The Chair (2014) s01e10 Episode Script
Outside the Bubble
Zachary: Storytelling in film is a unique format.
Directors grow in their own way.
Neal: When shooting finishes on a movie, it becomes a very lonely process.
Shader: The challenge for any filmmaker is to create an entertaining story.
Dan: Finding an interesting character, finding an interesting dilemma Creating a story where you're actually invested in a relationship.
The way it is now, it's not Scott and Tori's movie.
It's Janie and Joel's movie.
Fuck! Tell me shit you fucking like.
Zachary: Neal and I watched Shane's movie.
I found it deeply offensive.
Hold on.
He has reasons why he made choices that he made.
Neal: Zach has decided to take his name off Shane's film, and I believe I'm going to do the same thing.
Victor: We create together as a family.
We have the conflicts that come with that.
There's a lot of things that don't make sense.
Chris: One of the other tools in the arsenal of finishing up a movie is to have a test screening.
You're gonna come back in to talk, right? Nope.
You really won't come in there and listen? - No.
- Why? Did Chris try to get him in? Yeah, he didn't want to hear what people had to say.
If I had 10 million subscribers to my channels, I think I'd probably have a certain amount of confidence about my ability to speak to a fan base.
I don't think there's a scene that can't be shorter.
Let's go look at those moments that don't feel right.
Woman: Did anyone else feel like they were the same person? Anna: This is now the second person who said that they thought Tori and Heather were the same girl.
Not knowing who's who is a problem.
We have to win or else I'm gonna look like a crazy asshole.
I wanted to start the meeting.
I'm sure people have lots of things they want to talk about.
As you said, Hollywood's gonna have to get used to me.
And I'm gonna have to get used to some of the stuff in Hollywood.
Mm-hmm.
We're at that moment right now on picture lock.
I came away very happy from that screening.
People had fun, but the moviemaker in me sits back and says, "Man, it's better than that.
" The story's better than that.
It's not perfect yet.
But you can see an amazing amount of potential.
In my opinion, it's right on the edge of would I want to make the next Shane Dawson movie or not? So that's where I'm coming from.
Okay, first of all, I'm not against notes.
The reason I didn't stay for the 20-person thing wasn't 'cause I didn't want notes, and I know that you guys have never had a director that walked out of that or whatever, but I am also the star of the movie.
- Chris: I agree.
- And I'm the face of the movie.
Like, yes, I directed it, and, yes, I want notes, and, yes, I want to hear everything, but somebody who's just like, "Shane is fucking horrible.
I hate that guy.
" If I was in the room, I'd hear that, and that would affect me, versus two days later you guys, like, take all the notes and be like, "What are the ones that are important to tell Shane?" So it wasn't that I didn't want any of the notes, 'cause I'm excited to hear numbers and statistics.
It was just more like, for me, sitting there was not in the cards.
It's much less about that.
It's more about the joke beating the story.
Shader: We have a movie that can still be better, but still being better in the way that you envision it, not about changing your vision, but about enhancing it, about making the jokes that are there work even better.
Do you see it as something that you still want to work on Of course, you guys, I'm really fucking annoyed because I feel like I have not come across any less than a collaborative person.
I did the script with Dan, like, I did not throw him away and rewrite it.
You guys were on set every fucking day.
I took every note.
I don't know where this is coming from, if it's coming from you or what it's coming from.
I'm not against notes.
I want help.
The first screening we did at that college you guys were like, "This is great, like, don't really touch it, let it sit," whatever.
If you guys told me, like, "Hey, I think there's a lot of work to it," I'd be like, "Okay, great, let's do it.
" - I wouldn't be like, "Fuck off.
" - That's what we're doing.
But that's a little bit disingenuous because you won't read the notes.
- You won't read the cards.
- Shane: That night.
I want to see all the notes.
I want to see everything.
You said the opposite to me, and a lot of my reaction - I didn't want to be in the room.
- No.
You specifically told me that night, "You guys are gonna send me the notes, and I'm never gonna read 'em.
" I mean as a joke.
Okay, but it's been a week, and you haven't read them either.
I don't know where the fuck they are! I knew we were doing this meeting because I knew you guys were gonna come and say, "Hey, listen, this is the consensus from the cards.
" - This scene doesn't work - Shader: You just said, "I don't know where it's coming from.
" Lauren: You told me you didn't want to read the notes.
But that's what this meeting is.
That's why we're here.
But that's different than reading them.
That's different than reading them.
Shane: I'm supposed to read every single card? - I read every single one.
- Shane: I'm interested to hear, like, specific things instead of, like The one note from over half the people that wrote on the cards was, "The movie was too long.
I had issues with the pacing.
It felt too slow.
" I still think we're in a situation right now where the movie can get better by tightening, and tightening within every scene.
There's some, for lack of a better word, kind of insecure cutting in it, like you're not trusting that you're good enough and people will care enough and think it's funny and all these things.
I think it would be awesome if we could bring somebody in that is a film editor that has perspective that nobody in this room would have, 'cause we can talk about all the notes - and I'm not saying - Okay, that's totally fine, but this is the first I've ever heard of it besides when you said it yesterday.
This is the first I've ever heard of it.
I want a guy to come in and do music.
I'm not making the music myself.
Like, I'm not a fucking egomaniac, like, I'll take help.
I had an assistant editor, and that went great.
It's more like nobody has come to me and said these things.
So how am I supposed to read fucking minds? Like, if you think I should have a movie editor, come to me and tell me and let's find one.
Well, I'm telling you that now, but that's my point of view.
I'll let these guys speak for themselves.
To me that I'm hearing is important is you agree that the movie can be better, and you agree that there's work - that we can do to make it better.
- Of course! I've never said that it wasn't a work in progress.
I said that at the screening.
I said, "This is very much a work in progress.
" I knew this meeting was coming.
- That's what I was waiting for.
- Okay.
It's the same situation as when we screened it.
You guys started giving me notes, and then Chris jumped in and said, "It went great.
Let's talk about how great it went.
Let's sit on this, and then we'll come back and do notes.
" Yeah, and look, I deserve some blame for that.
When I said that, I assumed it would change a lot, and I may have been inarticulate about it, which is why I'm trying to be as articulate as I can right now.
I'm being pulled out of a movie that I'm actually engaging into by some of the comedy that's coming into it.
I feel like that one macro note was the only thing - I gave in that other meeting.
- Mm-hmm.
And so for you to then say, "I went and did all your notes, and I still feel the exact same way watching the test screening," all I can do is say, "Well, he must have disagreed with me.
" By the way, to acknowledge, I think the cut got better from the cut before that to the cut that you screened.
- Chris: Oh, 100% - It got better.
So the work you did made it get better.
I think that's why we're sitting here today saying, "Okay, we think it can make another leap again, making the jokes that are there work even better.
It's not about changing your vision, but about enhancing it.
Chris: Do you have other notes you were gonna bring up? 'Cause we have one other thing we have to talk about.
No, I think those were the big ones.
Yeah, so we have kind of a weird situation.
Zach and Neal, they've decided that they would prefer not to indicate to anyone that they were part of producing it.
He said, "If I ever do something like this again, I got to be involved with picking who the directors are and picking what the script is," and you know some What was the reason? I think he just really didn't like the movie, and I think he felt that it's the type of film that he, in some way, wishes didn't get made.
It was a pretty large statement.
This movie was not was there any was there like a lot of wild, like, "this is so offensive" comments? Too many shit jokes.
That was, like, the biggest one.
Shane: Well, he read the script.
He came to the set that one day during the most offensive day that we had, and now I have to see them, like, shake the motherfucker's hand, like what? Chris: You don't, absolutely not.
You don't have to shake their hand.
- Shader: You don't have to pretend.
- They both read the script.
It literally is less offensive than the script.
He seemed to get offended by it in some way.
Corey took it really hard.
Corey's very upset about it.
What does Corey have to say? 'Cause Corey likes the movie.
Corey does like the movie.
He's not taking his name off it.
Well, he's smart, 'cause this movie's gonna do fucking really well.
One of the comments, I think he said was, "I just don't even know how to fix it.
" Part of his anger was at me was that well, how do we let these movies or these types of movies I said, "Look, Zach, I made the 'American Pie' movies.
- You're not gonna convince me - You're talking to the wrong guy.
- Lauren: Did he not - Yeah, he acknowledged it.
He said, "Well, sometimes it's better, and I don't think this is as good as 'American Pie.
"' And I'm not sure Zach's ever seen "American Pie," - 'cause it's not - He was in "So Notorious," a Tori Spelling scripted comedy on VH1, which I thought was genius, but was the stupidest fucking thing - I've ever seen in my - I think that's part of it What's so annoying to me what's more annoying to me than him as a person, everybody thinks Shane Dawson is this horrible racist, crazy offensive person, and it's just frustrating me, 'cause this is so not it's good, and I'm so proud of it.
So now somebody involved in the project itself is now going to publicly in the show be like, "I had a visceral reaction to it.
I hated it.
I thought it was so offensive and so I can't believe movies like this are getting made anymore.
" It's like, I thought this was the one place where that wasn't gonna happen.
- Chris: I agree.
- And it fucking did.
- He did read the script.
- And it's so frustrating.
It makes me want to win more, but it also has just, like it just sucks, 'cause now the press no, that's the one thing people are gonna fucking pick out, that Zachary Quinto walked away from Shane's movie because it was too offensive.
Nobody's gonna even watch the movie.
They're gonna be like, "Yeah, we believe Zach.
" - Lauren: That's not true.
- All these people need to go into a fucking art house movie theater and just live there for the rest of their lives.
Lauren: I think that's where they want to be.
Because they're never gonna make money and he's never gonna get funding for anything because he's gonna keep making movies that are boring as fuck! I don't get it.
Like, make movies that fucking are good and fun and make money.
Whatever, anyways.
Moving on.
The results of the test screening, I think, were hard in some ways on both directors, because on Anna's side it was much more this thing where they liked the movie and they felt like they'd seen sort of this slice of life, but they weren't 100% sure what Anna was trying to tell them, and she had this issue where people were sort of mistaking the two lead actors for looking the same.
Man: I mean, I thought Tori and Heather were the same person until they saw each other at the grocery store.
They look too similar.
Woman: Did anyone else feel like they were the same person oh, that's interesting.
Tori and Heather, the audience has been mixing them up and not to say that the audience is crazy, 'cause this is we have now tested it on a lot of smart people and smart people are not getting it.
It's become crucial to use paneling to be like Scott, Tori, Heather.
This is a love triangle.
They're all different people, and you got to wrap your head around the fact that one of them is gonna be your narrator and tell the story and the other one is the most popular girl in school who we're gonna watch be super depressed.
In Anna's case, she has a voiceover.
So we spent a lot of time talking about the voiceover.
