Everyone Is...with Jennifer Coronado
The intent of this show is to engage with all types of people and build an understanding that anyone who has any kind of success has achieved that success because they are creative thinkers. So whether you are an artist, a cook, a bottle washer, or an award-winning journalist, everyone has something to contribute to the human conversation.
Everyone Is...with Jennifer Coronado
Scott Mosier: I Just Wanted to Make Films
Ever wondered how an unconventional path can lead to monumental success in the film industry? This episode features Scott Mosier, one of the icon filmmakers behind indie classics like Clerks, Mallrats, and Dogma. Scott shares his remarkable journey from a curious child fascinated by movies to becoming a key player in independent filmmaking. He reveals the transformative moments and creative decisions that shaped his career, including his long-term collaboration with Kevin Smith and his recent directorial role on the animated hit The Grinch.
Scott opens up about his early days in the industry, recounting the challenges and triumphs of transitioning from a dolly grip to a fully-fledged producer. Listen to Scott's reflections on the importance of supporting a filmmaker's vision and the creative nuances that come with managing larger projects.
This conversation also highlights the value of self-directed learning and discusses the difference between traditional schooling and following one's passions, emphasizing the need for mental space to foster creativity.
www.slightlyprod.com
To my career's detriment. I didn't have a plan, I didn't really have an intention to be a producer, I just wanted to make films. I, oddly, am not that different now.
Jennifer Coronado:Hello and welcome to Everyone Is I am your host, jennifer Coronado. The intent of this show is to engage with all types of people and build an understanding that anyone who has any kind of success has achieved that success because they are a creative thinker. So, whether you are an artist or a cook or an award-winning journalist, everyone has something to contribute to the human conversation. And now, as they say, on with the show, I think it's safe to say that Scott Mosher is an independent film icon. From his early days working with Kevin Smith as a producer, editor and the character of William the Idiot Manchild from his first film, clerks, to his role as producer on several more of Kevin's films, including ones like Mallrats and Dogma, he has been a force. He's also been a voice artist, a podcaster, a writer, a director on the Grinch animated film, and we're going to talk about how he got there. So welcome to Everyone Is Scott Mosher.
Scott Mosier:Thank you. Thank you for calling out my role as the idiot man-child that I'd seem to, a shadow I seem never able to escape.
Jennifer Coronado:Well, I thought when I was reading through your credits on that I was like I love all the little because you played so many characters in so many films. And I love the names of them and I know you played three characters in Clerks, but that was the one that stood out to me.
Scott Mosier:I can't remember if that was a role where somebody just didn't show up Because we were all non-professionals or friends, and so there was definitely times where it was like like you play that guy and then somebody wouldn't show up. And then it'd be like, all right, put on a hat and then put on a voice for something and go play another character, because he wasn't really in the movie that much, he was pretty much just kind of there. But then as soon as you start to play a character, then you're oh, why don't you walk in and do this? I think I can't remember how. I don't remember how we ended up. Unfortunately, a lot of the answers I'm going to give you are like I don't remember.
Scott Mosier:That's okay, I don't remember the exact process.
Jennifer Coronado:I sort of set the table of what you know, what your career has been so far. But I want to start with the childhood of Scott and where did you grow up? And tell me a little bit about your family and your growing up.
Scott Mosier:I was born in Vancouver, washington, which is just on the other side of the Columbia from Portland, and that's really where all the families were concentrated my mother and father's big Swedish community on my mother's side, sort of a lot of people from that region moved to that part of the Northwest and then my father worked for a company named Freightliner that builds like sort of big 18 wheelers and we lived around there until I was about five or six. We lived in a little suburban house and we ended up on like a five acre little spread and like a. It wasn't a farm, like it wasn't like farming stuff, but we were on like five acres of the pond and the bus would drop me off. My mom would always say like she, just she could see me, like it was a long driveway but it'd take me like an hour to walk home because I would just, you know, grab a stick and run around in the woods and just sort of meander my way.
Scott Mosier:And then we moved to California when I was five, to a suburb of LA called Upland, near San Bernardino. So we lived there until I was like 10. And this is all. My dad's work was kind of sort of pushing us to move and then there, and then we moved to vancouver, bc, or outside of vancouver bc, um.
