The Chair (2014) s01e02 Episode Script
Dollars & Decisions
"The Chair" is two directors shooting a movie from the same source material, how two different directors would take the same material and turn it into separate movies.
And what if you could really show that to people? - My name is Shane Dawson.
- My name is Anna Martemucci.
Ideally, they'll be very, very different from one another.
I have been on this whole YouTube grind for eight years now.
Shane Dawson is a 25-year-old YouTube sensation.
I had always been a writer.
I went to NYU for screenwriting.
Anna really is an example of independent filmmaking in the way it traditionally is.
I feel like I've bitten off a lot in terms of making a movie and also being filmed while making a movie.
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.
I really need some guidance here.
I need to figure out how to tell the story in the best way possible.
The DP is, like, a hugely important part in production.
Confidence in this project just went through the roof because of Hillary Spera.
Oh, my God! Oh! I've been working with Lauren for about two years.
He took his YouTube empire, if you will, as far as he could.
I'm ready to do something bigger than just the Internet.
I'm just making a pledge to share with this camera.
- That's what I signed up for.
- This is my journey.
- Hello.
- Hey, how's it going? It's good.
You're on speaker.
I've got cameras here.
Chris Moore did ask me if we could push last night, and I just was like, "No.
" He's like, "What if we did, like, a hiatus for a week?" I was like, "I'm really worried we'd lose crew.
" I'm not really terribly worried about it because I just can't be, but, I mean, I just don't feel like we can push.
Like, I just don't think so.
Right now, as far as I know, there is no money in the bank.
We need actual cash for art and costumes because a lot of those stuff that they're buying they're gonna get shit off craigslist and eBay.
I mean, they need cash.
We have the money.
We just don't have the money.
I mean, I understand that.
The money's not in the bank yet.
But he's worried about not paying people when, you know, they're starting, and I don't know how to respond to that.
All I can tell you is it changes on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis.
I know it's a combination of things, but it's like it's not us that's, you know I don't know.
Okay.
So we gotta figure some shit out, yo.
Money has been a consistent subject matter in this project.
It is an indie project that is independently financed.
The checks sort of trickle in rather than sort of getting released all at once, and so it definitely creates a little bit of drama.
I didn't raise any of the money on this, but I can talk about it.
I mean, this is independent filmmaking in the truest sense.
We have to raise the funds.
This is my fault.
I'm just too fucking busy.
If it were just us, like, if it was just our film, maybe I could see like, "Oh, fuck it, let's just throw the towel or whatever.
" But there's a TV crew.
There's another film.
There's a lot of people that are, like, sitting here, and I just think there's too much at stake.
It's been a very arduous, you know, sort of process of trying to get all the money to do all three aspects of "The Chair.
" I know Chris's credit card has been used as a little bit of a bank right now, which I think is getting a little bit out of control.
I mean, I put stuff on my credit card.
Josh has put stuff on his.
But ultimately, the answer has always been it's exactly the way the independent film business works.
We came on board and, you know, didn't know that everything was in place financially for the show or the movies.
We're gonna shoot and we're gonna assume we can work it out.
Okay.
One of the things that I believe and I know Chris Moore agrees with me on is at some point, you just gotta go do it.
That was really important to this process, that we get to Pittsburgh.
There's nothing wrong with a little optimism, is there? See me in a couple of weeks.
There were leads and I went out to Pittsburgh, and, you know, did what I could to generate further interest and get people to actually sign some checks, and Chris was pounding the pavement relentlessly.
And that came through, but, you know, every day is an adventure.
One of the really interesting aspects of "The Chair" that I think is a sort of North Star is basically like starting a company.
You start with nothing and you have an idea for what the company could be.
In this case, the company is going to create two independent films and give two directors this opportunity, and the company is going to create a documentary series that tracks the making of those two movies and hopefully explains and illuminates something about the independent filmmaking process.
Nice to meet you, too.
And thank you for everything.
And I just want you to know, with her comes the cameras.
Oh, my God.
I don't think that when you're asking people to back you and by people, I literally mean the guy in town who you're asking to write a check, they need to know that it's happening.
They need to know that it's real.
This is the real film business.
This is just another version of how movies could get made.
It's kind of a fly-by-the-seat- of-our-pants operation.
Luckily, Chris is wearing the pants.
I think we can keep that.
He has to eat his own shit.
Otherwise when he drinks his own piss later It wouldn't make any sense! And then after the credits, when he takes a dirty tampon out of the trash and eats it - It would make no sense.
- It makes no sense.
Like, I'm trying to make a movie here.
- Jesus.
- God, guys.
Maybe he could use the Find My Friend app to find his shit.
I hate you.
In my butt! Shane is hiring people, and they're starting to put their team together.
The YouTube guys and Shane himself were used to doing everything themselves.
I think it's going to be really interesting for him to work with a director of photography.
I like Frank a lot.
Frank's done music videos and other stuff.
Never done anything this big.
And with all of these jobs, there's two roles.
When you're a department head, there's the role of managing your department and there's the role of doing whatever it is your job is.
You know, Shane is going for a very young, a very energetic, excited group of people.
He's saving money by having younger people do stuff.
Heinz Field we're waiting for Chris, right? That's a big that's just Should we talk about alternatives? We need to get inside Heinz Field.
- The stadium? - Yeah.
I've got you there.
I'll get that.
Really? - All right! - Get over here.
Let me blow you.
What are you talking about? We have to pick up the camera by Monday, January 2nd.
That's not no, not January 2nd, February 2nd.
You're right, February 2nd.
Those all need to be changed.
I think Phil as the first AD is, you know, probably better on set while shooting than he is a planner.
I'm a little worried about Drew, the location manager.
You know, that's a very hard job.
By the way, Drew, I would also say to you because, A, Shane loves that house so much, and, B, it's a quarter of our shooting schedule, we shouldn't piss her off, you know what mean? Just know how important that is.
So I leave it to you to sort of determine what's the best way to get in there and how to do it.
I totally applaud Shane's ability and Lauren's to sort of embrace having more people and working with other people.
I worry a little bit that there's really nobody, except potentially Josh Shader, who has any sort of larger movie experience.
These are the cards that we put up last time.
Do you think there's any value redoing the cards for the most updated script and having it all laid out so you can see it in front of you somewhere on a wall in the production office? I don't know.
I think I'm okay with the script.
I'm still gonna be spending a lot of my time trying to close up the financing and figuring other stuff, so I am definitely not gonna be in charge daily.
My concern is there's no grown-up.
Grocery store I know that's gonna be, like, impossible.
How do you kind of see that? 'Cause it's just, like, them in the aisles and then them at the register.
Them at with the register and then we need a big front door area for her to fall with the watermelon.
Yeah.
Okay.
I think the movie set will be fun.
I think they'll have a good time.
I think they'll work really hard.
I don't think anyone's gonna complain that it's gonna be one of these annoying sets.
It may be sort of the graduate school program movie, then.
It's not a college film, but it's not 100% professional.
We wouldn't have to do much dressing Do you think Anna's having this conversation? Do we know which room we are in? I haven't even been here.
I don't know.
#? Jonathan Joseph! #? - Hey, I'm Josh.
- This is my team.
- Josh.
Jonathan.
Good to meet you, too.
- Good to meet you.
- I'm Julie.
Nice to meet you.
- Julie.
Great to meet you.
- Hey, I'm Phil.
- Phil, good to meet you, too.
Welcome to the lavishly furnished offices.
These are all a work in progress.
Josh Hetzler is someone I've known for a couple of years, and now Josh is marrying Victor's sister.
His cousin is Julie Buck, who has a tremendous amount of experience line producing, so they're like a producing duo.
I don't know how much you're aware.
There's been a cash flow issue.
Sadly, we are aware.
I should probably just get this out of the way.
I know fringe is for payroll.
We were hoping to make everyone ICs or 1099 everyone.
- For sure.
- We can't.
Why not? People are very clearly employees and because of the microscope Probably gonna be under.
That's a bit of bad news.
I had to break it.
I am sorry.
That's just a $100,000 hit on our budget of $600,000.
Can you repeat what what was it? - I missed it.
- We have to fringe everyone.
We have to fringe everybody, which means all the payroll taxes come out.
Josh brought Julie on, and they have the ability to line produce.
They literally decide how much to pay each position.
I can't hold $600,000 worth of line items in my head and make a film.
When you get the opportunity to set up a real production apparatus, you can lift the weight of the production off of the shoulders of the director.
I think all of those things take on an even greater level of importance because Anna is a first-time director, which means in order for her just to feel safe, all of the aspects of production have to feel solid underneath her.
You had mentioned just stepping back you have a DP? - Yeah.
- Great.
Yeah, we need to call Hillary, too, our DP.
That's all squared away? I mean, she's locked in? She's she is totally into it.
Her agent's like, "She's totally into it.
" So I just need to lock down the final details with her agent.
Lovely.
Moviemaking starts with coffee.
I know.
It starts with coffee and ends with coffee.
And you're getting irate.
Where's our financing?! Fuck, it's cold, man.
That's what you signed up for.
You're literally living the dream now.
I just wanna figure out how to get through this process without villainizing the TV side of things.
- I already feel an - I don't wanna be even I feel an "us against them" thing with Moore and Shader, which I don't want.
But that's not happening.
Chris Moore, it's just like he's just in so over his head.
- Oh, they're shooting us right now.
- Are they? From a window.
Yes, there is a camera on me right now.
It's like the fucking "Truman Show.
" Have they been doing that all lunch? No, he's laughing because I think he heard me.
I guess I'm on - So they could have heard - All our shit-talking.
#? Do do do.
#? - I got you some coffee already.
- Oh, you're amazing.
Hi, you've reached Chris Moore.
Leave a message after the beep.
Chris Moore, it's Josh and Julie.
Give us a call back just as soon as you are able, thank you.
To me, a director is somebody who can make decisions very fast.
I know exactly what I want.
I've never had somebody come to me with a question and I wasn't able to answer in a millisecond.
For Tori's Suburban, how old do you wanna go? Definitely older.
I like the earlier ones.
Yeah.
Okay.
Funky Town.
- Mm-hmm.
- Okay, cool.
Somebody who isn't afraid to take control, somebody who has a very clear vision and can really relate that vision to everybody that they're working with.