Could that affect the perspective? And what you end up talking about when you do a voiceover, this thing is at what point in the person's life is the person telling the story? His thesis was to the point that the movie is a low-stakes movie.
He's saying that not necessarily something we have to accept because you can use Tori's point of view in her voiceover - to sort of clarify the importance - Sure.
Of all of these moments for all of these characters.
Yeah, we started doing that a little bit.
Yeah.
I just think that you're at a stage now where even if the picture is exactly where you want it, it's something you can play with.
Chris: In Anna's voiceover, I think she was sort of doing it as if it was, like, two days later, or even the bus ride home back to college, and I think that gives a little less perspective.
And so we talked a lot about what can you do with the voiceover to sort of make people realize where it's coming from.
The VO is something that can morph and morph and morph and I, like, changed it yesterday, and it got so much better.
If you try to make everything so clear and please everybody and give people what they say they want, what they say they want isn't actually always what they want.
That's not how stories work.
(whimpers) I know.
I know.
That's exactly how I feel right now lost, confused, tied up.
It's been 24 hours since I found out that Zachary Quinto is dropping out of my movie.
I've waited 24 hours to make a video about this, because I was very angry, very upset.
And I had not a lot of good things to say.
So I decided to let it marinate and 24 hours later, I am still just as confused, just as hurt, and just as angry, but I've a little more of a clear head about it.
It doesn't bother me that Quinto doesn't like the movie.
I don't care because I like the movie, producers that I trust like the movie, a test audience liked the movie, so it doesn't matter to me that he didn't like it.
What hurts me is that he, on camera, has been saying that he doesn't think I deserve to make movies and that he doesn't understand why anybody would let me make movies.
I know I deserve to make a movie because I've been working my fucking ass off.
In these last eight years, on YouTube have been nonstop fucking grinding and like making videos every single day.
I definitely deserve it, and I can say a lot of hateful things and I have a lot of really funny little quips and puns, but I'm not gonna do that because I'm gonna take the high road.
I'm happy with the movie.
I'm happy that it's getting better every day.
Yes, Zachary Quinto doesn't get it, but luckily I believe that there is a lot of people out there that do.
Art house movies, great.
If that's your cup of tea, well, then, honey, sip it, because I'm over there drinking a big gulp of something sugary, sweet, and bad for me with the rest of America.
You know, people think the hard part is actually making the movie.
The hard part is putting the movie out there, getting people to actually see it.
Going your own route just ain't so easy if you haven't an already established what Shane Dawson has, and I haven't, and it's not for lack of trying.
Like, I love how in one of the articles, you're like, "It's gonna be really interesting to see how a girl like Anna figures out how to get more followers.
" Like, you don't think Victor and I have been trying, like, we're not putting, like, dick-vagina on all of our videos on all our Period films, but Chris: Maybe that's all you got to do! - I actually did no, hey - Dick-vagina by Period films? First thing I ever directed and put online and I titled it "Peeing Together," and it got a 100,000 views, like, in the first day because so many perverts were Googling "peeing together.
" But then I didn't keep doing all of my videos, like, salacious names 'cause that's just depressing.
Even in the last year and a half since "Breakup At A Wedding" came out - this landscape has - Anna: Shifted even more.
- Correct.
Absolutely.
- Anna: It's crazy.
And not for the benefit of movies like yours.
Most of the anecdotal conversations with those people in the room here who have had an independent movie get released recently by some of these distributors, nobody has been able to give me a positive story.
Corey: So we've essentially just reached out over the course of the past few months to all of our different, like, assorted resources on feelers specifically with "Hollidaysburg," right, to see what kind of life this movie would have and How are you doing that without showing the film? Shader: Because they're looking at things like who's in it, what's the concept, what was it made for? Being judged on who direc you know what I'm saying, it's first-time director unknown actors, small concept.
These are all things that make it very difficult.
For a movie like this, you have to actually pay to get in the theaters.
It's called four-walling You buy out the theater.
So if you believe that your movie deserves and will have people show up to see it, even if they wouldn't program it 'cause they're not sure, you can actually pay the movie theater X amount of dollars in order for the right to have your movie there for a week.
Generally, that'll be the theatrical part of this release.
Chris: There's all the struggles of the process of making the movie, of writing the script, doing everything else, but it all culminates in this moment when the movie is available for people to see, and what happens? And it is brutal, and it can be the most euphoric, amazing moment when you walk in theaters, and they're full.
It is fucking brutal when you've done all that same amount of work, all the same shit I did on a movie called "Best Laid Plans," had Reese Witherspoon and Josh Brolin and written by Ted Griffin who did "Oceans" and all this shit, and not a fucking soul went to see that movie.
In this whole arc of what you go through, that last moment of you're in a theater somewhere, you're sitting there and you're saying, "What more do I have to do? - What do I have to do?" - This is so depressing.
- But it might not be.
- Yeah, exactly.
It might be fucking full, right? But I'm saying to you is that moment, in my opinion, we owe it to the people who go down this road with us of the story of you getting to make your first movie to get all the way to that moment.
- Is Starz gonna air the full movies? - Yeah.
In order to have the movies available for people watching the show, right, they get to show the movies also.
To me it's about wanting as many people as possible to see it, wanting the audience that you think will respond to it to see it.
Corey: New movies are coming out every week now that you've never heard of.
Almost the only way you can find them is if somebody mentions it to you and then you look it up, but you actually have to know it exists before you can look it up.
Neal: People want to watch movies how they want to watch movies, and they don't want to be told you have to watch it in a theater, or you have to watch it on your computer, or you have to watch it on your phone.
They want to have options.
So they'll be available on iTunes, and they'll be available of Vudu and they'll be available in some form on Vimeo and YouTube and all these other platforms that are gonna have the right to air them, and then eventually and not too long before the end of the year they'll be out on DVD as well, so it's a shortened window.
And I hope this is all right with you.
I wanted to talk a little bit about what happened in regards to the other movie.
Neal and Zach watched Shane's movie Oh, they've gotten a screening? and have decided not to support that and to not have their names on it.
You know, what was meant to be all of us working on two things and sort of doing whatever, this is what happens in the business.
It is definitely a different movie, and a whole different setup, and so I respect their opinion, That's definitely happening? That's, like It happened.
So that's is it all three of you guys? Zach, like, voiced a very strong opinion about how he felt about Shane's style and body of work.
It's this weird thing for me.
I was there every day.
I worked with Shane on this movie, and I had good experience making the movie.
I'm not taking my name off of this movie, I actually disagree with my partners that this is a bad film.
Of course I think it's a good film.
I'm proud of this movie.
I mean, we have succeeded in the point of "The Chair.
" The experiment worked.
That's what we were doing.
They both made comedies with completely different styles.
And to say one is right or one is wrong you have an audience that's going to vote.
They're gonna make the decision of what they like better.
That's the experiment.
Lauren: In the end, what really needed to be sort of worked on the most, I think, with the edit was just sort of tightening things up.
I brought in a friend, Daniel Raj Koobir, who's a friend and a great editor, and he just spent a few days with it, and he just tightened it.
You couldn't even necessarily identify the things that he did, but you just knew in watching it after his little pass on it that it just felt so smooth.
I told everybody that you're locking picture today.
So I think the question is, like, what changes, if any There's just two little things I want him to add a beat of the party bus with silence before the line.
Shader: So right when you cut in, there's a beat of silence? - I agree.
- Shane: Yeah, it's just not - Chris: So that's it? - Yeah, I mean literally Chris: All right.
It's okay, it's all good.
Lauren: I don't know, I just wanted That's the thing, I'm telling you.
I literally have, like, two tiny things, and it's like, listen, I've compromised a lot in this movie and I'm excited about the movie and everything, but if I want one extra fucking second, just let me have it.
No one's not letting you have it.
I know.
I don't want to hear about it.
Like, if the movie comes out, I don't want somebody coming up to me, like, "I mean, listen, you could have taken that out but it's fine, I love it.
" I don't want that.
Lauren: Nobody wants you to feel compromised.
I think the movie is in the best shape it's ever been.
Let's hope so, since we're locking.
Right, I mean, like, that's the thing.
The movie I mean, this is the moment to be in the best shape.
This is, but it's true.
You shouldn't feel like, "I've compromised.
" I feel like you've learned and you've gotten notes and feedback and made it the best version it is.
So to say that, "I've compromised," I don't think what has happened.
I mean, in some ways I have.
That's fine.
That's what I said.
Yes, I compromised, and, yes, the movie's great.
There's certain things that I love that I got rid of.
There's certain things that I don't like that are still there, like, I have definitely compromised.
Is it a compromise, though, because you have directed you have final cut on this.
We're just trying to give you our opinions and our thoughts based on the past experiences that we've had, so I would hope that you don't look at it as a compromise - Shane: No.
- That you understand why we're talking about some of the things that we talk about with you, and why we want to make those changes.
Yeah, yeah, but also, I mean, in this process I feel like I feel like I've been very open to every note, every suggestion, everything.
I've never, like, yelled at you guys, said, "I don't" Like, I literally have incorporated everything, so it's like now that we're getting to the picture lock, if I just want an extra beat somewhere, like, I feel like I deserve it, at this point.
For the record, I've been yelled at.
What? I said I've been yelled at.
For the record.
- I've done everything.
- Fine, but, I've been yelled at.
Shader: When you decide to see a movie, Shader: When you decide to see a movie, what is the thing that makes someone say, "Yeah, I want to go see it"? Usually it's because you've seen the trailer.
Because of that, there are professionals that do it.
Wild Card is a professional company that edits trailers for huge movies.
Chris: I met Nick at a cocktail party.
And Nick actually loved the idea of "The Chair.
" Typically, the trailer is that first impression.
In any advertising, that first impression is critical, and ultimately, it comes down to are you presenting a story that people are interested in? Shane: I was so excited to have somebody make a trailer for me because I'm good at visualizing stories and movies and all those things.
Marketing, trailers, all that shit, no.
I literally am gonna have diarrhea.
I'm gonna diarrhea in this chair.
Are you sick, or you're just that nervous? I'm just nervous but excited.
I've never had a trailer.
When we looked at both films, while they're both character-driven they were treated so differently, we sort of pulled back and said, "Okay, how do you make people feel like I know what that is? I get it, I understand it, but I got to go see that.
I have to see that in a theater.
It can't be something that I can see on Netflix"? Heather: The first semester of college is awesome because nobody knows you and you can be whoever you want to be until you come home for Thanksgiving break.
Public sex is way in right now.
Gimme your dick! Obviously, Shane comes from a place where he's got a large online following, and so we wanted to kind of harness that.
While we were mindful of that, we tried to pull back and also say, "Okay, but how do we create a trailer that reaches more people, that feels like there's a more universal theme? You feel something, like a connection? Cutting Anna's trailer, I actually thought that would be tougher trailer to cut because you weren't gonna be able to rely on laugh-out-loud moments.
