This is a transcript of SYS 505 – Writing A Script That Gets Made With Jon Garcia .
Welcome to Episode 505 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger with sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I am interviewing writer-director Jon Garcia who just did a Bigfoot horror film called Summoning the Spirit. He’s done a number of LGBTQ films, including this horror film. It’s an interesting discussion with him hearing how he’s making elevated genre films specifically for the LGBTQ community. I’m a big proponent of this myself finding a niche, even a small niche and creating something that they can get excited about. And this can actually help your film breakout and sort of build an audience just really from the grassroots level up. So really interesting conversation today with Jon, so stay tuned for that interview.
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Ashley
Welcome Jon to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. Really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Jon Garcia
Yeah, man, thanks for having me on.
Ashley
So, to start out, maybe you tell us a little bit about your background. Where did you grow up? And how did you get interested in the entertainment business?
Jon Garcia
I’m from Corpus Christi, Texas, about three hours away from border Mexico. And I didn’t get into screenwriting and filmmaking until my 30s I went to the University of Texas Austin, I studied psychology. I moved to Oregon and moved to Portland, I started playing in bands and touring for a while now. That was all I did for a number of years. And then I went to film school about 29-30. I’m in my 40s now and since then I’ve just been writing and making feature films, mostly over the past 13 years. But right off the bat when I got to film school, I just started writing. So, researching and I always wanted to do it, I just never had the chance to never thought it was a reality. And then once you know I think once you know the first or second generation of prosumer cameras came out is SHA1 that the Panasonic … I’m like skipping I can’t remember the name now. But I’ll be sharing with, you know, hump day all these films made by the Dupel brothers in their early years. That’s when I got into it’s like I can actually like write something and just go right out and make it. And so that’s been like, the majority of my career has been like writing screenplays for that I’m going to actually make you know, as opposed to optioning.
Ashley
And yeah, so you got to Portland, you were doing music and then you went to film school in Portland. And that’s sort of what jumpstarted your film career?
Jon Garcia
That’s it, yeah. I went to Portland State University here. I was the first graduating class of the Portland State University, their film program.
Ashley
And so, talk about that a little bit. Being outside of Hollywood, outside of Los Angeles. Just talking about getting some of these films off the ground. So, you’re a musician at this point. You’re going to film school. How did you get that first, and I’m just looking at your IMDB page. You have a couple of early features Tandem Hearts, The Falls. How did you get those off the ground? Obviously, you don’t have you know, a ton of track record at this point. You’re just a young guy trying to make stuff happen for yourself. How did you get financing? How did you just have the competence to get these things produced?
Jon Garcia
As far as the confidence I was coming out of the music, the music industry, I had written a couple of albums I did PR for them, I knew how to kind of get myself out there. I had one song that was doing pretty well in the Commonwealth. And I just kind of understood creating something and putting it out in the world and kind of waiting for audience reception for it you know and so for me like getting into filmmaking out of film school, it was just at first a way to get my music out in the world as well, and have fun and a new medium. But when I made my first feature, I wrote it over the course of maybe like, six months to eight months, I started in a screenwriting class that I was taking as I was graduating from film school, I started there. And I went to Craigslist, and I just started finding people that to work with, I still I didn’t go to a great film program. So, I didn’t really know, it was mostly educated to become a critic that’s about that’s about it, we didn’t have very many production classes. So, I still showed up on set, and didn’t really know how a lot of things worked. And so as far as financing it, I still had some money leftover from my financial aid, some student loans, a couple of grants, you know, a couple of classes I didn’t take, you know, so I financed it mostly with that, and most everybody worked for free or cheap. You know, I tried to feed everybody I still, you know, I did not understand just the everyday workflow with film set, there’s basically two or three of us on set. Any one of us were on camera, the rest of us, you know, one would hold a boom, one was set up lights, but it was makeshift, you know, that was my first film, Tandem Hearts, we shot on weekends over the course of maybe like a year and a half. And eventually, we finished it we had a big party, a big screening for it, and actually did pretty well a lot of people that just didn’t really I think