This is a transcript of SYS Podcast Episode 250: Actor/Writer/Director/Producer James Morosini On His Indy Comedy, Threesomething.


Ashley: Welcome to Episode #250 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger of the www.sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I’m interviewing actor and also writer-director James Morosini. He gives a very candid interview about the process of him making the film Threesomething. He’s a real artist, very open about the whole process and not just the nuts and bolts of making the film but the emotional ups and downs as well. I think this is a big part of indie filmmaking and not something that you hear talked about a lot. So if you’re considering doing your own indie film you’re not gonna wanna miss this interview, so stay tuned for that. If you find this episode viable please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leaving me a comment on YouTube or retweeting the podcast on Twitter or liking or sharing it on Facebook.

These social media shares really do help spread word about the podcast so they’re very much appreciated. Any websites or links that I mention in the podcast can be found on my blog in the show notes. I also publish a transcript with every episode incase you’d rather read the show or look at something later on. You can find all the podcast show notes at www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/podcast, and then just look for Episode Number #250. If you want my free guide- How to Sell a Screenplay in Five Weeks you can pick that up by going to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. It’s completely free, you just put in your email address and I’ll send you a new lesson once per week for five weeks along with a bunch of bonus lessons.

I teach the whole process of how to sell your screenplay in that guide. I’ll teach you how to write a professional log line and query letter and how to find agents, managers and producers who are looking for material. Really it’s everything you need to know to sell your screenplay. Just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide.

So now let’s get into the main segment. Today I am interviewing actor and writer-director James Morosini. Here is the interview.

Ashley: Welcome James to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.

James: Yeah man, I’m happy to be on your show. Thanks for having me.

Ashley: So to start out, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background. Where did you grow up and how did you get interested in the entertainment business?

James: I grew up outside of Boston. I always really loved movies and I always kind of made stupid little videos with a camera. Some of my family had been in the business and did really well and I kind of had always had that person around and would talk to him and yeah, I started acting kind of after high school. I didn’t really do any type of acting in high school. I started doing plays, went to USC for theater and film and then I’ve been working as an actor for the past five years on and off obviously. In between acting jobs I’m a writer-director and I produce my stuff and other people’s stuff as well.

Ashley: Okay, perfect. So let’s dig into your latest film Threesomething. Maybe to start out you can give us a quick pitch for the film. What is this film all about?

James: Sure. A few friends try to have a threesome and it ruins their lives.

Ashley: Okay, and where did the idea come from…what was sort of the genesis of this story?

James: I think the genesis was that I felt like almost all my friendships had parts of them that…everything would be good but there would always be like one thing that was kind of like we never talked about or a vibe that was sometimes weird, like one person would be calling the other person more or like maybe one person wouldn’t wanna pick up their calls or whatever. There was always some weird underlying stuff I noticed in like every relationship I had. And so I wanted to make a movie about kind of the way friendships function and especially between guys and how guys I feel like have an idea of masculinity. Many guys have this idea of masculinity that their trying to uphold and it limits their ability to be honest with themselves and other people.

So I just thought the idea of them going, “Let’s have a threesome,” and then the reality of what a threesome actually is or it’s not just a fantasy and it’s not porn. It’s like you’re actually doing it and there’s another person involved, to us a whole life. I like the idea of fantasy meeting the hard road of reality.

Ashley: So let’s talk about your writing process a little bit. You’ve collaborated with another writer- Sam Sunshine on this project. Maybe you can just describe what that collaboration looked like. Were you guys in the same room writing, did you guys outline together and then break off and he took some scenes, you took some scenes and then you got back together? Maybe just describe that process for us a little bit.

James: Yeah, sure. I first called Sam with the idea. I was like, “I really wanna make a movie, let’s dive in.” He was like, “Cool man, what’s the story?” And I just started kind of running vague ideas by him. We both really liked the idea of some friends aspiring to have a threesome and it being completely different than they imagined it would be, and kind of using that as a way into delving into the issues we were experiencing in our twenties. And yeah, I think for Threesomething it was kind of a non-traditional process. It was basically like we had a poster board and we started writing scene ideas on the poster board on sticky notes and sometimes just on the cardboard poster board itself and then we’d just work for a few hours [inaudible 00:06:12] and stuff, come back, put more sticky notes on the poster and we’d walk away.