Tori: Senior year was weird for me.
I loved senior year.
Pretty sure the entire school had a crush on you.
Something that felt a little bit more universal to the idea of Thanksgiving and coming home and seeing how things have changed.
- Victor: Whoo! - Anna: Oh, my God! - Nice work.
- It was so good.
I did not expect that to be such an amazing experience.
That was wonderful.
Thank you.
I don't think a $600,000 feature would ever even dream of asking Wild Card to make them a trailer.
It's probably out of their price range if you're making a movie for 600,000 bucks.
So for us to get to experience someone taking our movie and giving it this treatment, it was amazing.
They elevated it and captured something that I didn't know was there, that I don't think I could have ever cut the trailer that they cut.
It's like magic trailer stuff.
Like, I would have never known how to do that, how it like, it comes up, and then I'm feeling things.
I've had that experience so many times where you sit there I think it's a little bit of a pothole all filmmakers, we all fall into, "I could cut the trailer.
I know the movie best," and every time, when the filmmaker shows up with the trailer, it's always dog shit.
When they do it well, and you look at it you sort of say to yourself "Holy shit.
" There's a moment where you sort of see a trailer for your movie, and you think, "Wow, I made a movie.
I made a real movie.
" And it's the funny part of the business is when you're home making movies yourself, you don't usually make trailers of your own movies and then you watch the trailer and you think, I'd go see that movie.
Shane: Seeing my trailer for the first time was intense because it really made it real.
I made a movie.
I have a movie trailer.
It's gonna come out.
People are gonna see it.
They're gonna see the trailer and say, "Oh, it's a movie," not, "Oh, it's a YouTube video," or, "Oh, it's just a thing stupid thing Shane did.
" It's an actual movie.
So I had a lot of emotions running through me at that time.
- (yells out) - (groaning) Tori: Sorry, I thought it was gonna be, like, romantic! Yay! It's really good, guys.
It's very exciting.
- Sweet.
- Man: It's a fun movie.
It's really fun.
Shane: I ran to the bathroom real quick.
And I did not want to cry in front of anybody.
I think I cried a little bit.
One of the things that happens in the movie-making process that I think you forget about when you're writing a script or you're trying to find your actors or you're trying to find your money or your shooting, is that even after the post process, you actually have to work on getting your movie out there in the world.
In the case of these movies, everybody has hired a marketing and PR firm called Prodigy PR.
Shader: Prodigy is a public-relations firm that did a lot of work with indie films.
They know how to take movies that don't have big marketing budgets and get the word out.
Eric: We do a lot of trailer placement and clip placement trying to get the views up.
Obviously with Shane, he's got a built-in crowd.
It was seamless for us to do it on that.
And even "Hollidaysburg," we still had a great response online, making sure we're covered on all the film ticketing sites, you know, all of the film fan sites, but also the traditional media sites like "New York Times," "L.
A.
Times," we were able to place it.
Neal: Whether it's Anna or Shane doing an interview about the directing process or about their particular movie, or something more broadly about the experience of being filmed on a documentary series, whatever the hook is for any given movie, that's what gets exploited.
Shader: There's tons of stuff in the marketplace.
How do you get directly at the audience that you think would like these movies? Neal: You're trying to find the right people who will appreciate this movie, who have a likelihood of paying to see this movie, who would tell their friends about this movie.
And in the case of Shane, if you don't get his audience, people who are already subscribed to his YouTube channels and follow his videos and have an awareness of him already, they should show up to see a Shane Dawson movie 'cause they're already choosing to follow him and be his fans.
And then in the case of Anna, you have to target people who would like this kind of movie.
You're targeting women, college-age kids, and people who grew up in the '80s and '90s who are nostalgic for this kind of movie.
Shader: We don't have the ability to put billboards up.
There's not gonna be commercials running on television about these movies.
We don't have the budgets to do that, and indie movies in general don't have the budgets to do that.
It's gotta be about going after a really specific group that you think will like your movie and telling them about it and then hoping that they head over to iTunes and buy it.
Chris: It's a very unique position Shane's in because he can tweet to 2 million people.
He can actually get the message out about his movie all by himself.
That's unusual for a first-time director.
(cheering) No autographs, no cell-phone pictures.
Ready? Are you ready? Fan: Oh, my God! Shane: Vidcon is crazy.
It is a yearly event where all the YouTubers come together and all the fans come together.
This year I think there was 20,000 or 30,000 people there, and we have a really big weird party.
Girl: Oh, my God.
Could you please kiss me on the cheek? Please? I love you so much.
Shane Dawson worked his butt off, and he built this massive, massive audience.
He earned that.
And he's kind of tailor-made the work that he's done to satisfy that audience.
I really like Shane's videos because it tells me, like, that I can just be myself, and it doesn't matter what other people say about me.
Everything he does and he talks about, there's always a meaning to it.
Whenever I'm sad or anything, I just watch him, and I get happy again.
I love you.
(crying) He's so sweet, and he's just so caring and funny, and I just love him so much.
Corey: His fan base, we've never seen anything like it.
I mean, you have seen something like it 'cause you've seen The Beatles, but he's not The Beatles.
He's not a rock star.
He's not Justin Bieber.
He's, like, a kid who just did all of this out of his bedroom and grew it into something large.
Chris: Because Shane has such a big following, we thought one of the best ways to bring attention to "Not Cool" was for him to premiere his trailer at Vidcon.
Corey: When you have him show his work in front of his audience and you see how they actually do respond to those bits and pieces that we, as the experienced producers, had problems with, his fan base goes insane.
It goes, like, fucking crazy.
Shane: Yay! Yay! When we get to him and his directorial debut, it creates certain problems with how he responds to advice.
When you have 10 million people who tell you you're amazing, who tell you you're brilliant, it's pretty impressive then that that person would be open minded to hearing anything.
I mean, I wouldn't I wouldn't listen to anybody if I had 10 million people listening to me while I was on a soapbox.
The point of this experiment for Shane was to basically see how he can transition out of what he has created into something larger, and he doesn't just want to reach the one demographic that he's been hitting so hard.
I love you so much.
I've been watching you since I was 8 years old.
Oh, my God, really? How old are you now? - 13.
Yeah.
- Wow.
Corey: This YouTube thing isn't gonna last forever.
Shane's growing up.
His fans have to grow up with him.
Going to Vidcon is really fun and exciting and also really scary and depressing because, you know, you go there and everybody thinks you're awesome and they're freaking out over you and stuff, and then the second you get in your car, ain't nobody give a shit, you know? Pull over to get gas, there's no security guard to help you out.
Guy at the gas station doesn't know who the fuck you are.
It just reminds me even more how much I want to make movies because I don't want to be a YouTuber for the rest of my life.
Chris: On "Hollidaysburg," we really needed to get people to know about it.
"Hollidaysburg" represents a much more traditional independent movie release.
- Thank you, my love.
- Go on.
One of the big tools when you're releasing independent movies is the press.
The TCA stands for the Television Critics Association.
There's an association of writers who write about television.
Different networks come to the TCAs, and they have this sort of week-long presentation where all the networks present their new programming.
It's pretty well done in terms of putting them all in the same room and get some face time with the people who are actually creating or appearing on the shows.
Shane: It is insane that me and Anna both made a movie in the same town at the same time, and we never met.
Anna: So like for instance, today you want a smoky eye, but it's like noon, so you don't want to be right, it's a day thing.
- Oh, my God! - Oh, my God! Good to meet you.
You're a real person.
You're a real come here.
- It's very nice to meet you.
- Oh, God, I'm breaking everything.
I did not see you coming at all.
That was intense.
It's nice to meet you! Corey: Shane and Anna will be linked forever as a result of this experiment.
They literally have something in common right now that nobody else will ever be able to share.
I'm so glad I'm not the only nervous - Oh, please, I've had diarrhea for - I didn't eat or sleep yesterday.
I've been watching "Big Brother" live feeds all night.
- What - It is intense.
It's intense.
Corey: They're linked in the way that they had unique experiences, as far as I'm concerned, in the world, and there's nobody that they can actually can talk to about that experience except each other.
Anna: When the TV show aspect of this experiment helps the movie, it's a beautiful thing.
It's built-in marketing, which is the thing that was missing from "Breakup At A Wedding," and that's one of the reasons this was a really appealing situation.
Man: Now I'd like to introduce the panelists executive producer Chris Moore, filmmaker Shane Dawson, filmmaker Anna Martemucci and executive producer Zachary Quinto.
Corey: We're fortunate "The Chair" is here for these two movies.
"The Chair" is gonna serve as a 10-week commercial.
It's not a studio-driven film.
It's an independent film.
There's a huge difference.
Chris: I think in today's world where there's so many media things you can watch and so many things that are out there, directors, particularly, they need to figure out how to promote themselves.
For Shane and for Anna, it's as much as them saying, "Hey, come watch my movie and come get behind the stuff that I'm doing," as it is "Hollidaysburg" and "Not Cool.
" And so we're all trying to push all of these different concepts and get people to like us and get people to like what we're doing and get people to buy tickets, or buy downloads or whatever it is.
And I think it's really important for filmmakers to somehow be willing to embrace the promotional side of their life and be okay with that because I think it's gonna be the difference getting your second movie made.
(applause) Thank you, thank you.
- So sweet, so sweet.
- Relatively painless.
Relatively painless.
Okay, I'm okay.
How are you feeling? Good.
How are you feeling? Okay.
I think it all hit me when I looked down and saw like the "Starz original" thing.
- I was like - Oh, it's real.
Did you do what I did, which is that I think it was a defense mechanism to make myself not as freaked out, I said, - "This isn't really gonna happen.
" - Oh, yeah.
The whole time I was like, "This is all falling apart.
" Every day, I'm like, "Are we really making a movie?" - Yeah, yeah, I saw that, actually.
- Are we actually and then everything kept falling through, so I was like, "Is this is there money? Like, what's happening? I really wish I would have met you before.
- I feel like - You feel like it would have I feel like we missed out on a lot.
It's crazy that Shane and I hadn't met before the TCAs because we were literally a floor apart during all of pre-production and production.
I don't even know how it's possible that we didn't run into each other in the elevator, but we didn't.
The entire time that this entire thing happened, I always had a mechanism in my brain telling me it's probably not gonna happen.
Philip: Being her doula, her coach, her creative sort of partner in this, I got a chance to see.
Anna day one, she was terrified, Anna day 20, she can do anything.
Anna: I feel really happy with "Hollidaysburg" the movie.
I made what I wanted to make, and I like it, and I think it works, and my main feeling is excitement to show it to people.
Shane: All the years of working my ass off, staying up all night editing, funding everything myself has led to this.
There isn't only one way to tell a story, any story.
That may intuitively be clear, but I think a lot of people go to the movies thinking, well, that must have been the best way to tell that story, and a lot of times it's not.