expect it to be as solid as it was. And I think as far as first films go, it turned out really well. So even before that film came out, I had another idea about two Mormon missionaries that go on a mission and they and they fall in love in opposition of their church and their community. And it was just an idea, I think I was deeply inspired by Brokeback Mountain, you know, which I really loved. And I started writing that screenplay. And it did a lot of research in that and I realized how fun that was, you know, it’s just go research something that you don’t know about and kind of try to teach yourself and teach others to, you know, like, but also have some in depth knowledge of that would be relatable to people that know about the LDS Church, the Mormon church. And so, we actually had a couple of people that were involved in the production that were Mormon, active Mormon, and also former Mormons. And so, I had a lot of insight on set on the day from people. So, you know, still to this day, people watch that film. And they tell me like; wow, you really told my story or like, wow, like, how did you know so much about the LDS church, etc., etc. And, and I think a lot people, like, learn more about them, too. And also, I didn’t exploit the church, I didn’t really have a dog in that fight. I didn’t, I wasn’t trying to say anything negative about religion, organized religion, or the LDS church at all. So, I wanted to stay neutral. I grew up religious, and I had no reason to offend anybody. And so that script, I think, the first version, I wrote that script, it was misinformed. It was just sort of based on just periphery knowledge about the church. And I realized that couldn’t make that story, it wouldn’t fit right. And there was just a lot of things that wouldn’t have worked. So, you know, early, since early on, I’ve never been afraid to start from page one again, you know, I just saw that as just like, a you know, like, don’t be afraid to like, just don’t be tied to anything that you’ve written, don’t be afraid to go back and just restarted again. And I did that. And also, you know, about two months before we started production. I had a version of the script I was getting pretty happy with. And I didn’t have the wherewithal to kind of to back-up everything. There was no cloud yet. You know, and so I lost the screenplay when my laptop died and so I had to write the whole thing all over again. And I wasn’t worried at that time. If I that would happen now. I would freak out. But I’m fairly certain that I was able to recreate every piece of dialogue that I lost and rewrite the screenplay better. And then of course, backing it up this time, etc. And then I was writing like you do all the way until the first day of filming and even adjusting things on the flag because like, he’s, like I said, we had people on set who were at active LDS, former LDS that could tell me like, No, this would never happen. That would never happen. A missionary companion would never go anywhere without their companions or companions always with them. And so, which is kind of interesting. And so, yeah, as far as the financing, that movie was a production with $7,000 I think I paid the lead actors $400 – $800 each, you know, there was a four person crew and myself, the director of photography, who was also his own Gaffer, and I was running the boom, and we had a makeup artist and a producer and our two actors or two actors who wore the same suit every single day like Mormons do. The funny thing about that film was actually our producer who was a Mormon, active Mormon at the time. I know, she was a former Mormon at the time, in her family, he just left the church, they all left the church together, and they still had their food storage, you know, which, which is something that the LDS church does, you know, preparing for the Doomsday, etc. And so we actually fed our crew with their food storage that they had. And we’d make any number of I don’t know, it’s something as simple as hotdogs and bread, it to just macaroni and cheese. I mean, we just, it’s so simple, you know, people were fed, they weren’t fed great with it, but they were fed, but we had a lot of loopholes, and actually, everything that was given to us, they were in this apartment for the whole thing came from the producers, family, and just like, you know, the Mormons when they are missionaries, rather, when they are stationed somewhere for two years or whatnot, everything’s donated, you know, and they wear suits that are hardly fit them. They have two bikes, you know, the only thing we changed on these guys was going to be the ties, and they were different ties, we had to remember like, what’s the day one tie? What’s the day five tie and so, everything was pretty simple. It was written to be to be made some and simplified, you know, and we and we got a, you know, a few locations let us film there for free. So, it was a $7,000 film. And to this day, I think the royalty checks I get from that movie to this day are sometimes more than what we spent.
Ashley
That’s a fantastic story. Now tell me this. So, on IMDb, you have The Falls and then you have The Falls: Testament of Love. Are those two separate movies? Was that a sequel? And was that always your plan? Just tell me how those two films sort of relate to each other? What was the plan there?