And then we’d go, “Oh, what about if we did this or that?” And then we’d move some things around and we got the poster board set. We started production very quickly without ever having a paper script. It was always just this poster board. The crew was small enough where anyone who wanted to know what the full story was we would literally have them look at the poster board and then explain the story to them. It was almost like conveyed to everybody involved as like almost spoken word. I remember one of the first times we showed our lead actress Isabelle Chester the story, we literally brought the poster board to her house and just excitedly described what we were thinking of the story and then she’d ask some questions and then we’d go, “Shit!”

And then we’d have to change some stuff around because this was a micro budget production we had the luxury of just kind of exploring in terms of like we were really excited about the story as is. So we would shoot that chronologically and then I’d edit it and then we would have that almost be our first draft, that first edit. And then it was a matter of like filling in the gaps, seeing what scenes didn’t work or what needed to convey more information or where the tone didn’t fit or whatever and then be like re-shooting those scenes. And so it was iterative so there was never like, “Okay, the writing process is done now and we’re gonna start production. It was like we didn’t wanna make excuses about not making a movie anymore.

So we made it and then we continued to then rewrite and shoot more, rewrite and shoot more. And so production informed pre-production and writing and it was kind of all the same process if that makes sense.

Ashley: Yeah, sure. How long did you work on this poster board before you actually got into production?

James: Very quickly. I’d say a week.

Ashley: Wow! And had you done this same process with your short films?

James: Yeah…I think with my short films they were more scripted generally. I can’t remember why I was so comfortable doing it. I guess wasn’t that comfortable. On this one we literally had a group of people that were like, “We really wanna make a feature and we really wanted to go about doing it this kind of like explorational, experimental way and we all just wanted to do it kind of for the love of the game, so we don’t need all that certainty. We don’t need the script to be in perfect…it doesn’t need to be perfect for us to get other people on board. We had everyone on board already and we could kind of convey the nuance just verbally to each other.

Ashley: Yeah, so there was never any like actual dialogue written, was it adlibbed?

James: No, there was a lot of dialogue written on the poster board and on like pages or sometimes it would be like Sam would be driving us to set, I’d be sitting on the passenger’s seat next to Sam or Ken next to me and we’d be on our phones and we’d be typing out the dialogue as we drove to set or for the next day or for the next few scenes. And so we’d have the dialogue when we showed up the set or we’d like text that to the other actors. It was very scrappy out of necessity but also by design there is something about that process that made it all really fresh and exciting and all. None of us went into it going like, “This is what it needs to be.” It was like we were all really listening to each other and it led to this kind or collaborative and open work flow.

Ashley: Is Sam also an actor?

James: Yeah, some is…

Ashley: And I wonder if that’s part of the thing too is because you guys had a background in acting, getting in there on set and stuff, just you have that background in coming up with a dialogue and that kind of stuff.

James: Yeah, I think that definitely helped and I think the thing we were both more interested in was what wasn’t being said more than what was. So kind of going back to like the genesis of the idea was like I was interested in what was going on beneath the surface in relationships, both friends and partners or whatever. And so often times instead of talking about the details of what will be said we’d be talking about what’s not being said here. And if these two people were to say something to each other, what would they wanna say to each other exactly and then it was a matter of through the writing and then also on set but my direction a lot of times was just like, “Guys, right now you guys are upset with each other, what would happen if you tried to show each other how you’re totally fine and it’s actually all good and you said the same words but you’re really…you’re trying to communicate to the other person that no harm so foul even though there really was.

Ashley: I’m curious, and this is sort of maybe off the beaten path, you mentioned that with all your relationships there’s just always this one little weird vibe. Did you have that with Sam and was that a way of working through that? This kind of becomes the elephant in the room if that what you’re exploring.

James: No, 100%! We went to college together, we studied acting together, so were in these classes together…like voice and movement class. We were rolling around on the floor, doing these breathing exercises and throwing new sound across the room and doing all these kind of like… And exercise is designed to basically make a fool out of yourself. Each person would go up in front of the other in class and their assignment would be to make as much of a fool out of themselves as they possibly could in a couple of minutes. And so there was exercises designed or like, “Hey, do this and do it as bad as you possibly can.” So we’ve just seen each other humiliated over and over and over and over, but we weren’t really that close…

We started out being really close in college and then for some reason there was miscommunication and we kind of stopped being close friends and whenever we would see each other, there’s this vibe of like us wanting to connect but not being sure how to put words to whatever rift had come between us. So we kind of both pretended it wasn’t there even though it was the most palpable thing in our friendship.  And then we go to coffee after college ended and I think one of us was like, “Dude…” like there was an awkward silence and I think one of us just made the leap and was like, “Dude, I feel like we’re really good friends and then something happened and then we stopped being friends.

