Act 3.
Really helps so that you know what's happening in each section.
Otherwise it's just like this giant clusterfuck in your brain.
Are you sad Daddy's gonna leave you? Are you gonna help me pack? Nope? Okay, great.
So, I am leaving in the morning to Pittsburgh.
And now comes the fun time where I have to pack up all of my shit.
As you can see, I have a lot warmer clothes because the weather is going to be so cold that if you pee outside, your penis will actually freeze and fall off.
I'm really excited because I feel like this is it.
This is my movie that I've been waiting to make for my whole life.
And I've been making YouTube videos for seven, eight, I don't know a long before you were born.
At least I have enough socks! That's a start.
That's it.
Here we go.
Pittsburgh! Duh! Why don't you introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Heidi.
I'm driving, trying not to crash, but I'm the production manager for Shane.
Yes, she is the production manager.
She just picked me up at the airport and we are on our way to the hotel.
To that sounds wrong.
We are, on well! Thanks for picking me up.
No, we're on our way to the hotel to talk about what we gotta do in the next four weeks of pre-production, one of which is what? Lots of things.
Like casting is one of them.
- Hiring crew another.
- Mm-hmm.
- Locations.
- Mm-hmm.
- Food is very important.
- Mm-hmm.
Where Shane is going to stay permanently.
Also Okay, also how many pairs of pants I'm gonna have to wear because it is -25 degrees outside most likely.
That's true.
That has happened here in Pittsburgh.
So, like, five pairs of pants.
Five, maybe six.
My bulge is gonna look huge! - Huge! I'm psyched.
- We're ready to go! - Let's go! - Go! - Go! - Match my tone.
- Go! - Go! Oh, go! Okay, I'm done.
So you might be asking yourself, "Why are we in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania?" Pittsburgh is the place that we wanted to bring these two stories to life.
It's a gorgeous, unique city.
Pittsburgh's a city that's really easy to double for other places, but also Pittsburgh in and of itself is just a cinematic city.
There's a group of people here who want to build up the infrastructure for filmmaking in Pittsburgh and they were willing to actually put their money where their mouth is, and so we actually raised money in Pittsburgh.
There's a lot of pluses for what we're trying to do with the city of Pittsburgh and hopefully bring more work to the city.
If we can establish regional production centers where filmmakers come to make these kind of projects, we'd actually get better movies.
L they don't oh, there he is! One of the things I wanted to talk about was, like, the fact that we're making this project, all of these projects so closely in affiliation with Pittsburgh and places in Pittsburgh, people in Pittsburgh, talking about the decision to sort of set it just outside of it what about it in Pittsburgh? I thought about doing a Pittsburgh movie and doing it like "Ferris Bueller" style treating Pittsburgh how Ferris Bueller treated Chicago.
But at the end of the day, like, the true essence of the movie that I wanted to make, I feel like is a smaller town story about kids who are, like, either leaving the small town or not leaving the small town.
I grew up in Central Pennsylvania, you know what I mean? In State College.
That's where my adolescence was, so I was like, "Oh, my God.
How cool that I get to write a movie about adolescence when I actually grew up there.
" That's a small thing, though.
The real reason is that I fell in love with the name "Hollidaysburg" as a title because it's the movie, you know what I mean? Like, they're going home to a place that is Hollidaysburg.
It's just where you go for Thanksgiving and Christmas now.
It's not actually your home anymore.
I just want a key being Pittsburgh-centric.
It's a part of the story, an inherent part of the story.
But at the same time, I get what you're saying creatively and where you're coming from.
I don't I don't feel like they need to live there.
Like, where are you in the budgeting and scheduling and all that stuff? Right now our, like, main concern is securing a DP and a production designer.
We're gonna be all on the ground the whole team will be on the ground in Pittsburgh on Monday.
I know you have another draft right now.
Is that right? I'll have a real, like, "Anna-vision" draft in hopefully, like, two days.
- Three days.
