Steve Balderson: Successfully Directing 20 Films Away From the Mainstream and Doing it His Way!

Filmmaker Steve Balderson discusses his diverse filmography, the challenges of blending genres, and the complexities of distribution and marketing in the film industry. He reflects on the provocative nature of his work, particularly in 'Watch Out,' and the balance between explicit content and artistic expression in 'Sex, Love, Venice.' Balderson also shares insights on character development, casting choices, and the importance of humor and improvisation in filmmaking. He concludes with thoughts on the financial realities of independent filmmaking and his journey of learning a new language while immersing himself in European culture. In this engaging conversation, Steve Balderson shares his insights on the intricacies of casting, auditioning, and the creative processes involved in filmmaking. He discusses the importance of personal growth, facing fears, and embracing change, particularly in the context of moving to Europe. The dialogue also explores the dynamics of relationships, the impact of public perception and reviews, and the exploration of non-traditional relationship structures. Additionally, Balderson delves into the sensory experiences in film and the meticulous art of filmmaking, emphasizing the precision required in creating compelling narratives.

BIO

Roger Ebert gave Steve’s film FIRECRACKER, starring Karen Black and Mike Patton, a Special Jury Award on his annual Best Films of the Year list. The U.S. Library of Congress selected his film THE CASSEROLE CLUB, starring Kevin Richardson of the Backstreet Boys, for its permanent collection. Steve ranks #47 on the IMDb's Top 100 Gay and Lesbian director's working today.

Film Threat magazine praises, “Balderson makes movies that are so gorgeous that it’s not unreasonable to say that, cinematographically at least; he’s the equal of an Argento or Kubrick in their prime. Some people have perfect vocal pitch,

Steve has perfect visual composition.”

Steve’s debut book, “Filmmaking Confidential,” debuted as an Amazon and Audible best-seller. He is a contributor to The Advocate and MovieMaker magazines and shares his extensive filmmaking knowledge as a guest lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

http://www.stevebalderson.com/

http://www.filmmakingconfidential.com/

http://www.dikenga.com/

Dikenga Films | WhatsApp +1 785 565 25 35

To contact Wilkinson- email him at BecomingWilkinson@gmail.com

Transcript

WILKINSON (00:00)
Get the glasses on. Hey, Steve Balderson, we're back. Hi there. Good to see you again. So last time we talked about life and all kinds of stuff, want to concentrate on your films now. Primarily. jump around. Okay, so I've seen three of your films. Obviously, I've seen Sex, Love, Thinness,

STEVE BALDERSON (00:03)
Hello. Hello. Thank you. You too.

Which ones?

WILKINSON (00:20)
like six or eight times that one. I watched Kestrel Club. Kestrel Club? Is that the name of it? Or is it?

STEVE BALDERSON (00:25)
Which is,

that was the original title, and then it was re-released under the title Sex, Lies, and Sugar.

WILKINSON (00:31)
all right. Well, I, my diversion, I watched said that, and then I watched watch out. my God. All right. So, I mean, looking at these films, it's like, my God. So how does a guy that does watch out make sex love Venice?

STEVE BALDERSON (00:37)
Okay? Right?

Well,

if you also one day watch Firecracker, and because Karen Black's incredible in it, one of her best, and Pep Squad, which was a satiric, campy comedy, you begin to see there's a through thread of a voice, but they're all so very different. And Sex, Love, Venice is my 20th movie, so.

WILKINSON (00:53)
Okay, I'll put that on my list.

Okay.

Okay. Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (01:12)
It's like I literally have done every genre except Western, a proper science fiction and a proper horror. I've done a horror comedy and I've done something that I would call like Gothic horror, like firecracker, but it wasn't the strict genre. I've had this problem in my life of, well, it's a great artistic achievement and a financial nightmare, which is I have taken almost every movie of mine are a combination of two

different genres and I've mashed them together. So artistically it's interesting, which is why some of these people wanted to be involved with these films, but it's hard to market. So if you can't fit it into a little box when it's time to sell, then it could get lost very, very easily. And of course, if you have distributors who don't know what they're doing, it's even worse. yeah, like they're all very, very different. So they're as different, all of them.

to each other as Watch Out is to sex love Venice.

WILKINSON (02:06)
The way I was thinking about interviewing you this morning and I was thinking about that topic and I thought, my God, his brain is like Amazon. There's like everything in there.

STEVE BALDERSON (02:17)
Well, let me tell you about Watch Out and how it came about because

I was approached by the author of, it was a book first, and he had been a fan of my film, Firecracker, which was my second film. I think also my first film, but I know for a fact he loved Firecracker. he said, would you make a movie of my book? And I said, sure, of course. And...

WILKINSON (02:24)
Right, right.

Had you read the book when he asked you that? okay.

STEVE BALDERSON (02:38)
No. He described

it to me and it sounded like American Psycho, sort of, you know, and I was like, great, yeah, sure, I'll do it. So he sends me the book and I read the book and it's so vulgar that when I finished the book, I literally in seconds said, no one in their right mind would ever make this movie. And then instantly I said,

I'm the only one. Well, I said I'm the only one who has the guts to do it.

WILKINSON (03:03)
Except for me, except for me.

STEVE BALDERSON (03:08)
or the balls to do it. And so I did it. And deliberately to be offensive, you know? And it did very well. So I was glad it did.

WILKINSON (03:17)
Wait,

did well being offensive or did well as a movie?

STEVE BALDERSON (03:20)
No, did

well financially. The distributors who released it made over half a million dollars and I never saw a cent. And yeah, it was nominated for best international film in dozens of film festivals around the world. it was a critical and finance. I mean, not for me, it wasn't, but for somebody, it was a financial success.

WILKINSON (03:26)
What?

How can that be? God.

STEVE BALDERSON (03:38)
well,

I'll tell you. So I learned this early on, which is I tell every young filmmaker when they're going to negotiate a deal with any distribution company to cap their marketing expenses. Because in these so-called marketing expenses, what they're doing is they're, you know, flying themselves to Cannes first class or wherever the hell to sell your movie. And they're you're paying for it. And, know, at one point when I had learned

WILKINSON (03:52)
Got it.

STEVE BALDERSON (04:02)
how much money a few of my films have made, I reached out to my distributor and I said, what is this? And they then would call the sub-distributor, or the retailer, the reseller, and they would call me back and say, they say there's no overages, meaning that there's not yet royalties to be paid. And I, exactly.

WILKINSON (04:16)
Right.

No, no, no profits because

because they shoved everything into that expense column marketing expense. Yeah. Wow. Wow.

STEVE BALDERSON (04:27)
marketing expenses. Yeah. So then I started saying, okay,

I'm going to cap your marketing expense at, you know, $5,000. And then they would walk away because, you know, they wanted a much higher marketing cap. Of course they do, you know, all the time. Um, Gravitas was the worst and they wanted, I don't know what. And I mean, it was a lot of money. And I was like, no way. Like I want percentage of first dollars in and they never called back.

WILKINSON (04:43)
Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (04:55)
I'm happy now because you don't want a relationship with those kind of distributors. You want a healthy one with a good trustworthy one.

WILKINSON (04:57)
Right.

And I hope Jerome is a good one now for this. Is he? Okay.

STEVE BALDERSON (05:03)
Yeah. Jerome is a good one. Yes, Jerome is fantastic.

And what I love about him is he is honest. if, you know, only a couple of times has somebody written me and said, you know, what's it like working with him? And I say, he is the first distributor I have ever met or experienced in my entire career that spans longer than 25 or 26 years. He's the first one, the very first one who is an honest, good person.

WILKINSON (05:26)
Wow.

person.

STEVE BALDERSON (05:31)
And if I hope he will like

anything that I continue to make because there were a couple of my other recent films that he passed on. And so I'm hoping that he will continue to want to work with me in the future. But there was a previous movie of mine that that was in between one of the ones that he released for me that he said, I don't I this isn't for me, you know, but he's still respectful and I respect him for that. So it's like

WILKINSON (05:41)
So I'm hoping that people will believe one another, that there was a previous movie of mine that was in between one of the ones that people used to make that he said, don't know how you can listen to it. But the police don't respect that. So I

STEVE BALDERSON (05:58)
I don't know if I can do anything with this, which is an honest answer. So I appreciate it. Yeah,

WILKINSON (05:59)
don't know if I should be allowed to. I'm not his answer. I'm not sure.

STEVE BALDERSON (06:05)
he's great.

Yeah, there's another. I mean, that's the problem with this street is there, it's, you know, every weekend there's a march or a, that sounds more like a picketing or some kind of a protest, whereas earlier it was a celebration with music and that's a little bit.

