Writer/Director Adam Anders

Act One Podcast - Episode 41 - Interview with Director, Screenwriter and Musician, Adam Anders.

Adam is the director and co-writer of the new film, JOURNEY TO BETHLEHEM, a musical adventure about the birth of Christ which is being released exclusively in theaters by Sony Pictures on November 10th.

Adam is a four-time Grammy® nominee and two-time People's Choice Award winner. For many years, he served as the executive music producer of GLEE and recently re-teamed with GLEE co-creator Ryan Murphy to produce Netflix's feature film, THE PROM. His company, Anders Media Inc., produces film and television content for global audiences. He has sold more than 100 million records and worked with artists ranging from the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus to Andy Grammar and Ceelo Green. His music has been heard in such film productions as HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL, THE WEDDING PLANNER, CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS, and ROCK OF AGES. His many other credits include executive producing the television shows PERFECT HARMONY for NBC and the international hit teen musical KALLY’S MASHUP, which he created based on his own life. His credits also include executive producing the faith-based FOX live television event THE PASSION, starring Tyler Perry, which generated the #1 soundtrack on Billboard.

The Act One Podcast provides insight and inspiration on the business and craft of Hollywood from a Christian perspective.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

And look, the difference between me and probably somebody else sitting sitting at home is I have an idea and I tried to go make it. You know, so many of us have ideas and we don't pursue them and we're afraid to fail. And my uh I think my first talent, maybe, is my honesty. My second probably greatest gift um is that I'm okay with failure. And man, have I failed a lot trying to make this movie. 17 years of failure, and now it's coming out.

James Duke: 0:35

This is the Act One podcast. I'm your host, James Duke. Thanks for listening. Do us a favor, and if you like what you hear, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. My guest today is writer and director, Adam Anders. Adam is the director and co-writer of the new film Journey to Bethlehem, a musical adventure about the birth of Christ, which is being released exclusively in theaters by Tony Pictures on November 10th. Check it out. Adam is a four-time Grammy nominee and two-time People's Choice Award winner. For many years, he served as the executive music producer of Glee and recently re-teamed with Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy to produce Netflix's feature film. His company, Anders Media, produces film and television content for global audiences. He has sold more than a hundred million records and worked with artists ranging from the Jonas Brothers and Miley Tyrus to Andy Grammer and Celo Green. His music has been heard in such film productions as High School Musical, The Wedding Planner, Captain Underpants, and Rock the Vegas. His many other credits include executive producing the television show's Perfect Harmony for NBC and the international hit team musical Holly's Mash Up, which he created based on his own life. His credits also include executive producing the faith-based Fox Live television event The Passion, starring Tyler Perry, which generated the number one soundtrack on Billboard. Adam is a very talented guy, and we had a great discussion about his career in music and film and television. I hope you enjoy. Adam Anders, welcome to the Act One podcast. It's great to have you. Thanks for having me, James. I have been looking forward to having this conversation with you because I uh we were just talking briefly. Uh we've got a lot of uh mutual friends in common, and they have been bragging to me about you. And I'm like, who is this guy? I want to get to know him too.

SPEAKER_00: 2:27

Let's be honest. There's two friends, and those are my only two friends. You just got lucky. The only two people I know in Hollywood. You happen to have them.

James Duke: 2:36

So we both have the only two, we both only have two friends, and they're the same people.

SPEAKER_00: 2:40

The weirdest thing. Yeah. I've heard a lot of good things about you too. So thank you for having me on.

James Duke: 2:45

Well, I I'm excited to talk to you because you've had a fantastic career and uh very varied, and and I definitely want to spend some time getting into that. And um I want to save uh a little bit of the conversation for your your your big film that's coming out. Uh I believe November 10th called A Journey to Bethlehem. We'll we'll save that towards yeah, and we'll save that towards.

SPEAKER_00: 3:03

I don't know when this is airing, but November 10th, yeah.

James Duke: 3:06

Yeah, whenever they listen to it, hopefully it's in November, they can go see it.

SPEAKER_00: 3:09

But uh my state of mind is it's in two weeks. So if I sound stressed out, uh that's why everybody. Two weeks from now, my life either ends or starts again. We'll see.

James Duke: 3:20

No pressure, no pressure, no pressure. Um so I I would love for people just to get to know you a little bit. You where did your creative kind of juices get flowing? Was it at a very early age at home? Were you inspired by a teacher? Was it are were you a child prodigy? Like I'm just curious because uh obviously you're a very gifted, talented musician who is kind of segued into not only now just doing music, but now you do film and television. And so I'm just curious, where did it all start?

SPEAKER_00: 3:54

Uh good question. You know, all of the above. Um, I grew up in a musical family. My parents are both um classical musicians. Actually, they they went to the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm, that's where they met. And uh mom's a concert pianist, dad's an opera singer. They left that for gospel music and missions work. Um so I kind of grew up in the ministry, hence the movie, you know, is a movie about the nativity story. So that comes from my roots, you know, growing up um with them. And they brought us along. They they wanted to bring their kids with them uh when they traveled the world. They didn't want to leave us behind. So we grew up on the road and in a musical family. Wow.

James Duke: 4:34

You were the part were you the partridges?

SPEAKER_00: 4:36

The Swedish parters family. And you know, one of the actors in the movie is Joel Smallbone from Fricking and Country, and he is has basically the same story. Uh immigrant from Australia, we're from Sweden, traveled with the family and all this stuff. We have a lot in common, uh, which made us really have a great bond on set. But um, yeah, I grew up in that musical family traveling the world. As we came along, we would join in the singing and playing. And by the time I was I think 10, my brother and sister and I was the youngest of three. We uh got a record deal, the three of us, and started touring, did a 40 city tour in Europe by ourselves without our parents when I was 10. Um so by the time I was 13, uh it was obvious I was pretty good at uh playing bass. That was my my instrument that I played in the family band. So, yes, a little bit of a prodigy as a bass player, because at 13 I started studying jazz bass at the University of South Florida in Tampa. And so I started going to college at 13 there while doing my regular school, my homeschool. I'm like the OG homeschooler. Um and uh yes, I did high school, elementary school, high school, or middle school, high school, and college at the same time. Um the time I was 16, I'd finished my my jazz-based studies with, by the way, you said a teacher who inspired you, my the professor there who took me in because he saw, you know, saw my potential. Um, he was amazing, and I didn't know what to do with that. I'd finished my studies with him at 16. I'm like, what do I do now? And should I go keep going to college? And he's like, Well, you've learned everything that I can teach you. So do you want to be a teacher? Then you need a degree. And I'm like, I don't want to be a music teacher. And he's like, well, then just go work, just go gig. So I was 16. I moved out. I moved to Nashville. And my brother was going to Belmont University there, and I moved in with him as his roommate. And started uh temp jobs uh by night and by day. I would play for anyone for free. Uh really get going, yeah. And that took about six months before I was full-time a musician, and I've never looked back. Um and uh yeah, so I didn't have to crawl back to my mom and dad, thankfully. And I knew I had it was nice, you know, if it bombed, I would go back home. But um yeah, I just uh kept going. And by the time I was 18, I was um touring with Stephen Chris Chapman. Um became his bass player, and that's kind of where I got my start in Christian music, met my wife in Nashville. But I never um you know, it became very clear to me, even though I grew up in the ministry and and in Christian music and all this, that wasn't my thing. It wasn't my calling. And I had many discussions with Stephen in the back of the bus. Like, this is not the thing for me, there's something else for me. And uh ultimately, um, you know, I came to Hollywood, came to LA to work in mainstream.

James Duke: 7:23

I just and I I'm assuming that that's unusual. Like I'm assuming you were the only 18-year-old bass player, professional bass player touring uh right, like that that's that's the thing.

SPEAKER_00: 7:36

I'm huge, like I'm a big dude, so I got away with uh they thought I was older than I was, but um I think at 19 Steven discovered how old I was, you know. Uh so um yeah, it was legal though, it was all legal. Maybe the jobs between 16 and 18, not so much, but um uh you know I had to make a living. So yeah, I started touring with him and touring, and then uh he actually heard my songs. Um, Steven did. I ended up doing the speechless album with him, which became a huge success. And at the same time, my wife Nikki, who was in Avalon, she was the founding member of Avalon, got signed to a record deal with Columbia with Tommy Matola uh to be the next Brian Harry. Yeah. So I ended up uh our first date was actually writing a song together, and here we are uh 20 some years later, 26 years later, still writing songs together.