It's the way those people told the story, and at a certain point, two people is the purest way to do it and it's possible today.
You can afford to go out and make two versions of the movie.
Corey: People who invested their money into "The Chair" were not investing in Shane.
They were not investing in Anna.
They were investing in an overall idea and concept.
Chris: I would say that I'd like to have all the money up front and not be constantly raising money, but that's the nature of an experiment.
I really think the experiment worked.
Not to overstate it, but it's a daunting task what these filmmakers did.
You get to have the opportunity to make a movie, you do not take that lightly.
Neal: They both win in a certain regard.
These directors knew they were gonna get to do the main prize, which is make a movie.
Chris: I think Anna and Shane are two filmmakers who deserved a chance.
I think we have shown in the documentary how hard it is and how interesting it is.
Fuck! What this show does is lets you into the process, and it shows you how challenging it is to get those perfect moments.
Corey: Filmmaking, in essence, is a group of people that come together to make something and to build something.
That's the whole point of doing these things, right? Chris: For Shane and Anna, they'll be the first two people that ever did this.
Dan Schoffer certainly is gonna be the first guy who ever wrote a script that got made by two people at the same time.
Shader: At the end of the day, you judge a director by the product they put out.
That's what the audience sees.
Chris: I think Shane and Anna were wildly different.
We got really different movies.
I'm really proud to be a part of it, and I really can't wait for people to see it.
Hey, what's up, you guys? Yes, I'm very, very excited.
I'm nervous.
I'm stressed.
I'm everything because tonight is the big night.
We are on a Delta flight to New York City to go to the premiere of "Hollidaysburg.
" It's my movie premiere.
It's just a big night, and I'm very, very excited, and I hope everybody loves the movie.
We're all gonna leave together at 5:15.
Yay! Woman: Whoo! Yay! Oh, look who it is! Victor: Come on.
Can we get a picture with her later? Victor: Yes, we will, absolutely.
Shane: There's my movie.
There's my thing.
There's Lauren, there's Corey.
There's everybody.
Oh, we're here! Guys, strip! Guys, strip! We're in the theater right now.
Here's the cameraman for the show.
He's my favorite.
He's doing the sound.
He's wearing a backpack.
There's a bunch of reserved signs on the seats.
I'm freaking out.
Got it? (chatter) It has so much heart and there's some great drama.
Shader: So after you're done with production, and you're done editing, you finally get to sit back and celebrate and watch the movies and have a premiere.
Premieres are a party.
It's a celebration for the filmmakers and for the crew and the cast to all get together and enjoy what we all created.
Anna: My premiere in New York City, it was 100% a dream come true.
Shane: Watching my movie with a room full of people was terrifying and exciting.
Everything I dreamed it would be.
Shader: But the real purpose of a premiere is to stage a publicity event.
The hope is that you get press to show up and take pictures and write stories about your movie, and that people will then discover the movie who hadn't otherwise heard of it.
How are you guys? We're all trying to show Hollywood that we can actually do something more than just a 3-minute video.
Anna: Once I started directing, I felt like I was doing what I was always meant to do, and it was a beautiful thing.
Shader: Both movies will play in theaters in New York and L.
A.
'Cause we're paying for it.
The hope is that we sell enough tickets that hopefully we make a little bit of money.
- There it is.
- Do you see it? Yeah, I see it.
Oh, my God, it's sold out.
Hey! - Publicity doing it.
- It's the opening night, and it's sold out.
Julie: Yeah, it's a good thing.
It's a good thing to be sold out.
Julie: I just want to come back.
I want us to sell out numerous times during this week.
We mailed everybody in the whole wide world to tell them to - I never got my email off, like - Really? Chris: Anna sold out her first two shows the ones she attended but after that, no one showed up.
Shader: The theatrical debut for "Not Cool" was both expected and frustrating.
On one hand, it was great to see hundreds of Shane's fans turn out and buy tons of tickets, mostly when he was there.
(screaming) The experience of releasing the movie was exhausting because all the marketing was on my shoulders.
"Okay, Shane, tell your audience go see it.
" So I fucking hustled.
I was at every single screening in New York and L.
A.
For those weekends.
And I sold out every single screening, I met every single person.
I signed all the boobs.
I hugged all the parents.
I mean, that's what you got to do because if it's not a huge Hollywood movie, then nobody knows about it.
And, yeah, I have a lot of fans online, and, yeah, I have more fans than she does and stuff, but you can't discount the fact that I worked my ass off to get every single person in that seat.
(screaming and cheering) Okay, we all worked so hard on this movie, and you know I've been showing it to a lot of people and a lot of producers and this and that, but tonight is the night I've been waiting for the whole time because I made this movie for you guys and you guys are gonna fucking love it! (screaming) Neal: Shane's made $36,000 in its weekend in its theatrical run, and hers made $3,800, and "Hollidaysburg" had a real trouble finding an audience who was willing to show up at the theaters.
His fan base of millions of people strong did not actually show up, and the truth of the matter is they showed up for the shows that he was there for.
Shader: When he wasn't there, we weren't selling tickets.
And I think that's the challenge that Shane has right now.
He is a personality.
He's a draw.
(cheering) Shader: People will show up to see him, but he wants people to show up to see his movie.
People that don't know him, people that aren't fans of him.
That's something that we've been tracking this whole time, is can he get that larger audience? And at least in that initial theatrical debut, we saw his fans showing up, but we didn't see anyone else showing up.
Reviews are obviously a big piece of how people come to know whether a movie's worth going to see or not.
Anna: Reviews actually mean quite a bit to me being an extreme film lover, and using reviews myself as a way figuring out what it might be worth to watch, and what it might be not worth to watch.
When you get a great review, it feels amazing.
When you get a shitty review, it's crushing.
Zachary: The films got very different critical reactions.
The morning of my premiere, at that point, we had gotten one review from "The New York Times," and it was decent, not great.
Reviews can be really bad sometimes, even if you are happy with your movie, and a review from "The Film Journal" came in.
And one of the first lines was "Martemucci has a deep love of her characters.
" I couldn't read anymore 'cause I was just sobbing because and that's when I realized how kind of vulnerable a feeling it is to put something out that you care about that much and then have the world openly judge it.
Zachary: Anna's movie was really well-received by almost all of the people that saw it critically.
And "Not Cool" got a lot of really negative reviews.
Zachary: Shane's movie got eviscerated in the critical landscape.
I mean, absolutely destroyed.
One review said that if you enjoy my movie, you must be a rapist, racist sociopath.
That was in the"Los Angeles Times.
" This movie got some of the worst reviews I've ever seen in my life.
(laughs) I have never read reviews that have said "the people involved in giving this person an opportunity to make this movie should never be allowed in the film business again.
" Chris: For one of the reviews, to call me out for letting him make a movie is so beyond anything I've ever seen on a movie.
I have no idea how to react to that, and I feel bad for Shane.
For me, reviews don't really mean whether a movie is good or not.
The fact is, both of me and Anna's movies got reviewed by like five people, when normal Hollywood gets 100, 200 reviews per movie.
To have five middle-aged white dudes judge your movie especially a teen comedy, is not really the tell-all for how the movie is.
For me it's more looking at the audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes people who didn't love the movie but didn't hate the movie looking at those reviews to me is more telling.
Zachary: The surprising thing is the inequity between the audience response and the critical response, that it's almost impossible if we're trying to choose the winner of this project, how would you do that? Most people would say, "Well, you know, Shane won.
He got all these people to see his movie.
It was in the top whatever on iTunes, and nobody saw Anna's movie.
" But people that saw Anna's movie, people that are arbiters of taste, reacted to the movie in a much more positive way.
I think we're all in a really tough position.
Chris: The group of us really brainstormed and we decided to make it a survey about the movies.
The two most important questions for any audience on any movie traditionally in Hollywood is "How would you rate this movie?" And the first two boxes are excellent and very good.
The other one is would you definitely recommend this to your friends? Those questions were weighted a little bit higher.
And SurveyMonkey was very helpful in trying to make it not a popularity contest.
One of the things was to create these test questions to prove that you watched both movies.
If you could not get all of the questions right about the two movies, your survey was thrown out.
Of all the surveys that were filled out, we disqualified almost 40% because they couldn't answer these questions correctly.
The idea was to make people really pay attention to what they liked about the movies, what they didn't like about the movies, but I think once you did the survey you realize we made it as fair as we possibly could.
Hey, this is my last vlog, and I'm very, very nervous as I read this email that I just got sent from Chris Moore.
"Final results the weighted average on a scale of zero to hundred using the agreed upon methodology, 'Not Cool' is clearly the winner.
" Okay.
Congratulations, Shane.
Good on you.
I hope you enjoy a thousand victory laps around the internet.
We have been thrown through the fucking mud dealing with critics who just hate me because I'm a YouTuber and just hate everything I do, people making the audience feel guilty for liking "Not Cool" because if you like "Not Cool," you must be an idiot.
Because who likes dumb, fun, raunchy comedies? So the fact that the audience voted and the audience loved this movie, it means fucking everything to me.
All the reviews don't fucking matter.
All the negativity from the producers who didn't like me, don't fucking matter.
People do love this movie.
And, yeah, a lot of people fucking hate this movie.
More people love it.
I'm just so happy to have gotten to make a movie and to have been able to share with you guys the journey.
I am so grateful to Chris Moore and Josh, Corey, Lauren, of course.
Obviously the audience for voting not just my fans, but the people who didn't know who the fuck I was who gave me a chance and probably thought they're gonna hate it and loved it.
Thank you.
Now I know exactly what I want to do with my life.
And I hope that I get to make another movie, and I hope that Anna gets to make another movie, and I hope that this just a launching pad for all of us, you know, because making movies is fucking hard.
And being an Indie director is really fucking hard.
Thanks for coming on this journey with me.
This is Shane Dawson director of "Not Cool.
" (sighs) Thanks.
Chris: I didn't succeed in finding people to market their movies.
We tried a show, 10-episode documentary that by all accounts people liked.
We tried the competition maybe people will be interested in that so they go see the movies.
And we tried, let's bring a dude who's got 10 million people he can talk to, and let's see if we can go out and be the most successful independent movie of the fall, and we weren't.
And Shane made the top five in iTunes.
Still, the average person didn't know shit about Shane didn't know anything about, "The Chair," didn't buy it, and so the question of how do you market to people when you don't have $50 million is still a fucking mystery to me.
And you know what the crazy part about all this is? We're not stopping.
I'm not stopping.
Those of us who did the documentary aren't gonna stop, and I can guarantee you Shane and Anna aren't stopping.
Everyone involved in this process will keep trying.
Because when you hit a home run in this business, it feels fucking awesome.
All the long days, all the frustration, all the people who fuck you over, all the unfulfilled expectations, it is all worth it when people love the shit you did.