Jon Garcia
You got it. It wasn’t the plan at all. It was after the first one came out. It did pretty well. I was like top 5000 IMDb which is pretty cool. And the reception was, was overwhelmingly positive. And it got into it got it almost every LGBTQ plus Film Festival that I submitted to. So about three or four months after it came out, I met with breaking last pictures the distributor of the film, and we just casually started talking about what about a sequel. And I was excited about it. And I wanted to keep making movies and I love that there’s an audience and idea of making a sequel sound of like, fun something to do so early in my career. I’ve only been doing it for three years at that point. So, I wrote the screenplay. This time, I talked to a lot of active and former Mormons who were of the LGBTQ community and I just jotted down a ton of stories and, and a lot of the stories ended up in the film, which I thought was pretty cool. And it felt real. And unlike a lot of people that who I’d met, there was a group of former and I’m currently practicing LDS individuals hear mostly from LGBTQ, they’re called affirmation. And they were very supportive of the first movie. And it was them that I spoke to mostly and garner stories about their experiences as being LGBTQ folks, who are also LDS. And so, there was an authenticity to it. So, the distribution company, they put in a little bit of cash, maybe about 25,000 for it, and the rest, I put in myself, I had a tech job at the time. And then I raised a little bit of money. And a gentleman came in my life who’d seen the first movie, and he contributed around $30,000, to the film, where I could actually pay myself because, you know, a lot of us when we’re making these films, and we’re producing them and writing and we don’t pay ourselves, so … which is a tough thing. And I’ve had enough people in my life tell me, like, if you don’t pay yourself, you’re not a hero for not paying yourself, you know, like, you’re not it, you’re just making it harder for the film to actually get created. And who is going to do it, if you don’t do it? I mean, you have to do everything that, you know, is what it comes down to, if you can afford to pay people to do anything. So, it’s good that I’m also an editor and a director of photography, and I can do any number of things on these films. So, I ended up making The Falls: Testament of Love for around 60 to $70,000, I think, and it was met with a pretty equal reception as the first one. You know, we had a couple of killer reviews, you know, from large publications, LA Times and variety, you know, dragged us through the mud, you know, sometimes you just want to scream and say, like… Do you not realize how much I made this movie for like, you know, and you know, but I was happy for the attention but it at fared pretty well and so three years later, I got really into my tech job I was doing, but three years later, I realized I don’t want to do this media for a tech company anymore. It’s kind of soul sucking, I’m in a no Fancy anybody who does that is for a living, but I just couldn’t, it wasn’t good for me. And so, I decided to get back in and make, I always plan to I just didn’t know when. But I wanted to make another feature. And so, I made a third installment to The Falls, The Falls Franchise, if you want to call it that. And in that one we made for around 95,000, a little bit more. Each film was stylistically different. They all had different DPs and our DOPs, and it was more or less the technology and the people that we had access to at that time, you know. So, it’s kind of funny, if you watch all three films, they are stylistically very, very different movies, you know, and the third one was more on your feet handheld, a little bit different than the previous to the second one had more of a Kubrick kind of feel, static camera, etc. It’s very to Wes Anderson, for a long time. And the first film had that kind of, you know, observed is sort of wide shot type field. And so it’s kind of funny, if you watch all three films, you can kind of see like, you know, my tastes and influences change, because it’s over the course of about seven or eight years, that film therapy fared very well too, the trilogy, as a whole is done pretty well and it continues to, you know, to garner a little bit of cash in for Lake, you know, not a whole lot, but just enough to just be able to look back and say, Hey, and I did this work 10 years ago, and it’s still bringing in a little bit of cash, I think those films have been a success for me in my career.
Ashley
So, lesson learned. So, on the second and third installment, you spent almost 10 times the amount of money, I’m assuming you didn’t make 10 times the amount of revenue back on them. But what can you say about that doing a movie for 60-70 or 95,000, versus doing a movie for $7,000? If you’re an early filmmaker just trying to cut your teeth, what do you recommend? I mean, it seems to me, I always encourage people, like if you can’t make money on a $7,000 movie, it’s going to be tough for you to make money on a $70,000 movie, and learning those lessons cheaply, always seems like a smart way to go. Maybe you can speak to that a little bit the difference of a 7000 for $70,000 movie.