James Duke: 8:26

Wow. Now I am now I am not a I'm not musically inclined at all, but I have been told that you know to start a band, you need a drummer and you need a bass player. Those are kind of like the foundations, right? I don't know, I don't know if that's true or not, but um I'm curious. Oh as a bass player, um what what what about playing bass do you think helps you with writing music, knowing music, performing music, composing music? What was it as a uh what what is it about do you think about bass that that kind of core rhythm? How has that served you as a musician overall?

SPEAKER_00: 9:10

It's a really good question. Um, I think it has a lot to do with it. I I think bass players, you know, guitar players are known as the flashy ones who want all the attention, right? All my guitar playing friends, you know it's true. I want another solo, look how cool I am. You know, bass players are just laying it down in the back. We don't want any attention. We just want to groove and jam. And you can't do anything without us, the rhythm section, right?

James Duke: 9:31

Um, but the the the other guys, they just learned to play guitars to get to pick up chicks, right? To get bait.

SPEAKER_00: 9:37

Yeah, and uh I didn't. I I literally just loved playing bass. And um for some reason I saw Abraham Leboreal Um in Sweden, and it was a band called Koinania, and I saw him, and I was playing bass and I was 10, and I saw him, and I told my dad, I'm gonna be better than him one day. I'm gonna be the best bass player in the world. And then I set off in this thing, and I literally practiced like four six four to six hours every day from that point out. I was completely obsessed. And so by the time I got to you know, Nashville at 16, I was really good. And but that wasn't the thing that got me gigs. It was I was I could sing, right? So growing up in the family band, we had to sing. We had to sing and play. And that's a weird thing, you got to split your brain in half and like sing the lyrics in a different rhythm there that your fingers are doing, whatever. It's a really difficult thing that many people can't do. Um, and I just did it naturally because I grew up doing it. And um so that was my calling card. So I got so much work because I could sing. Um, and uh yeah, so I got in, you know, into the business that way, and um, it is definitely unusual, um, especially at that age, uh, to do that. But um I don't know, it was just uh it's part of the whole plan. You know, it's funny. Um, one of the themes of my movie is you know, God has much bigger plans for us than we do. You know, if we just don't even know what he has in store for us, and I'm living proof, man. I just wanted to be a good bass player, and I'm directing musicals in Hollywood, you know, feature films. Um, I couldn't think that far ahead.

James Duke: 11:06

So you do you feel like do you do you feel like there's something fundamental about being a bass player that has kind of helped you throughout your career as a musician?

SPEAKER_00: 11:15

Yeah. Yeah, um, you'll see that you'll have to bring me back into the question. I go off in these little tangents. Uh no, I what I was gonna say is um I don't like the spotlight. I like being behind the scenes, and I think that is so much because a lot of bass players are producers for that reason. Um probably the first bass player to be a director, but it's the same thing. I just want to support everyone else. I want you to look good. I want you to be your best. Um, I want to lay a foundation for you uh to shine, and and that's really what bass players do. They're they don't need the attention. I much, much prefer you not knowing who I am. If you follow me on social media, I'm very sorry because I'm the worst follow. Because you will not know who I'm with, what I'm doing, where I'm doing it, when I'm doing it. You know nothing. Uh I'm a terrible follower, but follow me anyway if you'd like. Um but uh yeah, because I just I prefer to be behind the camera, um behind the scenes, and I love it. I I love getting out of the way and letting other people shine.

James Duke: 12:13

Do you see um this might be a weird question, but uh because music has been so much of who you are growing up over the years, um do you see the musicality in almost everything now? Like a part, even like film and television, uh not not the music part itself, but the actual art, the the the art of it. Is it does it almost flow with to you musically? Is there a is there a rhythm that you kind of um kind of look for in in art in the stuff that you're creating that um because it just seems like music um isn't just something you do, right? It just seems like it's deeply a part of who you are.

SPEAKER_00: 12:58

Music's who you are, yeah. Uh I I believe that. I think music music's a very um magical spiritual thing, right? You're you sit down and you start pulling stuff out of thin air, you know, notes and ideas and things, and it wasn't there before, and then it now you've created something that's tangible. It's a very special thing. And I think it's you know, uh God inspired. I think it's a divine thing. And you think of the artist through history, whether it's painting or the arts in general, it's just there's something really spiritual about it. Um, but it is who you are more than what you do, and it has to be because it's really hard. Um, I think you'll quit if it's not who you are. You have to be willing to keep going even when there's nothing good happening, you know. Um, but we joke, my wife and I, our life is a musical. I mean, it's just it's uh my poor kids, man. Uh it's a horrible place to live when you everything's a musical, uh, dishes, like trash, dogs. We sing everything. Um it's just been the fabric of our lives. But uh you're kind of in that flow, you know, so because you're you're always thinking creatively and rhythmically, and um, I do see music and everything. And you know, I've been asked to direct for a while, and I've been asked to do I want to do non-musicals, and I don't know. I don't know that that's who I am, you know. Maybe one day, never say never, but there's something amazing. I was just doing another interview, and we were talking about this. You know, on set, you do dialogue all day, every day. It becomes a grind. It it's really like to be quiet, quiet, and quiet on set. It's an amazing thing to be on a film set when it's time to do the song. And then you crank it up, everybody's dancing, singing. It doesn't matter because the music's playing, you don't have to be quiet anymore, and it's such a relief and and such an encouragement and life-giving to everyone on set when it's you know good music starts playing. Um, it's just a very joyous experience for crews who are kind of always beat up and tired and depressed. Schlag, man. Making a movie is a schlag. It's just this never-ending groundhog day experience. But when they don't know what song we're doing tomorrow and then they haven't heard it before, and then they get to discover the song as we're shooting, and it's just really fun. Um, and I couldn't wait to shoot the songs all the time.

James Duke: 15:11

Um, one of the things that I think is so fascinating about the connection between film and music is uh, you know, film is the collaborative art form. But what you're describing in terms of most people experience music communally. Um, I mean, obviously we experience it individually, but the one of the greatest joys about music is when you experience it communally. And so here's a here's an art form in film that is collaborative by nature. And when you combine that with the process of music and creating music, and uh like I just think about, you know, just a typical set on a regular film for you uh or kind of orchestrating all that and the experiences that you've had, do you feel a sense of almost um pastoral care with people in terms of like, hey, I get to lead you guys into this kind of moment of joy where we're singing together, we're celebrating together, we're doing something together. Does do you feel a sense of um I don't know, like responsibility or uh in terms of leading people in that way?

SPEAKER_00: 16:24

I think you do 100%, especially as a director. I mean, um, we've all been on sets that weren't fun, that working for people who aren't nice people. It's not a joy to go to work. Um, and I I tried to set the tone very early. We we had our big you know crew kind of kickoff meeting, safety, and I do a speech, you know. This I hate speaking in public, so I hate it so much. But I had to do it. So I get up there in front of a 373 crew where we had, and um the main thing I just wanted to tell them is this is a musical, it's supposed to be fun. And I said, if anyone next to you in the crew is not having fun, remind them they're supposed to have fun. If I'm not having fun one day, remind me because it's a musical, people. Um, so let's have a great time doing this, and we get to do this for a living. This is an amazing gift. Um, so let's just enjoy it, even when it gets hard. Let's remember uh how lucky we are, and and then you try to lead from that. Um, you know, and there were hard days, but encouraging people and and you know, lifting them up, even when I feel like crap and I'm dying, but that's my job. You know, I set the tone, and uh it was so rewarding to hear the feedback from crew and and cast just what a great experience it was making the movie. And I think partially it was because it's a musical and it's fun, and partially is the tone you set as a director. You know, you're at the top and it has it trickles down. You know, if I'm going around yelling at people and I'm a jerk with everybody and I'm uh demanding and not forgiving and all this stuff, you know, because everybody makes mistakes on movies, things go wrong. It is what it is, it's how you respond to those things that show your character as a director. And it was very important to me every morning to to check myself before I went on set and make sure I was in the right frame of mind to lead that way. That's good.

James Duke: 18:14

Uh, so let's get back into your story a little bit. You so you got to you got to Hollywood, you you left the kind of the the touring business in the Christian music world, and you said you came out here. Uh what was your what was your first professional gig here in um Los Angeles?