WILKINSON (06:16)
Okay. So kind of like New Orleans, right? The

parades all the time and stuff. All right. So let's go back to watch out.

STEVE BALDERSON (06:23)
Yeah, it's great.

Yes.

WILKINSON (06:26)
I kind of was a little shocked. What is it like two thirds in? I loved your lead in that though. He was so great. what I liked was, and your creativity must have done this, but the early scenes with his parents, like he really grew up and became something else. I really liked that. Yeah.

STEVE BALDERSON (06:35)
He is really, yeah.

He's a very good actor and

knows how to play that kind of person really well. I was really nervous about putting that out there with my name on it and yet let alone, you know, just the whole thing. But I got a piece of wisdom from Karen Black afterwards. And when she came to see it for the screening in LA, she walked up to me afterwards and she said, thank God you went that far because

WILKINSON (06:55)
you

Yeah, let alone.

Wow. Well, I want to talk about that. We'll come back to that.

STEVE BALDERSON (07:13)
If you would have made this movie and not had the ejaculation scene, for instance, or go down the list of all of the other ones, it would have.

Okay,

it would have been a bit of a ho hum feeling, think. I think it had to be absolute vulgarity in order to make it make sense that this person is this person. So yeah, was a that was a there were some risks taken, you know, with that film.

WILKINSON (07:31)
Right.

Now,

was that a body double or was that really him? That was my one question.

STEVE BALDERSON (07:46)
I've never been asked that. It was really him.

WILKINSON (07:48)
Wow.

So he got the script, he looked at it, and this is part of it, and he said, okay, I'm good on that. Wow.

STEVE BALDERSON (07:56)
Uh-huh, yes. Well, there are people.

mean, right around that time, the movie Short Bus came out because Peter Stickles, who had been in that movie, was in Watch Out. you know, people had seen, I think even Vincent Gallo had done Blue Bunny with What's Her Face, who gives him a blowjob in it, Chloe Seveney. So things like this have happened in cinema before. It's not new.

WILKINSON (08:01)
I'm right, right. Exactly, right, right.

Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (08:18)
but I like the idea of blending it. It's so fascinating. I've had this discussion with Bruce Labrus and a bunch of other different artists and filmmakers where if you're an esteemed filmmaker and you show a movie at an esteemed film festival that contains pornography, it's art. But if you make pornography and it's shown at a local CD bookstore, it's porn. And it's exactly the same thing. You know, I mean, maybe the way it's

WILKINSON (08:26)
Right.

But if you make choreography and it's shown at a local CD book store in home, and it's exactly the same thing. Right, right. I mean, maybe the

way it's lit, the way it's put together has different levels of craftsmanship, but it's one thing.

STEVE BALDERSON (08:45)
It's lit or the way it's put together has different levels of craftsmanship, but it's blending these

stereotypical categorized ideas. It's like judgment in Sex, Love, Venice, where we talk about pornography. What is considered pornography in this city or this country is not in this other country. So I think that there should be explicit sex in a film. And in fact, there was a minute

WILKINSON (08:57)
Right.

Right. Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (09:12)
At the very beginning of

before I even wrote the screenplay for Sex, Love, Venice, I was thinking about having it totally explicit and showing everything. But then as I was working on the screenplay and it became so poetic, I thought, you know what, if I show all of it, it's going to take away from the poetry. OK, OK.

WILKINSON (09:31)
Right. We'll come back to that. Let's

finish with Watch Out. So when I watched it, as I said, watched it the other night. I don't remember which book I read, but you're discussing filmmaking and you're talking about how you don't want to be explicit on anything. you specifically reference, well, I guess a spoiler, the movie has been out a while. We can talk about it.

STEVE BALDERSON (09:37)
Yes, yes.

Yeah.

WILKINSON (09:56)
So

the, end scene where he's put, sets the big bucket down and the toast, the toast scene. But you said how it's an, a horror movie, how it's more horrifying not to see it, but you're, you're hearing it in that. Right. And, and, but you're, referenced though, the sex scenes too. And so then I saw.

STEVE BALDERSON (10:03)
Yes.

Yeah, it's all, yeah. Well, it's...

WILKINSON (10:19)
I mean then and I totally enjoyed the sex scene don't get me wrong. But it was like I was thinking about well that's quite explicit you know so I guess you have to pace yourself sometimes you want it wanted this way and sometimes you want the explicit right.

STEVE BALDERSON (10:23)
Sure.

Well

Well, here's the thing. So in Watch Out, it's not meant to be erotic. It's meant to be psychotic. So explicit psychotic is perfectly fine. And I think, thank you. And if you really study the toes scene, for instance, you'll see that if there's 10 full seconds of this scene, only a sliver of not even a full second.

WILKINSON (10:38)
Okay. Right.

You, you, you, you achieved your goal.

Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (10:58)
shows you the gory thing. The rest of it's sound effects and somebody

in other shots. It's the idea of it that's crazier than actually showing. And so in doing a sex scene, if you want it to be erotic, you show enough so that the person in the audience or the viewer can imagine their own fill in the blank. Exactly. Whereas if you show all of it to them, they're gonna see it as

WILKINSON (11:05)
Wow. Right? The wrong scenario, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

STEVE BALDERSON (11:26)
a spectacle and something that should be, you know, it instantly comes outside of them onto something else.

WILKINSON (11:32)
So what was the renaming on Castro Club? What was it again?

STEVE BALDERSON (11:35)
Sex, Lies, and Sugar.

WILKINSON (11:37)
Okay, that was very interesting. I was re- Wow. Okay.

STEVE BALDERSON (11:39)
Do you know what's really funny? This is, that we're going, so Kevin Richardson from the Backstreet Boys makes his acting debut

in this movie. He had been in Chicago on Broadway, but he'd never been in a film. Guess what movie was the first movie that he decided to watch of mine before he considered working with me? Watch out. I was like, Kevin, why did you agree to work with me? Because if I would have watched that, I would have like, no way.

WILKINSON (11:56)
Watch out

Whoa.

STEVE BALDERSON (12:04)
I mean, the script was very, very different. I can't

WILKINSON (12:04)
Right. Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (12:07)
remember what he told me, but when I learned that, I thought it was hilarious.

WILKINSON (12:11)
So in that movie, the guy that's actually gay, closeted gay, what's the actor's name on that? In the Castrol Club one. Yeah, my God, I wish you'd been more explicit with him. I fell in love with him watching that. He's really great, yeah. I was kind of disappointed that when you were doing the Castrols, you didn't have my grandma's Castrol. You didn't feature it.

STEVE BALDERSON (12:20)
Gerrit Swan.

He's great. I love Garrett.

Which one was it?

WILKINSON (12:35)
She did a tuna nut fudge casserole. I just made that up. It's the worst things I could put together. But my God. Right, you never know. Yeah, that was, it was like, wow. Okay, so let's go from those to the new one. Wow. Amazing.

STEVE BALDERSON (12:39)
my god, that's crazy.

Yeah, but you know what? It's probably not all that bad.

Yes.

WILKINSON (12:58)
I literally I've watched it so many times. And every time I watch it, I just pick up something. What I got in the beginning, I love, love, the scene where Daniel is fantasizing over, Daniel, so Michael is fantasizing over Marco. He's got the picture of the app there and he's going at it, right, in his bedroom. And then I love the scene with the water and the boats. It's like.

STEVE BALDERSON (13:12)
Yes.

WILKINSON (13:26)
Talk about, let us fill in the blanks. my God. I love that. I love that. never, I mean, I've seen the touristy things for Venice, but the cinematography and the musical score was just like, yeah, wow. Yeah. I absolutely loved it. I loved it. So the other thing I noticed is the Michael character.

STEVE BALDERSON (13:38)
Thank you. Thank you.

WILKINSON (13:47)
as he learned from Marco, visually he changed. I mean, I know his outfits and that happened, I get that. But I'm talking about who he was as a person changed. When I saw, how did you do that?

STEVE BALDERSON (13:51)
Yes.

Yes.

He's really good. I mean, I think it probably stems from because he was on Broadway. When you have those kind of performances every day for a long run, you really have to know the big in order as it happens. And by performing on stage sequentially for all these performances, then when it comes time to study a

WILKINSON (14:11)
Right.

Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (14:26)
Script I told both of them because Alex who plays Marco was also very heavy in the stage background I said treat this like we're go on stage tomorrow night and do this tomorrow So take all the notes you can in your script so that you know exactly where this person is Yeah, because we did shoot a lot of things in order on that given day, but they're all done in order by location So, you know, you can't you shoot everything you can at the hotel

WILKINSON (14:39)
Right. Where you are at that point, yeah. Yeah.

Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (14:53)
At the hotel in those days and then you move to the next location but.