I feel like my feelings got hurt and your feelings got hurt…We started talking about it and just from that conversation forward we started kind of hanging out every day because that honesty and that vulnerability in that interaction was so refreshing and so unusual in my experience to have of another person to really just have from any other person. We really unpacked exactly what was happening and where my head was at, where his head was at, what other stuff was happening in our lives, how we might have taken stuff personally. We really took like a detailed inventory of our interaction and so that kind of gave us…it kind of aligned both of our hyper-sensitivities to really have a shared vocabulary when we were talking about what’s happening when people interact.

We both have been in social situations and we both would be picking up on a weird thing that was happening and we’d be like, “Does anyone else see this right now? Isn’t this kind of odd? This needs to be the thing that we make.” And so really it felt like just a feature long compilation of all of the stuff we felt was going on in the unspoken. And yeah, through the process it was like we would have conflict and we kind of let it fester and then we’d approach it and kind of then…sometimes we’d have the conflict on the day we’re shooting the scene, we’d go, “Wait, what if this part actually informed the part we’re shooting later today were this is how you feel in that interaction and so the making of it was really informed by what was just happening in our actual lives a lot of times.

Ashley: Yeah. I wonder if just for context you’re going through this you can kind of give us some examples. You’re going through this process where you shoot kind of a rough version of the film and then you go in and you realize missing scenes. Maybe talk about, like what’s an example of a missing scene that after you shot a first you had sort of a rough cut of the movie and then you had to go back and reshoot something?

James: Yeah man, sure. So there’s a part where Sam’s character gets basically left out of the scene and Isabelle’s character and my character were having this…were jumping into really falling in love with each other. But we really just both desperately wanted to have some connection. It’s kind of manufactured and not…we’re both just grasping for this intense connection just because both the characters are really lonely. So we had shot like a whole day of her character and my character connecting and having this great experiences together and then the movie went a different direction later on. So in the cut though, that ends up just being 20 minutes of people having this crazy experiences with each other and there’s no context to it.

It’s like the humorous attention it’s unclear what the point of view is. So we would often add scenes to help guide the perspective of what was being shown. So it’s like in that incidence it’s like okay, where’s Sam’s character or what if because he’s felt excluded he’s actually been outside the whole time looking in on what’s happening? So then it’s like we have to come back and shoot all these interstitials of him being outside the whole time and how he’s being affected by it. So then what he does next in the second half of the film is so informed by all these stuff you’ve been seeing him experience that’s unbeknownst to the other two characters of the film.

So often times it was a matter of this feels more like an idea, in order to really say something with it we need to add moments…we just need to really drive home the perspective of where we’re at right now with the film. Does that make sense?

Ashley: Yeah, sure. Was there any sort of…as you were going through this process, was there any talk of the marketing of the film or what we’re gonna do with the film when we’re done, genre requirements? Was there any talk of that sort of just more businessy sort of formula x stuff? Did you ever feel any push to like try and make this a little easier to package or easier to sell?

James: I’m sure there was. We were doing so many of the jobs ourselves. That was we were producing it, we were writing it as we were going along, I was directing it, I was also editing it, I was acting in it and then we were also doing all of these jobs, sometimes we were running sound. And then a few other people were helping out, Ben was our DP, these guys from USC’s [inaudible 00:18:30]. Guys would kind of show up and it was kind of this rotating group of people that was kind of inconsistent. People would show up when they can and we would show them how to use the sound. So there wasn’t really a lot of time or left over energy to really go, “Okay, what’s the marketing look like to you?”

And really our intent was just let’s just make this film exactly how we wanna make it and let’s make it the best we possibly can and then we’ll juts worry about all that stuff later. And because one of the reasons I hadn’t made a film up until recently, a feature film was just the process felt like such a…it felt so unfamiliar and it felt so daunting to make a whole feature length film. So I really tried to just focus on what was right in front of me and not be overwhelmed by like how are gonna market it. Because I think if I stayed scared about those elements before I even got to them I would probably just go, “Well, I don’t know, so I can’t make this film.”

Ashley: So was this completely self-funded? You and Sam basically, whatever money you needed you kicked in yourself?

James: A few other people came on board as executive producers but we made this movie for the cost of a used car. That give you a sense of our budget.