SPEAKER_00: 18:30

Well, it kind of started in in Nashville. You know, it's funny, I I I'm not a malcontent at all. Uh I'm I feel very blessed for everything I've done, but every stage of my career I felt like, eh, this isn't it. I kind of tried something else. So first I kind of conquered the bass playing thing. I'm like, okay, I'm like doing these huge arena tours in the stadium. Oh, this is cool, but all right, I'm kind of over this. Um, people thought I was crazy when I left because I was like, you know, really doing great as a bass player, and I just quit cold turkey. I'm like, I'm out of here. And that's because I discovered a love for songwriting and producing. And I'm like, well, if I want to be a songwriter and producer, why am I still playing bass? Like, I can play bass and get my fix on all the records I produce and all the songs I write, which I still do to this day, but I just don't want to be a bass player when I'm 50. You know, I was like, I need to, I've done this, I got out of my system, I loved it. It was an amazing ride, and I have some amazing friends. And I mean, Stephen Curtis, I mean, he's in this movie, you know. That's full circle from the beginning of my career. It's so fun. But um, you know, I don't didn't want to still be on tour with Stephen Curtis when I'm Stephen Curtis's age, you know. So, um, because it's not my songs, it's not my story. And I felt the real drive to tell stories, and I thought that was in songs first, and it was. So uh I started writing songs, um, did the speeches album with Steven, which was huge, and then wrote songs with Nikki, uh my wife, and and Tommy Matola heard those songs, and he goes, Who's this guy? You know, he's really good. So that was my first break outside of Stevens World. Wow. And Sony Music signed me, and I moved to LA. And I ended up producing half of Nikki's record. Patrick Leonard did the other half. That was a whole situation we won't get into. But what happened was Nikki and I became writing partners. And then obviously we ended up getting married. And we've married 20 gosh, almost 23 years now. Which is a miracle in Hollywood, by the way. So we started writing songs together, and then I started finding success as a songwriter-producer from Backstreet Boys and Ace of Bass and Nick Clache and all kinds of stuff. And it was really going great. We moved to New York City because again I was like, eh, you know, whatever. Well, let's go to New York because we're young, we don't have kids, and Nikki'd always wanted to live there. And I'm like, let's try that. So then found success as a producer songwriter there. Um, but then these stories kept you know creeping in. I'm like, I want to tell more than a three-minute song. It's just not reporting. Like, I don't know why I'm not happy with all the success, number ones and huge sales and like all this stuff. And I'm like, I was still just like, what is my problem?

James Duke: 21:10

Um did you always did I sorry to interrupt you, but like, did you so you viewed songwriting even then as storytelling?

SPEAKER_00: 21:19

Oh, 100%. Yeah. I've always come at it from uh from a storytelling. And I used to write stories when I was younger, and I just love telling stories. I'm a storyteller, as you can tell, I talk too much. Uh I've always been told I talk too much. Um, but that's what storytellers do. They want to talk and they want to tell their stories. And um, the song was very limiting, you know, and it was formulaic. And I'm like, I have to, I'm in this little box, and it was very frustrating for me. And then you'd write things uh on spec too as a songwriter. You write, just sit down randomly, like, well, let's write a Britney Spears song. And I'm like, you know, tell me. Like, this is so depressing creatively. Um, nothing wrong with Britney Spears, and I would have been thrilled to get a cut with Britney Spears. But for me, when I got into film and TV music, then I started really becoming more alive because to see something and put music to a story and a bigger picture was so much more gratifying for me than just writing uh pop songs for great artists. And again, I was very happy for all that success, and it's all led to other things, but you know, then I felt again the had to throw the carrot forward and go, let's move back to LA and pursue film and TV.

James Duke: 22:26

So so before that, just so I understand, you had a you were signed by Sony Music. So the the the life of someone who's signed by Sony Music is you write songs for artists they tell you to write for, or you're just writing songs and they grab them and go, you're yeah, I mean you're writing, you're a professional songwriter, like you gotta wake up tomorrow and write a hit, you know, and uh that can be very soul sucking too, uh, because you don't get any feedback either from people, you're just writing in a vacuum all the time.

SPEAKER_00: 22:54

Oh, interesting. But then they Sony would put you with Sony artists and write with those artists for their albums, and you would write songs other days and pitch them. Managers would get them and I'm gonna see if my artist wants to do this. It's just it's what it is. You're you're a salesman of your own music.

James Duke: 23:08

And they own every and they own every song you you wrote at that time, or you are you able to write on the side?

SPEAKER_00: 23:15

No, they yeah, they get a piece of anything you do. They're your publisher, they're your they administer your songs, and um and then and being a product to be a songer.

James Duke: 23:25

And and being a producer, uh so produ so like you wrote the song, and now you're gonna help kind of produce the song or help make the album.

SPEAKER_00: 23:33

So I would always do a demo for the song that I wrote, and then they would like the production and hire you to produce the song.

James Duke: 23:38

Got it, got it.

SPEAKER_00: 23:39

Yeah, and that's different. That was not Sony. So Sony was a publishing deal, and that would sustain you when you're not doing record, like you're writing songs, you're getting paid by the publisher in advance um to pay your bills. And then if you don't get a bunch of cuts and make them their money back, you get cut, you know, you get dropped. Um, so that was the game. But I did one deal with Sony, three-year deal, and since then I've had my own publishing ever since. Um, I just went out on my own and I've always just done my own thing. Again, because I'm like, I don't want Sony to determine what I do creatively in in my life. Um, and I wanted to pursue other things.

James Duke: 24:12

So one one thing I've heard tell me uh is uh because I've I've I've spoken to a few other people who have kind of been in similar space, and it the amount of time it takes to say uh turn to produce an album versus say producing a film is vastly different. Has there been any kind of because you can you can turn around an album uh pretty fast or a song? Like, you know, nowadays some people are you know, they're going into a studio writing the song the next day it's showing up on iTunes or something. Um what's the is there anything inherently more joyful or frustrating about the creative process of creating an album versus creating a film? Um, do you get something out of one more than the other? Do you enjoy the kind of the the kind of immediate, more immediate response you get from turning our an album around quicker versus maybe taking years to get a film out? What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00: 25:12

Um well, look, there's no one uh formula for how long things take, you know, because uh yes, you can make a song today and put it out tomorrow. It doesn't mean it's gonna be good.

James Duke: 25:22

That's true.

SPEAKER_00: 25:23

So, I mean, anybody can do that. Um, but the great albums, the great art uh in music have usually taken a lot longer than that. And I would rarely do an album in less than six months when I was sitting down and and making an album. Um, however, on Glee, I had to turn around an album every week. You know, that was complete insanity and not fun. Um, but we weren't writing all those songs, so at least a song existed and we were reproducing them. But um I don't even think it compares how much more gratifying a movie is for me personally. And and I think that's not for everyone because some people just love music and that's all they want to do. But again, coming back to the malcontent, the non-malcontent, malcontent that I am. Um I've always been trying to find why am I not happy just writing songs because I've had all the success. So then we moved to LA and and got into film and TV, and I like that better, but even got to the same point there. I want to tell my own stories. And Glee opened so many doors for me to tell my own stories. So then I started selling my own show ideas, musical ideas, and screenplays and and uh live events, and um because of the success of Glee and and that I did all that music, um, then that opened all those doors. So I got to finally tell my stories, but then I started getting frustrated because I was having so many of my ideas ruined by other filmmakers. Um, so then you go, oh man, that's not what I wanted to be at all. Um, and then I got frustrated with that. So it's always been this thing of something has kept moving me forward forward until now I got to this point. I was on set in Spain making this movie, and I stopped and I went, Oh my gosh, I'm in my 40s and I found my calling. Like I finally found the thing that I can use all my skills, all my passions, everything I love, and story and to tell the complete story from beginning to end, visually, musically, and with the screenplay. Uh, it was so fulfilling. Finally, I'm like, this is it. This is the thing I've been looking for, but I had to go through all that stuff to learn how to do it. You know, I I first had the idea for this movie Journey to Bethlehem 17 years ago at Christmas in Iowa, and I wrote an 11-page treatment of it. It took me 17 years to figure out how to make a movie, you know, to learn from all these great people I worked with in Hollywood, from the Tom Cruises and Meryl Streeps and Ryan Murphy's, all these amazing people I've had the opportunity to work with. You learn something, you know. I learned more working with Meryl Streep on that one movie of how to talk to actors and how to be around actors and what acting is all about from that experience that helped me so much in directing the actors on this movie. Um, so all of it was preparation for the thing that I think I'm supposed to be doing.

James Duke: 28:04

Was that was that prom? You're talking about prom? Yeah. Um, was so so was Glee your first um kind of uh work in the business? What was your first big project in the business?