Can I see how the days break down on that? - Mm-hmm.
- Okay, so These are the love scenes that sets day three, which is better than day two.
But these are big dialogue scenes.
Here's the thing if we save those days for later, it'll go faster acting-wise versus if we do those first 'cause I'm gonna wanna do 100 takes of that, because we're not gonna be in it yet.
- You know what I'm saying? - Right, right.
If we're all on the same page, then the book is gonna be great.
If we're not on the same page, it's gonna be terrible.
Because those are such pivotal scenes of the movie that I'm not gonna be happy.
I'm gonna, like, be like, "Let's do it again.
Let's do it again.
" - You know what I'm saying? So - Yeah.
I don't like to overshoot.
I don't have to get the wide shot and then get in the close-ups and then I don't have to do any of that because, literally, I know every line, whether it's wide, medium or close.
And I'm only gonna be shooting those lines from those angles, and we're gonna keep moving.
Day one we have kitchen.
Scott talks to William.
Scott talking to William and JC.
I see a lot of Shot reverse.
I see a lot of just - mediums, mediums, mediums.
- Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Janie and friends, I see the same thing.
I don't want to do the typical Hollywood thing where we set up for five hours and then the shot takes two seconds, and then we set up for another five hours.
I want this to be fast because we don't have the time for that.
Ain't no one got time for that.
Is this the creativity zone? This is you.
- Yeah.
- #? Creativity zone.
#? - I'll just go over this with you, too - Does this work for you or no? - I love it.
It feels like a - Okay, good.
- Go, creativity zone.
- Whoo! I went through the script last night and I'm on page 77.
So I just have a little bit more to go.
If I could have, like, 30 minutes to finish my work on it.
You know how we were gonna do one more quick draft? By tomorrow morning, we'll have a full-on, locked script situation, which was our goal.
With Anna, I think my concerns are more personal because I know how she can lose sight of the forest through the trees.
I think it's gonna be a matter of making sure that she realizes she's surrounded by day-to-day people who keep her on track.
For her, it's a matter of just do it, just put one foot in front of the other.
It will get easier, it will get less stressful, and you'll get more used to it.
And then as that happens, hopefully, it'll be a more comfortable experience.
- Just so you know - How long has it been? It's five minutes over what I promised.
No! No! And we need to get moving because not that there's any pressure, but I just know that things are happening and we need to start to get Julie Buck needs to basically start to annotate the script, you know, from a producer, location standpoint.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Number everything.
That's why I think it's so important.
Right, but we gotta, like, literally Can she do that tomorrow morning? No.
She's gotta do that today at some point.
When are you gonna be done with this? Don't worry about what she has to do.
- Okay.
- When are you gonna be done with this? I'm on page 85.
I need, like, 20 more minutes.
20 more minutes? 30 minutes to another 20 more minutes is crazy.
- We can't do that.
- What do you want me to do? I'm not doing, like, artistic things, I'm doing, like, this character.
It'll be easier for us if we just make this all David Harrison rather than a random - hiring a random actress to play - Oh, okay.
You know what I mean? Like, it's like nuts and bolts.
Okay, so I can give you another 15 minutes.
- All right.
- And then we have to call everyone.
- 15 minutes.
- Okay.
Otherwise, we're shooting ourselves in the foot.
- 15 more minutes, I'll be back.
- Okay.
- Okay? That's all you got.
- Thank you.
Is Anna changing the script, like, adding scenes or removing scenes or removing dialogue or? No.
She promises it's just some reshaping.
I'm gonna go check on her in about 10 minutes.
Cast list and that kind of stuff for a I'll mention all of this and make sure that that's wrapped up - within the next 10 minutes.
- Don't stress her out about it.
Oh, no, I'm not gonna stress her out, don't you worry.
Half my job is shrinking that head, you know? There's no official movie credit for that.
So, dude, what is our deal with CamRock? Our Pennsylvania options I looked at Philly, and I also looked at Cleveland.
- Yeah.
- But, again, that's not PA.
- And you've come up with not much.
- Right.
The guy in Hoboken is he an individual or it's a company? - He's a company, we've I've - You've rented with him before? Yeah, through for music videos.
Well, how does it work? How do you get the gear here? - I would go get it.
Mm-hmm.
- You would go get it? Which would have to be, like, this weekend? Mm-hmm.
Which my guess is that doing a pass-through thing would probably take longer to do.
- Let me ask Jonathan about this.
- Okay.
Hey, Jonathan.
- Hey, Lauren, I stepped out real quick.
- Thank you.
So, basically, I want to talk about the bank stuff in a minute, but the reason I was calling is because I'm with Frank right now and we're just going over camera stuff.
- And there's - Okay.
There's not really you know, with all with his research and stuff, he's not finding an option to rent in Pennsylvania.
Okay.
And he's got a guy who basically can meet our quote exactly.
We had $7,000 in there for camera, and the guy is gonna the guy would do the entire camera package - With lenses.
- With lenses and everything for 7,000, which is, like, crazy cheap.
Absolutely.
We were given $600,000 to make this movie.
People think $600,000 is a lot of money, and with a movie, it's not a lot of money.
It goes so fast.
Okay, great.
So what's the deal with money? Okay.
Is Anna talking to AD girl? I don't know.
I'll check.
What do you mean? - Are you calling Siena Brown? - How was I supposed to know I was? It's on the calendar and I emailed you about it, too.
- Oh, my God.
What? - But don't worry.
- It is all good.
- Hi.
Getting ready to direct your first feature? Yeah.
Everything's like a dream.
That's great.
And you wrote this, too? You're a writer? I'm a writer, yeah.
That's how I started.
That's what I've think of myself as up until this experience.
And this is your first feature that you're directing, though? Yep, first time.
I could never AD.
- Like, it's a job.
- Oh, yeah? Why's that? I just it's kind of the opposite of my personality.
I mean, timing I need support with time.
Like, I'll get dreamy and spend forever on You know what I mean? I need someone to, like, crack the whip.
And if that was my job, I would totally suck at it.
There's gonna be these two films, - one script.
- Yeah.
And the behind the scenes is both gonna be featured on this TV show on Starz, - is that correct? - Correct.
So there's gonna be, like, a contest at the end with your guys' two projects and people vote or something? Yes, but I don't even I like to not think about that, 'cause basically we are the underdogs.
I'm looking at this as just a gift that I've been given that I get to make a movie.
Every now and then I feel self-conscious, but then I'm just like, "You're filming me," and then it's okay, you know what I mean? Like, I try to just be honest with everybody around me and try as best I can to keep myself sane and just remember how weird this is and, like, it's not normal to have cameras around you when you're directing a movie.
Reality TV has gotten to a really weird place in our culture and so you can do a million different things in an edit to make someone look a certain way or to craft a certain story around something that isn't true.
And we all know that this happens and it's very possible.
I make no secret about the fact that I am challenging myself.
This is outside of my comfort zone, and that's a good thing.
The special effect shots, like the blood The special effect shots, like the blood - Yeah.
and the the puke.
We need to be selective with our projectiles, but Yes.
Selective projectiles.
This is what happens when Shane's not here.
In order to keep with the heavy the intense schedule of all of those days, I want to see if I can bring in a special effects person specifically for those shots.
- Sure.
- You've read the script? - Yes.
- There is an effect in the party scene where the fat girl, who's eaten a bunch of different varietals of restaurants and meals, has explosive vomit all over Tori.
What's your experience with that kind of thing? Puke.
So today has been my favorite day so far.
We were testing all the vomit and blood gags.
There is more than one.
And once she actually pukes, I think she'll lean forward.
- Yeah, no, we're - 'Cause see? You can see how close we're gonna be, so I'm just impressed we are able to test this.
This is big-budge to me.
We're testing things? - Ready? - Yep.
- Set? - All right.
Ready, set, and Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
Three, two, one, puke.
We need to spray it out more.
Do a little bit more pressure? Yeah.
Yeah, a little bit more pressure.
I thought that looked like natural pressure to me, but I think if we could start the way it ended My first time doing a gag that involved puke.
I'm lying.
This is my 587.
6 time doing this gag.
I say.
6 because it was technically diarrhea, but it was still the consistency of vomit.
So, yeah, I've done this before.
I'll stand behind you.
Oh, thanks.
Hillary, the human shield.
Three, two, one.
Yeah! Fuck, yeah! That was awesome.
- That was amazing.
- That was really good.
Oh, God! Yeah! That's gonna knock her fucking eye out.
- Shane? - Yeah.
To be serious, let's talk about the are you happy with the color and the consistency? Let me watch it again.
I think it looks awesome.
So we also did a gag where my character gets his ear pierced and it goes terribly wrong, hits an artery.
He has very thin blood.
- Are you ready? - Camera's rolling.
Okay.
That wasn't so bad, was it? Oh, my God.
Of course I took the smock off.
That time we blew an intern's ear off before we started the movie.
What are tests for? And pierce.
There, that wasn't so bad, was it? Oh, my God! When I was 12, I interned on a horror movie, which is terrible.
- You were 12? - Yeah.
Well, they thought I was 18.
When I was 12, I mean, I was, like, huge and tall and like, 10 feet tall.
I've gotten shorter.
It was so weird.
I was just like, "Oh, man, one day, I wanna make a movie.
" And now we're making one.
Isn't that weird? I don't think it's weird.
I think it's awesome.
I think it's the greatest thing ever because you don't ever think that.
Like, as a 12-year-old, you're like, "This is cool.
One day, I get to do it.
" Now you are.
I just liked the movie set 'cause they had a lot of, like, snickerdoodle Chex Mix.
I just remember that.
So the craft dude was good.
- He was on point.
- Yeah.
I have fallen hard for Rob Long, and I'm wondering if he's gonna let us call him Rolo, R-O-L-O- 'cause that's the best nickname.
- Hey.
- Hello, everyone.
Oh, hello! One part we have to talk about is, like, the budget is, as you know - Really small.
tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny.
We're not really gonna have the budget - to remake any places? - No.
And why would we, really, when we're shooting in Pennsylvania? We're literally just trying to capture it rather than create it.
And I wanna shoot at Carrie Furnace, too.
- Which we can do, absolutely.
- Cool.
You've done a ton of stuff, but you haven't done a feat you haven't, like, managed a feature before? - Nope.