WILKINSON (14:55)
Right. Gotcha. Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (14:57)
So we shoot sequentially at the location but it's all. Done out of sequence otherwise so i was just really really explicit at the beginning with. know make sure you know exactly where this person is on that moment on that day so that when we get there to film it you can remember where you are as a performer as a as a actor.

WILKINSON (15:03)
So I was just really, really explicit in the beginning with, you know, make sure you know exactly where this person is on that moment, on that day, so that when we get there to film it, you can remember where you are as a performer, as an actor.

STEVE BALDERSON (15:18)
And they were both so incredible that it took very little reminding about where

WILKINSON (15:18)
And they were both so incredible, back then, so very little reminded.

STEVE BALDERSON (15:21)
they were.

WILKINSON (15:23)
But

I'm talking about his physical presence seemed to change. It wasn't just where he was in his head. And when looking at him visually, it's like, wow, wow.

STEVE BALDERSON (15:33)
Well,

I also think that was the first time that he had traveled to Europe. He had traveled abroad, the actor. And I think that, you it was the first time he was nude, you know, the first time he was in a feature, I think. So I think that all of these, you know, gives you a bit of confidence. I don't know, not just confidence, but...

WILKINSON (15:37)
Yeah.

Right, he was, yeah that was.

STEVE BALDERSON (15:55)
You grow during the process. So I'm not surprised that the way that he would hold himself naturally would be different than before.

WILKINSON (15:58)
So my master plan was that they would plant themselves back where it would begin.

From his experience with Marco, he changes how he looks at life. And so I said, as an actor, how did you change? Did that same thing happen? And to me, was like just sitting in the seat out there watching it. I think it all, if you're really paying attention, it changes me incrementally watching that movie. I think that's what I liked about it.

STEVE BALDERSON (16:14)
yeah, sure.

Yes.

Well, and-

WILKINSON (16:31)
Because it's

like that whole thing at the end where he gives him the coin and he gives that speech. It's like, wow, I could make that a part of who I am. Yeah.

STEVE BALDERSON (16:40)
Yes.

I mean, those were deliberate choices from the very beginning. And it was in that process, I thought these messages are more important than nudity. So yes, there needs to be nudity because it's part of the story. But I can't go explicit because it takes away from what I would, I have heard it being described, I'll just say the philosophies, the meanings of this movie are,

WILKINSON (16:44)
Right. Right.

Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (17:03)
too special to be distracted by superficial things like a penis. You know what I mean? It's just, it's not, a penis is beautiful, but it also, because it is. And you know, really, no two look alike. It's wonderful.

WILKINSON (17:09)
Right. Right. And indeed, indeed it is.

Well, you know, I do photography and I do a lot of male nude photography and I say that that's my that's my thing I say I say penises are like snowflakes Wow, wow So the the actor the in the beginning I'm gonna talk about a couple of the actors in this movie. So Jason, what's his last name? He's the waiter

STEVE BALDERSON (17:31)
That's exactly right. That's hilarious. That's exactly right.

Ciceras.

WILKINSON (17:43)
Well, thank you for sharing him. That was beautiful indeed.

STEVE BALDERSON (17:47)
He's great. Jason's amazing. I think that

was his first full frontal scene in the movie also.

WILKINSON (17:51)
Yeah.

Well, I'm going to, he's, I've talked to him at other things because I know our stage manager at the local theater here for a while. I moved on, but, I talked to him, actually this coming week, I'm going to have Jerome, in, my podcast. And then, and then I've already, I, Daniel, I had like a year or two ago because he was, you know, on stage in pump Springs. So, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, he was in, gently down the stream. He was nude, but didn't show anything really.

STEVE BALDERSON (18:04)
Great.

that's right. Yes.

WILKINSON (18:17)
So anyway, that was great. I again, love, love, love the two friends. my God. So what's the actress's name?

STEVE BALDERSON (18:25)
Susanna Eakins.

WILKINSON (18:26)
She is like the epitome of whatever gay man wants for a friend. I loved her, I loved her. Yeah, she was so amazing.

STEVE BALDERSON (18:31)
Totally.

Totally, I love those two. I mean, she is a total movie star.

I can't, like, it was interesting. She auditioned for me for a different film a few years ago, and she was so good, I couldn't cast her. Because in that particular project, she would have overshadowed everybody else in that movie. And it was funny, because it was like, I would love to cast you, but I can't because you're too good, you know?

WILKINSON (18:44)
Bye.

Wow.

Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (18:57)
And so when this came up, I called her immediately and was just like, Hey, you want to go to Venice? And she was like, kidding? Like, what are you talking about? So I basically offered it to her because she's a treasure.

WILKINSON (19:06)
Yeah,

it's like you're saying it's like applying for a job and like, you're overqualified. Yeah, but I really need a job. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

STEVE BALDERSON (19:11)
Yes!

No, exactly. No, I know. It was exactly like that. And

then the best friend character, Dave, right?

WILKINSON (19:20)
my God, my God.

Well, I also, I met him and I haven't scheduled it yet. Cause you know, I just switched to video. So I was audio and he had to be in person with me. But he's on my list too. I've got actually sitting out. There's his card. was so amazing. I think I wrote somewhere. He's just so negative, Nellie. The sky is falling.

STEVE BALDERSON (19:31)
Yes.

He's so great.

Yes.

WILKINSON (19:44)
And you love him, but he's so cringe-worthy of what he's saying sometimes.

STEVE BALDERSON (19:47)
Totally.

He's a brilliant comedian. mean, his comic timing is genius. I would say 30 % of everything that came out of his mouth was improv. Yeah, we had full scenes written, but the stuff that ended up in the movie, most of it, well, a lot of it, I wouldn't say most of it, a lot of it was improv. And he and I shared the exact same birthday. So, yes.

WILKINSON (19:53)
Yeah.

Really?

Right, right, right, right. Really, which is

what?

STEVE BALDERSON (20:12)
January 19th. Along with Dolly Parton, it's Capricorn.

WILKINSON (20:13)
What is that? What is

that? Capricorn, okay. Okay. Yay.

STEVE BALDERSON (20:17)
Last Day of Capricorn. And he and

I will have philosophical conversations and talk about Alan Watts and all these, that was philosophy in this film, we share. So to have him play such a neurotic character is really fun because that's nothing like him. know? Yeah. he's so good.

WILKINSON (20:28)
Right.

Really? Well, he

pulled it off. Wow. I... Right? That's, wow. I'm so mad at names. And then Daniel's mom, of course, was great. Yeah.

STEVE BALDERSON (20:40)
Yeah, he's fantastic. Yeah, Zeramak Bacak. Zeramak Bacak. His name is so much fun to say.

Yes, Mink Stoll is amazing. I've worked with

Mink now three different times, and what I love doing with her is putting her in roles that she otherwise would not be cast in. You know, like serious dramatic parts. She's still very funny, but she's really good, solid actress, and I'm pretty surprised that she hasn't been given the opportunity more to show that she's a good actress.

WILKINSON (21:02)
Right.

Right?

Right.

Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (21:18)
So that was fun. I love working with her. She's just effortless and she's so much fun. Just like, I like creating a set where even if, regardless of the story, could be a horror, it could be a comedy, it could be a drama, whatever, love story, as long as it's fun to make, you know, and people get along and it's in a joyable environment, that's what's most important for me through the whole process.

WILKINSON (21:33)
Right.

I got these glass, I gotta switch. Either I'm reading or I'm on my computer. Okay, we're gonna have a whole lot of time with you. Cause you're gonna run out of cells, so gotta jam some things in here. So question I had, so I know that you got permits for this one in Venice. So my question was, were the extras, were they really extras or were they people on the street? It seems like they had to be, yeah, okay.

STEVE BALDERSON (21:47)
No we don't.

Yeah, jam them.

Yes. Yes.

Both.

If you were in public, you could do whatever you wanted. If it was a private place, like a hotel or restaurant or anything like that, that's when you'd have to place people or get their releases and all those things and ask permission. But if you were just in public, we had the run of the place. It was amazing.

WILKINSON (22:08)
You could.

then you gotta...

Right.

So the scene where you're in the coffee house, where the touchy feely one that you said, I think I read or saw somewhere where you, maybe it on your podcast. You said that was shut down, that the coffee shop was shut at that point. Yeah. But I...

STEVE BALDERSON (22:25)
Mm, mm-hmm.

That was, yes, that was locked, yeah. Well, were,

anytime we could control the environment 100%, we did. And then you can't shut down Piazza San Marco unless you've got $100 million. So we didn't, that's why it was just natural. Yeah.

WILKINSON (22:40)
Right.

Ha ha!