SPEAKER_00: 28:15

Well, my first um big cut was, you know, well, for Steven and then Nikki stuff, and then it was uh Sinead O'Connor and then Backstreet Boys number one and all that stuff. Then in film and TV, I started doing stuff for Disney first. Disney. We did Camp Rock, we did um what were they called Cheetah Girls movies, we did high school musical, we didn't know all kinds of stuff with them. At the same time, Fox kept hiring us to write Nikki and I to write theme songs for them for all their shows because we were fast, we could do different styles, we could sing it. Yeah, you know, and it was um again, it was just a way for me to make TV contacts. And they're like, oh, we're getting this big, you know, song pop songwriter or producer got to do our themes. And I'm thinking I'm getting to meet all the executives at the TV studio to win-win. Um, so that came together with Glee. Uh, they needed somebody to do Glee, and they knew I was doing musicals, and they knew you know that uh I would be a good fit for this show. Uh, long story short, you know, um, I did one song uh together with Pear, my producing partner, for 15 years. Uh, we produced one song for for Ryan and he loved it. And we were off to the races, did over 800 songs on Glee. Wow.

James Duke: 29:27

Was that were you part of for this first season, or did you come in after the first season?

SPEAKER_00: 29:30

No, I did the pilot. Yeah, I'm all the way.

James Duke: 29:33

Did you do the did did you do the um was it like don't stop believing the first big single? Was that you guys? That was us, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 29:40

Wow, wow Nikki and I are are basically that choir. My wife and I. That was a big deal.

James Duke: 29:48

That was a big deal.

SPEAKER_00: 29:50

It was bigger than the original.

James Duke: 29:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that.

SPEAKER_00: 29:52

I remember there's a whole generation that thinks it's a glee song. They have no idea that Journey exists. Uh I'm not telling them. You don't tell them. I like it.

James Duke: 30:00

Steve, please don't introduce him to Steve Perry. We're all out of the job.

SPEAKER_00: 30:04

Steve loves me. Journey loves us. Uh it it it blew up their careers again, and and we have a great collaboration with them. And I've become very good friends with Journey and and with their management. And um, it's it's been really great. But so then Glee happened, and then Rock of Ages with Tom Cruise, and then you know, uh all this, all these great projects. And every step of the way, I was learning something.

James Duke: 30:25

Um and yeah, so you've you've collaborated, you've collaborated a lot with Ryan Murphy. He's he's a he's a he's a really big deal in the business. He's one of the most um um proficient um creatives and producers in the business. Uh what what is that relation? So I'm assuming it started in Glee, and what what would you say um has attributed so much to you guys working together and what what's that what's that relationship been been like?

SPEAKER_00: 30:57

Well, look, um Ryan and my relationship started kind of funny because um if you know anything about Ryan Murphy, uh he knows what he wants and who he wants to work with. You don't tell him who to work with. And Fox Fox uh threw me under the bus and told Ryan he had to meet with me about Glee. And Ryan had his own ideas, but you know, okay, they make him meet make me meet him. And and uh I did not have a great first meeting with him, I'm not gonna lie. And this was three months before I moved to LA. I was still living in New York and I was out doing meetings and and working with Disney. So I'm not sure I'll go meet this guy and have a terrible meeting. Um, he didn't like me at all.

James Duke: 31:35

Um and what was what was terrible about it? What happened?

SPEAKER_00: 31:38

Well, first of all, he he he came in hot because he didn't want to meet me in the first place. So I was wasting his time. And he's like, I don't even know what a music producer does. And he's like, What is it? What does that even mean? And I'm like, I don't know. I've never had anyone ask that before. I'm like, I don't know, we facilitate the creation of music of all kinds for all mediums. I don't know. I made up some crazy answer. Um, he yeah, he was not feeling it. And um, you know, he looked at me, I had a ring on, he's like, What are you married? I'm like, yeah, he's like, to a woman. And I'm like, yeah, unfortunately. Uh so he was not having that. Um, it was not did not go well. And he's like, What's your background anyway? And I said, Christian music. It was just downhill from there, man. It was a disaster. A worse meeting in my career. He's he will never admit any of this. Uh, but um, from that meeting, which you couldn't imagine for me, I couldn't imagine a worse first meeting to it becoming the greatest collaboration of my career, uh, is pretty remarkable, right? We just don't know. Uh he's he's genius, uh, he's extremely loyal. I think one of the reasons I've worked with him so long is he's loyal. And he found somebody he loves and he loves to work with and who he thinks is good. And I think that's really what comes down to him. I'm good. He probably actually doesn't love me. He probably thinks I'm super annoying. He probably hates me. It's okay. I love Ryan. He's gonna hate me. But uh he is very demanding, uh, but he's he's brilliant. And what I've learned from him is directing is just about taste. You know, I would watch him do what he does, and it really just the thing, Ryan's magic, is that he just has really good taste. He knows if something's good or not. And he does couldn't speak the musical language with me, but he'd know if if it was good or not. And what I loved about him is all I had to do, he he kind of insulates the his people, right? The people he trusts, he creates like a little wall around them so nobody can get to you. So I did 800 songs and I never got a comment from the studio, from the network, or from the record company. Wow. Wow. Just think about that, right? So the magic of what Ryan does is he understands that committees don't make great art. Right? And he keeps control over everything. And basically I would do it, I'd send it to him, and he'd say approved. That was the process, which was like the greatest creative experience of my life because I've always had to deal with a committee, suits, people that don't know what they're talking about, telling you what to do, screwing up your your song or whatever it is because they have to prove that they you know exist for a reason, that they gotta justify their salaries or whatever it is, right? There's obviously good AR people and good executives. I'm I'm generalizing, but so many times you're making 15 people happy and you dilute it. It's not better, it's worse. Yeah, we know that and we have to go along with it. And that's really frustrating for an artist when you know you have something special and then it gets ruined. And he didn't allow that to happen. So that's really the brilliance of Ryan. He he finds talent, he holds on to them, he protects them, he lets them have an opportunity to do their best work, um, and then he benefits from it, frankly.

James Duke: 34:50

What what um when he's talking to you about music and what and what he wants in something, um is he talking to you about story? Is he talking to you about emotion? What what is it that you are, and now that you're a director yourself, uh what is it that you're looking for to try to understand what belies the music? Like what what what do I need here? Is it is it story? Is it emotion? Is it a some sort of specific character beat? Is it all the above? What's it like to to tell a story through music in film and television?

SPEAKER_00: 35:26

It's all those things, you know. Um I think I really learned um through the years of how to how to connect the song to a moment. Um, it has to start with the story, you have to serve the story. Um, it's funny, I I would always get frustrated early on with casting because they would always cast people who weren't good singers. You know, they would cast a great actor over a great singer, and I'm like, Yeah, but it's a musical, they need to be able to sing, and they're like, No, they need to be able to act. And I didn't really understand that in the beginning. Um, but I really understood it when I became a director because you can't fix the wrong cast in post, right? And if I've seen it so many times with my other shows where things went wrong, it was because we got the casting wrong. And um, so you have to start with the character and the story, and then the music just has to complement that, and you just have to work with what you have. And um, if you can nail the right song, the right sentiment, the right feeling, both lyrically and musically, to match an emotional moment in a movie, it's a home run. And I learned how to do that on Glee. You know, I got 800 shots at it, and um, that was an incredible experience. I mean, can you imagine having the opportunity to try things for 122 episodes and kind of guess, well, I think this is the good one, this is gonna hit, um, and then seeing a week later the feedback that you were right, you know, and what happened was I I learned to trust my instincts and my taste, right, through that process. So I would go, oh, so what's happening is if I like the song and I like what we did, I'm finding that everyone agrees, right? It's like Quincy Jones said, I just make music I love and I'm lucky people agree. That's what I learned on Glee. Like, oh my gosh, I have average taste. I have the same taste as most people. So if I like it, then we're done. So what I would start doing is just grinding away until I was happy. And that's all I can do. And and I took that with me into uh the the filmmaking process. And if you man, you connect those things and nothing penetrates like a song in a movie. It just gets so much deeper into your soul and your emotions than just the words.

unknown: 37:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:38

So uh that's really what you try to do is just connect those dots. And I mean, otherwise the music feels pasted on, it doesn't feel organic. Um so I don't really know if that answers your question, but um, it does it's hard to explain how it works. You just have to be so cognizant of the story and the emotion you're trying to convey, and then you have to know how to do that with the song, and that's not easy. Um, but when you get it right, it's awesome.

James Duke: 38:04

Well, and I think it's so fascinating that that glee gave you that opportunity to when you're having to churn it out um, you know, week after week, you've it's a job, you've got to get it done. But like you said, for you it became this opportunity to learn what what works, what doesn't work, how to connect with the audience, how to connect with the emotion of the scene.