- This would be a first? Yep.
I think that you'll generally find us to be overprepared for things.
If you want Christmas lights, we'll have four different kinds of Christmas lights to choose from.
It was Hetzler or Phil who pointed out how cool it was that we would be both first-timers and that I should take a chance on him just like we were all taking a chance on me.
He showed up to the location scout with Mitchell Barutha, and he was right there, and we looked at all the houses together and we found, like, a billion of the locations that we needed.
Pie's in the foreground on that table and then the end of the table and then all the pies.
It's great, right? You can see pulling pies out of there.
This oven's dance card is full.
Hillary and I were talking about going really warm for the interiors and then juxtaposing it with, like, a cooler blue feeling for whenever they're expansive and outside.
Looking for locations is one of my favorite parts of the pre-production process.
I found pre-production is a little bit rough because there's so much anticipation and you're not actually doing the thing, so it's, like, a little nerve-racking.
- So whose is this? - This is Tori.
Like, a little more homey and less suburban.
This is your spot, right? That's one of my big goals is to have a movie that is fun to revisit.
If you're gonna make a movie about coming home on Thanksgiving, it better feel kind of cozy.
For me, the details are just so, so important, really defining who each of these characters were and what their lives were like up until this point where we meet them.
How much money their mom makes and how much money their dad makes.
And it was really important to me because I think that's what makes a story universal, weirdly enough.
When you really know the details of the character in a world, you get that kind of, like, universal understanding.
You get those people to laugh because they're like, "I know that girl," or, "I've been to that basement.
" Like, "I get it.
I know these people.
" We're trying to make an independent film.
This isn't a studio movie.
This isn't Hollywood at its finest.
There is no money here.
We don't have the luxury of renting out a sound stage.
We don't have the luxury of building out sets.
What we have to do is we have to find authentic locations.
That's how you make independent filmmaking work.
And fortunately for us, Pittsburgh is loaded with tons of unique architecture, tons of interesting locations that are authentic, that are real.
That's what you have to do in independent filmmaking.
You have to go find what really exists, what's really out there, and then you have to let that come through in your filmmaking.
Finding locations for me is a very new experience because on YouTube, I literally just use what I got.
My apartment I'll turn that into a McDonald's.
My backyard sure, that's Jamaica.
Like, I have to just create it, whereas now, I have all these options.
I have restaurants.
I have houses.
I have all these things that on YouTube were never available to me.
I'm just excited to put these characters into the place I saw in my head.
Lockers, the entrance place.
I'm curious, like, to look around more and see, like Yeah.
- 'Cause that front entrance was - Well, maybe the pool, too.
And the pool.
Do you know where the pool is? Yeah, it's, like, straight down.
There's a sign that says "natatorium.
" - Is there, like, a - Can I take a picture with you? Oh, sure.
Okay, can I get one, too? Shane Dawson is beloved by 15-year-olds to 20-something-year-olds, and to be with him and see him encounter some of his fans sometimes is really crazy because to have this figure who I genuinely had never heard of but is so beloved to a demographic that is so important to the projects that I'm making, it's been real eye-opening to me.
- I'm Lauren.
- Lauren, nice to hey, that's Lauren.
Nice to meet you.
- Thank you so much.
- Nice to meet you guys.
Every time somebody under the age of, like, 18 knows who I am, in all honesty, it's really cool.
It's fun because they were excited to see me, but they were more excited that I was making a movie, and they were excited that I was doing something bigger and different.
And that was really cool, because I know that, hopefully, they're gonna go watch the movie and pay for a ticket when it comes out.
Independent movies are cobbled together by a lot of different sources of capital.
We have been out looking for different product placement and sponsorship deals, one of which was American Eagle.
They actually have a store built in their offices that has all the stuff in it, it has the employees, but it's not out in public and there's no actual real customers walking around.
And so we could shoot in it, and it would be like being in a sound stage.
- It feels pretty good, right? - Oh, my God.
- Yeah, this is amazing.
- This is, like, insane.
It'll be good.
We gonna have more scenes in here now? So the movie is about kids who work at American Eagle.
The other thing, obviously, they have is the age group is exactly the kind of people that American Eagle is making clothes for.
So if we could get some of their clothes and we could dress some of the people, that would make our budget go down.
This is a semi-crude question.
- Mannequins in the lingerie store - Area.
The boobs are bigger, right? - Mmm - Are there more 'cause our first joke is going to be involving, like, a girl mannequin getting her you know, the shirt ripped off by a crazy Black Friday shopper.
Mm-hmm.
Kind of faking the audience like, "Oh, they think it's boobs, but it's a mannequin.
" Could we bring in because you have so many different types of mannequins I've seen walking through.
Yeah, we could bring one out.
I'm not sure exactly what the cup size differences are.
Okay, cool.
Rip! If it was off here, and then there was people coming in this way, and then following like this.
I think you're wearing American Eagle jeans.
I'm wearing a whole American Eagle outfit.
Oh, my God.
- I'm even wearing their underwear.
- Okay, too much.
And then the minute I get back, you have to call Hillary.
- Got it.
- Josh and Julie both said - that that's super important - Yeah.
and to make sure that I make you do that today.
- Thank you.
- Okay.
It's one of those things that I will avoid unless you make me do it 'cause I feel nervous.
There are always concerns about her ability to believe in herself enough to do what she needs to do, her ability to stop leaning on anybody else that's surrounding her and believing in her own voice and that that's the story that she wants to tell, and being confident of that.
I've been so scared Hillary's gonna be like, "You're supposed to be more prepared than this.
You're a bad director.
" Which is not gonna happen.
- Oh, my God! - Like, that's just not gonna happen.
- Let it go! - I know, it's so dumb.
I'm just realizing that, like, I am clearly I'm avoiding calling Hillary because I'm scared.
Don't go that extra step to thinking what these people think of you.
I know.
It's totally subconscious.
- I'm just recognizing it.
- Let them know how smart you are and how great your ideas are and share the vision.
- Yeah.
- All right, I'm gonna go do this.
- Please - I'll write to Mitchell.
- Yeah, please do that.
- When you get back, we call Hillary.
Yeah, you're gonna write to Mitchell and you're gonna send that thing to Mitchell, right? Yeah.
Yeah, I'm gonna send Mitchell the notes.
- Perfect.
- And the next steps.
- All right, cool.
I'll be back.
- Thanks, man.
What I'm trying to do is I don't wanna create an environment where all of a sudden, the directions that are coming from me or me managing the timeline for her is somehow useless because she doesn't see me connected to you guys.
- Right, right, right, right.
- So it's just the idea that we're always on the same page and that she'll trust me to manage her time.
I think it's just helpful to her.
- Goin'? - Good.
How are you doing? Good.
So I got the new script and I made the shot notes with the older one, but I feel like they're probably pretty similar.
Yeah, they're very, very similar.
And I don't know the best way to do it.
I mean, I kind of just, like, made general notes.
It's hard because it's just kind of dependent a little bit on blocking and also what the location's like.
Without seeing the locations, it's, you know, kind of hard.
By the way, I saw a bunch of locations today that I loved, and I think - Oh, nice.
- So it's great.
I can compile those and email them to you so you can take a look.
Sure.
Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Cool.
"Compile locations you like and send to Hillary.
" All right.
So how do we begin? Uh, that's a great question.
It's like it's so much.
It's like oh.
Do we go through the script? Hillary gave me a ton of confidence 'cause the DP is a hugely important part.
It's kind of a major, major collaboration.
You know what's more terrifying than directing a movie? Abandoned schools.
Do you think the kids knew the school was gonna be shut down? Yeah.
I'm taking a picture of this shit.
They're the fucking scariest place you will ever be.
Every room on the chalkboard said, "We'll miss you.
Good-bye.
This is our last moment.
" It's the saddest thing you'll ever see.
It smells like cancer.
We're not allowed to drink the water.
We were told that very specifically, because if you drink the water, you will die.
I hope nobody drank the water here.
- Uh-oh.
- What's wrong with it? It's been sitting in the pipes.
Hopefully, none of our extras die.
I literally vomited after I left there.
That being said, it's cheap.
It's nice enough, so we're using it.
I think as she's getting up, we kind of see Scott back there either you know, up against the wall sitting down Yeah, we can even put, like, a dolly here.
I'm happy that it's not a real high school, because real high school costs $4,000 a day, whereas this school cost us, like, two bucks 50 cents.
I think that's what it was.
And a risk of dying from cancer.
So, worth it.
I've wanted to be a director since I can't even remember.
I think I was probably five years old.
I would direct my life.
I know that sounds very creepy and almost psychopathic and maybe serial killerish, but I would just pretend like my life was a movie.
And I would pretend like my head was the camera, and I would watch everything and I would edit it in my head.
I would add music.
I would add sound effects.
I would create a storyline, you know? When my dad was being mean to me, I'd pretend like he was the villain, and when a girl rejected me, I'd pretend like I was gonna kill her.
Like, I would just create these really weird, crazy stories.
So getting the chance to actually make a real movie is, like, a huge, crazy hug to my five-year-old self.
A big hug.
He was real fat.
I can't really get my arms around him, but it's probably like that.
They want me to do an interview sesh on Saturday, and I'm tempted to be like, "Nope, I need a second to, like, sleep.
" But what else am I gonna to do, really? I mean, I'm gonna be here alone.
I was wondering if there's any reason any positives to me going back to New York with the team.
They're all going back tonight, like, in a couple hours.
I know.
I'm gonna be all alone.
I really wish you were coming this weekend.
I don't know, it does feel a little creepy to be here by myself.
- Bye, everybody.
- Bye.
- Oh, it's time? - I think the time has come.
You're just leaving me here with the camera crew.
- Uh - We'll leave eventually.
I'm just gonna stare into the camera the whole time.
- Aw - #? Meow meow meow.
#? - Bye.
- Drive safe.
- Do not go in my room! - Okay.
Bye.
Okay, it's meditation time.
How are you feeling? Everything's good? Yeah, yeah, I think locations-wise, I feel pretty good.
I'm not freaking out about anything or anything yet, so that's good.
Takes a lot to freak me out.
Like, the fact that our days have been ending around, like, 5:00? - I know shooting is gonna be crazy.
- Like days in the office.