(music playing)
Directors grow in their own way.
Neal: When shooting finishes on a movie, it becomes a very lonely process.
Shader: The challenge for any filmmaker is to create an entertaining story.
Dan: Finding an interesting character, finding an interesting dilemma Creating a story where you're actually invested in a relationship.
The way it is now, it's not Scott and Tori's movie.
It's Janie and Joel's movie.
Fuck! Tell me shit you fucking like.
Zachary: Neal and I watched Shane's movie.
I found it deeply offensive.
Hold on.
He has reasons why he made choices that he made.
Neal: Zach has decided to take his name off Shane's film, and I believe I'm going to do the same thing.
Victor: We create together as a family.
We have the conflicts that come with that.
There's a lot of things that don't make sense.
Chris: One of the other tools in the arsenal of finishing up a movie is to have a test screening.
You're gonna come back in to talk, right? Nope.
You really won't come in there and listen? - No.
- Why? Did Chris try to get him in? Yeah, he didn't want to hear what people had to say.
If I had 10 million subscribers to my channels, I think I'd probably have a certain amount of confidence about my ability to speak to a fan base.
I don't think there's a scene that can't be shorter.
Let's go look at those moments that don't feel right.
Woman: Did anyone else feel like they were the same person? Anna: This is now the second person who said that they thought Tori and Heather were the same girl.
Not knowing who's who is a problem.
We have to win or else I'm gonna look like a crazy asshole.
I wanted to start the meeting.
I'm sure people have lots of things they want to talk about.
As you said, Hollywood's gonna have to get used to me.
And I'm gonna have to get used to some of the stuff in Hollywood.
Mm-hmm.
We're at that moment right now on picture lock.
I came away very happy from that screening.
People had fun, but the moviemaker in me sits back and says, "Man, it's better than that.
" The story's better than that.
It's not perfect yet.
But you can see an amazing amount of potential.
In my opinion, it's right on the edge of would I want to make the next Shane Dawson movie or not? So that's where I'm coming from.
Okay, first of all, I'm not against notes.
The reason I didn't stay for the 20-person thing wasn't 'cause I didn't want notes, and I know that you guys have never had a director that walked out of that or whatever, but I am also the star of the movie.
- Chris: I agree.
- And I'm the face of the movie.
Like, yes, I directed it, and, yes, I want notes, and, yes, I want to hear everything, but somebody who's just like, "Shane is fucking horrible.
I hate that guy.
" If I was in the room, I'd hear that, and that would affect me, versus two days later you guys, like, take all the notes and be like, "What are the ones that are important to tell Shane?" So it wasn't that I didn't want any of the notes, 'cause I'm excited to hear numbers and statistics.
It was just more like, for me, sitting there was not in the cards.
It's much less about that.
It's more about the joke beating the story.
Shader: We have a movie that can still be better, but still being better in the way that you envision it, not about changing your vision, but about enhancing it, about making the jokes that are there work even better.
Do you see it as something that you still want to work on Of course, you guys, I'm really fucking annoyed because I feel like I have not come across any less than a collaborative person.
I did the script with Dan, like, I did not throw him away and rewrite it.
You guys were on set every fucking day.
I took every note.
I don't know where this is coming from, if it's coming from you or what it's coming from.
I'm not against notes.
I want help.
The first screening we did at that college you guys were like, "This is great, like, don't really touch it, let it sit," whatever.
If you guys told me, like, "Hey, I think there's a lot of work to it," I'd be like, "Okay, great, let's do it.
" - I wouldn't be like, "Fuck off.
" - That's what we're doing.
But that's a little bit disingenuous because you won't read the notes.
- You won't read the cards.
- Shane: That night.
I want to see all the notes.
I want to see everything.
You said the opposite to me, and a lot of my reaction - I didn't want to be in the room.
- No.
You specifically told me that night, "You guys are gonna send me the notes, and I'm never gonna read 'em.
" I mean as a joke.
Okay, but it's been a week, and you haven't read them either.
I don't know where the fuck they are! I knew we were doing this meeting because I knew you guys were gonna come and say, "Hey, listen, this is the consensus from the cards.
" - This scene doesn't work - Shader: You just said, "I don't know where it's coming from.
" Lauren: You told me you didn't want to read the notes.
But that's what this meeting is.
That's why we're here.
But that's different than reading them.
That's different than reading them.
Shane: I'm supposed to read every single card? - I read every single one.
- Shane: I'm interested to hear, like, specific things instead of, like The one note from over half the people that wrote on the cards was, "The movie was too long.
I had issues with the pacing.
It felt too slow.
" I still think we're in a situation right now where the movie can get better by tightening, and tightening within every scene.
There's some, for lack of a better word, kind of insecure cutting in it, like you're not trusting that you're good enough and people will care enough and think it's funny and all these things.
I think it would be awesome if we could bring somebody in that is a film editor that has perspective that nobody in this room would have, 'cause we can talk about all the notes - and I'm not saying - Okay, that's totally fine, but this is the first I've ever heard of it besides when you said it yesterday.
This is the first I've ever heard of it.
I want a guy to come in and do music.
I'm not making the music myself.
Like, I'm not a fucking egomaniac, like, I'll take help.
I had an assistant editor, and that went great.
It's more like nobody has come to me and said these things.
So how am I supposed to read fucking minds? Like, if you think I should have a movie editor, come to me and tell me and let's find one.
Well, I'm telling you that now, but that's my point of view.
I'll let these guys speak for themselves.
To me that I'm hearing is important is you agree that the movie can be better, and you agree that there's work - that we can do to make it better.
- Of course! I've never said that it wasn't a work in progress.
I said that at the screening.
I said, "This is very much a work in progress.
" I knew this meeting was coming.
- That's what I was waiting for.
- Okay.
It's the same situation as when we screened it.
You guys started giving me notes, and then Chris jumped in and said, "It went great.
Let's talk about how great it went.
Let's sit on this, and then we'll come back and do notes.
" Yeah, and look, I deserve some blame for that.
When I said that, I assumed it would change a lot, and I may have been inarticulate about it, which is why I'm trying to be as articulate as I can right now.
I'm being pulled out of a movie that I'm actually engaging into by some of the comedy that's coming into it.
I feel like that one macro note was the only thing - I gave in that other meeting.
- Mm-hmm.
And so for you to then say, "I went and did all your notes, and I still feel the exact same way watching the test screening," all I can do is say, "Well, he must have disagreed with me.
" By the way, to acknowledge, I think the cut got better from the cut before that to the cut that you screened.
- Chris: Oh, 100% - It got better.
So the work you did made it get better.
I think that's why we're sitting here today saying, "Okay, we think it can make another leap again, making the jokes that are there work even better.
It's not about changing your vision, but about enhancing it.
Chris: Do you have other notes you were gonna bring up? 'Cause we have one other thing we have to talk about.
No, I think those were the big ones.
Yeah, so we have kind of a weird situation.
Zach and Neal, they've decided that they would prefer not to indicate to anyone that they were part of producing it.
He said, "If I ever do something like this again, I got to be involved with picking who the directors are and picking what the script is," and you know some What was the reason? I think he just really didn't like the movie, and I think he felt that it's the type of film that he, in some way, wishes didn't get made.
It was a pretty large statement.
This movie was not was there any was there like a lot of wild, like, "this is so offensive" comments? Too many shit jokes.
That was, like, the biggest one.
Shane: Well, he read the script.
He came to the set that one day during the most offensive day that we had, and now I have to see them, like, shake the motherfucker's hand, like what? Chris: You don't, absolutely not.
You don't have to shake their hand.
- Shader: You don't have to pretend.
- They both read the script.
It literally is less offensive than the script.
He seemed to get offended by it in some way.
Corey took it really hard.
Corey's very upset about it.
What does Corey have to say? 'Cause Corey likes the movie.
Corey does like the movie.
He's not taking his name off it.
Well, he's smart, 'cause this movie's gonna do fucking really well.
One of the comments, I think he said was, "I just don't even know how to fix it.
" Part of his anger was at me was that well, how do we let these movies or these types of movies I said, "Look, Zach, I made the 'American Pie' movies.
- You're not gonna convince me - You're talking to the wrong guy.
- Lauren: Did he not - Yeah, he acknowledged it.
He said, "Well, sometimes it's better, and I don't think this is as good as 'American Pie.
"' And I'm not sure Zach's ever seen "American Pie," - 'cause it's not - He was in "So Notorious," a Tori Spelling scripted comedy on VH1, which I thought was genius, but was the stupidest fucking thing - I've ever seen in my - I think that's part of it What's so annoying to me what's more annoying to me than him as a person, everybody thinks Shane Dawson is this horrible racist, crazy offensive person, and it's just frustrating me, 'cause this is so not it's good, and I'm so proud of it.
So now somebody involved in the project itself is now going to publicly in the show be like, "I had a visceral reaction to it.
I hated it.
I thought it was so offensive and so I can't believe movies like this are getting made anymore.
" It's like, I thought this was the one place where that wasn't gonna happen.
- Chris: I agree.
- And it fucking did.
- He did read the script.
- And it's so frustrating.
It makes me want to win more, but it also has just, like it just sucks, 'cause now the press no, that's the one thing people are gonna fucking pick out, that Zachary Quinto walked away from Shane's movie because it was too offensive.
Nobody's gonna even watch the movie.
They're gonna be like, "Yeah, we believe Zach.
" - Lauren: That's not true.
- All these people need to go into a fucking art house movie theater and just live there for the rest of their lives.
Lauren: I think that's where they want to be.
Because they're never gonna make money and he's never gonna get funding for anything because he's gonna keep making movies that are boring as fuck! I don't get it.
Like, make movies that fucking are good and fun and make money.
Whatever, anyways.
Moving on.
The results of the test screening, I think, were hard in some ways on both directors, because on Anna's side it was much more this thing where they liked the movie and they felt like they'd seen sort of this slice of life, but they weren't 100% sure what Anna was trying to tell them, and she had this issue where people were sort of mistaking the two lead actors for looking the same.
Man: I mean, I thought Tori and Heather were the same person until they saw each other at the grocery store.
They look too similar.
Woman: Did anyone else feel like they were the same person oh, that's interesting.
Tori and Heather, the audience has been mixing them up and not to say that the audience is crazy, 'cause this is we have now tested it on a lot of smart people and smart people are not getting it.
It's become crucial to use paneling to be like Scott, Tori, Heather.
This is a love triangle.
They're all different people, and you got to wrap your head around the fact that one of them is gonna be your narrator and tell the story and the other one is the most popular girl in school who we're gonna watch be super depressed.
In Anna's case, she has a voiceover.
So we spent a lot of time talking about the voiceover.
Could that affect the perspective? And what you end up talking about when you do a voiceover, this thing is at what point in the person's life is the person telling the story? His thesis was to the point that the movie is a low-stakes movie.