- Okay.
We're gonna start shooting your movie when? - And you're still writing? - I know, I know.
When I'm in the middle of writing a script like this, I have, like, a really weird paranoia that someone will just steal my computer or my computer will just explode, so I keep emailing Victor and I the drafts.
Are you going home? I'm going home to eat some leftovers, and - To write.
- write the second act.
I'm so Sean Akers, thank you for saying that there is a nine-page scene in the middle of the movie.
It's not a bad scene, it's just a long scene.
- Right.
- And I just wonder if there's a way to break that up or to interrupt it in some way so the flow of it doesn't get too boring.
Is it questionable giving you notes at this point, Anna, like What do you mean, like, "We need this script to be locked" - kind of thing? - Yeah.
We need to make a budget for you.
You want to be able to go out to Pittsburgh on Sunday - Yes.
like, with a locked script Yes.
with not worrying about that side of it.
You know that you can write some of this script with those those guys just using your style of filmmaking.
Right.
We say this all the time.
There are three different movies.
The movie you write, the movie you shoot, the movie you edit.
You just need to get through Phase 1, you're done.
And right now, Writer Anna is just going fucking crazy.
Turning Director Anna off and being like, "Shut up.
Write!" Because I've been telling myself, like, "Eh, it's not really happening yet.
Like, I don't have to be a director just yet.
Oh, okay, I'll answer this email and I'll do this and I'll make this choice.
" You were a director from the first minute that you agreed to become part of this.
I know and that is what's so hard, because I've - You are a director.
- been a writer for so long.
But you've been a director for so long, too.
I saw you I saw you controlling your husband when we were making that movie.
Oh, he's gonna murder you.
You were the woman behind that movie behind that movie, "Breakup at a Wedding.
" - Available on iTunes.
- That you secretly directed behind your husband's back.
You got it.
You got this.
To the right and up the hallway.
Okay.
- Hey! - Hey! Look at this, it's like "Project Runway.
" Hi, how are you? - Wow, oh.
- Hey, guys.
- Hey, guys.
- Mr.
Shader.
- Oh, my God! - Welcome.
Is this the first time you've been in here? - Yeah.
- Yeah.
So we find ourselves here in Pittsburgh making a low-budget indie movie, and that means that the crews that we're hiring are less experienced and younger.
This is what indie film is.
It's getting young people that are hungry and talented and giving them an opportunity.
And it's nerve-racking.
For me, the most nerve-racking decision in this whole process was hiring the DP.
All right, so this is Frank.
- Hello.
How's it going? - Shane.
Nice to meet you.
- It's good to meet you.
- I'm Lauren.
Nice to meet you.
- Thanks for coming in.
- I'm Josh.
I'm Frank Paladino.
I'm 24 years old and I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
So Frank is the guy I hired to be my DP.
He does a lot of rap videos.
So, perfect fit.
When I first spoke with Heidi a couple weeks ago, you know, she was talking about the two different directors' styles and I was immediately attracted to is it Anna? Mm-hmm.
I was immediately attracted to her script.
But once I read your treatment, I thought, you know, "Superbad.
" And I think "Superbad" is a perfect movie.
It's literally an exact representation of our generation.
I know nothing about her movie, but I definitely wanted to go raw teen comedy.
- I mean, that's my audience.
- Yeah.
It's like I'm not gonna try to make an artsy movie.
It's like, let's let's do a glory hole scene in the first five minutes.
He came with clear ideas of what he wanted to do, of references he brought clips from other movies.
He showed us things he had done that look similar to what I want.
He just had it all.
And I knew right then that he was the guy.
The "Mean Girls" look, is that something you think we could do on this budget? Oh, yeah.
I know Lauren was very nervous at first, as was I, about hiring crew.
Not just because it's Pittsburgh, but because it's people we haven't worked with before.
Coming here and meeting a bunch of new people, and hiring them off a very awkward interview I wish I could do a test day where I have everybody come in and we film for a day, and then I fire people who aren't great and hire new people, but that's not Hollywood.