Yeah, preproduction has been kind of, like, really easy.
- Continues when you get home.
- Yeah.
What's nice is we have a really good crew around us.
- Yeah.
- You just point people in the right direction, they get shit done.
That's like for me, I'm used to doing everything.
So having people do things, like you know, "You're working on this.
You're working on this.
She's working on this.
" So it's like I go home and I'm like, "Oh I'm good.
" It's got to be a nice change of pace, though.
Honestly this is gonna make me sound like a douchebag, but it's been like vacation.
I feel like I'm on vacation.
It's awesome.
Well, enjoy it while you can, because you got one more week.
Then you double duty.
Then you're acting and directing.
But, like, I'm excited about that.
- Oh, yeah, it's gonna be awesome.
- I'm a little tired of vacation.
In the landscape of looking for locations, especially for independent film, you're looking for a couple of different things.
You're looking for tax incentives, obviously, because it's cheaper, and you can use those locations to double for other places.
And Pittsburgh's great for that.
I grew up in Pittsburgh.
I'm from there.
It's a thrill for me to be able to come back.
The idea of building Pittsburgh up and bringing jobs there and engaging the community in support of creative opportunities with somebody, that made a lot of sense to us, having the connections and the history with the city that we do.
This is pretty awesome.
It's unbelievable.
- There's beautiful graffiti.
- There's so much graffiti.
Yeah, it's great.
They got tired of trying to fight the graffiti happening, so they've embraced it.
I can't believe this place exists.
It's so beautiful.
It's really cool.
I don't even know where to put my characters.
There's too many amazing options.
Well, yeah, let's just let's keep going.
- Keep going.
Let's do it.
- 'Cause there's a lot more to see.
It's like a madman's laboratory.
This looks a lot like the Borg Collective.
- The Borg Collective? - The Next Generation.
" Oh, of course.
What? My partner is Spock.
It's almost like this sweet pain when I go around Pittsburgh because I just wanna capture it all.
God damn, this is gorgeous! There's something so weird about Pittsburgh in the best sense of that word.
I just I love it.
So one of Hillary's ideas was in addition to having that claustrophobic versus expansive that you'd also have a little bit of contrast between warm and then cool.
I'm actually worried that people are gonna be like, "That movie was just like a big jerk-off session of gorgeous images that didn't amount to anything because it's too beautiful!" Are we gonna be able to come back here with with - With your DP and your tech team? - Yeah.
- Yeah, we'll have to.
- Okay.
Oh, fuck.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Don't do that.
You're making me nervous.
Trust me, just read an email that just came in.
Oh, no.
That is possibly the worst news we could have gotten.
- Let's take a breath.
- Okay.
- P.
Q.
- Yeah.
Um we're gonna have to do some damage control today.
Why, what happened? It looks like Hillary is pulling out of our film.
- Really? - DP Hillary, yeah.
Oh, my God.
All right, well, we're gonna have to be super strategic.
Off the top, I can tell you every other position should be filled by the end of the day so that she doesn't feel like the whole production is now not you know.
It's just not this is not great for a first-time director.
Do I need to reach out to Vic and ask about DP conversations? Let us do these first phone calls and just see if we can put somebody right away on on the map, and then we'll go to yeah.
Perfect.
Let's not mention it, obviously, to Anna.
I just got a message from Hillary that said she already sent her the email, so So Anna just hasn't even seen the email yet.
- No.
- Okay.
Julie and I are now basically in hustle mode to get anyone and everyone that we have connections to teed up for her so that we can make this replacement as swiftly as possible.
Hello, sir.
When you get this, give me a call.
This is the conversation where I beg you to come and shoot this movie.
Literally, today, at the very last moment, she just pulled out.
We are scrambling.
I hope that email is buried under seven other emails.
So right now American Eagle is pushing back.
The guy Luke that gave us the tour is, like, all about it because he can't get anybody above to sign off yet.
So we are going to act as if we don't have a closed deal with them.
Chris is like, "I really think it's gonna work out.
" - Can we shoot there? - Nothing is 100% right now.
I just don't understand why this wouldn't have been signed off in the first place.
Why are we waiting to get signed off two days before? Because I think Chris Moore is trying to do too much shit, and he's really he's trying to and it's just you can only push so far with people that are giving you stuff for free and - They haven't given us anything.
- I understand that.
But he's basically like, "You guys need to shoot, just move forward.
" She's already told me that she's got other companies that are interested in donating, and I already told her to go forward and find those companies.
I'm not too worried about the clothes.
I'm more about the location.
Yeah, right now, they don't seem in a big rush and he's like, "I'm going in there personally myself tomorrow instead of us going in and doing the show, and I'm gonna push really hard," so - This movie happening? - I mean, yes, Shane.
Like, for real? Is this movie happening? - I don't know.
Ask Jonathan.
- Is this movie happening? As far as I'm concerned, it's happening.
Should we just go back to L.
A? I feel like it's not happening.
- Shane.
- I'm serious.
I feel like nothing is fucking coming together.
I feel like every time, it's like, "Oh, no, for sure, that's totally happening.
" - The next day - This is the way it is.
"No, it's not happening.
" And I know you guys are just as frustrated as me.
I know.
But I know it's all gonna work out because that's just it has to.
But that's like it's a huge like, now we have to find, I mean, a mall or store? Don't be miffed.
It's fine.
It's the way shit goes.
Gotta roll with it.
It's not even it's more just, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
Don't worry, don't worry.
You have the store.
Keep going.
Keep working on other things.
" And we have not even looked at a backup.
I know.
Well, we'll see.
We're not shooting tomorrow.
And at the last second, you know tell me there's a chance it's not gonna happen so I get a backup.
We should just assume that there is a chance it's not gonna happen until we have confirmation on things, which is the way I've been operating in my brain.
I mean, yeah, but, no, because we haven't looked at backups for half of the things.
Sure, but we're not shooting tomorrow.
So we still have time to do so if we need to.
It sucks.
I mean, listen, we've got a big a guy who's big in that company who's all about it.
He's just like Luke is having a hard time getting people to sign off about because they just don't really understand the urgency, so Chris is like, "I'm going in there myself.
" Urgency? We're filming in, like, two weeks.
I know, but these people are not in this business.
They don't understand.
Okay - Anna? - Yeah.
We gotta have an emergency powwow.
Oh, my God.
We're gonna have a deeply uncomfortable meeting with you.
- Emergency powwow, commence.
- Emergency powwow.
- So we have some bad news.
- Oh, no.
And it's kind of significant bad news.
What is it? Hillary Spera?! - Yeah.
- Oh, my God! What's going on? - She - I have an email that says, "Hey, there," and I haven't looked at it yet 'cause I've been so swamped.
What is it, the "Hey, there"? She had apparently had a commitment on a previous project.
And that they said they had pushed, but then they called her yesterday to say that they got green-lit and it's basically starting Like, tomorrow or something crazy.
Basically as soon as she comes back that they start prep.
And so she tried to decide what she was gonna do, but it's like the difference between a big, huge, gigantic feature that's $30,000 that she's gonna get paid versus $6,000 or whatever it is on ours.
That is the bad news, and that is not great news.
All right, is it how definite is it? - It's definite.
It's definite.
- Very definite.
I just am trying not to flip this table, but It's a little rough.
Somehow I had, like, a sixth sense.
We have some action in place.
We definitely have action in place.
Okay.
We're hoping by the end of the day we will have at least three or four options for you so you can talk to people tomorrow and we can get somebody out here by next week.
So we're going with new people.
Josh and I have calls out to literally all of our DP friends saying if you have a really good suggestion for somebody who could come in that's looking for this as an opportunity, they could be really hungry for this.
This is a fucking blow.
I somehow I kind of knew.
I think I have to accept that, like, I'm gonna probably cry a lot and probably in front of people, and that's okay.
I think that I can be a leader and still have emotions.
So I'm struggling with, like, the idea that I have to hide any fear or overwhelmedness or frustration that I have, because otherwise, people will not treat me like a leader or not think that I'm a good filmmaker or something.
But I don't know, I call bullshit on that.
I feel like I'm going to experience a lot of stuff, and that's okay, and that's part of this experience.
American Eagle, did you meet with them today? Any updates? I was kicked out of the meeting.
So it went well? I was politely asked not to come.
By the end of the day, it seemed to have gone very positive.
Okay.
I don't know if you guys followed this, but they they fired the CEO.
- You told me there were some - I didn't follow that.
- How recently? - I did not know that.
- Tuesday - Oh.
- That's something.
- Of last week.
But who's they? The board? - The board.
- Right.
And they're a little bit in a power vacuum of who gets to approve shit like this.
The issue is that they wanna do it.
Everybody's totally into it.
- Okay.
- They're still totally into it.
The issue is we may have a timing problem.
To get through the malaise of who makes the decision to say, "We're part of this project.
You can shoot.
You can do the other stuff in the place," may take another four or five days.
- Okay.
- What they were saying was, "Look, we can't promise anything about the cameras," which is worrisome to me because I don't wanna waste all that time if they end up saying no or the other question is if it's not free, right? Like, part of it is if it's not free, would you guys really use all of it, right? I'm honestly less concerned about the clothes as much as I am the location.
That's fine.
That's what I said to Chris.
L honestly, I'd rather just you have the if I had a choice because the location is so perfect because it looks like a mall and it's completely controllable.
Today was a long day.
I'm really tired.
As of now, we just lost a huge location, which was the American Eagle store, which is amazing.
It's literally an American Eagle store that you would find in a shopping mall, and we had that for free and we could do whatever we wanted there, and it was the perfect scenario, and now we might not have it.
That means we have to find a replacement, which we haven't been looking for.
It means we're gonna have to spend money, which we don't have, and I'm really nervous about that because it's a big scene.
It's like a four-page scene, and now we might not have a store.
That's not good.
And I'm nervous because it was told to us that we were going to have it for sure.
We went there, we did the walkthrough, we did everything, and now it's not happening.
What I'm not used to is not doing everything by myself.
I am used to me dropping the ball.
I'm not used to having other people drop the ball because usually I'm the only one with the ball.
So now when something is fucked up or something is wrong or somebody drops the ball, now I have to try to pick up the pieces, whereas usually I'm doing everything myself.
I'm finding the locations.
I'm funding it.