Wow. Well, this

was not a cheap movie to make. know that. Wow. Are you gonna make money on it?

STEVE BALDERSON (22:55)
No, it wasn't. No, it wasn't. Yeah.

hope it costs a lot, so let's see. mean, yeah, I don't know. mean, was the... Thank you, thank you. Yes, I hope it does because I'm the number one contributor to the financing of the film, so I would like to continue existing. yes, yeah.

WILKINSON (23:02)
Well, I'm doing my part to promote it. Trust me. Because it's like, yes.

Right,

Yeah, well it wasn't a independent film. Here's $35,000. I know that wasn't the case. So, huh. Do you have new film coming up?

STEVE BALDERSON (23:27)
Yeah.

No, but I have a bunch of things in the works and they're always at different stages of percolating. So I consider my career like an industrial kitchen stove with like 20 different burners and some of the sauces just started, some are boiling, some I just put on, this one I just plated, you know, like they're all different. And I don't know which one's next, I never do. Each movie has its own life force, so it sort of, it'll present itself to me.

WILKINSON (23:48)
Gotcha.

STEVE BALDERSON (23:56)
when it's right, and I don't know which one that'll be next. I've always...

WILKINSON (23:57)
Right.

Before you said the stove, sorry, before you said the stove, was switching at garden and it's like this one's, know, the tomato's ready, almost ripe. The beans are just coming up here, you know, that same analogy though. Yeah. Yeah.

STEVE BALDERSON (24:05)
yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.

I have a choice to either tell you I'm at 4 % or change where I am and unplug this, but I'm gonna sound different.

WILKINSON (24:23)
I don't know, what do you want to do? We're at, I'm good time-wise. I mean, could talk to you for hours, but what do you want to do? What do you want to do?

STEVE BALDERSON (24:28)
No, I know I could talk to you for hours too. Well,

tell me if this sounds bad and if it does I'll just plug it right back in.

STEVE BALDERSON (24:33)
BAM.

WILKINSON (24:34)
Something just popped up. I think it said, it said your quality improved, I think. It popped up for a second. This is a new program and I don't know all the quirks of it, but.

STEVE BALDERSON (24:35)
No, know, it's because I unplugged my microphone.

Okay, so I'm

unplugged. How do I sound?

WILKINSON (24:47)
It's a little equity, echoey, but not too bad. Yeah.

STEVE BALDERSON (24:50)
Okay, that's the difference. The only thing I need to

do is plug my phone. So hold on one sec.

WILKINSON (24:54)
Okay.

STEVE BALDERSON (24:56)
I love European plugs.

WILKINSON (24:58)
I know. I've got one of those gadgets with all the different ones. I've only been to Europe three times, but.

STEVE BALDERSON (25:03)
Alright, let's see.

WILKINSON (25:05)
It's so weird because when I'm in Europe...

STEVE BALDERSON (25:07)
Yeah.

WILKINSON (25:08)
When I'm in Europe, I feel like I'm

at home always. I must have been there in a former life. That's all I can figure out.

STEVE BALDERSON (25:12)
All right, this is going to be really tricky.

Well no, that's what I feel too every time. God damn it. My cord doesn't reach the phone. Hold on. It'll take me two seconds.

WILKINSON (25:20)
Yeah.

well.

Alright.

STEVE BALDERSON (25:29)
to just... I have to take my phone off of my tripod. Jesus. One second. I'm so elegant. Alright. And then, plug it. Okay, now it's charging. Alright, at least it won't die.

WILKINSON (25:37)
You're all over the, you

were all over the map. Like you weren't following the storyboard here.

STEVE BALDERSON (25:42)
I know. let me. you see how that lights going on the wall? Okay, that's what happens.

WILKINSON (25:46)
I do. that's very cool. You're darker,

however.

STEVE BALDERSON (25:49)
No, I know that's because I moved over here. can move this wherever I want.

WILKINSON (25:52)
Okay.

Whoa.

That's a good light right there. other one, before it was a little bit harsh, but this is good. I can see you.

STEVE BALDERSON (25:57)
Alright.

Alright.

WILKINSON (26:02)
Ugh. So...

STEVE BALDERSON (26:03)
Let me see if I can put this back into its position. But I'm not gonna, my phone's not gonna die, it's already up to five again.

WILKINSON (26:10)
cool.

STEVE BALDERSON (26:10)
my god.

No, it's going so well right now that I also don't want to kill it. The mood.

Alright, it fits there. There's that. I'm gonna move the light again, so don't worry.

WILKINSON (26:22)
Hahaha.

STEVE BALDERSON (26:23)
Okay, that's hanging right up.

WILKINSON (26:25)
I think I'm going to leave all this in the video. not going to edit. It's fun.

STEVE BALDERSON (26:30)
You don't have to. Alright.

WILKINSON (26:32)
Alright, so you're in Barcelona.

STEVE BALDERSON (26:34)
I'm in Barcelona.

WILKINSON (26:35)
and you're going to school to learn the language. How long will that take?

STEVE BALDERSON (26:38)
Yes.

Well, you can buy as many weeks as you want at one time, so I started with five weeks. It's super intensive, so it's every day, and it's... the teacher only speaks in Spanish.

WILKINSON (26:52)
That's what I was gonna

say. So it's kind of immersive. You're in the middle of the pool. Learn to swim.

STEVE BALDERSON (26:57)
She will,

every now and again, clarify in English, you know, but she starts, you walk in, it's, you know, but it's the end, blah, blah, blah. She's talking to you in Spanish. Sometimes you have no idea what she's saying, but she says the same thing at the beginning of class every day. So by the third or fourth day, you realize, oh, she's asking, what did we do after class yesterday? You know, you're not sure what the words are per se, but you're beginning to get a sense of what...

WILKINSON (27:01)
Okay, right.

STEVE BALDERSON (27:24)
it sounds like because she might ask it and somebody over here on the other side of the room says in Spanish, you know, that they had a walk, they did some work, had dinner, and you're beginning to realize what those words are, but you're not seeing the words. So I have no idea what the word is that she's saying, but I know that's what she's asking. It's fascinating.

WILKINSON (27:36)
Right.

I don't know if that would work for me because I'm so visual. It's like,

STEVE BALDERSON (27:48)
Yeah, me too. Yeah, when we were working on

verbs the other day and I saw the word and then they turned the card around, I'm like, I can't say that. I need to look at it while I'm saying it because I have no idea what it was.

WILKINSON (27:59)
Right.

So how long do you go to school every day for that? Is it like two hour, a couple hours?

STEVE BALDERSON (28:06)
Couple hours. Yeah, it's not,

not... I could have signed up, now I signed up for the semi-intensive, but there was the one that's like four hours a day. And I signed up for five weeks, and what I think I'll do is either extend it for another five, or could pause and then go back a month later. But it's crazy, I've only been going for a week and half, or two weeks, and I've learned more and been able to use it.

WILKINSON (28:15)
Okay.

STEVE BALDERSON (28:32)
a lot faster than I thought I would.

Like I can get through a restaurant or cafe with zero English.

WILKINSON (28:34)
So, wow,

wow. Do you see many people with those new devices that got, you you see them advertised where, you know, you push a button, say something and then it translates for you?

STEVE BALDERSON (28:47)
No, I have used Google Translate, but I would love one of those. I I think that there's even an app you can do this on your phone, but I haven't found it yet. So I may have to get one of those devices.

WILKINSON (28:55)
Yeah.

Well, I think I'm too old to learn a new language, so I'm going to think I need to rely on that.

STEVE BALDERSON (29:04)
Did you

ever learn a new language? No, it's so hard. I had studied French for three years in high school era, so it's like the idea of learning a new language. It's also really inspiring because the next chapter of my life is not in the United States of America. Yeah. And I really...

WILKINSON (29:06)
No.

we're gonna have a third episode on that. Cause you know, wow. Yeah, I, go ahead.

STEVE BALDERSON (29:26)
Mm-hmm.

But I didn't move

because of this. I moved because when I was filming Sex, Venice, I looked around and now it had already been presented to me a few times in the past. Why aren't you living in Europe? Why aren't you living in Europe? So the seed had been planted. And when I was there shooting this movie in Italy, I was like, why am I not living in Europe? You know, as a director, I can be anywhere.

And even when I was living in Los Angeles, only one job that I got took place in Los Angeles. They were all in other cities. So I didn't need to be in Los Angeles. And then when I thought, well, where in the world would I like to go? The only place that felt like home was Europe. my lifestyle and everything that I do, my mindset, everything we talked about in

WILKINSON (30:01)
in LA, yeah.