Scott Mosier:So my formative years were really spent up in canada, um, and and during that time, you know, I I was always into art, I liked movies when I was growing up, but like it didn't really hit me till I got a little bit older, like by the time I was in my early teens. I remember, you know, I had the only poster I have in my office is a kind of not a real poster of raiders of the lost ark, but one that I found online. I was, I really enjoyed movies, but that was the movie where I was like, oh, I don't want to be an archaeologist, like the kid version is. Like't want to be an archaeologist, like the kid version is like I want to be an archaeologist because we're translating it literally, we're going like oh, that's what it's like to be an archaeologist Right, like that looks super fun.
Scott Mosier:But that was the first movie I watched and I think I was 12 where I really was made the connection of like, oh, I want to, I would like to make movies.
Jennifer Coronado:Like when you're thinking about that, like, oh, I want to make movies. What was it about that? Like did you? How did you think movies were made? Like, what about it made you think about?
Scott Mosier:making it versus just watching it. You know I enjoyed movies and art and comic books and I was always, you know I was into all that stuff. But I think when I saw Raiders and I really loved it and I still do, it's one of my favorite movies of all time and I got really swept up in it, like I kind of had gotten to the point where my curiosity, or I'd just seen enough that in that movie I was like I made the connection, like I loved the movie, and then I made the connection of just like, oh well, if I love the movie, how amazing would it be to actually make it? Now conceptually, like I didn't understand all the elements that went into making a movie or all the that sort of began after that point. It was very, it was more abstract. It was really just going like I know that that's a movie and I know people made it I don't necessarily know how and so I was reading magazines, books. I remember by the time I got it was like that first ILM book that came out, because once I started examining and looking at the process, I just watched making of and like I really started digging into it. But that was the sort of that was the moment where the connection between like liking movies or loving movies, and then, and then the desire to go do it. And then the more I looked into it, the more I was watching things and the more it didn't dissuade me. It was like this is what I want to do. And and then I still watched a lot of movies.
Scott Mosier:But once I, once I, graduated high school, my grades were were terrible. I was a terrible. I was a terrible. I still am a terrible student. I'd bomb my SATs. And so when I left Canada to go down to California to go to school, I got into this Orange Coast College it was like a big community college in Orange County and I basically convinced them that I'd moved from California to Canada so I'd never moved to another state. It was, I don't know why, but they gave me in-state tuition and it was cheap and they had a film program that was just like, you know, like VHS to VHS, kind of like. This is like 1989. So this is late 89.
Jennifer Coronado:Well, I want to ask you about that, because you said you convinced them right.
Scott Mosier:Yeah.
Jennifer Coronado:You were what? 18, 19 years old.
Scott Mosier:I was 18.
Jennifer Coronado:Yeah. How do you go about convincing them Like, was it your parents helping you or was it you going? Hey man, look, I deserve this in-state tuition. How did you do that?
Scott Mosier:I wish it was this great moment. It's like it really was me sitting there going like, like I just come up with this argument in my head of like I was like well, I never left the state of California, I moved out of the country and now I'm back. So it's like I never really gave up my California state residency. And the person was kind of nodding at me and I was like so, technically, I was like I'm still aifornia state resident, my last united states address is in california. And I just kept saying and then the I can't tell if the person was just like yeah, but it was like it wasn't. Like they just were like all right, whatever, they like gave me the stamp, like I just sort of I was. I mean, my parents could have afforded to if we had to to, but I was really like because I don't like.
Scott Mosier:I never liked going to school. I was like I, I am the person who should go to school as cheaply as possible, like no one should spend a lot of money on my education, because I get bored and and restless and and don't go to class and all these other things.
Scott Mosier:So I was always trying to keep. My parents were very generous in helping me do it, but I was always like I need to just go to the cheapest schools possible. I did that for about a year and a half. I did it for a couple semesters. My grades did not get any better.
Scott Mosier:There was a thing called UCLA Extension and so I moved up to LA and started taking these extension classes at night, like in screenwriting and anything mostly screenwriting. I'd been away for a few years and then once my collegiate career was going nowhere and so I remember there was the Vancouver Film a, the vancouver film school. Now I think it's primarily animation and vfx and stuff like that, but at the time it was just a small film school and I was in la and I was like interning for a producer and I was taking night classes and then I was the stockroom manager at banana republic it and I'm a really good folder. I fold all the laundry in the house because I did that job for many, many years. So my wife tends to just throw it all on the table.