We have to shoot in a mere four weeks, and that means I might not be able to have this DP that I want that I'm about to talk to.
So that's very sad.
But we'll see.
We're gonna find out right now if Hillary Spera is available.
It's just so nice to know that someone can shoot, like, a lower-budget full feature and get it done.
It's very comforting.
Hey, Hillary! It's so nice to meet you.
It's very nice to meet you, too, totally.
- Thanks for making the time.
- Oh, no, please.
Thank you.
I'm being filmed, just to let you know.
- There's a great time.
- How's it going, guys? The DP is, like, a hugely important part.
I think the director and the DP kind of become, like, a two-headed monster when you're actually in production.
My biggest fear, I think there are a lot of moments that I have very clear ideas of how to shoot or how I would like to shoot them and what they look like.
And then there are others where I'm like, "I don't know.
" I really need some guidance here.
I need to figure out exactly where I would place the camera and how to tell this story in the best way possible.
This is an area where I would love for my DP to kind of, like, be in on it with me and bring me ideas, and we can hash it out.
Do you mind staying in a big house with us? Oh, I'd love to! Lt'll be me and Phil and Josh and Julie.
You will love them.
You already love Julie.
I've been really lucky the last couple of years.
I've worked with some really amazing women, so I'm, like, really interested in that aspect, too.
I can't believe how game you are.
The TV show aspect freaks a lot of people out.
Somehow everything, I hope, will end up being positive.
Because even if I have a freak-out, some little girl will see that it's okay to have a freak-out and you can still do your job.
Exactly.
So we're definitely the underdogs in terms of, like, winning the competition.
The other guy, who's also making this movie, he's a YouTube star.
- His name is Shane Dawson.
- Oh! Our side of things is representing the New York scene, - independent filmmakers.
- Yeah.
This is a major moment in this process for me.
So happy.
Thank you, Hillary.
Well, thank you.
Thank you.
And I guess I'll talk to you soon.
Okay, we'll be in touch.
- Okay, cool.
Take care.
- Bye-bye.
Have a good day.
Confidence in this project just went through the roof because of Hillary Spera.
I didn't ask her how to pronounce her name, but I think it's "Spear-a.
" Just based on, like, the amount of rewrites Shane is doing just with the WGA, just the rules, like, I've spoken to his attorney a bit about it.
- Mm-hmm.
- I don't really understand when is it decided if he's done enough that warrants A, credit, B, he has to join WGA.
Like, all these things because we have this parameters now.
The original draft is based on Dan's draft.
He has been hired to rewrite this draft based on directors' notes.
So when that draft gets turned in, which it hasn't been turned in yet, that draft will be the official - Second draft.
- Second draft.
- Right.
- At that point, if we're talking about you having notes or dialogue polish or jokes, that is something that is sort of par for the course, and So we're gonna pretend like everything I've done to the script so far - We're not pretending anything.
was just notes? Because I rewrote every sentence of dialogue.
A, I don't think that's true, every sentence of dialogue.
- I mean - But, B I think I rewrote it.
- But he's had, then, to but he's - Like, I sent him a rewritten script.
But that's you giv but that's you giving notes on a Final Draft document.
To your question about credits, the WGA decides credits.
So, unless Shane is officially hired as a writer, that and you guys pay for that out of your budget, then there will be only one writer on the movie, which is Dan.
I like Shane.
You know, I respect him as a director.
He's mentioned that he might want some kind of co-writing credit on this movie, and I have tell you that's absolutely ridiculous.
Shane contributed, you know, to the final screenplay.
He had thoughts, he had ideas, and he was certainly involved.
But he was never contracted as a writer on this.
And this is why the WGA it's why they have guidelines.
We work together as a writer and a director.
If you're not allowed to do that without a director trying to grab credit, you're in a lot of trouble.
WGA does an arbitration based on credits.