STEVE BALDERSON (30:19)
the other episode, the other conversation we had, is here. You know, these people are raised with philosophy in the classroom. They're not forced to take phys ed so they can be on the football team. know, art is part of the culture. Everywhere you look is beautiful. They have museums. They're celebrate. Art is celebrated here. It's not shunned. And that's where I need to be. So I knew that

WILKINSON (30:32)
Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (30:44)
And I started the process of getting my visa and all of these things long before the election. That was just something that happened that was just an additional reason to not be there.

WILKINSON (30:52)
So when you're casting a movie, you use what most of them are using now, like the video audition and stuff like that? And then you go in person with them or how does that work for you?

STEVE BALDERSON (30:54)
huh.

Well, I've always sort of done that because before I lived in Los Angeles I was in Kansas. So I would have to audition people over videos. what I did though was a little different. Instead of sending them the script, I mean I would send them the script, but I would have them audition to me in character, but improv, off the script. So I would say, like for instance, when we were doing Sexualize and Sugar, aka Castrol Club,

WILKINSON (31:10)
Right, okay.

okay.

STEVE BALDERSON (31:28)
I had all of them read for two different parts because casting that movie was not very easy because not only did I have to find five women who together would be best friends and have that chemistry, but also five guys who together would be best friends and have that chemistry, and then they're all married. So each of the couples had to have their connection. So it was pretty difficult. And so I had all the guys and all the girls audition for two different parts.

WILKINSON (31:38)
Right.

Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (31:54)
And then what I had them do was just introduce themselves. So they would say, you know, and you could do this for anything, you know, hey, my name is so and so, like, I would introduce myself to you. I'd say, hi, I'm Steve Balderson. make films, I write books. I'm sometimes a life coach and sometimes I like to eat good food, you know, but they would do it in character and tell me, you know, what's their take on this character, you know, which was really, really fun. And the people who,

WILKINSON (32:05)
Right.

Right, right, right.

STEVE BALDERSON (32:21)
are believable in that character, I always circle and say, I should keep looking at these people because they're so good.

WILKINSON (32:27)
Yeah,

right. Did their improv in that change anything from what you had originally thought when you making that film?

STEVE BALDERSON (32:35)
Sometimes. I mean, also it informs, typically when I'm working, there are, my approach is this. Take one, as it's written. So you do the scene as it's written. Take two is, all right, now set the script aside. How would you do it? Do you have an idea? Do you want to bring something that's not written? You know? And then the third,

WILKINSON (32:37)
Okay.

Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (32:55)
And this is of course, I always don't have time to do all three. But the third one is either. All right, we know that the scene beforehand is A and the scene that comes next in the story is C. There are a thousand ways to do B, right? So let's just try as many as we want. You know, that's one thing you could do. Another thing I like to do is I say, especially if

WILKINSON (32:59)
Right.

B for B, right? Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (33:19)
This is fun if there's a monologue or some kind of lots of dialogue. All right, let's do this take exactly as it's written without saying a single word.

You know, like how do you do it? How do you communicate physically without saying words? Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Like Xander Berkeley in Alchemy of the Spirit was really good at that because he could say something that looked better than the sentence was written. know, so sometimes you use it and sometimes you throw it away because it doesn't work. It just depends.

WILKINSON (33:29)
Wow.

Right.

I just, I just had this flashback. was, I'll take a second and tell you. So I get divorced from the woman that in the spring of 99 fall, I go to Europe where I came out to myself. As I mentioned earlier, I think in the other episode, I wanted to do independent film. I always wanted to do that. But then I, you know, back then 99, it's like film film, not digital. And it was like, I saw like,

STEVE BALDERSON (34:12)
No, know. My first movie was 1997.

WILKINSON (34:16)
But the cost on that was like, my God. So I said, and all this stuff, it's like, nah. So I took an acting class and I picked up the camera, those two things. So I'm in this local, I think it was probably an elementary school turned into a community center. I'm going to the acting class, right? There's maybe 20 people in the class. And we're kind of probably a few weeks into it. we walk in and she goes, today.

STEVE BALDERSON (34:23)
Yes.

WILKINSON (34:39)
You're going to go up and you're going to tell a personal story. There's three rooms on the stage. It was like, you know, those in the schools that have a cafeteria, this like multi-purpose room. So it was like a cafeteria with a stage in it, right? You've seen, you've probably seen those. So anyway, she said, you're going to, you're going to go up here and she said, you're going to tell a personal story, three rooms, and you can't speak. And instantly I knew what I was going to do. So I go up and I think I run the first one up. So I go up and I remember I got divorced.

STEVE BALDERSON (34:51)
Yeah.

WILKINSON (35:07)
So I'm acting this out just in, I'm like opening the door and leaving, I've got a briefcase, I'm leaving that. And then I walked across the middle room and as I was walking, I started, I had an Onyx ring, it wasn't a wedding ring, but I switched it and put it on my ring finger for a wedding ring, right? So it looked like a wedding ring. And I just...

I just was fiddling with it as I walked across the room, right? And the hardest part for me doing that was walking slow enough across the stage, right? But as I walked

across and I was actually living this as it happened, I looked around the room and it was my life, everything that I knew in my life up to that point, right? And then I came to the third door or the second door, third room. I opened the door and I...

And I took one last look and I took the ring off, put it in my pocket and walked through the door. And the lady teaching the class was crying. She knew exactly what it was. But wow. I hadn't thought of that in years. Wow. Over 20 years. Wow. That was very cool. But so I get what you're talking about in doing that. So, but my question is when you're doing all those different takes on it,

STEVE BALDERSON (35:59)
Cool.

cool.

Yeah, that's great.

WILKINSON (36:19)
Isn't that expensive?

STEVE BALDERSON (36:21)
Well, not anymore.

WILKINSON (36:21)
cause it's digital. But it's just the time, right? Time would be the big thing, right? Yeah, yeah.

STEVE BALDERSON (36:23)
And, well, it's just time. Yeah, so if

you've only got six hours in this space to finish a scene, because you're not coming back here tomorrow, then you may not be able to do all of that, you know? But if you're there the next day, maybe you do have some time to do it. And maybe you don't need to do it for every scene, you know? But it is sometimes fun to do it. Just different variations on how to do it.

WILKINSON (36:43)
Right. Right.

Huh.

So being the curious guy that I am, so in your kitchen or your garden, where all the stuff's going on, is there one where the pot's almost ready to plate? As far as your projects, you got, so there.

STEVE BALDERSON (36:54)
Yes.

No, no,

there's nothing in post-production. When I started my process to move to Europe, the first thing I did was I decided to translate, well, to have my books translated by somebody else because I don't clearly speak different languages. So I'm working with different people to translate filmmaking confidential, accessing creativity. I've already translated.

the How to Find Investors book, which is now available in Spanish. And I'll show you the cover of it right now because it's really cool. And...

It's called...

The to finding investors.

WILKINSON (37:34)
And so this is the Spanish version.

STEVE BALDERSON (37:36)
This is the Spanish version of how to find investors. And here it's called, well, anywhere. I mean, you can get it in the United States if you speak Spanish. The secret to finding investors. So that's that. And then...

WILKINSON (37:39)
Okay.

Right.

Cool. Are

you translating Year of the Whore?

STEVE BALDERSON (37:52)
No.

WILKINSON (37:52)
Why? my god, that was a fun book.

STEVE BALDERSON (37:55)
Thank you. Now, part of it is because…

I did it as an exercise and on the other conversation we had, was discussing, you know, doing something you're afraid of because it builds some confidence and strength and whatever. And I thought...

WILKINSON (38:09)
Wait, wait,

stop right there. That was a really good thing. That was our pre-video little chat we had. Talk about that a little bit. I want you to share that.

STEVE BALDERSON (38:18)
Okay,

so when I was, I can't remember if I started this in high school or if I did it in college or even after college, I would do, I had a laundry list of things that I was nervous about or frightened of or afraid to do or whatever. And I would deliberately do one of them every day. If it was I was afraid to go talk to someone, I was afraid to whatever.

WILKINSON (38:31)
Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (38:42)
I made myself go talk to them the next day, you know? And I learned, didn't kill ya, didn't hurt, you know, you're the same person afterwards, and in fact, you might even be a little stronger. You might even have a different outlook that's even a little healthier. So, I told several people the story of...

WILKINSON (38:47)
Right.

Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (39:03)
what happened and you know after I came back from Venice what transpired over the coming months and Because it was inexplicable. I mean chapter 2 which is called year of the whore I didn't even leave my house for 24 hours, and there were a series of events that you can't even living in West Hollywood or Palm Springs have this level of

insanity. mean, I don't know what to call it. It was the most unlikely in Wamego, Kansas, you know? And when it occurred to me, I was like, this is so bananas. Like, you can't fake this, you know? You could write it down.