SPEAKER_00: 38:26

That's uh that's a only person that's ever gotten that opportunity. I mean, to every week, it's like, okay, we dominated the charts. I don't know if you remember. I mean, we had nine out of the top ten. We were like Taylor Taylor Swift, you know. And we had nine out of the top ten on iTunes at the same time. Um, we had 50 songs in the top hundred of Billboard, and we were a TV show.

SPEAKER_01: 38:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 38:48

I mean, that's bonkers. But I would, it was amazing. I had my little scoreboard and I just kept track of it. And nobody else in history has ever gotten to get that kind of feedback on their create creative process um and to be able to hone their own taste and and build their confidence to trust uh what they do as an artist. And and um that was just it was a godsend for me.

James Duke: 39:11

Well, I mean, with all due respect, I mean, sure, Glee was successful, but there was always before you there was cop rock. Don't forget cop rock.

SPEAKER_00: 39:20

That's true. I don't know if cop rock, the greatest show ever made.

James Duke: 39:25

Um I gotta go back and watch some of that. I just remember as a kid seeing the commercials for that, going, what is happening? Um so for oh, I forgot what I was gonna ask you about that. I made the cop rock.

SPEAKER_00: 39:38

I made the cop rock. Well that's what cop rock does. It ruins everything. I think we have to end this conversation now. We're done here.

James Duke: 39:50

Um so I you oh, I don't want to talk to you about musicals. So did you were you like a big fan of because music? Musicals had fallen out of favor for years. Um, were you a fan of musicals growing up? Um, and if so, what were some of your favorite musicals? And what kind of um are there any that you kind of even kind of pull inspiration from today?

SPEAKER_00: 40:14

Wow. So here's the thing. I don't like musicals.

James Duke: 40:24

Um I love it.

SPEAKER_00: 40:26

That's breaking news.

James Duke: 40:28

Am I breaking news right now?

SPEAKER_00: 40:29

You may it may be the first time I've admitted this in public. Um it's not that I don't like all musicals. Uh my favorite musical of all time is Son of Music. My s because that's an amazing movie. Yeah. My secret second favorite is West Side Story, another amazing movie. Um, but other than that, I did not ever seek out musicals who watch them. I I just don't like I don't like musical theater um as a I think I respect it and I think it's amazing. There's some of the by the way, some of the best talents on earth are found on Broadway. They're unbelievable. When I lived in New York City, I started to grow to like musicals more. I started to find, especially going to the theater, it kind of hits all your senses, you know. Um, and I I kind of started falling in love with theater while I lived in New York, but still not, I wouldn't consider myself, I just wasn't raised on musicals. I didn't watch every musical that came out. We just didn't do it. Um frankly, a lot of them were pretty risque and you know, minister parents, and it just I was into rock and roll and pop music and all that. So uh but I think that was kind of part of the magic of what we brought to a musical, is because I think people who don't like musicals will still like our musical. You know, and Glee, it it was yeah, it was a musical, but for some reason everybody liked it. And I think it's again, it's that same thing because I didn't approach it as a Broadway musical.

James Duke: 41:50

Yeah, like and and I'm assuming Rock of Ages and and prom, these are films that you're going, hey, I want to do, I want, I want to kind of break some of the uh not cliches, but kind of the standards, and I wanna you wanna you wanna kind of push and evolve the the genre a little further.

SPEAKER_00: 42:07

I wanted it to sound like it could go on radio every time we did anything. And that was my pitch to Ryan Murphy when I first met him in that horrible meeting. Um, I did tell him something that stuck in his head, and I said, my pitch to him was nobody wants to listen to a glee club. Like we've all gone to high school to hear our kids sing, and they're awful. Let's be honest, right? They suck. So I'm like, nobody wants to sit through an hour of that. I want it to sound like they think they sound in their heads. That was my pitch. And they sound like they're on radio. So I'm I want to make records. And I told him, like, nobody's gonna sit through an hour of karaoke either. And you know, three months later, I move from New York to LA and we're unpacking in our new house in LA, and I get a call from Fox saying Ryan Murphy wants to talk to you again. Three months later, after our like bad meeting. And uh he calls me uh and he says everything sounds like karaoke. And I had left him with that little seed, I guess. And I think that was a God thing, you know. Because I don't know why I said it, it was as I was leaving his office. I turned around and said it like weird. Um and um that stuck with him, and he said, Do that thing you pitched me. Uh you know, I want to hear that. And I did, and then he was like, This is it, this is the thing I've been looking for for three months, and that was really cool. Um, but yeah, it's uh I don't know. I think musicals, um, there are some very good musicals. Please don't misunderstand what I'm saying. But there is a formula to modern musicals, especially I think they've gotten away early on in the old the reason I like the old school musicals is that those were the hit songs of the time. You can't say that now, right?

SPEAKER_01: 43:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 43:48

Um, I don't think you're gonna put Dear Evan Hansen songs on the radio.

James Duke: 43:52

Yeah, um but but but there but like you said, there there has been kind of an evolution and a crossover um uh greatest showman. That that had a song that hit the radio. That's pop music, yeah. And then and then uh we don't talk about Bruno, right?

SPEAKER_00: 44:08

Like there's like some of the Lynn Manuel probably does more poppy stuff now. Uh I I think the reality is um that's the stuff that has mass appeal when you write songs for everyone, and that's what I've always done. So I'll just continue doing that. I think Lynn Manuel is probably more musical theater than we are, um, for sure, but um, he's brilliant at it, but that's not what I do, and I just need to do what I do, which is ABBA. You know, I was born with ABBA playing in the background in Sweden, you know. Um I have to stick to my roots. But uh Sweden doesn't have a big musical theater history, it has a music history, pop music, you know. Um, so that's just what we are, and I think it's a really cool combination for for a movie.

James Duke: 44:51

Well, uh, I don't get to ask this question very often, so I'm going to. Um being on set with Tom Cruise. Is it different than being on set with another actor? What is it about him that uh you know they say he's our last great, you know, movie star? Um what was that experience like?

SPEAKER_00: 45:10

That was um probably still a highlight of my career uh getting to work with with Tom. Um so many great stories and memories. Uh wonderful, wonderful man uh to work with. Um he's so gracious, he's so uh giving to everyone he works with. Um and the reason he gets so much out of people is is he works harder than any of us. There's no way you can outwork Tom Cruise. It is humanly impossible. He almost killed me. Um I I joke, two hours with Tom feels like 24 hours with another human. Um I've heard this.

James Duke: 45:40

I have heard this.

SPEAKER_00: 45:42

He's just his energy, his drive. I'm 6'6. I think he's I don't know, let's be let's be generous, 5'8. Right? I tower over him and I felt tiny next to him. Uh he is a huge presence. Um he is a really remarkable guy. Um, and it was just an amazing two years that I spent working with him very closely. I'd go to his house almost every day and work with him uh on his voice and his singing.

James Duke: 46:08

But that's what I was gonna ask you. Are you actually kind of voice coaching him?

SPEAKER_00: 46:11

I did. Yeah, I was literally the guy turning him into a rock star in his house. Wow. Um, which also was the beginning of my directing career, frankly. Uh, Tom had so much to do with it. He got so dependent on me that he would fly me out. My work was done on Rock of Ages, and he would fly me out for every single scene that he had. He wanted me there to approve and make sure he trusted me to tell him the truth. Really? He trusted me to tell him if he looked like a rock star or not. Because um, you know, we had some funny moments when we were working together where I was brutally honest with him, and he loved that. Like I had this incident where for some reason he was singing a song, and whatever it was made me, you know, sometimes you're tired and I was overworked, I was doing glee at the same time, and I'm fried, and I got a laugh attack starts coming on. And I'm like, I don't know if you guys have ever had that. It's like there's no stopping it. When you get a laugh attack, that bubble, you're I was like, I'm screwed. Like he's singing, and I'm about to start bursting out laughing in his face. Like, what do I do? Do I run out of his living room or do I just go with it? So I just went with it. I just started laughing. And I'm laughing so hard, I'm crying. Uh, he starts laughing, he's crying, he's laughing so hard. We finally compose ourselves, and I stop and I look at him like Tom, and he's like, Yeah, yeah. I'm like, that sound you were making, he's like, Yeah, don't ever do that again. Um, and he he's like, All right, I can trust this guy. He told me the truth. And that was such an important lesson for me because that did more for my relationship with him, being honest, because how many of these stars are lied to all the time? Nobody tells them the truth, nobody has the guts to tell them the truth, and I'm just stupid enough to do it. So I would just tell the truth, and then I realized wait, this is my secret weapon that I'm willing and able to tell the truth to it doesn't matter who it is. Um, and that's a gift, man. It's it got me in trouble my whole life. Finally, it became like, okay, they because what it is, actors of that level, first of all, only have yes men around them, but two, the way they feel safe is when they know someone's watching is going to tell them the truth. So on set, as a director, everyone feels safe when you're honest with them. So when I was with Antonio, that was the greatest compliment he's given he he could give me at the end when we wrapped him, and he told me I felt safe with you the whole time and your vision and how clear you were and what you wanted. Uh, and that's like the greatest uh compliment a director can get. And that comes from being truthful. Just look that my job is to make sure the bad stuff never makes it out to the public. That only the good singing and only the good lines and the good acting performance, you know. My job is just watch it and listen to it and go, that's not good. And here's why, and now let's fix it. You know, um, that's what they long for, you know, frankly.