I'm doing everything.
Whereas now there's so many people to depend on that if one of them fucks up, we're all fucked.
And what if you could really show that to people? - My name is Shane Dawson.
- My name is Anna Martemucci.
Ideally, they'll be very, very different from one another.
I have been on this whole YouTube grind for eight years now.
Shane Dawson is a 25-year-old YouTube sensation.
I had always been a writer.
I went to NYU for screenwriting.
Anna really is an example of independent filmmaking in the way it traditionally is.
I feel like I've bitten off a lot in terms of making a movie and also being filmed while making a movie.
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.
I really need some guidance here.
I need to figure out how to tell the story in the best way possible.
The DP is, like, a hugely important part in production.
Confidence in this project just went through the roof because of Hillary Spera.
Oh, my God! Oh! I've been working with Lauren for about two years.
He took his YouTube empire, if you will, as far as he could.
I'm ready to do something bigger than just the Internet.
I'm just making a pledge to share with this camera.
- That's what I signed up for.
- This is my journey.
- Hello.
- Hey, how's it going? It's good.
You're on speaker.
I've got cameras here.
Chris Moore did ask me if we could push last night, and I just was like, "No.
" He's like, "What if we did, like, a hiatus for a week?" I was like, "I'm really worried we'd lose crew.
" I'm not really terribly worried about it because I just can't be, but, I mean, I just don't feel like we can push.
Like, I just don't think so.
Right now, as far as I know, there is no money in the bank.
We need actual cash for art and costumes because a lot of those stuff that they're buying they're gonna get shit off craigslist and eBay.
I mean, they need cash.
We have the money.
We just don't have the money.
I mean, I understand that.
The money's not in the bank yet.
But he's worried about not paying people when, you know, they're starting, and I don't know how to respond to that.
All I can tell you is it changes on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis.
I know it's a combination of things, but it's like it's not us that's, you know I don't know.
Okay.
So we gotta figure some shit out, yo.
Money has been a consistent subject matter in this project.
It is an indie project that is independently financed.
The checks sort of trickle in rather than sort of getting released all at once, and so it definitely creates a little bit of drama.
I didn't raise any of the money on this, but I can talk about it.
I mean, this is independent filmmaking in the truest sense.
We have to raise the funds.
This is my fault.
I'm just too fucking busy.
If it were just us, like, if it was just our film, maybe I could see like, "Oh, fuck it, let's just throw the towel or whatever.
" But there's a TV crew.
There's another film.
There's a lot of people that are, like, sitting here, and I just think there's too much at stake.
It's been a very arduous, you know, sort of process of trying to get all the money to do all three aspects of "The Chair.
" I know Chris's credit card has been used as a little bit of a bank right now, which I think is getting a little bit out of control.
I mean, I put stuff on my credit card.
Josh has put stuff on his.
But ultimately, the answer has always been it's exactly the way the independent film business works.
We came on board and, you know, didn't know that everything was in place financially for the show or the movies.
We're gonna shoot and we're gonna assume we can work it out.
Okay.
One of the things that I believe and I know Chris Moore agrees with me on is at some point, you just gotta go do it.
That was really important to this process, that we get to Pittsburgh.
There's nothing wrong with a little optimism, is there? See me in a couple of weeks.
There were leads and I went out to Pittsburgh, and, you know, did what I could to generate further interest and get people to actually sign some checks, and Chris was pounding the pavement relentlessly.
And that came through, but, you know, every day is an adventure.
One of the really interesting aspects of "The Chair" that I think is a sort of North Star is basically like starting a company.
You start with nothing and you have an idea for what the company could be.
In this case, the company is going to create two independent films and give two directors this opportunity, and the company is going to create a documentary series that tracks the making of those two movies and hopefully explains and illuminates something about the independent filmmaking process.
Nice to meet you, too.
And thank you for everything.
And I just want you to know, with her comes the cameras.
Oh, my God.
I don't think that when you're asking people to back you and by people, I literally mean the guy in town who you're asking to write a check, they need to know that it's happening.
They need to know that it's real.
This is the real film business.
This is just another version of how movies could get made.
It's kind of a fly-by-the-seat- of-our-pants operation.
Luckily, Chris is wearing the pants.
I think we can keep that.
He has to eat his own shit.
Otherwise when he drinks his own piss later It wouldn't make any sense! And then after the credits, when he takes a dirty tampon out of the trash and eats it - It would make no sense.
- It makes no sense.
Like, I'm trying to make a movie here.
- Jesus.
- God, guys.
Maybe he could use the Find My Friend app to find his shit.
I hate you.
In my butt! Shane is hiring people, and they're starting to put their team together.
The YouTube guys and Shane himself were used to doing everything themselves.
I think it's going to be really interesting for him to work with a director of photography.
I like Frank a lot.
Frank's done music videos and other stuff.
Never done anything this big.
And with all of these jobs, there's two roles.
When you're a department head, there's the role of managing your department and there's the role of doing whatever it is your job is.
You know, Shane is going for a very young, a very energetic, excited group of people.
He's saving money by having younger people do stuff.
Heinz Field we're waiting for Chris, right? That's a big that's just Should we talk about alternatives? We need to get inside Heinz Field.
- The stadium? - Yeah.
I've got you there.
I'll get that.
Really? - All right! - Get over here.
Let me blow you.
What are you talking about? We have to pick up the camera by Monday, January 2nd.
That's not no, not January 2nd, February 2nd.
You're right, February 2nd.
Those all need to be changed.
I think Phil as the first AD is, you know, probably better on set while shooting than he is a planner.
I'm a little worried about Drew, the location manager.
You know, that's a very hard job.
By the way, Drew, I would also say to you because, A, Shane loves that house so much, and, B, it's a quarter of our shooting schedule, we shouldn't piss her off, you know what mean? Just know how important that is.
So I leave it to you to sort of determine what's the best way to get in there and how to do it.
I totally applaud Shane's ability and Lauren's to sort of embrace having more people and working with other people.
I worry a little bit that there's really nobody, except potentially Josh Shader, who has any sort of larger movie experience.
These are the cards that we put up last time.
Do you think there's any value redoing the cards for the most updated script and having it all laid out so you can see it in front of you somewhere on a wall in the production office? I don't know.
I think I'm okay with the script.
I'm still gonna be spending a lot of my time trying to close up the financing and figuring other stuff, so I am definitely not gonna be in charge daily.
My concern is there's no grown-up.
Grocery store I know that's gonna be, like, impossible.
How do you kind of see that? 'Cause it's just, like, them in the aisles and then them at the register.
Them at with the register and then we need a big front door area for her to fall with the watermelon.
Yeah.
Okay.
I think the movie set will be fun.
I think they'll have a good time.
I think they'll work really hard.
I don't think anyone's gonna complain that it's gonna be one of these annoying sets.
It may be sort of the graduate school program movie, then.
It's not a college film, but it's not 100% professional.
We wouldn't have to do much dressing Do you think Anna's having this conversation? Do we know which room we are in? I haven't even been here.
I don't know.
#? Jonathan Joseph! #? - Hey, I'm Josh.
- This is my team.
- Josh.
Jonathan.
Good to meet you, too.
- Good to meet you.
- I'm Julie.
Nice to meet you.
- Julie.
Great to meet you.
- Hey, I'm Phil.
- Phil, good to meet you, too.
Welcome to the lavishly furnished offices.
These are all a work in progress.
Josh Hetzler is someone I've known for a couple of years, and now Josh is marrying Victor's sister.
His cousin is Julie Buck, who has a tremendous amount of experience line producing, so they're like a producing duo.
I don't know how much you're aware.
There's been a cash flow issue.
Sadly, we are aware.
I should probably just get this out of the way.
I know fringe is for payroll.
We were hoping to make everyone ICs or 1099 everyone.
- For sure.
- We can't.
Why not? People are very clearly employees and because of the microscope Probably gonna be under.
That's a bit of bad news.
I had to break it.
I am sorry.
That's just a $100,000 hit on our budget of $600,000.
Can you repeat what what was it? - I missed it.
- We have to fringe everyone.
We have to fringe everybody, which means all the payroll taxes come out.
Josh brought Julie on, and they have the ability to line produce.
They literally decide how much to pay each position.
I can't hold $600,000 worth of line items in my head and make a film.
When you get the opportunity to set up a real production apparatus, you can lift the weight of the production off of the shoulders of the director.
I think all of those things take on an even greater level of importance because Anna is a first-time director, which means in order for her just to feel safe, all of the aspects of production have to feel solid underneath her.
You had mentioned just stepping back you have a DP? - Yeah.
- Great.
Yeah, we need to call Hillary, too, our DP.
That's all squared away? I mean, she's locked in? She's she is totally into it.
Her agent's like, "She's totally into it.
" So I just need to lock down the final details with her agent.
Lovely.
Moviemaking starts with coffee.
I know.
It starts with coffee and ends with coffee.
And you're getting irate.
Where's our financing?! Fuck, it's cold, man.
That's what you signed up for.
You're literally living the dream now.
I just wanna figure out how to get through this process without villainizing the TV side of things.
- I already feel an - I don't wanna be even I feel an "us against them" thing with Moore and Shader, which I don't want.
But that's not happening.
Chris Moore, it's just like he's just in so over his head.
- Oh, they're shooting us right now.
- Are they? From a window.
Yes, there is a camera on me right now.
It's like the fucking "Truman Show.
" Have they been doing that all lunch? No, he's laughing because I think he heard me.
I guess I'm on - So they could have heard - All our shit-talking.
#? Do do do.
#? - I got you some coffee already.
- Oh, you're amazing.
Hi, you've reached Chris Moore.
Leave a message after the beep.
Chris Moore, it's Josh and Julie.
Give us a call back just as soon as you are able, thank you.
To me, a director is somebody who can make decisions very fast.
I know exactly what I want.
I've never had somebody come to me with a question and I wasn't able to answer in a millisecond.
For Tori's Suburban, how old do you wanna go? Definitely older.
I like the earlier ones.
Yeah.
Okay.
Funky Town.
- Mm-hmm.
- Okay, cool.
Somebody who isn't afraid to take control, somebody who has a very clear vision and can really relate that vision to everybody that they're working with.
Can I see how the days break down on that? - Mm-hmm.