WILKINSON (39:38)
Are you talking

about like meeting some of these guys and that kind of stuff or what?

STEVE BALDERSON (39:43)
Well, in that chapter, was first it was the magazine salesman, literally, right? The one from

WILKINSON (39:47)
The Latino guy.

That was the one for me. Hence, my God, the Spanish guy is around you. Right, really?

STEVE BALDERSON (39:52)
Yeah!

Right, well, there's a big Latin American Mexican population in Kansas.

Yeah. then the guy from, you know, New York, and then the pizza guy, all in the same day. So, I mean, in fact, it was probably within an eight hour time window, or maybe a 10 hour time window. And I never left my house the entire time. So anyway, I had other experiences that year.

But as I was telling the story of, especially the Venice story, to people, they would always say, you need to write this down, you need to write this down, or you need to make a movie about this. And I was never really interested in it at that time. yes. And then I was talking to Iris Berry, who owns Punk Hostage Press, and she said, you've got to write an erotic memoir. And...

WILKINSON (40:32)
Really?

STEVE BALDERSON (40:46)
I was like, what does that even mean? Like, I don't even know what that means. And I thought, well, first of all, I learned at this time that the largest consumer of gay erotica is heterosexual women. And when I learned that...

WILKINSON (41:03)
Yeah, yeah,

that makes sense. Not.

STEVE BALDERSON (41:06)
I thought,

so the book is meant for horny housewives who read, you know, dirty books when they go out to the beach on the vacation with their girlfriends, you know? And so I thought, well, let's approach it like that. So I actually got together with about, I wrote the whole thing and then I would give each chapter to a different ghostwriter.

WILKINSON (41:12)
Hahaha!

Right.

Wow.

STEVE BALDERSON (41:28)
I would say and most of them were women and there was one gay guy who was really really cool that helped me with a few of them, but I said hey, I need your your feminine approach perspective as a woman a straight woman to enhance this For for you You know so she would then basically do a rewrite of the chapter She would send it back to me, and then I would say okay. I would never say

WILKINSON (41:42)
Wow.

STEVE BALDERSON (41:51)
Or I would call her up and say, okay, this is not what happened. It's kind of what happened and I would never say that. And she was like, come on, it's so good, just leave it in. So I was like, all right, fuck it, just leave it in. But then what it did, mean, a lot of the other stuff in it, it wasn't just about sex, was about, it was a continuation of the reawakening that I had in Venice. So it was also the moment I decided,

WILKINSON (41:55)
you

Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (42:16)
it was time to leave Kansas. And that's when I moved to Los Angeles. I had lived in the LA area when I went to film school, but I then went back to Kansas. And so on that drive, you know, I knew I would never go back. Like I knew on that drive I would sell my house, that I would start the next chapter, and then it would be the next thing.

WILKINSON (42:24)
Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (42:37)
And it was really remarkable because...

Until moving to Europe, I have not had that kind of overwhelming sense of relief and release and yet promise at the same time. So it's like every mile that pass, I let that go there and just dissolve and welcome with big open arms what was coming next. And that was such an overwhelming

WILKINSON (42:46)
Right.

Right. Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (43:03)
sense, like a sensory experience for me, that I was always nervous that I would never have another one. Like it. But when I was moving here, it was the same feeling. And I was like, God, I love this. know, it's just like, know, letting the past go where it needs to go, and it's part of you, but you can embrace the unknown, the next, what's happening next. And when I was having lunch with Minxedil before I...

WILKINSON (43:10)
Huh.

Wow.

STEVE BALDERSON (43:28)
It was like the week before I moved to Europe. She said, she did a similar thing when she moved to Los Angeles from Baltimore, which was you're just diving into the unknown and you really have no clue, but you just go for it. And I love that. I just love that about the ability that we all have to do that. in accessing creativity, there's a whole section on

WILKINSON (43:38)
Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (43:50)
decisions we've made and beliefs we have and it's funny because human beings make a decision and then they somehow feel like they're stuck in them and We all have the freedom to choose again You know, I I have decided I love pasta Well, maybe I don't tomorrow. That's okay. I don't have to love pasta tomorrow. I Can love it right now. That's it, you know, they appreciate now

WILKINSON (43:59)
Right.

Exactly.

Right, right, right.

Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (44:14)
you know, be present and then... Yeah. Do you know... I can't tell if the cathedral on the corner... what religious denomination it is, but there are twice a day now, which is 720 because it happens, 720 p.m., a constant ringing of the bell. Like, 35 times. Like it just ding, ding, ding. Is there a mass getting over?

WILKINSON (44:18)
I get it.

STEVE BALDERSON (44:41)
Maybe. Or something.

I don't know.

WILKINSON (44:43)
Maybe it's time to start making dinner. Because Europeans eat, they eat late, right?

STEVE BALDERSON (44:46)
Well, that occurred to me too.

No, that occurred to me too because the morning bell is like 10 o'clock, which maybe signals it's time to get out in the world. And then the 720 bell is, oh, we better get home so we can make dinner. Maybe, I don't know. Anyway, that was just her.

WILKINSON (45:02)
It

sounded like a Catholic bellow, come on. So getting back to your, you know, moving and all that, because when I moved from New York to Seattle, there's two words that came up. I called it scary anticipation. That's what it was. Yeah, it was like, I was letting go of that moving forward and I didn't know what was on the horizon, but.

STEVE BALDERSON (45:06)
Alright. Yes.

Yeah.

Right.

WILKINSON (45:27)
the anticipation and scary just not knowing that but just letting go of everything I had known. So it was fun.

STEVE BALDERSON (45:34)
Yeah. It's great. My...

The other thing I say is that I have retired from bullshit.

WILKINSON (45:40)
Wow. Sounds good to me.

STEVE BALDERSON (45:42)
I mean, in every aspect. Yeah.

WILKINSON (45:44)
Yeah.

Wow. I've been going through such changes the last couple months. It's been crazy. I basically stopped watching the news, like stopped, like no. My friends send me all the political stuff and I say, please don't send me this stuff anymore. Because.

To me, I'm at right now, and I've been watching a lot of podcasts, I'm really into the energy stuff. And it's like, for me right now is, I'm here, I'm in the States, I need to be my little dot of light. That's my job. And when I dwell on all of the bullshit going on out there, and I've got friends that...

STEVE BALDERSON (46:10)
Yeah.

Right.

WILKINSON (46:27)
They post like 10 things a day. It's like, gotta, you know, cut them off of all the political stuff. It's like, to me, my understanding is you're giving, you're feeding that shit with your energy. That's what you're doing. You're giving your energy to that and feeding it. And I just don't wanna be a part of that anymore. So.

STEVE BALDERSON (46:44)
Yep. Did you ever

read Eckhart Tolle's book, A New Earth?

WILKINSON (46:49)
No, I think that's come up a couple times. That's interesting, yeah.

STEVE BALDERSON (46:53)
Because he calls it,

the pain body, I think, and it feeds on negativity. And when you feed it, it takes over. But if you acknowledge it and say, that's just my pain body talking, or that's just their pain body talking, you don't feed it. And then you just go, it's like what I mentioned to you about going to film school and seeing all the craziness. I had the power to turn around and walk away. And so I have done that and it's...

WILKINSON (46:56)
Okay.

Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (47:18)
primarily for selfish reasons, but it's also for self-preservation. I wish all of my friends would also move outside that country and go somewhere else. I would obviously want them to live nearby me so I could go see them. I love a lot of people and wish them the best, but I also need to look out for myself too.

And I want to be in a place where I can create and do what I need to do to help people and the planet and create art, which will hopefully inspire somebody somewhere, even if it's just one person, to have a better life of some kind. If the one thing that somebody takes away from sex, love, and Venice is to find love in everyone they meet and to just be a little kinder to everybody, if one person can do that, let alone a dozen or whatever,

That's why I'm here and that's what I do what I do.

WILKINSON (48:07)
Yeah. Well, and it happened, that happened for me. So I'm the one, I'm one. But you know, my, my friends, you know, I had two guys over, I know, a few days ago and, and every, everyone that's seen that movie loves it. I mean, they, every, literally I'm not making that up. Everyone. And, and they say that it's like, changes people. So.

STEVE BALDERSON (48:12)
You are one.

I would ask, and anybody who's listening who's seen it, please go to Amazon and the IMDB and all these places to rate and review it. Because one thing that occurred to me, this was maybe 10 years ago, when people hate you, they're jealous of you, or they're upset because they didn't get the job, or whatever, they will go out of... Okay.

WILKINSON (48:37)
Right.