James Duke: 48:58

That's good. That's good, man. Uh let's let's segue now into Journey to Bethlehem. You uh how does this film uh come to be? I mean, you mentioned you first came up with the idea 17 years ago. When do you decide, hey, I'm going to write and direct a musical about the birth of Christ, and I'm gonna convince Sony to do this with me and all these big stars to do it with me. Um, give us the give us kind of the the journey of the journey to Bethlehem.

SPEAKER_00: 49:27

Well, it's a long one. Uh I didn't know it was gonna take that long. Um and look, I've always been a dreamer. So I had this, I had no business having a I dream for a movie at that point, you know, 17 years ago. I was just starting out and had not done anything in Hollywood at that point. Still lived in New York. Um, but I had this idea, you know, and and look, the difference between me and probably somebody else sitting sitting at home is I have an idea and I tried to go make it. You know, so many of us have ideas and we don't pursue them and we're afraid to fail. And my uh I think my first talent, maybe is my honesty. My second, probably greatest gift um is that I'm okay with failure. Uh and I'm gonna fail over and over and over again. And I think athletes, and man, have I failed a lot trying to make this movie. 17 years of failure, and now it's coming out.

James Duke: 50:16

But ambition, ambition is a ambition is not a bad thing. You're an ambitious person.

SPEAKER_00: 50:20

No, no, it's well, I I don't like the word ambition because it has certain connotations. I think um tenacity and belief in yourself. If you don't believe in it, you're not gonna fight for an idea. Why in the world do you think someone's gonna drop millions of dollars on it if you're not willing to fight for it? Um, so I mean I started that journey 17 years ago, then moved to LA, all these things happened, Glee, and I had this idea, never went away. Then I wrote the first version of this with a friend who was wanting to be a screenwriter. So, well, hey, let's write this together. And that was 2010, the first version of the script. Tried to sell that for four years, couldn't. Uh, everybody told me, no, this isn't gonna work, nobody wants this.

James Duke: 51:05

Now, did you have all the music written for the for that first script?

SPEAKER_00: 51:08

At that point, no music, just ideas. Um I had some initial ideas of what I wanted the music to be. Um, but I didn't feel like I needed to prove myself on the music front. Like the music's gonna be good, is what I kept telling people. I was just too lazy to write the songs. Um, so uh that the part B of my story. But uh 2017, I try again, and now Glee's been going for years. Uh, and I've done high school musical, and I met when I did uh high school musical, I met a man named Peter Barsacchini uh who wrote high school musical. He created it, and we had the same agent, so we connected, and then in 2017, we started over and wrote a new version of this movie. Uh I sold that, but uh they said we don't like the script. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm not a screenplayer. And and you know, I it was my story, and I Peter's a great writer, but it was my fault if it they didn't like it. Um but it was my vision, and it was pretty pretty much the vision of this movie, um, but they didn't like it. So they hired someone else to write a new script. I got that one, um trying to think what year it was, maybe 18 or 19. Um, and I hated it. And and it wasn't that it wasn't good, it was a very good script, but it was not my movie. It wasn't my vision for this movie. And if I've come this long and this far, I'm not gonna settle for something that's not my movie. And uh so that ended up dying too. Um, so then uh long story short, COVID hits. I can't, I don't have anything to do. I'm like, let me pull this thing off the shelf and dust it off because I still I need to make this movie. Um so I started over again. And then I asked Peter, hey, you want to take another stab at this with me? And because I have an idea of how to do it. And so we wrote the version that that now's gonna be in theaters, and that didn't come without its challenges. Um, we wrote that a company called Monarch Media um uh paid for it. They they came out came on as financiers and co-producers, which was great. We were supposed to shoot in Utah um like a few weeks before we were supposed to go there. Uh, we found out that the owners of this the set in Utah wanted final cut on the movie. What like that it's the same set that Chosen shot on, and the Mormon Church owns it, and they were concerned we were gonna do something to the Bible story. So that died, and then I had to try Morocco and I went to the Holy Land and scouted Israel, and then that didn't work, and then I finally found Spain. Um, but it's just been a grind, man, every stuff of the way.

James Duke: 53:46

Um but what was the what was the for you? What was the connection between music and the birth of Jesus, the story of the of Mary and Joseph and Jesus' birth? What what is it that lent itself to this idea that you have of of bringing music to that story? I'm just curious what what made you want to do that?

SPEAKER_00: 54:06

I think it's one of the only stories in the Bible that feel like a celebration. You know, and and I feel, you know, when I when I the idea I had, and and I'm not I I don't like to quote this movie because it has different connotations, but Moulin Rouge is what was in my head, right? Which is one of the musicals I love, by the way. I love the movie too. I love his creativity, I think he's brilliant. Um and I thought, why can't the nativity be this kind of a celebration? And of all the stories in the Bible, this is one that can. And when I was young, there was I had a storybook Bible that was very picturesque and colorful, and uh it would make me want to read the next page of the Bible and lean into the story. And I'm like, that's what the movie should be. It should pull you in with color and fun and vibrance, and and it should be a celebration. It's like, especially if you believe in Christmas. Um, but even if you don't believe, but you celebrate Christmas. It's called celebrating Christmas for a reason, not depressing Christmas, you know. Um, and Bible stories are usually so depressing. It's like, you know, sheep grazing in dirt and it's sandals and staffs, and nobody smiles. And there was a nativity story Lionsgate did where Mary didn't say a word or smile the whole movie, and they like they started the movie with the Massacre of the Innocents. My kids screamed and ran out crying. Like, great, thanks a lot. Merry Christmas, Lionsgate. Uh, I'm like, it can't be any of those things. So I was like, let's make it a celebration for the whole family. They're gonna watch Elf and then they're gonna watch Journey to Bethlehem every year. That's the plan. And I didn't know how hard it would be, but uh here we are.

James Duke: 55:42

So you so you finally kind of get this one up and going. And um when did you write the music, by the way? Did you write the music during the pandemic as well?

SPEAKER_00: 55:52

Or so we wrote the first songs on the 17 script, the 2017, the Peter script. We ended up writing a couple songs for that, and then we wrote a couple more on the next script that the one I that wasn't my movie, and the songs, even the songs we wrote, I'm like, they don't this doesn't even go together. Like again, that celebration. And you have to to be able to break into song and dance on a biblical story, you need to heighten the world. The world needs to be elevated. It can't be super grounded, and then they start singing and dancing, right? That's just that's another thing I learned making musicals for 20 years. It needs to be elevated and heightened. And that was the thing. That script was super grounded. It was more of a documentary and and uh than a celebration and a family fun movie. That's you know, look, this is not what you expect. When you go see this movie, it's gonna not gonna be what you expect. The characters aren't what you expect, the tone, uh, and that's what I love about it. You know, it's there's creative license taken, you know, because I know it it's not a documentary. They didn't break into song and dance to pop music either, you know. So there's definitely creative license taken, but um it you have to to make it a musical, or it'd be terrible. Can you imagine the chosen breaking into song and dance and choreography with pop music? Right. Doesn't work. Yeah. Um, so yeah.

James Duke: 57:06

Um I haven't seen the film yet. I've only seen the trailer. My kids and I can't wait to see the film. I showed the kids when it first came out, the trailer, and they got all excited. My daughter was like, Is that Lacrae? And I was like, Yeah, that's LaCrae. And I will say, just by looking at the trailer, um what I find appealing is that it does feel like there's almost a fantastical nature to the to the film. In a sense, you have, you know, your, you know, one of your main jobs as a filmmaker is to create a world. And it does feel like you are attempting to kind of create a world here that you're gonna invite the audience into that isn't isn't kind of the typical, maybe just uh, you know, sword and sandal type feel, um, which is which which is intriguing to me. I haven't seen the film, but it it definitely I I just from the trailer, I get the sense that you are trying to do something different here.