Jon Garcia
I can’t. And I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because most of them, all the films I’ve made have been under $200,000. I’ve made 11 now my first few were, you know, 15,000, 7000, you know, for 15 for Tandem of hearts, 7000 for the Falls, you know, I always called the Falls my baby. That’s the first film that came out, Tandem Of Hearts didn’t come out till 10 years later, you know, and of course, The Falls: Testament of Love for about 65 to 70. And then covenant around 95 I made a film in between the second and third Falls called the Hours Till Daylight and I was a $20,000 movie I did with just myself and a director of photography. And it was just a two person crew. And the film didn’t fare well critically, or monetarily. But it was my first kind of my first horror film, my first experience doing that. And I think what I found is, in all those films, especially the trilogy, they happen to be in a genre of it has a lot of support. And I didn’t go into making LGBTQ films, with an intention or with all to know that I was making films within a genre, but because I did make a film within a genre that had a lot of support, I found that they did get some eyes on them. They did they did get into a lot of film festivals. And people did were curious about these films. And so, I think just the fact that it was about something a little taboo, you know, sexual orientation, and religion. I think that that drew some people in, it just did. And so, you know, Tandem Hearts was about two people that moved to Portland and they from Boise, and they they’re just in a new place. And they had relationship issues for the beginning and they’ve moved to new place to try to fix them, of course, though, their problems follow them there, etc. It’s a coming of age film. It’s cool. You know, it’s about you know, Portland music, it’s kind of a time capsule of Portland music in the early 2000s, right, but it doesn’t have a draw necessarily. It’s hard to really even I mean, especially now but back then, you know, to get people in to just watch this indie film as love story. It was very hard, you know, it didn’t come out till a lot later to the Hours Till Daylight was a horror film. And it did garner some attention because it was a horror film. I had a Latin cast. And that was something that we weren’t seeing a lot at that at that point in time, you know, Latin genre movies, and that kind of started me my interest in making more diversified films around 2012. And so, you know, I made this film lose about $130,000 movie a few years ago. It’s a prison movie. It’s also Latino, you know, so it’s right from the get go, you know, you mentioned prison movie. You know, a lot of people like prison movies, you know, I look for prison movies and the fact that that’s also LGBT. And it’s also a Latin film, that’s those are other elements that draw people in, you know, people see themselves in there, okay, you’re making a film about Latin people, Latin people who are also religious, or also LGBT, you know, I see myself in that film, or I’ve never seen anything like that. And I think, you know, part of making these independent films that are below $200,000 is just trying to make yourself stand out and finding a, I wouldn’t say a call it a formula, but it’s somewhere where your interests align with the zeitgeist of what people are thinking and feeling. And the world right now, you know, like, the reason, you know, I’m an actor, and I have an acting teacher that always tells us, every time we go and study with her, she’s like, you know, think about the Greeks. And that’s where it all started. You know, that’s where theater started. And the job of an artist is to tell the stories about the time we live in the times that we live in, that’s our job as artists, and I think that’s there’s something Zeitgeist about making work that is about issues or topics that are on everybody’s mind, right now. And not only right now, but maybe like 7 to 9 to 10 months to a year from now, when the movie actually comes out. You know, and so, I mean, that’s, that’s kind of the thinking, I go in with, with making these low budget and independent films. And now that, you know, inflation and everything else, you know, that $150,000 to $200,000 independent movie is a very difficult thing to pull off now. And I just, and I realized that after the pandemic, when I made so many in the spirit for around $180,000, between $160,000 – $180,000, it’s kind of hairy, you know, but the reason why is because, you know, you’re paying people almost below minimum wage, you get very close to that threshold, to actually pull off these 12 hour days or more, you know, you’re shooting for 23 to 25 days, that’s the average for all my films, as I write, you know, anywhere from 90 to 110-120 page screenplays. And it’s just, you know, we end up having to cut pages out just to make do and whatnot. And it’s really hard on people, it’s really, especially when you add the creature element, you know, we had to spend two or three hours putting this creature together, putting this guy in the suit, and we only had a couple of facial applications. They’re very expensive. And we got him from the company, Spectral Motion, suit that we got for Summoning the spirit was loaned to us by Greg Hale, who was a consultant on the film, he of course, he made the Blair Witch in the 90s, you know, and so he’d made a Bigfoot movie called Exists. And so that suit cost more than the entire budget of our film. And that really helped to have that element to it. So, that is the star of our movie, the Bigfoot. There’s nobody knows anybody in this film they never heard of any of these actors are all very talented. So that in itself, in the fact that we’re making a Bigfoot film, a lot of people are interested in Bigfoot. I’m interested in Bigfoot. And right from the get go, it’s like, you know, we stand out. Yeah, we made a weird spiritual Bigfoot movie that’s not not very big on the scares, and on the death and on the murder, you know, on the horror, it’s more got a spiritual narrative, emotional element to it. And part of that is because we had to cut out a whole slew of the scares, and the gore, because we couldn’t afford it. We’re basically we’re working with what we’re working with, you know.