He's saying that not necessarily something we have to accept because you can use Tori's point of view in her voiceover - to sort of clarify the importance - Sure.
Of all of these moments for all of these characters.
Yeah, we started doing that a little bit.
Yeah.
I just think that you're at a stage now where even if the picture is exactly where you want it, it's something you can play with.
Chris: In Anna's voiceover, I think she was sort of doing it as if it was, like, two days later, or even the bus ride home back to college, and I think that gives a little less perspective.
And so we talked a lot about what can you do with the voiceover to sort of make people realize where it's coming from.
The VO is something that can morph and morph and morph and I, like, changed it yesterday, and it got so much better.
If you try to make everything so clear and please everybody and give people what they say they want, what they say they want isn't actually always what they want.
That's not how stories work.
(whimpers) I know.
I know.
That's exactly how I feel right now lost, confused, tied up.
It's been 24 hours since I found out that Zachary Quinto is dropping out of my movie.
I've waited 24 hours to make a video about this, because I was very angry, very upset.
And I had not a lot of good things to say.
So I decided to let it marinate and 24 hours later, I am still just as confused, just as hurt, and just as angry, but I've a little more of a clear head about it.
It doesn't bother me that Quinto doesn't like the movie.
I don't care because I like the movie, producers that I trust like the movie, a test audience liked the movie, so it doesn't matter to me that he didn't like it.
What hurts me is that he, on camera, has been saying that he doesn't think I deserve to make movies and that he doesn't understand why anybody would let me make movies.
I know I deserve to make a movie because I've been working my fucking ass off.
In these last eight years, on YouTube have been nonstop fucking grinding and like making videos every single day.
I definitely deserve it, and I can say a lot of hateful things and I have a lot of really funny little quips and puns, but I'm not gonna do that because I'm gonna take the high road.
I'm happy with the movie.
I'm happy that it's getting better every day.
Yes, Zachary Quinto doesn't get it, but luckily I believe that there is a lot of people out there that do.
Art house movies, great.
If that's your cup of tea, well, then, honey, sip it, because I'm over there drinking a big gulp of something sugary, sweet, and bad for me with the rest of America.
You know, people think the hard part is actually making the movie.
The hard part is putting the movie out there, getting people to actually see it.
Going your own route just ain't so easy if you haven't an already established what Shane Dawson has, and I haven't, and it's not for lack of trying.
Like, I love how in one of the articles, you're like, "It's gonna be really interesting to see how a girl like Anna figures out how to get more followers.
" Like, you don't think Victor and I have been trying, like, we're not putting, like, dick-vagina on all of our videos on all our Period films, but Chris: Maybe that's all you got to do! - I actually did no, hey - Dick-vagina by Period films? First thing I ever directed and put online and I titled it "Peeing Together," and it got a 100,000 views, like, in the first day because so many perverts were Googling "peeing together.
" But then I didn't keep doing all of my videos, like, salacious names 'cause that's just depressing.
Even in the last year and a half since "Breakup At A Wedding" came out - this landscape has - Anna: Shifted even more.
- Correct.
Absolutely.
- Anna: It's crazy.
And not for the benefit of movies like yours.
Most of the anecdotal conversations with those people in the room here who have had an independent movie get released recently by some of these distributors, nobody has been able to give me a positive story.
Corey: So we've essentially just reached out over the course of the past few months to all of our different, like, assorted resources on feelers specifically with "Hollidaysburg," right, to see what kind of life this movie would have and How are you doing that without showing the film? Shader: Because they're looking at things like who's in it, what's the concept, what was it made for? Being judged on who direc you know what I'm saying, it's first-time director unknown actors, small concept.
These are all things that make it very difficult.
For a movie like this, you have to actually pay to get in the theaters.
It's called four-walling You buy out the theater.
So if you believe that your movie deserves and will have people show up to see it, even if they wouldn't program it 'cause they're not sure, you can actually pay the movie theater X amount of dollars in order for the right to have your movie there for a week.
Generally, that'll be the theatrical part of this release.
Chris: There's all the struggles of the process of making the movie, of writing the script, doing everything else, but it all culminates in this moment when the movie is available for people to see, and what happens? And it is brutal, and it can be the most euphoric, amazing moment when you walk in theaters, and they're full.
It is fucking brutal when you've done all that same amount of work, all the same shit I did on a movie called "Best Laid Plans," had Reese Witherspoon and Josh Brolin and written by Ted Griffin who did "Oceans" and all this shit, and not a fucking soul went to see that movie.
In this whole arc of what you go through, that last moment of you're in a theater somewhere, you're sitting there and you're saying, "What more do I have to do? - What do I have to do?" - This is so depressing.
- But it might not be.
- Yeah, exactly.
It might be fucking full, right? But I'm saying to you is that moment, in my opinion, we owe it to the people who go down this road with us of the story of you getting to make your first movie to get all the way to that moment.
- Is Starz gonna air the full movies? - Yeah.
In order to have the movies available for people watching the show, right, they get to show the movies also.
To me it's about wanting as many people as possible to see it, wanting the audience that you think will respond to it to see it.
Corey: New movies are coming out every week now that you've never heard of.
Almost the only way you can find them is if somebody mentions it to you and then you look it up, but you actually have to know it exists before you can look it up.
Neal: People want to watch movies how they want to watch movies, and they don't want to be told you have to watch it in a theater, or you have to watch it on your computer, or you have to watch it on your phone.
They want to have options.
So they'll be available on iTunes, and they'll be available of Vudu and they'll be available in some form on Vimeo and YouTube and all these other platforms that are gonna have the right to air them, and then eventually and not too long before the end of the year they'll be out on DVD as well, so it's a shortened window.
And I hope this is all right with you.
I wanted to talk a little bit about what happened in regards to the other movie.
Neal and Zach watched Shane's movie Oh, they've gotten a screening? and have decided not to support that and to not have their names on it.
You know, what was meant to be all of us working on two things and sort of doing whatever, this is what happens in the business.
It is definitely a different movie, and a whole different setup, and so I respect their opinion, That's definitely happening? That's, like It happened.
So that's is it all three of you guys? Zach, like, voiced a very strong opinion about how he felt about Shane's style and body of work.
It's this weird thing for me.
I was there every day.
I worked with Shane on this movie, and I had good experience making the movie.
I'm not taking my name off of this movie, I actually disagree with my partners that this is a bad film.
Of course I think it's a good film.
I'm proud of this movie.
I mean, we have succeeded in the point of "The Chair.
" The experiment worked.
That's what we were doing.
They both made comedies with completely different styles.
And to say one is right or one is wrong you have an audience that's going to vote.
They're gonna make the decision of what they like better.
That's the experiment.
Lauren: In the end, what really needed to be sort of worked on the most, I think, with the edit was just sort of tightening things up.
I brought in a friend, Daniel Raj Koobir, who's a friend and a great editor, and he just spent a few days with it, and he just tightened it.
You couldn't even necessarily identify the things that he did, but you just knew in watching it after his little pass on it that it just felt so smooth.
I told everybody that you're locking picture today.
So I think the question is, like, what changes, if any There's just two little things I want him to add a beat of the party bus with silence before the line.
Shader: So right when you cut in, there's a beat of silence? - I agree.
- Shane: Yeah, it's just not - Chris: So that's it? - Yeah, I mean literally Chris: All right.
It's okay, it's all good.
Lauren: I don't know, I just wanted That's the thing, I'm telling you.
I literally have, like, two tiny things, and it's like, listen, I've compromised a lot in this movie and I'm excited about the movie and everything, but if I want one extra fucking second, just let me have it.
No one's not letting you have it.
I know.
I don't want to hear about it.
Like, if the movie comes out, I don't want somebody coming up to me, like, "I mean, listen, you could have taken that out but it's fine, I love it.
" I don't want that.
Lauren: Nobody wants you to feel compromised.
I think the movie is in the best shape it's ever been.
Let's hope so, since we're locking.
Right, I mean, like, that's the thing.
The movie I mean, this is the moment to be in the best shape.
This is, but it's true.
You shouldn't feel like, "I've compromised.
" I feel like you've learned and you've gotten notes and feedback and made it the best version it is.
So to say that, "I've compromised," I don't think what has happened.
I mean, in some ways I have.
That's fine.
That's what I said.
Yes, I compromised, and, yes, the movie's great.
There's certain things that I love that I got rid of.
There's certain things that I don't like that are still there, like, I have definitely compromised.
Is it a compromise, though, because you have directed you have final cut on this.
We're just trying to give you our opinions and our thoughts based on the past experiences that we've had, so I would hope that you don't look at it as a compromise - Shane: No.
- That you understand why we're talking about some of the things that we talk about with you, and why we want to make those changes.
Yeah, yeah, but also, I mean, in this process I feel like I feel like I've been very open to every note, every suggestion, everything.
I've never, like, yelled at you guys, said, "I don't" Like, I literally have incorporated everything, so it's like now that we're getting to the picture lock, if I just want an extra beat somewhere, like, I feel like I deserve it, at this point.
For the record, I've been yelled at.
What? I said I've been yelled at.
For the record.
- I've done everything.
- Fine, but, I've been yelled at.
Shader: When you decide to see a movie, Shader: When you decide to see a movie, what is the thing that makes someone say, "Yeah, I want to go see it"? Usually it's because you've seen the trailer.
Because of that, there are professionals that do it.
Wild Card is a professional company that edits trailers for huge movies.
Chris: I met Nick at a cocktail party.
And Nick actually loved the idea of "The Chair.
" Typically, the trailer is that first impression.
In any advertising, that first impression is critical, and ultimately, it comes down to are you presenting a story that people are interested in? Shane: I was so excited to have somebody make a trailer for me because I'm good at visualizing stories and movies and all those things.
Marketing, trailers, all that shit, no.
I literally am gonna have diarrhea.
I'm gonna diarrhea in this chair.
Are you sick, or you're just that nervous? I'm just nervous but excited.
I've never had a trailer.
When we looked at both films, while they're both character-driven they were treated so differently, we sort of pulled back and said, "Okay, how do you make people feel like I know what that is? I get it, I understand it, but I got to go see that.
I have to see that in a theater.
It can't be something that I can see on Netflix"? Heather: The first semester of college is awesome because nobody knows you and you can be whoever you want to be until you come home for Thanksgiving break.
Public sex is way in right now.
Gimme your dick! Obviously, Shane comes from a place where he's got a large online following, and so we wanted to kind of harness that.
While we were mindful of that, we tried to pull back and also say, "Okay, but how do we create a trailer that reaches more people, that feels like there's a more universal theme? You feel something, like a connection? Cutting Anna's trailer, I actually thought that would be tougher trailer to cut because you weren't gonna be able to rely on laugh-out-loud moments.