SPEAKER_00: 57:58

100%. And I I tried to, in the first 10 minutes of the movie, tell people what movie this is. I intentionally start with with the wise men you'll see, and it's funny. Um and I think it's really important to tell people from the beginning, you can laugh. We're not taking ourselves too seriously. Um and uh you have to, since they don't know what they're doing, and it's so different, it's it's really never been done what we were doing with this movie. So you have to kind of give the audience a chance to figure out what movie they're in. So I tried to do that. And you know, just my Herod, you know, he's crazy. He's he's like what Johnny Dupp is the pirates, you know. It's just he's totally unhinged. And he's a rock star of the time, you know. And I would tell Antonio, he's like, you know, before his song starts, he's like, What am I doing here? I'm like, You're Mick Jagger, you're about to go out on stage. You know, um, and he man that he embraced that. Uh he's just a total rock star. I mean, our Herod's got eyeliner and like you know, leather pants. So it's uh it's a very unusual take, but it's very fun. Um, but it gets reverent when it needs to. It's serious when it needs to be. Um, but the idea is to bring you along on this journey and this adventure and and just give everyone something. You know, at Christmas we gather, right? Our grandparents, kids, aunts, uncles, cousins, everywhere we gather. What do you watch? What do you can you watch that everybody will enjoy and that has to do with Christmas? And that was the goal. Believers, non-believers, friends, family, whatever. Um, and to make a version of this story that's digestible for everyone, um, and that you can watch again and again because the music's great and you love the performances, and you discover little Easter eggs I've planted everywhere, by the way. You need to watch it more than once. Um, but yeah, I want people to watch Elf and this every Christmas.

James Duke: 59:39

That was the goal. Do you talk about the um the casting process? Seems like you have a very eclectic, interesting cast. What was the thought behind that?

SPEAKER_00: 59:48

And yeah, the casting process was crazy. Um, I'm very picky, I will say. Um, one thing I've learned, and I think we hit on it, is if you get the cast wrong, you're dead. Um There's no fixing that in post. I learned that the hard way on many projects that I sold. And I was determined not to have that happen here. So it all began and ended with Mary. I had to get Mary right. It's at the end of the day for story. And man, it was hard. I had hundreds of submissions, you know, going through, and I'm just like, no, none of these are right. This isn't it. This isn't it. And then everybody's getting frustrated. You have to cast someone, take this one, take that one. I'm like, no, I'll know it when I see it. You know, that battle, that's where your kind of your movie lives or dies. How willing the director is to fight at that level at the beginning? Because if you get that wrong, it's there's no, I can't come back from it. So I fought. We were a few weeks. I probably I want to say we were like four or three, three weeks or something, the holidays away from starting rehearsals, and I had no cast. It was really scary. Oh, yeah, I'm fully in prep mode in Madrid and I have no cast. And the studio's freaking out, rightfully so. Um, I'm like three in the morning, I can't sleep because I'm like panicking about this, and I'm getting emails from LA with from casting, and I'm going through and I no no no, and then this Fiona Palomo pops up. I've never heard of her, and I watch this thing over and over again. I'm like, oh my gosh, I found her. Um and I sent an email in the middle of the night to Sony, I found Mary. Let me cast her. And they let me cast her without a callback. Really? As a lead in a feature film.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:29

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:29

And in a theatrical, you know, it's a it's a big, big thing, and never probably never been done. Now, that's why the Lord works in mysterious ways. If I had cast her way earlier, they may not have let me cast her because she wasn't a big household name. And they would have made her do a bunch of callbacks and screen tests and all this stuff, and it may not have worked out. But because we were so late in the game, they're like, Great, fine. I'm like, perfect.

James Duke: 1:01:56

So we could just gave our audience the perfect strategy for working with a studio. Wait till the wait till they're gonna be able to do it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:04

You won't believe how quickly you get yeses when they're out of time. So now everything's I'm like, okay, crap, full speed ahead. Now now I need to pick Joseph. We had six names that we liked. Um, the first one up was a guy named Milo Mannheim. Uh, we did a chemistry reading. So now I have Mary. So she's chem reading now against the six Josephs in a row. And the first one up is Milo. I had no idea who he was, full disclosure, uh, which is embarrassing because he's the biggest star in the Disney like franchise world right now. He does all the zombies movies. I had no clue. The good news is I cast him, I immediately circled him. This is Joseph. Like it was amazing. There's one line in the movie that he delivered so perfectly in his audition with Mary, and their chemistry was so amazing. I'm like, yeah, I'm done. So much so, my producing partner Alan, he just turned off the camera and vanished halfway through Milo's edition. He didn't even wait for the other five. He's like, I'm done. This guy's perfect. And uh sure enough, then it turns out he's a huge star. So that was a bonus. I don't even know why he was there, like auditioning for my little movie, but he had just loved the music so much. That's why he showed up. So he wanted to do this. Um, and he also wanted to do something probably outside the Disney uh kind of uh sphere. So that would get him. Um, then of course Herod is the most important piece left, and that's the villain. Um and I'd always had Antonio Bender's tops on my list, and uh, of course, that was kind of a pipe dream. Um, and the manager liked the script, liked the song, had played Antonio the song, and he loved the song. He's like, I can't sing it though. So we got kind of dismissed. And I kind of, again, tenacity, man. We just stayed, couldn't let go of Antonio. I'm like, I think this is the guy that needs to play Herod.

James Duke: 1:03:45

So he he thought he couldn't sing the song. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:48

Yeah, it's a very, very challenging song, and it's crazy rangy. Like the the last note in that song is like the highest note in the history of cinema. Um and he just kind of, you know, and and his manager's like, look, he's directing a play and he studies starring, and he can't be bothered with this right now. And we kept persisting. I'm like, come on, I just know it's him. I've seen him a fan of the opera, he can sing anything. This guy's amazing. Please let me talk to him. And he's like, No, he's doing this play. I'm like, well, where is he doing the play? I'll go find him. And he's like, he's in Madrid, Spain. I'm like, so am I. It's amazing. I don't believe in coincidences. And I'm like, okay, game on. So my producing partner, Alan from Monarch, he starts buying tickets to the show. And we start going. So we're working, you know, all day, and then we okay, let's walk over to the theater and text the manager. Come on, send him out, send him out to talk to us. And he didn't, and then Alan befriended uh a guy at the theater who was apparently best friends with with uh with Antonio, so he got him to come out. So we come back that he says, come back tomorrow. So we come back the next day, and sure enough, it's two in the morning at this point. Antonio comes out at the empty theater and comes and talks to me. I get like three minutes to pitch him my best elevator pitch. I'm super nervous because I have so little time, and um I pitch this thing and pitch the character the way I envisioned him. And he's like, That does sound fun, actually. Um, but I can't sing the song, and I go, Yes, you can. He's like, What do you mean? I said, I have this piano on my iPhone, and every night we've been coming here, you've been singing that note live. So you can sing this song in the studio for this movie one time. And he goes, Really? And I go, Yep. And he's like, Huh. All right, and I'd asked the manager, what do I need to get him to say for him to do the movie? And he said, just if he says talk to my manager, then he's in. So he looks at me and goes, I like you. Uh talk to my manager. He walks away. And I'm like, Yes! We got him. We were floating home at two in the morning in Madrid because we're like, we got a movie star in our little movie. That's fantastic. Yeah, and then of course, Lecrae and Joel, all that so I won't bore you with uh amazing stories all the way down of how we got just Joel. I mean, I cast his wife first, Mariah, as Mary's sister, and then I needed now that I got Harrod, I need his son immediately. And we were already shooting at this point. We're two weeks into shooting, and I don't have the son, so I'm like freaking out. We keep moving the scenes around, and and somebody tells me Joel's an actor, Mariah's husband. I'm like, no, he's in for King and Country, he's Australian. I can't have an Australian in a biblical movie. They're like, no, I think he can get rid of the accent. So that kind of stuck with me that weekend. I watched a movie he had starred in some years ago, and he was amazing in it, and he had no accent. I'm like, well, okay. So I asked permission from his wife to call him. So I call him, he picks up on FaceTime and he's packing. I'm like, where are you going? He's like, I'm coming to Spain to visit my wife. And I'm go, I say, bring a bigger suitcase. And he's like, What? I'm like, how would you like your scene partner to be Antonio Benderas for the next few weeks? And that's the story. Yeah.