- Okay, so These are the love scenes that sets day three, which is better than day two.
But these are big dialogue scenes.
Here's the thing if we save those days for later, it'll go faster acting-wise versus if we do those first 'cause I'm gonna wanna do 100 takes of that, because we're not gonna be in it yet.
- You know what I'm saying? - Right, right.
If we're all on the same page, then the book is gonna be great.
If we're not on the same page, it's gonna be terrible.
Because those are such pivotal scenes of the movie that I'm not gonna be happy.
I'm gonna, like, be like, "Let's do it again.
Let's do it again.
" - You know what I'm saying? So - Yeah.
I don't like to overshoot.
I don't have to get the wide shot and then get in the close-ups and then I don't have to do any of that because, literally, I know every line, whether it's wide, medium or close.
And I'm only gonna be shooting those lines from those angles, and we're gonna keep moving.
Day one we have kitchen.
Scott talks to William.
Scott talking to William and JC.
I see a lot of Shot reverse.
I see a lot of just - mediums, mediums, mediums.
- Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Janie and friends, I see the same thing.
I don't want to do the typical Hollywood thing where we set up for five hours and then the shot takes two seconds, and then we set up for another five hours.
I want this to be fast because we don't have the time for that.
Ain't no one got time for that.
Is this the creativity zone? This is you.
- Yeah.
- #? Creativity zone.
#? - I'll just go over this with you, too - Does this work for you or no? - I love it.
It feels like a - Okay, good.
- Go, creativity zone.
- Whoo! I went through the script last night and I'm on page 77.
So I just have a little bit more to go.
If I could have, like, 30 minutes to finish my work on it.
You know how we were gonna do one more quick draft? By tomorrow morning, we'll have a full-on, locked script situation, which was our goal.
With Anna, I think my concerns are more personal because I know how she can lose sight of the forest through the trees.
I think it's gonna be a matter of making sure that she realizes she's surrounded by day-to-day people who keep her on track.
For her, it's a matter of just do it, just put one foot in front of the other.
It will get easier, it will get less stressful, and you'll get more used to it.
And then as that happens, hopefully, it'll be a more comfortable experience.
- Just so you know - How long has it been? It's five minutes over what I promised.
No! No! And we need to get moving because not that there's any pressure, but I just know that things are happening and we need to start to get Julie Buck needs to basically start to annotate the script, you know, from a producer, location standpoint.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Number everything.
That's why I think it's so important.
Right, but we gotta, like, literally Can she do that tomorrow morning? No.
She's gotta do that today at some point.
When are you gonna be done with this? Don't worry about what she has to do.
- Okay.
- When are you gonna be done with this? I'm on page 85.
I need, like, 20 more minutes.
20 more minutes? 30 minutes to another 20 more minutes is crazy.
- We can't do that.
- What do you want me to do? I'm not doing, like, artistic things, I'm doing, like, this character.
It'll be easier for us if we just make this all David Harrison rather than a random - hiring a random actress to play - Oh, okay.
You know what I mean? Like, it's like nuts and bolts.
Okay, so I can give you another 15 minutes.
- All right.
- And then we have to call everyone.
- 15 minutes.
- Okay.
Otherwise, we're shooting ourselves in the foot.
- 15 more minutes, I'll be back.
- Okay.
- Okay? That's all you got.
- Thank you.
Is Anna changing the script, like, adding scenes or removing scenes or removing dialogue or? No.
She promises it's just some reshaping.
I'm gonna go check on her in about 10 minutes.
Cast list and that kind of stuff for a I'll mention all of this and make sure that that's wrapped up - within the next 10 minutes.
- Don't stress her out about it.
Oh, no, I'm not gonna stress her out, don't you worry.
Half my job is shrinking that head, you know? There's no official movie credit for that.
So, dude, what is our deal with CamRock? Our Pennsylvania options I looked at Philly, and I also looked at Cleveland.
- Yeah.
- But, again, that's not PA.
- And you've come up with not much.
- Right.
The guy in Hoboken is he an individual or it's a company? - He's a company, we've I've - You've rented with him before? Yeah, through for music videos.
Well, how does it work? How do you get the gear here? - I would go get it.
Mm-hmm.
- You would go get it? Which would have to be, like, this weekend? Mm-hmm.
Which my guess is that doing a pass-through thing would probably take longer to do.
- Let me ask Jonathan about this.
- Okay.
Hey, Jonathan.
- Hey, Lauren, I stepped out real quick.
- Thank you.
So, basically, I want to talk about the bank stuff in a minute, but the reason I was calling is because I'm with Frank right now and we're just going over camera stuff.
- And there's - Okay.
There's not really you know, with all with his research and stuff, he's not finding an option to rent in Pennsylvania.
Okay.
And he's got a guy who basically can meet our quote exactly.
We had $7,000 in there for camera, and the guy is gonna the guy would do the entire camera package - With lenses.
- With lenses and everything for 7,000, which is, like, crazy cheap.
Absolutely.
We were given $600,000 to make this movie.
People think $600,000 is a lot of money, and with a movie, it's not a lot of money.
It goes so fast.
Okay, great.
So what's the deal with money? Okay.
Is Anna talking to AD girl? I don't know.
I'll check.
What do you mean? - Are you calling Siena Brown? - How was I supposed to know I was? It's on the calendar and I emailed you about it, too.
- Oh, my God.
What? - But don't worry.
- It is all good.
- Hi.
Getting ready to direct your first feature? Yeah.
Everything's like a dream.
That's great.
And you wrote this, too? You're a writer? I'm a writer, yeah.
That's how I started.
That's what I've think of myself as up until this experience.
And this is your first feature that you're directing, though? Yep, first time.
I could never AD.
- Like, it's a job.
- Oh, yeah? Why's that? I just it's kind of the opposite of my personality.
I mean, timing I need support with time.
Like, I'll get dreamy and spend forever on You know what I mean? I need someone to, like, crack the whip.
And if that was my job, I would totally suck at it.
There's gonna be these two films, - one script.
- Yeah.
And the behind the scenes is both gonna be featured on this TV show on Starz, - is that correct? - Correct.
So there's gonna be, like, a contest at the end with your guys' two projects and people vote or something? Yes, but I don't even I like to not think about that, 'cause basically we are the underdogs.
I'm looking at this as just a gift that I've been given that I get to make a movie.
Every now and then I feel self-conscious, but then I'm just like, "You're filming me," and then it's okay, you know what I mean? Like, I try to just be honest with everybody around me and try as best I can to keep myself sane and just remember how weird this is and, like, it's not normal to have cameras around you when you're directing a movie.
Reality TV has gotten to a really weird place in our culture and so you can do a million different things in an edit to make someone look a certain way or to craft a certain story around something that isn't true.
And we all know that this happens and it's very possible.
I make no secret about the fact that I am challenging myself.
This is outside of my comfort zone, and that's a good thing.
The special effect shots, like the blood The special effect shots, like the blood - Yeah.
and the the puke.
We need to be selective with our projectiles, but Yes.
Selective projectiles.
This is what happens when Shane's not here.
In order to keep with the heavy the intense schedule of all of those days, I want to see if I can bring in a special effects person specifically for those shots.
- Sure.
- You've read the script? - Yes.
- There is an effect in the party scene where the fat girl, who's eaten a bunch of different varietals of restaurants and meals, has explosive vomit all over Tori.
What's your experience with that kind of thing? Puke.
So today has been my favorite day so far.
We were testing all the vomit and blood gags.
There is more than one.
And once she actually pukes, I think she'll lean forward.
- Yeah, no, we're - 'Cause see? You can see how close we're gonna be, so I'm just impressed we are able to test this.
This is big-budge to me.
We're testing things? - Ready? - Yep.
- Set? - All right.
Ready, set, and Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
Three, two, one, puke.
We need to spray it out more.
Do a little bit more pressure? Yeah.
Yeah, a little bit more pressure.
I thought that looked like natural pressure to me, but I think if we could start the way it ended My first time doing a gag that involved puke.
I'm lying.
This is my 587.
6 time doing this gag.
I say.
6 because it was technically diarrhea, but it was still the consistency of vomit.
So, yeah, I've done this before.
I'll stand behind you.
Oh, thanks.
Hillary, the human shield.
Three, two, one.
Yeah! Fuck, yeah! That was awesome.
- That was amazing.
- That was really good.
Oh, God! Yeah! That's gonna knock her fucking eye out.
- Shane? - Yeah.
To be serious, let's talk about the are you happy with the color and the consistency? Let me watch it again.
I think it looks awesome.
So we also did a gag where my character gets his ear pierced and it goes terribly wrong, hits an artery.
He has very thin blood.
- Are you ready? - Camera's rolling.
Okay.
That wasn't so bad, was it? Oh, my God.
Of course I took the smock off.
That time we blew an intern's ear off before we started the movie.
What are tests for? And pierce.
There, that wasn't so bad, was it? Oh, my God! When I was 12, I interned on a horror movie, which is terrible.
- You were 12? - Yeah.
Well, they thought I was 18.
When I was 12, I mean, I was, like, huge and tall and like, 10 feet tall.
I've gotten shorter.
It was so weird.
I was just like, "Oh, man, one day, I wanna make a movie.
" And now we're making one.
Isn't that weird? I don't think it's weird.
I think it's awesome.
I think it's the greatest thing ever because you don't ever think that.
Like, as a 12-year-old, you're like, "This is cool.
One day, I get to do it.
" Now you are.
I just liked the movie set 'cause they had a lot of, like, snickerdoodle Chex Mix.
I just remember that.
So the craft dude was good.
- He was on point.
- Yeah.
I have fallen hard for Rob Long, and I'm wondering if he's gonna let us call him Rolo, R-O-L-O- 'cause that's the best nickname.
- Hey.
- Hello, everyone.
Oh, hello! One part we have to talk about is, like, the budget is, as you know - Really small.
tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny.
We're not really gonna have the budget - to remake any places? - No.
And why would we, really, when we're shooting in Pennsylvania? We're literally just trying to capture it rather than create it.
And I wanna shoot at Carrie Furnace, too.
- Which we can do, absolutely.
- Cool.
You've done a ton of stuff, but you haven't done a feat you haven't, like, managed a feature before? - Nope.
- This would be a first? Yep.
I think that you'll generally find us to be overprepared for things.