Tori: Senior year was weird for me.
I loved senior year.
Pretty sure the entire school had a crush on you.
Something that felt a little bit more universal to the idea of Thanksgiving and coming home and seeing how things have changed.
- Victor: Whoo! - Anna: Oh, my God! - Nice work.
- It was so good.
I did not expect that to be such an amazing experience.
That was wonderful.
Thank you.
I don't think a $600,000 feature would ever even dream of asking Wild Card to make them a trailer.
It's probably out of their price range if you're making a movie for 600,000 bucks.
So for us to get to experience someone taking our movie and giving it this treatment, it was amazing.
They elevated it and captured something that I didn't know was there, that I don't think I could have ever cut the trailer that they cut.
It's like magic trailer stuff.
Like, I would have never known how to do that, how it like, it comes up, and then I'm feeling things.
I've had that experience so many times where you sit there I think it's a little bit of a pothole all filmmakers, we all fall into, "I could cut the trailer.
I know the movie best," and every time, when the filmmaker shows up with the trailer, it's always dog shit.
When they do it well, and you look at it you sort of say to yourself "Holy shit.
" There's a moment where you sort of see a trailer for your movie, and you think, "Wow, I made a movie.
I made a real movie.
" And it's the funny part of the business is when you're home making movies yourself, you don't usually make trailers of your own movies and then you watch the trailer and you think, I'd go see that movie.
Shane: Seeing my trailer for the first time was intense because it really made it real.
I made a movie.
I have a movie trailer.
It's gonna come out.
People are gonna see it.
They're gonna see the trailer and say, "Oh, it's a movie," not, "Oh, it's a YouTube video," or, "Oh, it's just a thing stupid thing Shane did.
" It's an actual movie.
So I had a lot of emotions running through me at that time.
- (yells out) - (groaning) Tori: Sorry, I thought it was gonna be, like, romantic! Yay! It's really good, guys.
It's very exciting.
- Sweet.
- Man: It's a fun movie.
It's really fun.
Shane: I ran to the bathroom real quick.
And I did not want to cry in front of anybody.
I think I cried a little bit.
One of the things that happens in the movie-making process that I think you forget about when you're writing a script or you're trying to find your actors or you're trying to find your money or your shooting, is that even after the post process, you actually have to work on getting your movie out there in the world.
In the case of these movies, everybody has hired a marketing and PR firm called Prodigy PR.
Shader: Prodigy is a public-relations firm that did a lot of work with indie films.
They know how to take movies that don't have big marketing budgets and get the word out.
Eric: We do a lot of trailer placement and clip placement trying to get the views up.
Obviously with Shane, he's got a built-in crowd.
It was seamless for us to do it on that.
And even "Hollidaysburg," we still had a great response online, making sure we're covered on all the film ticketing sites, you know, all of the film fan sites, but also the traditional media sites like "New York Times," "L.
A.
Times," we were able to place it.
Neal: Whether it's Anna or Shane doing an interview about the directing process or about their particular movie, or something more broadly about the experience of being filmed on a documentary series, whatever the hook is for any given movie, that's what gets exploited.
Shader: There's tons of stuff in the marketplace.
How do you get directly at the audience that you think would like these movies? Neal: You're trying to find the right people who will appreciate this movie, who have a likelihood of paying to see this movie, who would tell their friends about this movie.
And in the case of Shane, if you don't get his audience, people who are already subscribed to his YouTube channels and follow his videos and have an awareness of him already, they should show up to see a Shane Dawson movie 'cause they're already choosing to follow him and be his fans.
And then in the case of Anna, you have to target people who would like this kind of movie.
You're targeting women, college-age kids, and people who grew up in the '80s and '90s who are nostalgic for this kind of movie.
Shader: We don't have the ability to put billboards up.
There's not gonna be commercials running on television about these movies.
We don't have the budgets to do that, and indie movies in general don't have the budgets to do that.
It's gotta be about going after a really specific group that you think will like your movie and telling them about it and then hoping that they head over to iTunes and buy it.
Chris: It's a very unique position Shane's in because he can tweet to 2 million people.
He can actually get the message out about his movie all by himself.
That's unusual for a first-time director.
(cheering) No autographs, no cell-phone pictures.
Ready? Are you ready? Fan: Oh, my God! Shane: Vidcon is crazy.
It is a yearly event where all the YouTubers come together and all the fans come together.
This year I think there was 20,000 or 30,000 people there, and we have a really big weird party.
Girl: Oh, my God.
Could you please kiss me on the cheek? Please? I love you so much.
Shane Dawson worked his butt off, and he built this massive, massive audience.
He earned that.
And he's kind of tailor-made the work that he's done to satisfy that audience.
I really like Shane's videos because it tells me, like, that I can just be myself, and it doesn't matter what other people say about me.
Everything he does and he talks about, there's always a meaning to it.
Whenever I'm sad or anything, I just watch him, and I get happy again.
I love you.
(crying) He's so sweet, and he's just so caring and funny, and I just love him so much.
Corey: His fan base, we've never seen anything like it.
I mean, you have seen something like it 'cause you've seen The Beatles, but he's not The Beatles.
He's not a rock star.
He's not Justin Bieber.
He's, like, a kid who just did all of this out of his bedroom and grew it into something large.
Chris: Because Shane has such a big following, we thought one of the best ways to bring attention to "Not Cool" was for him to premiere his trailer at Vidcon.
Corey: When you have him show his work in front of his audience and you see how they actually do respond to those bits and pieces that we, as the experienced producers, had problems with, his fan base goes insane.
It goes, like, fucking crazy.
Shane: Yay! Yay! When we get to him and his directorial debut, it creates certain problems with how he responds to advice.
When you have 10 million people who tell you you're amazing, who tell you you're brilliant, it's pretty impressive then that that person would be open minded to hearing anything.
I mean, I wouldn't I wouldn't listen to anybody if I had 10 million people listening to me while I was on a soapbox.
The point of this experiment for Shane was to basically see how he can transition out of what he has created into something larger, and he doesn't just want to reach the one demographic that he's been hitting so hard.
I love you so much.
I've been watching you since I was 8 years old.
Oh, my God, really? How old are you now? - 13.
Yeah.
- Wow.
Corey: This YouTube thing isn't gonna last forever.
Shane's growing up.
His fans have to grow up with him.
Going to Vidcon is really fun and exciting and also really scary and depressing because, you know, you go there and everybody thinks you're awesome and they're freaking out over you and stuff, and then the second you get in your car, ain't nobody give a shit, you know? Pull over to get gas, there's no security guard to help you out.
Guy at the gas station doesn't know who the fuck you are.
It just reminds me even more how much I want to make movies because I don't want to be a YouTuber for the rest of my life.
Chris: On "Hollidaysburg," we really needed to get people to know about it.
"Hollidaysburg" represents a much more traditional independent movie release.
- Thank you, my love.
- Go on.
One of the big tools when you're releasing independent movies is the press.
The TCA stands for the Television Critics Association.
There's an association of writers who write about television.
Different networks come to the TCAs, and they have this sort of week-long presentation where all the networks present their new programming.
It's pretty well done in terms of putting them all in the same room and get some face time with the people who are actually creating or appearing on the shows.
Shane: It is insane that me and Anna both made a movie in the same town at the same time, and we never met.
Anna: So like for instance, today you want a smoky eye, but it's like noon, so you don't want to be right, it's a day thing.
- Oh, my God! - Oh, my God! Good to meet you.
You're a real person.
You're a real come here.
- It's very nice to meet you.
- Oh, God, I'm breaking everything.
I did not see you coming at all.
That was intense.
It's nice to meet you! Corey: Shane and Anna will be linked forever as a result of this experiment.
They literally have something in common right now that nobody else will ever be able to share.
I'm so glad I'm not the only nervous - Oh, please, I've had diarrhea for - I didn't eat or sleep yesterday.
I've been watching "Big Brother" live feeds all night.
- What - It is intense.
It's intense.
Corey: They're linked in the way that they had unique experiences, as far as I'm concerned, in the world, and there's nobody that they can actually can talk to about that experience except each other.
Anna: When the TV show aspect of this experiment helps the movie, it's a beautiful thing.
It's built-in marketing, which is the thing that was missing from "Breakup At A Wedding," and that's one of the reasons this was a really appealing situation.
Man: Now I'd like to introduce the panelists executive producer Chris Moore, filmmaker Shane Dawson, filmmaker Anna Martemucci and executive producer Zachary Quinto.
Corey: We're fortunate "The Chair" is here for these two movies.
"The Chair" is gonna serve as a 10-week commercial.
It's not a studio-driven film.
It's an independent film.
There's a huge difference.
Chris: I think in today's world where there's so many media things you can watch and so many things that are out there, directors, particularly, they need to figure out how to promote themselves.
For Shane and for Anna, it's as much as them saying, "Hey, come watch my movie and come get behind the stuff that I'm doing," as it is "Hollidaysburg" and "Not Cool.
" And so we're all trying to push all of these different concepts and get people to like us and get people to like what we're doing and get people to buy tickets, or buy downloads or whatever it is.
And I think it's really important for filmmakers to somehow be willing to embrace the promotional side of their life and be okay with that because I think it's gonna be the difference getting your second movie made.
(applause) Thank you, thank you.
- So sweet, so sweet.
- Relatively painless.
Relatively painless.
Okay, I'm okay.
How are you feeling? Good.
How are you feeling? Okay.
I think it all hit me when I looked down and saw like the "Starz original" thing.
- I was like - Oh, it's real.
Did you do what I did, which is that I think it was a defense mechanism to make myself not as freaked out, I said, - "This isn't really gonna happen.
" - Oh, yeah.
The whole time I was like, "This is all falling apart.
" Every day, I'm like, "Are we really making a movie?" - Yeah, yeah, I saw that, actually.
- Are we actually and then everything kept falling through, so I was like, "Is this is there money? Like, what's happening? I really wish I would have met you before.
- I feel like - You feel like it would have I feel like we missed out on a lot.
It's crazy that Shane and I hadn't met before the TCAs because we were literally a floor apart during all of pre-production and production.
I don't even know how it's possible that we didn't run into each other in the elevator, but we didn't.
The entire time that this entire thing happened, I always had a mechanism in my brain telling me it's probably not gonna happen.
Philip: Being her doula, her coach, her creative sort of partner in this, I got a chance to see.
Anna day one, she was terrified, Anna day 20, she can do anything.
Anna: I feel really happy with "Hollidaysburg" the movie.
I made what I wanted to make, and I like it, and I think it works, and my main feeling is excitement to show it to people.
Shane: All the years of working my ass off, staying up all night editing, funding everything myself has led to this.
There isn't only one way to tell a story, any story.
That may intuitively be clear, but I think a lot of people go to the movies thinking, well, that must have been the best way to tell that story, and a lot of times it's not.