Jennifer Coronado:I was going to say do you have the folding board?
Scott Mosier:No, I don't need it because it was too slow. I was like.
Scott Mosier:I just learned how to do it. So then I was going to go to art school or film school. I was really on the fence because I loved comic books and I loved drawing comic books and I loved art. And I was like so I'm 20 at this point and I was like I got to pick one or the other and I used to run around the campus and then sometimes I'd cut through the middle and I'd run at night a lot, and so I was running and I ran up the stairs. When I got to the top of the stairs there was a really bright light, like a blinding light, and I couldn't see that well. So I kind of stopped to catch myself because it was like right in my face and when I, when my eyes adjusted, they were shooting a movie and I was like all right, like you know, that's good enough, like that's enough, because I was really torn. I was like so 50-50. And like so many things in life, there's all this scientific studies of decision making and it really is like most of the time we just make decisions for those reasons, for any reason. Like we can spend six years debating about something and then we really just make the decision in the last two minutes and so I was like, all right, I'm going to go to film school.
Scott Mosier:I packed up and moved back to Vancouver and I think I was in school. It was like three months from the moment that happened until I was in class and that's when I met Kevin. So Kevin was in my class and then one other person named Dave Klein, who now is a. He's a DP, like he's on Mandalorian and Boba Fett, and so he's like he. He was younger than us but so he he. So all three of us met and Kevin left. It was an eight-month tech school and Kevin left after four months and then Dave and I kind of stayed the whole time because Kevin wanted to go back and write the script and get his job back at the convenience store and so, yeah, I mean that gets us to 1992.
Jennifer Coronado:But you and Kevin didn't. I mean, this is kind of a famous story, but you guys didn't quite vibe at first, right.
Scott Mosier:On a surface level more than anything. Like I was, I was very. I was a pretty boy. I'd look like come from LA. I had like gel in my hair and I didn't have a beard then Were you super tan.
Scott Mosier:I was probably pretty tan at that point. I was still probably tan, but I was like I had a big leather jacket. I was definitely like I was labeled a 90210 kind of person, wow, and he was like wearing a trench coat and like had a kind of a mullet and it was. You know, it was like definitely like East Coast, west Coast kind of clash on the surface and then we ended up in a group together and Film Threat came up and that was basically it From there. It was like what we had in common or what we wanted out of this or what we were thinking about doing. Next we were immediately on the same page and on top of that it was really like our relationship is really founded a lot in making each other laugh. We got in trouble for talking too much because we would just always be yeah, like we were brought into a room.
Scott Mosier:We're like really Like, isn't that our problem when we don't want to pay attention, like we're paying you.
Jennifer Coronado:We're adults, yeah.
Scott Mosier:Yeah, it's like if we leave here and we don't know shit, it's like why is that your problem? You know, and we weren't disruptive. It wasn't like we were class clowns or anything. We just I mean, maybe we were a little, we would just talk all the time and like, try to make each other laugh and draw a little, draw stuff. And you know, we were both, we bonded because neither of us were very good students.
Scott Mosier:But yeah, that was, that was we yeah the initial moment was more like sizing somebody up from just on the surface. From on the surface. We were not fans of each other at the beginning.
Jennifer Coronado:You both went to film school. You know he left early. But when you went to film school, were you like I'm going to be a producer? Or were you like I'm going to be a director? Like how did how did your roles align? How did he end up in the director role and you ended up in the producing role?
Scott Mosier:I definitely went there to be a director, writer, director, just like you know. I mean Dave didn't. Dave went to be a DP. There's a bunch of jobs in this business where no one goes to film school to do them. You sort of end up there and by the time I'm done with school he's written the script. But the deal was like you write a script, I'll write, write a script, and then we'll produce each other's movies. Like that was our big plan and so I was. I was a dolly grip on a short I was working on like they were shooting all night and I was working all day and I was just sort of sleeping in my car in between and he sent me. It was called inconvenience and so I read his script, which I hadn't had time or done mine, like I can tell the story looking back, but I remember reading it. Going like this is really fucking funny and.