Ashley
So, that’s a good time to just break into this and talk about Summoning the Spirit. And let’s just start out with a quick pitch or logline, you’ve kind of given us some clues about what this is about. But do you have sort of a concise logline for this one? And then we’ll dig into the specifics of writing and producing this?
Jon Garcia
You got it. Yeah, sure. Somebody’s spirit is about a couple from Miami, that moved to the Pacific Northwest. And they specially moved next to a group of people called the mountain people that are a cult that worship Sasquatch, and the story is about their intermingling with the cult, and as they slowly find out what they believe in, and how that can affect them. And they’re in this new place that they moved to.
Ashley
So, where did this idea come from? And you’re talking about all of these various, you know, trying to come up with something that’s in the zeitgeist that people sort of familiar with, but maybe you can talk specifically, I mean, how much does that play into it? But what was the genesis of this story? And how much of did these other sort of more broader issues about finding an audience play into the development of this idea?
Jon Garcia
Right. And I think it happens organically, I think that’s how I hope and feel that it happens. I think if you’re too intentional about it, I think the whole thing could fall apart or feel a little, just a little forest, right. But I always wanted to make a Creature Feature and never made one. I had a lot of time, like extra time during the pandemic, as did Zach, the Co-writer, and we just started throwing the script back and forth. This idea had many iterations and the cult wasn’t even part of it for the first few. And we were just telling the story. And over time, you know, I’ve been watching a lot of cult oriented documentaries and whatnot, like Teal Swan, you know, the rainbow folks, you know, a slew of documentaries and reading about coals, it was just an interest of mine. And so, I just, we just have a need to just infuse this into the story. And, like I said, started doing it back and forth. And we had names for these characters, and we were trying to tie the Sasquatch, the three storylines of the Sasquatch, the couple and the colt, and what they all want, and all their arcs, and collectively trying to make them line up at the end was very difficult, you know, but we played with the idea of this forest that the Sasquatch lives in that this cult lives by, that this couple from Miami have moved into is magical as it’s home to the Sasquatch, other Sasquatch, and it has this regeneration, all kinds of power to it, you know, it can change, you can recycle, you can fix you can in and so we went with that idea. And so starting off with what Dean and Carla what their grievances are, and what they don’t have and what they need and what they want, and trying to get to, into from the second act of the third act and decide whether they get what they want, you know, they don’t have to get what they want. And it’s sometimes more interesting when they don’t, you know, if we believe that nature we had sort of theme that nature is neutral, and it’s not good or bad. That doesn’t mean that you end up happy or alive at the end of nature’s progression and what it decides to do. And so, we went with that theme in the film and you know it just like any genre piece, you know, you set your rules, you stay within those rules, you try not to break the rules, you bend the rules where you need to, if you need to. And so that was the spirit behind thinking and writing the screenplay.
Ashley
Yeah, let’s talk about your writing process a little bit. You mentioned a co-writer. Maybe you can talk about that. How did you guys actually collaborate? Did you sometimes get in the same room? Did you cook up an outline? And then it sounds like you guys were passing the script back and forth. But just talking about that process?
Jon Garcia
Sure. Yeah, we started off with an outline, some beats, and Zach did the first pass of the screenplay. And then I did the second one. And, you know, we were very much. I mean, I think I did more than Zach does. I think Zach, you know, I can’t say he ever was like, very tied to anything, you know, and I tried not to be as well. So, he’d write a pass, you know, I would do the next pass. And I’d go through and we didn’t do a revision mode or anything, I didn’t even know about revision mode. So that’s something I just learned about, we just, you know, I literally had to go through and look for the changes and we probably did that around six or seven times. You know, there was some things you know, we would talk about by phone, I never once had a zoom with him over this screenplay, we were literally sending this, this FBX file, back and forth, back and forth. And at some point, about three months before we actually started shooting the movie. And I just I reached out and was like; Hey, I think I just need to take just take over from here. I’m about to make this film, I think I just need to kind of take it by the reins and just start writing and writing the film I’m actually going to make with all these folks. And so, and he was very cool with that, you know, Zach, you know, we, you know, we paid Zach for his work, you know, as part it was a line item in the budget. And I’d known Zach for a long time, you know, so I we he’s been in my career since my first movie Tandem Hearts. He answered the Craigslist that I told you about earlier. And we met up and he’s been in my life ever since actually, everybody that worked on tandem hearts we’re all still friends and they they’ve worked in various films I’ve made since then. I think because I’ve known him so long. And because I know that he’s he doesn’t have a lot of ego when it comes to this. He actually works for Sevrin, I don’t know if you know what Sevrin is, he works for that distribution company. They mostly make horror films, and they sell kind of revitalized older heart horror films. But yeah, I knew the guy you know, and there’s very few people that I could write with that I can write in this way with you know, I didn’t one other time and it went pretty well with my friend Ian Stout, who I made love and dangerous times with this pandemic movie I made for around $2,500 a few years ago. And so yeah, that was the process. It was nothing too complicated. It just helped that we were friends, and that we didn’t have a lot of ego.