James Duke: 1:07:09

That's great. That is fantastic. What's the what's the process been like? You know, obviously you've dreamed about this project for so long. It's been cooking, gestating for so long. You rap now with a musical boom. Now you got to put all the pieces together. Did it did it really just kind of flow together or or or did you have to do any reshoots or did the music did you have to do a lot of rewriting? I'm just curious about kind of the post process.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:39

Um man, I had an amazing editor, Sabrina Plisco, who um she chased chased us on set. So she was back here in LA, but she would get the dailies, and then she was cutting scenes the whole time, and I'd see the cut scenes, and I'd know that was super helpful too, because uh many indie movies don't want to pay for that. You know, we're not a studio film, we were indie e finance. So um, even though we have studio distribution, um, they approach the film very much from an independent standpoint. And you usually don't have an editor chase, it's expensive, right? But they I fought for that too, because I knew we're in Spain, we're never coming back, right? I have to get it, and I have to know that I have it. So she was chasing, and and I knew as we're doing this, it's special, like the way she's cutting this, she's got the vision exactly. And so I landed back from Spain, and a week later I had my my direct my editors cut, and she had a full string out.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:31

Wow, that's fast.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:33

Yeah, and so well, I mean, we wrapped in middle March and it's coming out in two weeks, so the whole thing's been crazy. Wow. Um, and then we dove in together and we had an amazing time editing the movie, and it really came together. The score, you know, um Pear, my partner and I did the score, but he first was trying to do it in Sweet, he lived in Sweden, and we were trying to do long distance and it just wasn't working at all. And he's like, just get someone else to do it. I quit. I'm like, no, you're not quitting. Again, tenacity, because I knew I knew we should do it, and he should do it. And so I said, Why don't you just come over? And I had an office next door to where we were editing that was empty, and I set up a little studio there, and we scored while we were editing. So by the time I turned in my director's cut to Sony, it was fully scored.

James Duke: 1:09:17

Wow, Adam, that's impressive. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:19

So they're like, this is the best director's cut we've ever gotten. And I think a lot of that uh was the score. Usually it's a temp and it's garbage and it's a mess. And um, the reality is so many editorial mistakes are made because the music doesn't work, right? So this gift of being able to score the movie while we're editing, we can really tell if a scene's working or not because we scored it properly. If you can't find the right music, it makes the scene not work, but the scene might be great, right? So that was a huge gift, too. So um it's moved very quickly. CGI was the hardest thing that took the most time, and you know, we limped to the finish line, we had no money for it. And we had budgeted 30. This is funny, we'd budget 30 CGI shots, we ended up with 236. Whoops! Oh boy. Oh man, a lot of you'll see in the credits, there's a lot of names from India. Yeah, a lot of CGI done in India on this thing. Uh, but it turned out great. Yeah.

James Duke: 1:10:17

Now the music though, because you because the casting was so late, don't you don't you uh uh for the songs? I'm talking about the songs, don't you put the songs together and they sing them? Do you play them back on on stage while you're shooting or on set while you're shooting? Um, so did you have to produce all the songs like right away? Like, how did that work?

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:42

All the songs have to be you know done before you shoot. Uh you have to choreograph and rehearse with the dancers and all this stuff. Um, the only thing that you can kind of do last minute is is put the cast on it, like their their own voice. So what we had was demos that we oh, I see.

James Duke: 1:10:56

So you actually you you you you produced the songs without the cast voice, and then you add the cast.

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:01

Yeah, the songs are done, but just not with Antonio on it. So it's me singing instead of Antonio. It's me singing instead of Joel Smallbone. It's me being like, great, I'm everybody, you know, and then my wife's Mary and Rebecca and everybody, you know. So uh that's what we do, and then you rehearse to that, you build everything around that, you choreograph to that, and then as you're casting people, my brother, who's a phenomenal vocal producer and has done all my stuff for 20 years, he then goes in with the cast member and replaces me with Antonio. And that needs to happen a few days at least before we shoot it because we have to have time to finish it and mix it, and then he needs to hear it and practice lip sync to his own voice and to those nuances. So um that's how we do that, and then it's playback on set, you have speakers blaring, everyone's dancing and singing along and having fun.

James Duke: 1:11:50

And you can't make any excuse me, you can't make any changes to the music after that. Like it's it's it's locked in, or are you able to make a tweak or two um to the songs um after you've no?

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:01

We can. We can't change the vocal at that point. You know, you can edit the song down, you can't lengthen it, so always shoot more than you need. Um, and then the thing we can change is the the score, the music underneath that can change uh as much as we want, and we finish that uh we changed and tweaked to picture a bunch of stuff uh in post. Um but fundamentally it's it's the demos. I mean, it just hasn't changed that much. Um and uh yeah, it's pretty fun uh to see them come alive the way they did since they've been in our heads for so long.

James Duke: 1:12:34

What did you learn shooting this film? Like what's your I'm sure you learned a lot, but do you have uh one or two kind of really big takeaways? Maybe it's personal, maybe it's professional or artistic, but uh what do you take away from this whole experience?

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:52

Well, I think personally I found my calling, you know. That that's probably the the greatest gift this movie gave me. Um I also found how hard it is to make a movie, um, to move away from your family for almost seven months, nine hours apart. Uh I'm asleep when they get home from school. Um it was very, very difficult. Um I didn't even I couldn't plan for how hard that would it would be, frankly. And I think people don't understand. I I I won't criticize a film ever again, um, because just finishing a movie is a miracle. Getting it made is a miracle, finishing it's a miracle, having it come out is an even greater miracle. Uh I'm taking the W in two weeks when this movie comes out in theaters, whether it flops or does great, I can't control that. Um control what you can control, right? Um, and then you have to let go of the rest or you'll go crazy. We made a good movie, we're proud of. Um and it's coming out, and and it's so hard and it's such a sacrifice for so many people. Um, that it's it's an amazing art form. And you you said it earlier of how it's such a collaborative thing. It takes a village to make a movie. I mean, you have people who are best of the best in 300 positions on a movie, and they all come together to make something special. Um, you know, I liken it to I could write a song by myself, I can produce it by myself, I play a lot of instruments. I can do right here in the studio I'm sitting in, and it'll be good, it'll be fine. But if I go to a studio or another studio and I bring in five of the greatest musicians in LA, and then we do it again, it's gonna be vastly different, right? Um, and it won't be better unless I'm still leading it as the director. But it will be if I can lead and show them what my vision is and then let them do their thing and let them do what they're great at. You're gonna have a completely different thing and a much better thing. And um I I would say a big, big takeaway is let people give people room uh to do their best work. You know, I I I really think um part of the magic of this movie is all the department heads gave 110% um because I let them be creative, I let them do their thing. I didn't tell them what it should be. But then I I got it, it was like the bumpers, you know, they go, no, no, no, that's too far, no back here, you know. And I would tell them, go crazy. Worst thing that happens is I say no, that's not it. But I don't want to limit you. And when you don't limit people who are really good at their jobs, and you let them do their best work and have fun and be creative, it's amazing what you can what you can accomplish.

James Duke: 1:15:27

Well, that was really good. Adam, this has been fantastic. I um so appreciative to you for taking the time. I know you're in the midst of all this big press push. Uh, just a reminder for people, I don't know when they're gonna listen to this, but November 10th, it's in theaters everywhere. Uh, Journey to Bethlehem. And it's a fan, it's a film for the whole family. I know I'm taking my kids to see it. And uh, this has just been a fantastic. Congratulations on the film and all the success. And and uh we'll come back and we'll we'll bring you back some time to talk about whatever other projects you got kind of going on.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:03

So thanks for having me. Thanks for uh letting me talk too much.

James Duke: 1:16:07

I had it. I always like to close our time by praying for our guests. Would you allow me to do that? Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Heavenly Father, we just uh thank you. We thank you for Adam. We thank you for just um just who he is and how you've created him to um to tell stories and to to create music and to bring joy and celebration um uh into life. And God, we just thank you for his tenacity and we thank you, God, that you have created him in such a way that um that he actually brings life to other people through his art. And we thank you for that. God, we we pray a blessing upon his work, we pray a blessing upon his marriage and his family. Um, God, we pray that you continue to just um birth inside of him um these uh these creative endeavors that uh you have for him to do. And God, just uh watch over him as he does those things. And we thank you for this time together. We pray this in Jesus' name and your promise as we stand. Amen. Thank you for listening to the Act One podcast, celebrating over 20 years as the premier training program for Christians in Hollywood. Act One is a Christian community of entertainment industry professionals who train and equip storytellers to create works of truth, goodness, and beauty. The Act One program is a division of Master Media International. To financially support the mission of Act One or to learn more about our programs, visit us online at Act One Program.com. And to learn more about the work of Master Media, go to mastermedia.com.