Scott Mosier:I can't do this. You know, it's like two people show up with scripts and it's like I was like I was intimidated in a good way, which I was like I can't do this. And the reason I couldn't is because Kevin had been writing for a long, long time, you know, since he was a kid, he wanted to be a writer. He wanted to be a writer on Saturday Night Live. He'd written a novel. By the time I meet him, he'd already written a novel. He'd written tons of sketches and skits. And so he shows up and says, okay, this is my version of a script which was funny and exciting and it was a movie, and I had sort of been writing stuff, but I was like I can't, I don't have a voice. Basically, the easiest way to put it is like, you know, he had a voice and it was very clear when you read the script and I was like, oh wow, I'm like I like many, many, many miles away from this.
Scott Mosier:And so the plan was to make that first we shoot the movie and then we just did.
Scott Mosier:You know, there was like three or four of us in the crew and so I was recording sound and I was editor, and you know we were just taking on whatever roles we had to, but I was never so me becoming a producer is. We're driving up editor and, you know, taking on you. We were just taking on whatever roles we had to, but I was never so me becoming a producer is we're driving up to to new york city to drop off the titles to the optical house because we were going to shoot him and kevin, I'm driving his car and he's on, he's in the passenger seat and he's writing out the thank yous and all this stuff and he writes, he goes do you want to be a producer? And I was like sure, and then the industry absorbs you as those roles. And so that was it. That was really. I didn't really have an intention to be a producer, I just wanted to make films. I, oddly, am not that different now.
Jennifer Coronado:Yeah, kevin, was that light in your face. Again he was at the top of the stairs. Again he was the you want to be a producer and you're like, yeah yeah, and I, you know, I was 21, 20, 21 I was really young and and um I was like what am I?
Scott Mosier:going to do and I didn't have this deep sense of, oh, I'm going to write this brilliant script. Like I said, working with Kevin was intimidating in a good way, in the sense of if you're not at this level, then you need to either start practicing a lot or just sort of let it be practicing a lot or just sort of let it be. And so, yeah, the producing thing was I'm not trying to find the words it just wasn't planned, it wasn't. I didn't have a plan. I really loved movies and and possibly, possibly, uh, to my career, career's detriment, I've never had a plan Like I really have never had a plan, and if you really look at it, it doesn't seem that well thought out.
Jennifer Coronado:Do you see producing? Do you see that as a creative endeavor or do you see it as something that's supporting a creative endeavor?
Scott Mosier:It's an interesting question because when people ask what is a producer it's like, the answer is many things. There are people who are very much more money, more like hardline budgets and schedules and keeping things on track, and then there are sort of more generally creative producers. I was really a creative producer, creative producer, and for me the job in that instance is to understand the intent of the person you're making. If you're producing their movie, your job is to kind of try to adapt and learn what their intent is, and then the guardrails of that I think you have to adapt. I believe that, like you don't have to cause. There's plenty of producers are just like it's their show and, like you know, like that's it.
Scott Mosier:And, like with Kevin, it was more like oh, I understand what he wants to do and I understand. You know, we shared a sense of humor, so it was easy to sort of throw out jokes, but I was always trying to figure out like, oh, what is he trying to do? And then, based on that, how do I support what he's doing? And at times, maybe even remind him like, well, I mean, you know, maybe we don't go that far or maybe we don't do this because it's not necessarily fitting inside of what you're trying to do.
Scott Mosier:And even now, when I work on stuff that I'm EPing or working on, I really am trying to understand what the filmmakers want to do. So my job can be more helpful to be somebody who's like there to help them figure out what they're trying to do, versus imposing my taste, creative work. A lot of it's taste right Like a lot of you know, some of those initial moments are like if you watch people all the time, it's like people put things in front of you and it's like your first expression is taste. It's just like oh, I like it, I don't like it, I like blue, I don't like blue, like you know, it's like all those, like sort of little teeny things, and for me it's important to have taste, taste.
Scott Mosier:But as a producer, if you're just imposing taste, I think that's how movies can go awry. Because if you're making a movie and it's somebody's vision, I believe you have to take a step back from your taste and really try to understand the taste of the people that you're making the movie for. Because there's movies that you know it's like not every movie I made with Kevin I was 100%, you know, on the same page with them. But you know it's not my job to try to grab the steering wheel while we're in the middle of driving and be like I want to go this way. It's like no, no, no.