But what they're looking at are things like were any new characters added or deleted, were any new scenes or new sort of story structure.
When it comes to jokes in dialogue, that's usually considered production-polish-type stuff.
Which is fine.
I honestly don't give a fuck.
I don't care if my name's on it as a writer.
I don't care if I get paid for it.
I'm obviously not in this for the money.
I don't care.
I think her main question was just like legally, are we - Legally.
I'm more - Because l and I know you're saying it was just notes, and I get it.
And we can just say "it was notes.
" - He sent me a draft - Mm-hmm.
and I literally deleted characters and then created characters and then sent it back to him.
That's not notes.
Like, I rewrote it.
And if we want to say it's notes for WGA, I'm totally fine doing that.
No.
He is still doing a draft that he's been hired to do based on your notes.
He needs to turn in that draft.
- That's what that's what he's gonna do.
- We can decide what to do with that.
- And then what we do after that - Is up to us.
The work that you've done thus far is considered notes, 'cause that is the writer that has been hired to And it really and it is notes.
All I was saying to you is some people give notes over the phone, some people give written notes, some people want to go into the document and start typing on it, but at this point, you're giving notes.
He's doing he's the writer who's been hired to do a pass right now.
My question is I've just overheard that the other girl is rewriting her script and I'm like, is that is she doing notes? - Is she - No, she got her second draft from him.
He had to legally he was we had to legally offer him the option to write the second draft.
By the way, why I mean, this all sort of goes under, like, we're not supposed to be talking about the other thing.
Where did you say you heard it? We just I mean, I just know that's what she did.
The point of the conversation is that he had to legally be offered the right to write the second draft because he was the original writer according to WGA.
He accepted that job.
Learning to work with a writer is a skill.
Absolutely.
Saying, "No, I don't like that dialogue, let's change this," or whatever, that's your work as a director.
He wants to deliver a draft that pleases the director.
The important thing is that you're getting what you want.
If we get to a stage where you, the director are not pleased, and you don't think Dan the writer can get you there, that's another conversation to have.
I don't think that we're at that point yet, and I think you agree we're not at that point yet.
It was originally written as a dramedy.
Definitely not a comedy.
There was definitely a lot of drama.
And I said, "Let's save that drama for the mama.
" Let's bring in the poop jokes.
Like, if you insert one of Shane's jokes into my original script, you'd be like, "What the fuck was that on page five? Like, how did that get into this script?" And once he saw what I was going for, he got really into it.
I had to adapt and write in the style of Shane Dawson, which is a challenge.
You know, the joke-per-page ratio is just a hell of a lot higher right now.
I always get so jarred when I see Dan Schoffer's name.
Not that he didn't write this, he absolutely did.
He just cut something per Zachary Quinto's request.
Victor always uses this term called "pencils down," which it's just like at certain points you gotta put your pencils down.
The question for me is always, like, is it enough? That's where it gets really dangerous, where I just start overthinking.
And I'm like, "Is enough happening? Is it profound enough? Am I saying something good about life?" And it's just like, please.
It's a movie.
Oh, my God.
This feels really good.
This motherfucker has been stressing me out so much.
Sent.
Oh, my God.
I am so tired.
Oh, my God.
I have been really stressed out about this.
Really stressed out.
And I've been just dying for this moment where it's like, I have something that makes sense to me.
As a director, when I read it, I'm like, "Okay.
" "Be happy with the script.
" Check.
"Have explored both John Pope and Hillary Spera.
" Check.
I'm done.
#? Story's always rollin' #? Oven-ready meats, Shane Dawson.
Just gettin' my meat ready.
#? You hold it in your bones beautifully #? #? Music like a cool device to visit old homes #? #? Like pictures of dreams you might have forgot #? #? The contents of life you left outside the box #? #? When you was on a path that was tracked and sampled #? #? Sang along to that till the act was cancelled #? #? Let's catalogue the past, your time in front of the candle #? #? When you had a while to rap and cast a long shadow.