Ashley
Once you had a draft done that you guys were happy with, or you were happy with? What was that process to raising the money? How do you go about now getting the funding in place for a film like this? Obviously, you do have a track record, you’ve got a number of films. But what does that look like? Once you say; Okay, I’m going to go make this movie, what are those steps look like?
Jon Garcia
Yeah, so we were talking to a producer about just doing a horror film, about doing an LGBT horror film, and, but first, we were going to do something else, right. And so, I mean, I wasn’t sure if we were going to work with this group of people for this movie, I’d casually mentioned it, and there was other sources I was looking at, you know, for fundraising, we thought, well, if we, you know, we’ll do this movie, even for 30,000 If we have to, I can raise 30 grand, and I might be able to raise it from the distribution company or something, you know, so we were prepared to go into it to make it dirt cheap, you know, and we still didn’t make it dirt cheap. But once I told this group that were supposed to make this other movie with about this film, they got on board and they brought people in their network on board, and they all they all put in around $28,000 to $30,000 each for the film, I put in about 20 or so. But you know, we didn’t have the cash until we were about maybe a week or two in production. I was I think rolled the first week or so. And then I think a Dark Star pictures put in $20,000 for this, they don’t always do that this was just kind of a special case, for the genre movie. And so yeah, so the distributor, and for producers, I myself all put in around the same amount. And so, I haven’t raised money like this really before, and I’ve had several investors in the past, but we’ve never had like waterfall agreement. That’s where we all started an LLC, and a waterfall. And then, you know, deliver K ones, all the things you need to do. And so that’s I raised the money from you know, a few different sources. And, you know, we raised enough to get us through post and so yeah, that’s how we did, it was pretty simple.
Ashley
So, just general advice, what advice do you have for people looking to break in as screenwriters, just any lessons learned? Any just if you had one piece of advice, someone comes to you say, I’m a young person out of college, I want to get into screenwriting. What would you tell that person?
Jon Garcia
Yeah, if they want to make a movie or to get into screenwriting?
Ashley
Yeah, get into screenwriting start there. And then maybe someone that screenwriter but also wants to make a movie?
Jon Garcia
Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, I think I think, I mean, I’m still learning how to write screenplays. And I listen to script notes all the time. And script notes, the podcast, and I love that podcast. And I think, yeah, obviously, like learning as much as you can about screenwriting, whether it’s by, you know, YouTube, or books, or what have you, and just start writing, really, honestly start writing and creating movies. You know, they say, like, you know, I remember, like Mark Duplass was saying, she, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be making movies every weekend with your friends to kind of perfect that art of making movies. The biggest thing for me, you know, what’s really worked for me as a director is I am a trained actor, and I did do a lot of work as an actor. And so I’m one thing you hear about from actors is that, like, they work with directors who just haven’t acted before, and you’re plenty good, technically sound, but it’s hard for them to get in and have that play time with actors to really ramp up the imagination, you know, that’s kind of what it takes is to is to play in that space and really create a world for these people, you know, for these actors that you’re working with. So, I think, you know, as far as performances go, I mean, working with actors knowing how to work with actors, that’s huge. You know, I mean, I used to, you know, I’ve integrated like, a lot of improv in my, in my films, that was, of course, a kind of a movement, there’s a lot of that going on, you know, and similar type work that was happening and like the Duplass brothers do a lot of that. I mean, I used to think, you know, you can go into making a movie with sort of a blueprint, sort of loose screenplay, let the actors improvise, whatever. And that’s great. That does work. It makes editing very hard. But, you know, the more the more I work, my writing has changed over the years you know, I didn’t used to have any structure at all I just used to write whatever came out of me, you know, and that’s how I made the falls. I got into structure later and then learn the rules, learn how to break the rules, and even now narratives, the way we tell narratives is changing, you know, people are throwing, or like, kind of throwing all convention out the window and just trying something different and so, I don’t know. I think if it speaks to you, it’s going to speak to somebody else. I think writing films that are like closer to like who you are like what you want to see. Rather than writing something that somebody else did or what have you, I mean, I think just kind of stain like, like what interests you and like, what do you want to see? I think that’s a heard Quin Tantino talk about that a lot. You know, and I tried to do that. I try and do that.