Ashley: And what does the crew look like on something like this. You just mentioned DP and sort of a rotating bunch of people but obviously you need a sound guy and a DP, I’d say that’s kind of minimum. Is that what you had?

James: When we were lucky, yeah. So we’d often be the DP, so it would be Ben, it would be our actors and then it would be somebody usually running sound. But if for whatever reason they had class that day or something came up with their girlfriend or boyfriend that they had to figure out with them we’d go, “Alright, well we’re not pushing the shoot, let’s just figure out a way to record sound ourselves.” And so we got really good at using the sound equipment and learning what sounded good and what didn’t sound good and we just decided we were gonna put most of our money into the post sound so that we can clean up a lot of the stuff or do [inaudible 00:21:05] when necessary. So yeah man, a lot of times it was like the actors and the DP and then sometimes there’s be one or two other people kind of helping out.

Ashley: And so, maybe we could talk just a little bit about that. You just mentioned okay so you’re putting a little bit of this money into the post production sound. Where else on a micro-budget film like this where you and your buddy are basically doing as much as possible, where else do you need to spend money, just for people out there that are thinking about doing something like this?

James: Yeah, I think there’s no right or wrong way to do it necessarily. We invested in sound gear so that we wouldn’t have to…so we can be as self-reliant as possible because we had a super committed DP that would be willing to show up every day. But again we were like we really wanna make this film so even if our DP hadn’t…part of it was we would have rented a camera or like if we had to have shot in on out iPhones. We were like, “Let’s just do our absolute best at every stage of the process.” But in terms of where our budget went it’s like post sound we got a great colorist and the way we’d go about it is just reaching out to our favorite people and then hoping they said, “Yes.”

But the way…I had read a book out of college called Rich Dad Poor Dad. It talks about how 9 out of 10 businesses fail so you have to start 10 businesses. I kind of apply that logic to every area of my life when I can in that 9 out of 10 times are probably not gonna work, so you just have to try 10 times. And so I look at when we’re looking for a colorist I look at it that way. So reach out to 10 colorists or I look at casting…I look at almost every part of my life…just put out the intention that this is what you want and then you’ll be able to be picky after that…after you’ve decided upon a variety of things you’re cool with.

Ashley: Okay, so now you’ve done your film, what were your next steps? You and I connected through a publicist, did you get the publicist first, did you find distribution, did you go the festival route? Maybe you can talk about sort of after you have a completed film a little bit.

James: So after we were done with the film and after we had done…so after we were done with shooting we were like, “Let’s get some feedback so we know that we’re not crazy that this is good.” So we would have screenings in my apartment, we’d invite all our friends who’s opinions we trusted and we’d have them in my apartment, they’d watch the film then we’d have questionnaires that we’d hand out. People would answer a billion questions about what was working, what wasn’t. We had a few of those, we then collated all those notes and then left out a form at a final few days stretch of production and then incorporated those edits into the film. I think we might have had one more screening after that.

Once we were at picture lock we sent to our colorist…we brought it to our colorist, we brought it to our sound person and then the post process was staggered where it’s like for weeks on end we were driving to our sound person to kind of oversee the workflow. Yeah, that part of the process was pretty horrible. It just was not…Sam and I really didn’t enjoy that part of the process. But our colorist is unreal. It’s [inaudible 00:24:44] a lot of the time. And yeah man, so anyway, once we had the final locked version of the film we then submitted to a bunch of festivals and just like any place we were like, “Yeah, that would be cool to go if our plan got in. Once we had that we decided we’d premier at Cinequest and so then we made a ton of these…we were like, “Okay, let’s try to sell this film.

So let’s go to Sundance this year even though we don’t have a film and let’s just try to meet distributors.” So we did. I met my distributor there at a party and he was like, “Send me your film,” and I was like, “Okay dude, see you later.” I sent him the film, he was really into it, shared it with his company, they made us an offer. So we went to Cinequest already having an offer. So what we were thinking was like, “Well, if someone can beat this offer, great, we’ll think about it. But we’ll just go with the offer we have.” Cinequest is in San Jose, there’s not a tone of industry people up there and there’re not really any distributors go so nobody made another offer.