It's the way those people told the story, and at a certain point, two people is the purest way to do it and it's possible today.
You can afford to go out and make two versions of the movie.
Corey: People who invested their money into "The Chair" were not investing in Shane.
They were not investing in Anna.
They were investing in an overall idea and concept.
Chris: I would say that I'd like to have all the money up front and not be constantly raising money, but that's the nature of an experiment.
I really think the experiment worked.
Not to overstate it, but it's a daunting task what these filmmakers did.
You get to have the opportunity to make a movie, you do not take that lightly.
Neal: They both win in a certain regard.
These directors knew they were gonna get to do the main prize, which is make a movie.
Chris: I think Anna and Shane are two filmmakers who deserved a chance.
I think we have shown in the documentary how hard it is and how interesting it is.
Fuck! What this show does is lets you into the process, and it shows you how challenging it is to get those perfect moments.
Corey: Filmmaking, in essence, is a group of people that come together to make something and to build something.
That's the whole point of doing these things, right? Chris: For Shane and Anna, they'll be the first two people that ever did this.
Dan Schoffer certainly is gonna be the first guy who ever wrote a script that got made by two people at the same time.
Shader: At the end of the day, you judge a director by the product they put out.
That's what the audience sees.
Chris: I think Shane and Anna were wildly different.
We got really different movies.
I'm really proud to be a part of it, and I really can't wait for people to see it.
Hey, what's up, you guys? Yes, I'm very, very excited.
I'm nervous.
I'm stressed.
I'm everything because tonight is the big night.
We are on a Delta flight to New York City to go to the premiere of "Hollidaysburg.
" It's my movie premiere.
It's just a big night, and I'm very, very excited, and I hope everybody loves the movie.
We're all gonna leave together at 5:15.
Yay! Woman: Whoo! Yay! Oh, look who it is! Victor: Come on.
Can we get a picture with her later? Victor: Yes, we will, absolutely.
Shane: There's my movie.
There's my thing.
There's Lauren, there's Corey.
There's everybody.
Oh, we're here! Guys, strip! Guys, strip! We're in the theater right now.
Here's the cameraman for the show.
He's my favorite.
He's doing the sound.
He's wearing a backpack.
There's a bunch of reserved signs on the seats.
I'm freaking out.
Got it? (chatter) It has so much heart and there's some great drama.
Shader: So after you're done with production, and you're done editing, you finally get to sit back and celebrate and watch the movies and have a premiere.
Premieres are a party.
It's a celebration for the filmmakers and for the crew and the cast to all get together and enjoy what we all created.
Anna: My premiere in New York City, it was 100% a dream come true.
Shane: Watching my movie with a room full of people was terrifying and exciting.
Everything I dreamed it would be.
Shader: But the real purpose of a premiere is to stage a publicity event.
The hope is that you get press to show up and take pictures and write stories about your movie, and that people will then discover the movie who hadn't otherwise heard of it.
How are you guys? We're all trying to show Hollywood that we can actually do something more than just a 3-minute video.
Anna: Once I started directing, I felt like I was doing what I was always meant to do, and it was a beautiful thing.
Shader: Both movies will play in theaters in New York and L.
A.
'Cause we're paying for it.
The hope is that we sell enough tickets that hopefully we make a little bit of money.
- There it is.
- Do you see it? Yeah, I see it.
Oh, my God, it's sold out.
Hey! - Publicity doing it.
- It's the opening night, and it's sold out.
Julie: Yeah, it's a good thing.
It's a good thing to be sold out.
Julie: I just want to come back.
I want us to sell out numerous times during this week.
We mailed everybody in the whole wide world to tell them to - I never got my email off, like - Really? Chris: Anna sold out her first two shows the ones she attended but after that, no one showed up.
Shader: The theatrical debut for "Not Cool" was both expected and frustrating.
On one hand, it was great to see hundreds of Shane's fans turn out and buy tons of tickets, mostly when he was there.
(screaming) The experience of releasing the movie was exhausting because all the marketing was on my shoulders.
"Okay, Shane, tell your audience go see it.
" So I fucking hustled.
I was at every single screening in New York and L.
A.
For those weekends.
And I sold out every single screening, I met every single person.
I signed all the boobs.
I hugged all the parents.
I mean, that's what you got to do because if it's not a huge Hollywood movie, then nobody knows about it.
And, yeah, I have a lot of fans online, and, yeah, I have more fans than she does and stuff, but you can't discount the fact that I worked my ass off to get every single person in that seat.
(screaming and cheering) Okay, we all worked so hard on this movie, and you know I've been showing it to a lot of people and a lot of producers and this and that, but tonight is the night I've been waiting for the whole time because I made this movie for you guys and you guys are gonna fucking love it! (screaming) Neal: Shane's made $36,000 in its weekend in its theatrical run, and hers made $3,800, and "Hollidaysburg" had a real trouble finding an audience who was willing to show up at the theaters.
His fan base of millions of people strong did not actually show up, and the truth of the matter is they showed up for the shows that he was there for.
Shader: When he wasn't there, we weren't selling tickets.
And I think that's the challenge that Shane has right now.
He is a personality.
He's a draw.
(cheering) Shader: People will show up to see him, but he wants people to show up to see his movie.
People that don't know him, people that aren't fans of him.
That's something that we've been tracking this whole time, is can he get that larger audience? And at least in that initial theatrical debut, we saw his fans showing up, but we didn't see anyone else showing up.
Reviews are obviously a big piece of how people come to know whether a movie's worth going to see or not.
Anna: Reviews actually mean quite a bit to me being an extreme film lover, and using reviews myself as a way figuring out what it might be worth to watch, and what it might be not worth to watch.
When you get a great review, it feels amazing.
When you get a shitty review, it's crushing.
Zachary: The films got very different critical reactions.
The morning of my premiere, at that point, we had gotten one review from "The New York Times," and it was decent, not great.
Reviews can be really bad sometimes, even if you are happy with your movie, and a review from "The Film Journal" came in.
And one of the first lines was "Martemucci has a deep love of her characters.
" I couldn't read anymore 'cause I was just sobbing because and that's when I realized how kind of vulnerable a feeling it is to put something out that you care about that much and then have the world openly judge it.
Zachary: Anna's movie was really well-received by almost all of the people that saw it critically.
And "Not Cool" got a lot of really negative reviews.
Zachary: Shane's movie got eviscerated in the critical landscape.
I mean, absolutely destroyed.
One review said that if you enjoy my movie, you must be a rapist, racist sociopath.
That was in the"Los Angeles Times.
" This movie got some of the worst reviews I've ever seen in my life.
(laughs) I have never read reviews that have said "the people involved in giving this person an opportunity to make this movie should never be allowed in the film business again.
" Chris: For one of the reviews, to call me out for letting him make a movie is so beyond anything I've ever seen on a movie.
I have no idea how to react to that, and I feel bad for Shane.
For me, reviews don't really mean whether a movie is good or not.
The fact is, both of me and Anna's movies got reviewed by like five people, when normal Hollywood gets 100, 200 reviews per movie.
To have five middle-aged white dudes judge your movie especially a teen comedy, is not really the tell-all for how the movie is.
For me it's more looking at the audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes people who didn't love the movie but didn't hate the movie looking at those reviews to me is more telling.
Zachary: The surprising thing is the inequity between the audience response and the critical response, that it's almost impossible if we're trying to choose the winner of this project, how would you do that? Most people would say, "Well, you know, Shane won.
He got all these people to see his movie.
It was in the top whatever on iTunes, and nobody saw Anna's movie.
" But people that saw Anna's movie, people that are arbiters of taste, reacted to the movie in a much more positive way.
I think we're all in a really tough position.
Chris: The group of us really brainstormed and we decided to make it a survey about the movies.
The two most important questions for any audience on any movie traditionally in Hollywood is "How would you rate this movie?" And the first two boxes are excellent and very good.
The other one is would you definitely recommend this to your friends? Those questions were weighted a little bit higher.
And SurveyMonkey was very helpful in trying to make it not a popularity contest.
One of the things was to create these test questions to prove that you watched both movies.
If you could not get all of the questions right about the two movies, your survey was thrown out.
Of all the surveys that were filled out, we disqualified almost 40% because they couldn't answer these questions correctly.
The idea was to make people really pay attention to what they liked about the movies, what they didn't like about the movies, but I think once you did the survey you realize we made it as fair as we possibly could.
Hey, this is my last vlog, and I'm very, very nervous as I read this email that I just got sent from Chris Moore.
"Final results the weighted average on a scale of zero to hundred using the agreed upon methodology, 'Not Cool' is clearly the winner.
" Okay.
Congratulations, Shane.
Good on you.
I hope you enjoy a thousand victory laps around the internet.
We have been thrown through the fucking mud dealing with critics who just hate me because I'm a YouTuber and just hate everything I do, people making the audience feel guilty for liking "Not Cool" because if you like "Not Cool," you must be an idiot.
Because who likes dumb, fun, raunchy comedies? So the fact that the audience voted and the audience loved this movie, it means fucking everything to me.
All the reviews don't fucking matter.
All the negativity from the producers who didn't like me, don't fucking matter.
People do love this movie.
And, yeah, a lot of people fucking hate this movie.
More people love it.
I'm just so happy to have gotten to make a movie and to have been able to share with you guys the journey.
I am so grateful to Chris Moore and Josh, Corey, Lauren, of course.
Obviously the audience for voting not just my fans, but the people who didn't know who the fuck I was who gave me a chance and probably thought they're gonna hate it and loved it.
Thank you.
Now I know exactly what I want to do with my life.
And I hope that I get to make another movie, and I hope that Anna gets to make another movie, and I hope that this just a launching pad for all of us, you know, because making movies is fucking hard.
And being an Indie director is really fucking hard.
Thanks for coming on this journey with me.
This is Shane Dawson director of "Not Cool.
" (sighs) Thanks.
Chris: I didn't succeed in finding people to market their movies.
We tried a show, 10-episode documentary that by all accounts people liked.
We tried the competition maybe people will be interested in that so they go see the movies.
And we tried, let's bring a dude who's got 10 million people he can talk to, and let's see if we can go out and be the most successful independent movie of the fall, and we weren't.
And Shane made the top five in iTunes.
Still, the average person didn't know shit about Shane didn't know anything about, "The Chair," didn't buy it, and so the question of how do you market to people when you don't have $50 million is still a fucking mystery to me.
And you know what the crazy part about all this is? We're not stopping.
I'm not stopping.
Those of us who did the documentary aren't gonna stop, and I can guarantee you Shane and Anna aren't stopping.
Everyone involved in this process will keep trying.
Because when you hit a home run in this business, it feels fucking awesome.
All the long days, all the frustration, all the people who fuck you over, all the unfulfilled expectations, it is all worth it when people love the shit you did.
(music playing)