#? Fuck this.
Fuck this.
Why did I say I would do this? I don't know.
This was a terrible idea.
I am Rob, the guy one of the guys making this show, told me that I should film myself when I'm in a fear pocket.
And so I'm in one.
I'm definitely procrastinating because I think maybe if I don't pack, then I just won't have to leave.
Basically, the situation is that we went back and forth a bunch of times as to whether or not Victor should come along on this movie.
And at first it seemed like definitely not, and then it seemed like definitely yes.
And then it was like, "No.
" And at the end of the day, he we just really he had to stay here and make a living because we need to make a living.
I think right now the reason that I'm scared is just because I feel alone.
And I have to leave Victor.
Really sad to leave Victor.
Feel really weird that Our pri I mean, privacy is a huge thing, so one of my hugest fears with this experience is that somehow I will hurt someone that I love.
And I really need to pack.
Now I'm using this video diary as a way to not pack.
I get to go to Pittsburgh and live in a big house with a bunch of people I love and make a movie.
And all of this other shit is just being a shitty human.
Waves of fear even if you know you can do something, it happens.
How much am I gonna cry on this fuckin' thing? Fuck.
I think it's gonna be really good to get with my people.
It's so important to get out of your head, I think.
Get out of my head.
You can hear it right now in my voice.
I'm speaking as though this is like this terrible thing that's happening to me, which makes no sense.
It's an amazing thing that's happening to me, that I get to go direct a movie.
But when I do things like procrastinate all right, I'm going to continue this later.
First of all, I think the script is super funny, you guys.
- Yay! - It's really, really funny.
Laughed out loud.
But I do wanna talk about what your process was to decide to put yourself in the role.
Of course I wanna support it, but I do want to talk about the unique challenges that go with that.
There's so much I really want to do as this character that I couldn't imagine not playing it.
It's very personal to me 'cause it's a character that I really, really want to play and I just want to fucking go all out.
And l and I'm not scared about it.
And I probably should be.
They're going to use this in the show and they're going to cut to me freaking the fuck out.
But I'm 155% confident.
I don't know.
- I shouldn't be, but I am.
- That's great.
And you feel like your relationship with Lauren gives you everything you need there? Yeah, me and Lauren have built a relationship where she'll tell me if something was bad, she'll tell me if something is not funny.
And I love when people call me out on shit.
Well, you could potentially dial back some of the graphic nature of some of the jokes.
The raunchiness of it, for example.
And by even just shading some of the undercurrent of those jokes a little bit, you might be able to appeal to an even a bit of a wider audience.
Yeah, I mean this sounds really strange but it's so weird that the teenage girls that I've been catering to, they are so graphic and sexual and crazy.
And it's hard 'cause I kind of get lost in that because it's so fun to write.
But, yeah, these kids nowadays are different.
You know, "American Pie" was 15 years ago, so they're All right, all right, simmer down over there, okay? I don't like violence.
Is there any and I'm totally willing to tone down certain things.
I know Lauren is trying to get me to tone down everything, but - Not everything.
- I mean, is there a There's just some shit-eating.
- Just the shit-eating.
- I don't want you to sanitize it.
You know what I mean? I'm not asking you to sanitize it.
I don't want you to remove it completely.
But maybe I am just getting older and I'm not as interested in hearing it, but I do feel this is a project that's fostering attention on Pittsburgh.
I guess I just feel like there is a certain level of responsibility to that aspect of what we're making, talking about what a shithole the place is and that kind of stuff.
It's like, how can you express that kind of dissatisfaction, that frustration that plagues everyone in their early 20s? I see what you mean.
So you're saying, like, instead of Tori hating where she's coming from, it's more she's hating the people she was surrounded by.
- So it's not about, like - It's more we're hating the fact that she knows that she's capable of more.
I mean, look, I left Pittsburgh I stayed for Carnegie, but I left as soon as I graduated and got as far away as I could go.