And so we ended up going with the one that we had and…yeah, we’re up at Cinequest [inaudible 00:26:17] was just filling those theaters so we’re just passing out tons of flyers and trying to get people to commit to showing up to screenings. I mean, dude, it’s so much live work. Independent film is like 95% just hustle, just going like…and most people are not up for actually doing that live work. It sounds like a really cool idea like, “Let’s make a feature film.” But then when it comes down to it you’re like…you’re just every single thing. It usually falls on your shoulders or somebody else close to you, their shoulders and it really takes a toll because you’re doing so much of it yourself and then at the end of the day you’re still making a film that doesn’t have a ton of money for marketing, doesn’t have a huge team behind it to push the film.

So even when you release it, it kind of feels like you build up all these expectation by going to places like Sundance to watch these huge, way bigger budget indies doing really well and stuff and then you release your film and to be totally honest man it can be really disappointing. I think Sam’s expectations were more measured but it’s pretty anti-climactic. It’s like you wait for that release date and then it come out on iTunes, a few people review it and then it just is on iTunes and you just scroll on the library of iTunes and there’re just thousands of other pictures and yours is like a drop in the ocean and it makes you wonder what’s the point of me contributing and that’s really been where I’ve been at for the past few months.

It’s like what do I really wanna say that’s different from what other people wanna say and why do I wanna do this other than it just being like fun to do, because a lot of times it’s actually not that fun, it’s a lot of work. But there are parts that are really rewarding.

Ashley: Yeah. And I’m totally there with you. I’m actually waiting for my release date on my film. Just I’ve got to see the aggregator, there are some technical issues but it’s gonna be the same thing. I’m getting ready to push it up to iTunes and yeah, I’m at that stage too where the fun is long since worn off. Maybe you can just talk briefly about your talk with the distributor at Sundance and sort of what you did as prep work on that. Did you just try and just crush parties and just chat people up, “Hey man, what are you doing,” or “Who are you?” Maybe talk us through that because I know there’s gonna be people…

James: I was going to Sundance being like, “We’re gonna go to all the parties.” My manager sent me a list of all the top parties at Sundance, we were like, “Dude, we’re set.” We had some friends that had films there and we like we could just go to parties with them, get to Sundance. We stopped trying to ask about these parties, they’re all completely full. And so then we just started going, “Let’s just start showing up at the parties.” So we’d go and they’d be like, “No, you’re not on the list, you can’t come in.” So we started getting kind of disheartened and then we would just talk to people at screenings and then we started meeting people who were like, “Yeah, you can be our Pass On, totally cool.”

They’d invite us, we’d go to the parties and sometimes we…and then we’d go to these parties and then we’d just…a lot of the times it’s just everybody’s hammered and people are just passing out business card after business card and it just all kind of feels like bullshit and especially when you don’t have a [inaudible 00:29:55] it’s really easy to feel like you’re kind of like this weird outsider. Your insecurities are all off the charts in that environment or at least mine were. So then I kind of gave up on trying at network or schmooze. I was just hanging out at a party and I personally don’t drink so I was just kind of standing there alone like, “Wow, this was like we really went in and it’s not working out. “ I was like, “Hey man.”

I just said hello to this dude and he was like, “Hey, what’s up man?” We just started talking and then we got into like taking about meditation I think maybe one of us had an app on our phone. I started telling him about how I went to this 10 day meditational trip three years ago and then he told me how he had just gone to Burning Man and had kind of a similar spiritual experience. And we just connected as people and he didn’t even know I was a filmmaker and I didn’t know he was a distributor. And then I was like, “So what do you do?” He was like, “I work for Gravitas.” I’m like, “Oh, cool man!” I had heard the name a lot. I told him about my film, he was like, “Send it over.” So there was really very little prep work.

From the moment we came up with the film till our release it’s been pretty run and gun for better and for worse. I don’t know if it’s…I think I’ve done it and it’s really exhausting and it’s tasking on everybody involved. I think it can be really rewarding because you make a film and then you’ve made a film and you know how to do it and it makes you more confident. I love our film, I think it’s really good and I’m very proud of it, but it’s also like I think I might wanna try doing it. There’s benefits to going really fast and just doing it and then there are benefits of waiting and letting things marinate. There’re fall backs to both of those processes.

Ashley: Yeah, for sure. So how can people see Threesomething? You just mentioned it’s up on iTunes. Maybe you can just rattle off all the places that it’s currently available.

James: Sure. So it’s on iTunes, Amazon, it’s on all the gaming platforms. It’s on Vudu, YouTube, Vimeo, pretty much everywhere. If you go to our website www.threesomethingfilm.com or my personal website www.jamesmorosini.com you’ll be able to find it and order it. And yeah, I think…I donno, in terms of…we’ve gotten a lot of people reach out to us that really liked it. I don’t think that’s an indicator of anything but…

Ashley: Yeah, so what’s next for you? You’ve done this movie and it’s out there. What are you looking to do next as a director and writer?