If you want Christmas lights, we'll have four different kinds of Christmas lights to choose from.
It was Hetzler or Phil who pointed out how cool it was that we would be both first-timers and that I should take a chance on him just like we were all taking a chance on me.
He showed up to the location scout with Mitchell Barutha, and he was right there, and we looked at all the houses together and we found, like, a billion of the locations that we needed.
Pie's in the foreground on that table and then the end of the table and then all the pies.
It's great, right? You can see pulling pies out of there.
This oven's dance card is full.
Hillary and I were talking about going really warm for the interiors and then juxtaposing it with, like, a cooler blue feeling for whenever they're expansive and outside.
Looking for locations is one of my favorite parts of the pre-production process.
I found pre-production is a little bit rough because there's so much anticipation and you're not actually doing the thing, so it's, like, a little nerve-racking.
- So whose is this? - This is Tori.
Like, a little more homey and less suburban.
This is your spot, right? That's one of my big goals is to have a movie that is fun to revisit.
If you're gonna make a movie about coming home on Thanksgiving, it better feel kind of cozy.
For me, the details are just so, so important, really defining who each of these characters were and what their lives were like up until this point where we meet them.
How much money their mom makes and how much money their dad makes.
And it was really important to me because I think that's what makes a story universal, weirdly enough.
When you really know the details of the character in a world, you get that kind of, like, universal understanding.
You get those people to laugh because they're like, "I know that girl," or, "I've been to that basement.
" Like, "I get it.
I know these people.
" We're trying to make an independent film.
This isn't a studio movie.
This isn't Hollywood at its finest.
There is no money here.
We don't have the luxury of renting out a sound stage.
We don't have the luxury of building out sets.
What we have to do is we have to find authentic locations.
That's how you make independent filmmaking work.
And fortunately for us, Pittsburgh is loaded with tons of unique architecture, tons of interesting locations that are authentic, that are real.
That's what you have to do in independent filmmaking.
You have to go find what really exists, what's really out there, and then you have to let that come through in your filmmaking.
Finding locations for me is a very new experience because on YouTube, I literally just use what I got.
My apartment I'll turn that into a McDonald's.
My backyard sure, that's Jamaica.
Like, I have to just create it, whereas now, I have all these options.
I have restaurants.
I have houses.
I have all these things that on YouTube were never available to me.
I'm just excited to put these characters into the place I saw in my head.
Lockers, the entrance place.
I'm curious, like, to look around more and see, like Yeah.
- 'Cause that front entrance was - Well, maybe the pool, too.
And the pool.
Do you know where the pool is? Yeah, it's, like, straight down.
There's a sign that says "natatorium.
" - Is there, like, a - Can I take a picture with you? Oh, sure.
Okay, can I get one, too? Shane Dawson is beloved by 15-year-olds to 20-something-year-olds, and to be with him and see him encounter some of his fans sometimes is really crazy because to have this figure who I genuinely had never heard of but is so beloved to a demographic that is so important to the projects that I'm making, it's been real eye-opening to me.
- I'm Lauren.
- Lauren, nice to hey, that's Lauren.
Nice to meet you.
- Thank you so much.
- Nice to meet you guys.
Every time somebody under the age of, like, 18 knows who I am, in all honesty, it's really cool.
It's fun because they were excited to see me, but they were more excited that I was making a movie, and they were excited that I was doing something bigger and different.
And that was really cool, because I know that, hopefully, they're gonna go watch the movie and pay for a ticket when it comes out.
Independent movies are cobbled together by a lot of different sources of capital.
We have been out looking for different product placement and sponsorship deals, one of which was American Eagle.
They actually have a store built in their offices that has all the stuff in it, it has the employees, but it's not out in public and there's no actual real customers walking around.
And so we could shoot in it, and it would be like being in a sound stage.
- It feels pretty good, right? - Oh, my God.
- Yeah, this is amazing.
- This is, like, insane.
It'll be good.
We gonna have more scenes in here now? So the movie is about kids who work at American Eagle.
The other thing, obviously, they have is the age group is exactly the kind of people that American Eagle is making clothes for.
So if we could get some of their clothes and we could dress some of the people, that would make our budget go down.
This is a semi-crude question.
- Mannequins in the lingerie store - Area.
The boobs are bigger, right? - Mmm - Are there more 'cause our first joke is going to be involving, like, a girl mannequin getting her you know, the shirt ripped off by a crazy Black Friday shopper.
Mm-hmm.
Kind of faking the audience like, "Oh, they think it's boobs, but it's a mannequin.
" Could we bring in because you have so many different types of mannequins I've seen walking through.
Yeah, we could bring one out.
I'm not sure exactly what the cup size differences are.
Okay, cool.
Rip! If it was off here, and then there was people coming in this way, and then following like this.
I think you're wearing American Eagle jeans.
I'm wearing a whole American Eagle outfit.
Oh, my God.
- I'm even wearing their underwear.
- Okay, too much.
And then the minute I get back, you have to call Hillary.
- Got it.
- Josh and Julie both said - that that's super important - Yeah.
and to make sure that I make you do that today.
- Thank you.
- Okay.
It's one of those things that I will avoid unless you make me do it 'cause I feel nervous.
There are always concerns about her ability to believe in herself enough to do what she needs to do, her ability to stop leaning on anybody else that's surrounding her and believing in her own voice and that that's the story that she wants to tell, and being confident of that.
I've been so scared Hillary's gonna be like, "You're supposed to be more prepared than this.
You're a bad director.
" Which is not gonna happen.
- Oh, my God! - Like, that's just not gonna happen.
- Let it go! - I know, it's so dumb.
I'm just realizing that, like, I am clearly I'm avoiding calling Hillary because I'm scared.
Don't go that extra step to thinking what these people think of you.
I know.
It's totally subconscious.
- I'm just recognizing it.
- Let them know how smart you are and how great your ideas are and share the vision.
- Yeah.
- All right, I'm gonna go do this.
- Please - I'll write to Mitchell.
- Yeah, please do that.
- When you get back, we call Hillary.
Yeah, you're gonna write to Mitchell and you're gonna send that thing to Mitchell, right? Yeah.
Yeah, I'm gonna send Mitchell the notes.
- Perfect.
- And the next steps.
- All right, cool.
I'll be back.
- Thanks, man.
What I'm trying to do is I don't wanna create an environment where all of a sudden, the directions that are coming from me or me managing the timeline for her is somehow useless because she doesn't see me connected to you guys.
- Right, right, right, right.
- So it's just the idea that we're always on the same page and that she'll trust me to manage her time.
I think it's just helpful to her.
- Goin'? - Good.
How are you doing? Good.
So I got the new script and I made the shot notes with the older one, but I feel like they're probably pretty similar.
Yeah, they're very, very similar.
And I don't know the best way to do it.
I mean, I kind of just, like, made general notes.
It's hard because it's just kind of dependent a little bit on blocking and also what the location's like.
Without seeing the locations, it's, you know, kind of hard.
By the way, I saw a bunch of locations today that I loved, and I think - Oh, nice.
- So it's great.
I can compile those and email them to you so you can take a look.
Sure.
Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Cool.
"Compile locations you like and send to Hillary.
" All right.
So how do we begin? Uh, that's a great question.
It's like it's so much.
It's like oh.
Do we go through the script? Hillary gave me a ton of confidence 'cause the DP is a hugely important part.
It's kind of a major, major collaboration.
You know what's more terrifying than directing a movie? Abandoned schools.
Do you think the kids knew the school was gonna be shut down? Yeah.
I'm taking a picture of this shit.
They're the fucking scariest place you will ever be.
Every room on the chalkboard said, "We'll miss you.
Good-bye.
This is our last moment.
" It's the saddest thing you'll ever see.
It smells like cancer.
We're not allowed to drink the water.
We were told that very specifically, because if you drink the water, you will die.
I hope nobody drank the water here.
- Uh-oh.
- What's wrong with it? It's been sitting in the pipes.
Hopefully, none of our extras die.
I literally vomited after I left there.
That being said, it's cheap.
It's nice enough, so we're using it.
I think as she's getting up, we kind of see Scott back there either you know, up against the wall sitting down Yeah, we can even put, like, a dolly here.
I'm happy that it's not a real high school, because real high school costs $4,000 a day, whereas this school cost us, like, two bucks 50 cents.
I think that's what it was.
And a risk of dying from cancer.
So, worth it.
I've wanted to be a director since I can't even remember.
I think I was probably five years old.
I would direct my life.
I know that sounds very creepy and almost psychopathic and maybe serial killerish, but I would just pretend like my life was a movie.
And I would pretend like my head was the camera, and I would watch everything and I would edit it in my head.
I would add music.
I would add sound effects.
I would create a storyline, you know? When my dad was being mean to me, I'd pretend like he was the villain, and when a girl rejected me, I'd pretend like I was gonna kill her.
Like, I would just create these really weird, crazy stories.
So getting the chance to actually make a real movie is, like, a huge, crazy hug to my five-year-old self.
A big hug.
He was real fat.
I can't really get my arms around him, but it's probably like that.
They want me to do an interview sesh on Saturday, and I'm tempted to be like, "Nope, I need a second to, like, sleep.
" But what else am I gonna to do, really? I mean, I'm gonna be here alone.
I was wondering if there's any reason any positives to me going back to New York with the team.
They're all going back tonight, like, in a couple hours.
I know.
I'm gonna be all alone.
I really wish you were coming this weekend.
I don't know, it does feel a little creepy to be here by myself.
- Bye, everybody.
- Bye.
- Oh, it's time? - I think the time has come.
You're just leaving me here with the camera crew.
- Uh - We'll leave eventually.
I'm just gonna stare into the camera the whole time.
- Aw - #? Meow meow meow.
#? - Bye.
- Drive safe.
- Do not go in my room! - Okay.
Bye.
Okay, it's meditation time.
How are you feeling? Everything's good? Yeah, yeah, I think locations-wise, I feel pretty good.
I'm not freaking out about anything or anything yet, so that's good.
Takes a lot to freak me out.
Like, the fact that our days have been ending around, like, 5:00? - I know shooting is gonna be crazy.
- Like days in the office.
Yeah, preproduction has been kind of, like, really easy.
- Continues when you get home.
- Yeah.