I know what you're going to say. They're going to post, but if they

love it, they don't. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

STEVE BALDERSON (48:52)
Yes, they will go out of their way

to tear you down, especially in the climate of the world today, even if they've never seen it. But I'm guilty of this too. When I see a movie or a show or read a book that I love, it doesn't occur to me to go leave a review. But it helps the people who are doing it. And if you're an independent author or an independent filmmaker or an independent artist,

WILKINSON (48:59)
Right. Yeah.

STEVE BALDERSON (49:17)
you need that help because otherwise somebody who's a stranger who lives in whatever city goes online and says, god, it's got such terrible reviews. It's only because these people are upsetting this and it's really, really frustrating but I'm guilty of it too because when I love a restaurant, it doesn't occur to me to leave a nice one. It only occurs to me to leave a review when I've terrible service. It's so weird. That's just how we are.

WILKINSON (49:40)
Right? And

then don't forget all of the jealous people that are writing stuff because they don't like you and they're jealous. So they do the negative.

STEVE BALDERSON (49:48)
Yeah, I've

had a few of those in my life and it's interesting because, for instance, some of them are high profile people. And one was an agent that worked at CAA. And early on in my career, they were using their clout because they were a fan of the rock star Mike Patton. And they wanted to see my movie before anybody else. So they basically led me on to believe.

that they were interested in maybe representing me or working together. All they wanted to do was see the movie. And then when I sort of confronted them about this, God, they hate me. The other one that really doesn't like me used to be senior vice president of Fox Searchlight. So it's interesting, you know, when you come up against these people and they have good jobs. What are they doing trying to, you know, hurt me? I've done nothing to them. You know what I mean? So fascinating.

WILKINSON (50:35)
They need to ponder your message in that, in your film. They do, wow.

STEVE BALDERSON (50:39)
They do. And that's the other fun thing.

So anytime you're ever in an argument or somebody's been mean to you, my friend told me the other day, he was really, really frustrated with someone. And I said, take a moment, find something. And I said, this may be difficult. Think now and find something about the new love. Just find something. It could be anything. And he had just had this heated argument with this person.

and he finally found something. And it was fascinating because as he was telling me what he loved about her, he changed. it was amazing. And so it's not an easy game to play, but it's really helpful. Yeah.

WILKINSON (51:10)
Wow.

Right.

huh. Before we started, you said nothing's off limits. So, but we can take this out if you don't wanna go there. So you have a partner. Where did you meet?

STEVE BALDERSON (51:24)
Nothing.

Well, I don't like this part because it's fascinating. And Jodie Foster said it best.

Privacy.

Like, it's important, but I mean, I'll tell you anything you wanna know. there... No, no, no, it's not that I don't want to, but there is a joy when I first moved here and knowing that no one knows me. No one. That's kind of exciting. You know, in Spanish class they're asking, what do you do? You know, what brought you to Spain? No way am I saying that I'm a film director.

WILKINSON (51:36)
Okay.

But no, I don't want to go where you don't want to go. So that's fine.

Okay.

STEVE BALDERSON (52:00)
You know, it changes the whole dynamic.

WILKINSON (52:00)
Wow.

Well, in some ways, I mean, those that are really famous, they don't have a life. They can't go to a restaurant and just enjoy a meal.

STEVE BALDERSON (52:06)
No they're not.

No, Angelina Jolie lived next to me in Hollywood, and there's a supermarket on the corner called Lazy Acres, and every time she goes there, there's cameras and people's cell phones and all this bullshit, and I'm like, God, that would suck. You know? Well, and then I'm like, why isn't she getting groceries delivered? You know? I got my groceries delivered. you know, there's, maybe she wants that, I don't know. But it's, I am very fortunate that I am a director on this.

WILKINSON (52:13)
Uh-huh.

Really? Yeah.

STEVE BALDERSON (52:36)
other side of the camera so that I don't have to deal with that in the world.

But no, I,

met the person that I'm with now years and years and years ago. I don't remember when exactly, 2015, 2016, but it was an effortless, I had already learned everything that gave me a new mindset about life and people and living differently. So when you engage with anybody, regardless of whether it becomes a lover or a friend or a neighbor, et cetera.

WILKINSON (52:55)
Right?

STEVE BALDERSON (53:02)
the approach with how you interact with them and go through life, there's no such thing as codependency, there's no such thing as ownership of another person, there's no such thing as... All of those things that cause problems in relationships vanish because they're all constructs. None of them are true. And so then it becomes being in a relationship with

a person or people or whatever works for you, I don't know. It's different and it's healthy in that way and it's just really lovely. And I love, because there are mean people in the world and there are these jealous people in the world, I like to know that that's, you know, even with my family, I don't follow them on social media.

I finally convinced my mother to take her number out of the phone book, however many years ago. Because I was just like, I want you to have a good life and not be, you know, I'm not a famous person like Angelina Jolie, I'm not comparing myself there, but there are still people who will track those numbers down to harass or bully or whatever. And there's just something nice to know that that's not gonna happen. And if does, it happens, but whatever.

WILKINSON (53:57)
Right, right.

Right.

Well,

Well, Balderson is not exactly Smith or Jones, so like they can track her. You got it. Yeah.

STEVE BALDERSON (54:15)
No, I know. It's very small family

tree.

WILKINSON (54:19)
I'm always interested on relationships. So personally, I've had an ex-wife, three ex-partners, and a COVID boyfriend that none of them worked out, right? And so I got to the point where, I mean, in my own growth, it's like, I'm good with me, I'm fine. But there are times, but it would be nice to have somebody sometimes, but it always intrigues me with the idea of not living together. Having somebody but not living with them.

STEVE BALDERSON (54:33)
Well, and that's what it takes.

WILKINSON (54:44)
kind of appealing to me.

STEVE BALDERSON (54:45)
Well, I don't remember what year it was. I learned about... Well, there were two couples that I used as an example. The first story I'm going to tell you though was what my mentor, my teacher from CalArts, Eric Sherman, he was my Yoda, okay? He was the first person to explain to me the concept of what an open relationship was. I had never heard of it before. he... No. No, not at all.

WILKINSON (54:58)
Okay, right.

Now was he gay? Was he gay? okay.

All right, wow.

STEVE BALDERSON (55:11)
But his story was, his father was one of the greatest, last remaining golden age Hollywood directors. He directed all the big stars. His name was Vincent Sherman. And he came home from the studio one day and Eric's mom said, how was the studio today, honey? And he said, it was great. I had sex with Betty Davis.

WILKINSON (55:22)
Okay.

Hello.

STEVE BALDERSON (55:34)
And Eric said, what do you think my mom said? And I had no idea, right? I was like, what? And he said, she sat down and leaned in and said, how was it?

And that's when I, that's when I, you know, I was just like, my mind was blown and I was like, interesting. Like, sex and love aren't the same thing. They sometimes come together. They sometimes don't have to. And then there's the, let's talk about it. And maybe you learned something with that person that might be important to know. Maybe you learned, you liked something new that you hadn't tried that maybe is important for the relationship, you know, to even go deeper.

WILKINSON (55:47)
Eh.

STEVE BALDERSON (56:12)
Those are concepts that I just had never even thought of. And then I learned years later, I have a really good friend, one of my best friends, she is in a long-term relationship. They live in the same home, but from Sunday night until Thursday night, she sleeps in her bedroom because she values her sleep and wants to be productive at work. And he sleeps in another bedroom. And then they come together on the weekends. And that may not be the picture perfect

construct that everybody's told, but it works for them. And then after that I learned about an older woman and an older man, both who had been married and did all that and did all the constructs and all these things. They lived in two houses in Los Angeles and every weekend or every other weekend, one of them would go to the other person's house for the weekend. And then they would go home. And then...

WILKINSON (56:43)
Right. Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (57:03)
You know, and back and forth. So I began mine as a long distance relationship. So we would travel every month or so to the opposite city and be together for a week to 10 days. Sometimes it was a month, sometimes longer, doesn't matter. But back and forth, back and forth. And what I learned was that was sort of meant, it was meant for me because what I could do is I could focus on my work and be productive.

and do the things I needed to do, and then go celebrate time with this person and be able to focus my attention 100 % in that place and then come back. And that's why I think it works. The idea of living in the same city, I'm not so sure about. I think that just for some practical purposes, you could live better if you, you know.

WILKINSON (57:28)
Right.

Right.

Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (57:55)
combine your resources. But even then, that's not so important. I don't know. I think you'd still see the same people, the same person as much as you would. But no, the dynamics of what works for some people and doesn't work for others is always fascinating. Yeah.