James: Yeah, I have a TV show that I created that I’m really excited about, and then I have a movie that I wrote about my experience growing up outside of Boston called The Acne. I grew up with horrible cystic acne on my face and I was also obsessed with mafia movies- Goodfellas and stuff like The Sopranos and Scar Face and all that. I had posters all over my room. And when I was about 13 or 14 I started selling pot and I got caught by the local police department and they really came down on me pretty hard. So the movie kind of looks back at that time of life and it kind of explores the insecurities and social anxieties of a 14 year old kid trying to figure out who he is and then deciding, “Oh, I’m a gangster.

I’m kind of like these guys in these mafia movies. So he wears suits to school, slips his hair back and then gets in over his head it over his head in some ways. It basically feels like a movie in like Eigth Grade or Lady Bug where it’s such a really sensitive film but it’s told in a similar…it’s told basically by the kid as if he’s trying to be in a gangster movie. So it has a similar structure to Goodfellas.

Ashley: Okay, perfect. What’s the best way for people to keep up with what you’re doing? Twitter, Facebook, you mentioned your website, I’ll link to that as well. But anything you’re comfortable sharing I’ll round up for the show notes.

James: Yeah, I’d say hit me up on Instagram Morosini Tortellini. Hit me up on Twitter if you want, James Morosini, Facebook…my website is www.jamesmorosini.com. That pretty much covers it.

Ashley: Okay, well perfect James. I really appreciate you coming on the show today and talking with me. I can’t remember an interview where the filmmaker was so candid. I really appreciate people that come one and wanna share the real things and really get to the bottom of these stuff, so I appreciate it.

James: Thank you man, it was really fun. Thanks for having me on.

Ashley: Thank you, will talk to you later.

James: Alright, bye.

Ashley: Bye.

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Producers are in the data base searching for material on a daily basis so it’s another great way to get your material in front of them. As a further bonus, if your script gets a recommend or consider from one of our readers, your screenplay will get included in our monthly Best Of newsletter. Each month we send out a newsletter that highlights the best screenplays that have come through our script analysis service. This is a monthly newsletter goes out to our list of over 400 producers who are actively looking for material. So again this is another great way to get your material out there. So if you want a professional evaluation of your screenplay at a very reasonable price, check out www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/consultants.

On the next episode of the podcast I’m gonna be interviewing writer- director Jeremy Wetchter. He just did a thriller film called E-Demon, which is a micro-budget feature. It’s a great example of going out there and making things happen. We talk through his background, his entire process and how he got to the point where he was ready to make this first feature film. Keep an eye out for that episode next week. To wrap things up I just wanna touch on a few things from today’s interview with James. I really wanna thank James for coming on and being so open and honest about his experience with this film. A lot of success in the entertainment business feels very anti-climactic.

We work so hard to achieve certain goals and then when we achieve them it’s not always quite what we had hoped. And maybe that’s just with everything in life. I’ve certainly had these moments of despair with The Pinch but I think the key for me is knowing the alternative which at least for me is selling a script and then having no real creative control over it once it gets into production. So doing The Pinch there was definitely some ups and downs. It definitely was a creatively very fulfilling project for me. I think that makes some of the desperation that you go through with these large projects more tolerable. At least I know that I’d rather be making my own films and just selling scripts.

Not that I’m not still out there trying to sell scripts but it’s also nice to have these creative release where I can just produce my own work. Also, and this is a really big part of it as well, is that I really enjoy the process. I genuinely enjoyed the process of making The Pinch, so therefore the results become less important. I put less emphasis on the results because the process of making it was fun for me. So I think that’s also very, very, very key. The journey is most of the process, those ups and downs, the producing and the writing, getting it together, the editing, the post-production, those are not necessarily the things we think about when we think about successful films but that’s really the 99% of the process.

Collecting the awards, getting the adulation, that’s a very small part of the process. So hopefully you’re not just in it for that. Hopefully the whole filmmaking process or if you just wanna be a screenwriter, hopefully the writing process is something that you genuinely enjoy and get something out of it creatively so that even if these projects don’t turn out ultimately how you envisioned them or how you would like them you’ve still gotten something of value out of them. Anyway, that’s the show, thank you for listening.