What's nice is we have a really good crew around us.
- Yeah.
- You just point people in the right direction, they get shit done.
That's like for me, I'm used to doing everything.
So having people do things, like you know, "You're working on this.
You're working on this.
She's working on this.
" So it's like I go home and I'm like, "Oh I'm good.
" It's got to be a nice change of pace, though.
Honestly this is gonna make me sound like a douchebag, but it's been like vacation.
I feel like I'm on vacation.
It's awesome.
Well, enjoy it while you can, because you got one more week.
Then you double duty.
Then you're acting and directing.
But, like, I'm excited about that.
- Oh, yeah, it's gonna be awesome.
- I'm a little tired of vacation.
In the landscape of looking for locations, especially for independent film, you're looking for a couple of different things.
You're looking for tax incentives, obviously, because it's cheaper, and you can use those locations to double for other places.
And Pittsburgh's great for that.
I grew up in Pittsburgh.
I'm from there.
It's a thrill for me to be able to come back.
The idea of building Pittsburgh up and bringing jobs there and engaging the community in support of creative opportunities with somebody, that made a lot of sense to us, having the connections and the history with the city that we do.
This is pretty awesome.
It's unbelievable.
- There's beautiful graffiti.
- There's so much graffiti.
Yeah, it's great.
They got tired of trying to fight the graffiti happening, so they've embraced it.
I can't believe this place exists.
It's so beautiful.
It's really cool.
I don't even know where to put my characters.
There's too many amazing options.
Well, yeah, let's just let's keep going.
- Keep going.
Let's do it.
- 'Cause there's a lot more to see.
It's like a madman's laboratory.
This looks a lot like the Borg Collective.
- The Borg Collective? - The Next Generation.
" Oh, of course.
What? My partner is Spock.
It's almost like this sweet pain when I go around Pittsburgh because I just wanna capture it all.
God damn, this is gorgeous! There's something so weird about Pittsburgh in the best sense of that word.
I just I love it.
So one of Hillary's ideas was in addition to having that claustrophobic versus expansive that you'd also have a little bit of contrast between warm and then cool.
I'm actually worried that people are gonna be like, "That movie was just like a big jerk-off session of gorgeous images that didn't amount to anything because it's too beautiful!" Are we gonna be able to come back here with with - With your DP and your tech team? - Yeah.
- Yeah, we'll have to.
- Okay.
Oh, fuck.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Don't do that.
You're making me nervous.
Trust me, just read an email that just came in.
Oh, no.
That is possibly the worst news we could have gotten.
- Let's take a breath.
- Okay.
- P.
Q.
- Yeah.
Um we're gonna have to do some damage control today.
Why, what happened? It looks like Hillary is pulling out of our film.
- Really? - DP Hillary, yeah.
Oh, my God.
All right, well, we're gonna have to be super strategic.
Off the top, I can tell you every other position should be filled by the end of the day so that she doesn't feel like the whole production is now not you know.
It's just not this is not great for a first-time director.
Do I need to reach out to Vic and ask about DP conversations? Let us do these first phone calls and just see if we can put somebody right away on on the map, and then we'll go to yeah.
Perfect.
Let's not mention it, obviously, to Anna.
I just got a message from Hillary that said she already sent her the email, so So Anna just hasn't even seen the email yet.
- No.
- Okay.
Julie and I are now basically in hustle mode to get anyone and everyone that we have connections to teed up for her so that we can make this replacement as swiftly as possible.
Hello, sir.
When you get this, give me a call.
This is the conversation where I beg you to come and shoot this movie.
Literally, today, at the very last moment, she just pulled out.
We are scrambling.
I hope that email is buried under seven other emails.
So right now American Eagle is pushing back.
The guy Luke that gave us the tour is, like, all about it because he can't get anybody above to sign off yet.
So we are going to act as if we don't have a closed deal with them.
Chris is like, "I really think it's gonna work out.
" - Can we shoot there? - Nothing is 100% right now.
I just don't understand why this wouldn't have been signed off in the first place.
Why are we waiting to get signed off two days before? Because I think Chris Moore is trying to do too much shit, and he's really he's trying to and it's just you can only push so far with people that are giving you stuff for free and - They haven't given us anything.
- I understand that.
But he's basically like, "You guys need to shoot, just move forward.
" She's already told me that she's got other companies that are interested in donating, and I already told her to go forward and find those companies.
I'm not too worried about the clothes.
I'm more about the location.
Yeah, right now, they don't seem in a big rush and he's like, "I'm going in there personally myself tomorrow instead of us going in and doing the show, and I'm gonna push really hard," so - This movie happening? - I mean, yes, Shane.
Like, for real? Is this movie happening? - I don't know.
Ask Jonathan.
- Is this movie happening? As far as I'm concerned, it's happening.
Should we just go back to L.
A? I feel like it's not happening.
- Shane.
- I'm serious.
I feel like nothing is fucking coming together.
I feel like every time, it's like, "Oh, no, for sure, that's totally happening.
" - The next day - This is the way it is.
"No, it's not happening.
" And I know you guys are just as frustrated as me.
I know.
But I know it's all gonna work out because that's just it has to.
But that's like it's a huge like, now we have to find, I mean, a mall or store? Don't be miffed.
It's fine.
It's the way shit goes.
Gotta roll with it.
It's not even it's more just, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
Don't worry, don't worry.
You have the store.
Keep going.
Keep working on other things.
" And we have not even looked at a backup.
I know.
Well, we'll see.
We're not shooting tomorrow.
And at the last second, you know tell me there's a chance it's not gonna happen so I get a backup.
We should just assume that there is a chance it's not gonna happen until we have confirmation on things, which is the way I've been operating in my brain.
I mean, yeah, but, no, because we haven't looked at backups for half of the things.
Sure, but we're not shooting tomorrow.
So we still have time to do so if we need to.
It sucks.
I mean, listen, we've got a big a guy who's big in that company who's all about it.
He's just like Luke is having a hard time getting people to sign off about because they just don't really understand the urgency, so Chris is like, "I'm going in there myself.
" Urgency? We're filming in, like, two weeks.
I know, but these people are not in this business.
They don't understand.
Okay - Anna? - Yeah.
We gotta have an emergency powwow.
Oh, my God.
We're gonna have a deeply uncomfortable meeting with you.
- Emergency powwow, commence.
- Emergency powwow.
- So we have some bad news.
- Oh, no.
And it's kind of significant bad news.
What is it? Hillary Spera?! - Yeah.
- Oh, my God! What's going on? - She - I have an email that says, "Hey, there," and I haven't looked at it yet 'cause I've been so swamped.
What is it, the "Hey, there"? She had apparently had a commitment on a previous project.
And that they said they had pushed, but then they called her yesterday to say that they got green-lit and it's basically starting Like, tomorrow or something crazy.
Basically as soon as she comes back that they start prep.
And so she tried to decide what she was gonna do, but it's like the difference between a big, huge, gigantic feature that's $30,000 that she's gonna get paid versus $6,000 or whatever it is on ours.
That is the bad news, and that is not great news.
All right, is it how definite is it? - It's definite.
It's definite.
- Very definite.
I just am trying not to flip this table, but It's a little rough.
Somehow I had, like, a sixth sense.
We have some action in place.
We definitely have action in place.
Okay.
We're hoping by the end of the day we will have at least three or four options for you so you can talk to people tomorrow and we can get somebody out here by next week.
So we're going with new people.
Josh and I have calls out to literally all of our DP friends saying if you have a really good suggestion for somebody who could come in that's looking for this as an opportunity, they could be really hungry for this.
This is a fucking blow.
I somehow I kind of knew.
I think I have to accept that, like, I'm gonna probably cry a lot and probably in front of people, and that's okay.
I think that I can be a leader and still have emotions.
So I'm struggling with, like, the idea that I have to hide any fear or overwhelmedness or frustration that I have, because otherwise, people will not treat me like a leader or not think that I'm a good filmmaker or something.
But I don't know, I call bullshit on that.
I feel like I'm going to experience a lot of stuff, and that's okay, and that's part of this experience.
American Eagle, did you meet with them today? Any updates? I was kicked out of the meeting.
So it went well? I was politely asked not to come.
By the end of the day, it seemed to have gone very positive.
Okay.
I don't know if you guys followed this, but they they fired the CEO.
- You told me there were some - I didn't follow that.
- How recently? - I did not know that.
- Tuesday - Oh.
- That's something.
- Of last week.
But who's they? The board? - The board.
- Right.
And they're a little bit in a power vacuum of who gets to approve shit like this.
The issue is that they wanna do it.
Everybody's totally into it.
- Okay.
- They're still totally into it.
The issue is we may have a timing problem.
To get through the malaise of who makes the decision to say, "We're part of this project.
You can shoot.
You can do the other stuff in the place," may take another four or five days.
- Okay.
- What they were saying was, "Look, we can't promise anything about the cameras," which is worrisome to me because I don't wanna waste all that time if they end up saying no or the other question is if it's not free, right? Like, part of it is if it's not free, would you guys really use all of it, right? I'm honestly less concerned about the clothes as much as I am the location.
That's fine.
That's what I said to Chris.
L honestly, I'd rather just you have the if I had a choice because the location is so perfect because it looks like a mall and it's completely controllable.
Today was a long day.
I'm really tired.
As of now, we just lost a huge location, which was the American Eagle store, which is amazing.
It's literally an American Eagle store that you would find in a shopping mall, and we had that for free and we could do whatever we wanted there, and it was the perfect scenario, and now we might not have it.
That means we have to find a replacement, which we haven't been looking for.
It means we're gonna have to spend money, which we don't have, and I'm really nervous about that because it's a big scene.
It's like a four-page scene, and now we might not have a store.
That's not good.
And I'm nervous because it was told to us that we were going to have it for sure.
We went there, we did the walkthrough, we did everything, and now it's not happening.
What I'm not used to is not doing everything by myself.
I am used to me dropping the ball.
I'm not used to having other people drop the ball because usually I'm the only one with the ball.
So now when something is fucked up or something is wrong or somebody drops the ball, now I have to try to pick up the pieces, whereas usually I'm doing everything myself.
I'm finding the locations.
I'm funding it.
I'm doing everything.
Whereas now there's so many people to depend on that if one of them fucks up, we're all fucked.