Ashley
Sound advice for sure. So, I just like to wrap up the interviews by asking the guests if there’s anything they’ve seen recently that they thought was really great. And they can recommend to our mostly screenwriting audience, anything on Netflix, HBO, Hulu, anything you’ve been watching recently that you thought was really good?
Jon Garcia
Yeah, but go back and watch it and kind of, you know, movies from the past a lot, and I don’t know if this is even, you know, well, I’ve been watching Nathan for you a lot. You know, I just I can’t stop watching that show. You know, and I have no idea how it’s written because it’s supposed to be like, kind of a, you know, very candid, or whatever. But I mean, that guy is just so funny. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t watch it. A lot of Nathan for you. I’m trying to think of…
Ashley
Where is Nathan for you showing?
Jon Garcia
It’s on HBO Max.
Ashley
I have not watched that. So that’s a good recommendation. I’ll have to check that out. How can people see Summoning The Spirit? What’s the release schedule going to be like?
Jon Garcia
Yeah, Summoning the Spirit is out now. But it’s coming slowly, the movies been uploaded to all the different platforms right now. It’s just on Amazon. DVD is sold out which was which is actually pretty cool. But it’s on Amazon, Google Play YouTube, Hulu, Microsoft. The Xbox, its on as far as far as cable providers. It’s on Comcast, Xfinity Cox, Verizon.
Ashley
Just out of curiosity as a producer, how many DVDs did you guys create that you sold out of them? Wasn’t a large batch?
Jon Garcia
I don’t know. I don’t really know. I bet it was sold out. Walmart sold out at Barnes and Noble. And it sold out at a few different and it had like the Bigfoot community. You know, that’s the thing. There’s a huge community of Bigfoot folks that you know, I think all Horror folks that all want to own DVDs that like collect. And so and I don’t know how to know how many they printed. But I know it wasn’t like five or anything like that.
Ashley
Gotcha. Yeah. So well, that’s fantastic. What’s the best way for people to keep up with what you’re doing? Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, anything you’re comfortable sharing, I will round up and put in the show notes just so people can kind of see what you’re doing and follow along?
Jon Garcia
Thank you. Yeah, I’m on Instagram and Facebook. JonGarciaPDX. So that’s how you can find me.
Ashley
Yep, sounds good. I’ll put that in the show notes. People can click over to that. Jon, I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today and discussing all of this, great interview. I really appreciate it. And hopefully I’ll have you back sometime soon.
Jon Garcia
Yeah, man, I love that. Thank you.
Ashley
Thank you. We’ll talk to you later.
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On the next episode of the podcast, I’m going to be interviewing Joe Cornette, who just directed a horror film called Night of the Caregiver. So, we talked about that film and how that project came together for him. But we also talked about some of his earlier films as well, like a lot of people, he started out working in another industry outside of the entertainment business, but he was always drawn to it. So, he started out by independently producing and starring in a western, which is never easy to do on a low budget. As you know, if you listen to this podcast, I’m a big proponent of writing low-budget scripts that can get produced, he went sort of the opposite direction, which I thought was interesting. And he describes sort of how he went and did this. And since that time producing this very, very low-budget, independent Western film, he’s produced a number of other westerns, each slightly higher budgets and kind of moving along with that. So again, it’s an interesting conversation just to have with him why he chose westerns, and how he went about putting together a low budget Western project. And then again, we’ll talk about his horror film that’s coming out now which is called the Night of the Caregiver. So, keep an eye out for that episode next week. That’s the show. Thank you for listening.