And I get that feeling.
I had it myself.
But I always valued where I came from.
And it's minor things, really little, general things and take it or leave it.
I will support whatever decision you make ultimately.
That's why I'm here, so I just thought it was worth a mention.
But, yes, that's sort of what I mean.
Okay, cool.
What do you want in terms of an acting coach? Do you just want somebody to, like, have some conversations with and do a little work before you start shooting? Exactly.
I just want to make sure I'm interesting enough to carry this movie, because I feel like he's definitely the straight man, which I don't really play very often, so I wanna figure out how to make that work.
Mm-hmm.
Then what I'll do, if it's helpful to you, is I will send you some notes so I can be specific about some of the things I'm talking about.
And then you can use those to warm the fireplace or put them into where you feel like they'd be helpful.
That sounds no, that sounds great.
I think you're in a really great spot to make a really funny movie and I'm excited to watch you go on the journey of it.
Cool, thank you so much.
If anything comes up, you can just email me or call me or I'm sure we'll speak soon.
- All right, sounds good.
- Okay.
Good work, you guys.
Best of luck tonight.
Have a good day.
- You, too.
- Bye.
I think the main thing I got out of it was that I might have to tone it down.
I don't really know how to do that.
I guess I'll try.
He said raunchiness and overly sexual dialogue.
Every movie I've seen in the last five years like "Superbad" like, all these movies, are way dirtier than our movie.
It's not a question of you not speaking the truth, it's just a question of the Pittsburgh stuff.
Now I'm overthinking the script.
You can't overthink it because you're just gonna psych yourself out.
I usually never worry because it's always my money that I'm that the budget it's my money.
It's like going on my YouTube.
Now it's like, "Oh, it's somebody else's money and it's going in a theater, and it's their thing" and "Oh, shit.
" We went to this, like, fancy cocktail dinner where, like, all the investors were there.
They were all like, "And this is such a big project for Pittsburgh.
" And literally, Lauren was like, "All these people are going to be sitting in a theater watching a homeless guy eat shit.
" And watching a homeless guy's nutsack.
Yeah, like, can't wait to see the reaction.
I'm going to have to cut a lot of things out.
Is Anna's movie "G"? It's "G," right? Oh, crap.
I love Pittsburgh Airport.
It always feels like an '80s movie to me.
Is that better? I don't know.
I'm in a rental car that's extremely expensive, and I'll probably return it in a couple days to save Chris Moore some money.
I think Victor was really nervous for me this morning.
It's just really hard to believe that I could possibly do this job without him, because he's really in charge.
And now I'm really in charge.
And that is just insanely terrifying to me, which is why you'll be seeing a lot of crying and lot of emotions.
Because I'm right up against a wall of what I think I might be capable of.
How do I start this car? "Press brake and push button to start.
" I'm so tired of being alone.
That's all.
I'll talk to you guys later, whoever you are.
A huge component of independent film is faith faith in what you're doing and faith in who you're choosing to do it with.
Why am I doing this? Why am I a part of this? It was never designed to be this grand experiment where I'm going to put two people who can't do it, and we're just gonna create two fuckin' train wrecks.
I think Chris Moore is trying to do too much shit.
Is this movie happening? Right now there is no money in the bank.
Hard out there right now to get movies made.
Cut.
This is independent filmmaking in the truest sense.
The funds are being raised simultaneous to both of these films being set up.
For me, the point is to show the process of what these directors go through.
A lot of other things are gonna have to be snowy if this is snowy.
I think this movie's gonna be good if I just don't fuck up on week two, three, and four.
Fuck! Cut! For the sake of this experiment, we should also experiment with distribution and marketing.
No, no, dude.
You have final cut.
You can do whatever you want.
So when they come see the movie and they think it's dogshit, they're gonna ask you, "Why is it dogshit?" It's gonna be a disaster.
It's gonna be great for you guys to watch.