WILKINSON (57:55)
Right, right, right.

so I'm not going to ask any more about him, which is kind of cool because it goes back to what you saying earlier about so we can create who he is in our own mind. That's cool. So we do that. But my one question that was, was he in the U.S. with you and then you both went to Europe or was he in Europe and then you went

STEVE BALDERSON (58:24)
Sure.

We both came to Europe from... not specifically the US.

WILKINSON (58:38)
Okay, cool. All right, cool. Excellent.

STEVE BALDERSON (58:39)
But it was interesting because

both independently arrived at the conclusion, independently, I need to live in Europe.

WILKINSON (58:48)
Wow.

STEVE BALDERSON (58:48)
Yeah.

And then it just so happened that that just happened to be the way it worked out.

WILKINSON (58:49)
Very cool.

Huh, well we're almost done but I want to circle back to something. So I want to go back to Sex, Love, Venice. And we didn't talk about this but when you were, when you were, you had Michael, which is you, being with, Michael was with Marco and he's going through all the sensory things. It was really cool the way you shut off the visual, you shut off the sound.

STEVE BALDERSON (58:58)
Yes.

huh.

Yeah.

WILKINSON (59:14)
you were actually living it as a viewer. I thought that was very cool.

STEVE BALDERSON (59:18)
Thank you. That was my biggest challenge because when the whole movie and the whole experience is meant to be so sensorial that I was like, how do you do that?

WILKINSON (59:20)
Yeah.

STEVE BALDERSON (59:28)
A movie is a movie. then I, the day, don't remember how long it took, but the day that I realized, let's be provocative, right? Like, let's just shut the image off. And let's do it for like five minutes, you know? I was.

WILKINSON (59:41)
you just

hear it you're hearing everything yeah

STEVE BALDERSON (59:43)
Yes. And then

I just got so excited because I was like, that's the key. So it's never been done in a movie before. So I'm going to do it. And everybody said, you can't do that. They'll never show it on any streaming platform because everyone will think it's a mistake. And I'm like, baloney. They will know exactly what's going on. Give people the benefit of the doubt. And then when it comes back, the sound guy, I was like, I told him, kill the sound. So that it's only visual.

WILKINSON (59:47)
Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (1:00:09)
and people. Everybody kept saying, you need a little air, you need a little something. And I said, no, you don't. That's not the point. So there's not a sound. And what's amazing is in a theater full of people, no one's breathing. Like it is so quiet during that section. I mean, you've experienced this. Like when that happens, it's just pin drop.

WILKINSON (1:00:09)
Right.

Right.

Wow.

STEVE BALDERSON (1:00:34)
And then when the sound comes back, not only does come back, but there's like all five senses, know, it's like all the surround sound and the music and the different voices and he's talking at the same time in Italian and English that you're hearing at the same time. You know, all this stuff meant to be a sensory overload, you know? But I don't think you could have gotten the sensory overload. Yeah.

WILKINSON (1:00:52)
Well, it actually, right, it

reflected light because if you have someone, for example, who's blind, then their sense of hearing is gonna, it just goes like this, right? But we're experiencing a lot. I do have a question though on the after all that, how did you get the effects? Was it a filter on your camera? What did you do for the?

the part where you're seeing it, but you're kind of not seeing it. You know what I mean? The shapes and all of that,

STEVE BALDERSON (1:01:19)
where they're like what I call them.

I called it the watercolor sex scene. We were shooting a different shot. Like I knew I wanted them to be like a ballet and I wanted to be really beautiful. But I didn't know what it would look like yet. But we were shooting something totally unrelated. And the lens was changed to get this microscopic shot during one of the other sex scenes. And when that lens remained on the camera and then

WILKINSON (1:01:27)
Okay.

Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (1:01:49)
whoever it was stood up and turned around, that happened. And I was like, that's it, that's it. Like we have to the whole scene that way. And he was like, what? And it took about 20 minutes to get, to at least communicate what I was seeing because Hanuman and I, he's my cinematographer, we'll go through everything and storyboards and analyzing and planning lenses and lights and all these things.

WILKINSON (1:01:52)
It just, yeah. Whoa.

What?

Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (1:02:14)
So if there's a change in the middle of it and I'm having a hard time articulating it, it takes a minute. So I don't remember how long it took me half an hour. And finally, it clicked. So I was like, yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. And then we just kept doing things. One of my favorite things to do, especially these days when you can do lots of motion graphics and things online or use CGI and things, I like to use in.

WILKINSON (1:02:20)
Right.

STEVE BALDERSON (1:02:39)
camera techniques. if you're really going to, you know, like in my film Firecracker, I wanted these sort of flashes to happen on the negative because my first two films were made on 35 millimeter. So I would open the door of the camera. The cinematographer refused to do it because he said, you'll expose the negative.

you know, as it's going through the thing. And I said, that's exactly what we want because you can't fake that. You can try to do it with CGI afterwards, but it's gonna look a little different. So, you know, using lenses and light as naturally as possible, it creates that illusion where you couldn't just go into like Photoshop and blur something. It had to be that lens in that way for that scene. And yeah.

WILKINSON (1:03:15)
Right.

Right.

It was very unusual, the whole thing, and very, beautiful. It was great, it was great. So were your actors actually naked with each other or not? I'm just asking that as a gay man, it's like, ha!

STEVE BALDERSON (1:03:29)
Thank you.

Yes, of course. I mean, you saw it. We didn't, like... We didn't, airbrush... straps of clothing.

WILKINSON (1:03:39)
They were. But.

Right.

Do they wear socks? Okay, all right. Interesting. It was very hot. The whole thing was very hot.

STEVE BALDERSON (1:03:45)
time.

Yeah.

Why, thank you. It's also

really tricky to do those kinds of scenes because it's almost as detailed as a fight scene. So it's like this second of the fight, you know, it's just this second. I mean, I wanted to have all the shots different. So the camera's moving around a lot. So it took us like two days to do that scene, you know, just the one scene. And...

When you're doing stuff like that, it's not sexy. It's like microsurgical precision surgery. It's like, or it's plotting a, I don't know, it's a different thing. And it's like, you really have to get every shot because if you've designed this whole sequence, like I've designed this whole sequence, if I missed one of those shots, it upsets the sequence how it's designed. So yeah, maybe it could be different, but you have to go through

piece by piece. Okay, now we're going to move the right hand to the shoulder. Literally. And you film that. then you literally... Okay, now we're going to shoot the... It's... It's not easy.

Yeah.

WILKINSON (1:04:45)
reminds me of porn. Before COVID, I let a porn producer shoot porn at my pumpstrings house for eight days. And at the end of the eight days, he said, tell me what you thought in one word, I go mechanical. Because it's, you know, it just, it's not sexy most of the time at all. But when you put it to get

STEVE BALDERSON (1:04:57)
Yeah!

Can you tell me which

company it was?

WILKINSON (1:05:06)
He was shooting for like three studios, Bareback something was one. I don't know the names of a lot of them.

STEVE BALDERSON (1:05:12)
okay. Well, after we talked,

I met a porn producer around the time of CinemaDiverse, and I was pitching him ideas about how to incorporate what we were talking about in the other conversation with a story that's a story, that's a film, that has explicit sex in it. Not unlike what Bruce Labruse is doing and some other people. So that's maybe something bubbling in the future. But the other thing about future is...

A lot of my movies have been compared to European art films done in English. Right? So I thought, well, shit, why don't I just do a French movie? Like a real one. You know what I mean? In French, with French actors.

WILKINSON (1:05:40)
Okay.

My only comment on that is that, because I used to belong to a film group in Seattle, do not have them hang themselves at the end, okay? I watched so many French films. It's like watching them, it almost seemed like they ran out of money. It just ended, have any end. But a lot of them hung themselves. Maybe it was a thing at that point in time, I don't know, it was so weird.

STEVE BALDERSON (1:06:04)
that's funny.

That's interesting.

WILKINSON (1:06:10)
But don't do that. So, all right. All right, my friend. This is wonderful. Yeah, I'm not gonna ask you the same last question I ask all of them, because you've already been on it once. So, when we were on the...

STEVE BALDERSON (1:06:10)
Okay, I won't.

Yes, it was. Thank you so much.

But I've already forgotten what the

question was.

WILKINSON (1:06:23)
what guides you as you live your life.

STEVE BALDERSON (1:06:25)
Well at this hour, dinner.

WILKINSON (1:06:27)
Dinner. Well, what is it now for me? So it's nighttime and it's 1048 in the morning for me. But you got me all awake and you said, you gotta get up. So I got up at 645 to get ready. So it's all good. It's all good. Yes, it was really great. We'll talk. Bye. Ciao.

STEVE BALDERSON (1:06:34)
748.

amazing. It is. Well, thank you. We'll talk again very soon.

All right, ciao.