Scott Mosier:You need to commit to the point of view and it doesn't mean that you can't render an opinion, but I still think you have to filter it in a different way than if it's something that say, I'm directing or writing and then it's like, yeah, it's my taste, it's my opinion, it's like, you know, I don't need to move away from that. That's the basis of everything I do when I'm producing for Kevin. The basis of what I do is generally not me just showing up, you know, with all my taste and dumping it on the table and be like, well, I think this and I think that, like I sort of take a more of a supportive role, it's sort of the difference between what collaboration means and what making things by committee right.
Scott Mosier:Movies by committee. I generally, I generally find, you know, I used to do re-edits and you'd be like oh, everyone gave their opinion and their taste and then the editor did all 10 things. And then you watch the movie and you're like all right, well, it's all 10 things, it's not one thing, it's like a, it's like a bad, uh potl dinner. You know where you're going, like oh okay, like taquitos, and you know like Marshmallow salad.
Scott Mosier:Yeah, like you're just like all right, everybody brought what they liked. But collectively you're like this is kind of the grossest meal I've ever seen in my life, like there's nothing coherent about it. And you're just like, oh, that's interesting, and movies can become that and you know them when you see them. We're just like, wow, this is not a thing, it's just a hundred things stitched together. So all these people could sort of feel happy about having a thing inside of it, but now it's not a thing and it will never exist as a thing.
Scott Mosier:And I think that's why, you know, work in the business it's like the auteur driven movie is so um, appealing or or exciting, because it's sort of it negates that it's. It's like okay, this person has a vision and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. You know, and I think there's movies that are also big budget, movies that are have a committee but still manage to create something. That's that's singular. You know, barbie's an example. Like that's a very big movie and, and I'm sure there's a lot, there's a lot of people, but you don't leave the movie going like, oh, greta Gerwig got swallowed and doesn't exist in the movie, like you are like oh, like she probably had to compromise here or there, but also like they did back her and it makes a difference.
Scott Mosier:I think, like most of what gets celebrated or the films that get celebrated are the ones that manage to do that, you know that manage to have that feeling well, they're the films that actually create the franchises, aren't they?
Jennifer Coronado:I think that's what we forget. Like a franchise comes into being, an original idea may made it very cool and now you can create other ideas based off that idea first, and but sometimes it gets so distant from the original idea that you're like what is this now?
Scott Mosier:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like how many levels removed from it. Like, for me, a lot of people in the business don't know how to distinguish between their taste and what is actually the right thing for the movie. Like, I would never do this, you know what I mean. Like I could sit there and look at things and say I would never make this choice, I would never do that or go that far, or et cetera, et cetera. But you have to stop and say like, but is that just my taste? Like, if that's just my taste, then like, but does that fit in the movie? And you're like, yeah, in this movie, yeah, it's like. You know you can go that far.
Scott Mosier:And I mean now I'll go off on a little tangent but taste also creates the painful changes that happen in this business. The amount of lateral moves that you watch happen where you're just like holy shit, we just worked all weekend for you know, like 18 hours a day to change this from A to B and it is nothing, Like it doesn't change, it's different. Right, it's that thing of like, is it better or different? And a lot of times taste to me create different.
Jennifer Coronado:Yeah, I think you're right.
Scott Mosier:And it's hard, because when you're in a this business, it's like you can tend to be like your taste is everything. You know that your taste is your, your currency, and it is on some level. It is on some level, but then I think like it goes beyond that and your ability to separate yourself from being like well this is once again is it better, is it different? If it's just different, then don't drive people crazy, like just sort of relax, you know.
Jennifer Coronado:Well, you, you went from clerks, which was like $27,000 budget, to mall rats, which was a grammar C pictures, and it was like $6 million, and at that time you talked about how this is your first major movie and you're expecting to get beat up and kicked around. So why did you have that expectation and what was the actual reality of that?
Scott Mosier:I think that I didn't know anything. You know, I I was, we were, we were really young. I was 20, like 23 ish, and we were really young, I was 20, like 23-ish, and so I was really young. I didn't know, like I did not know anything, like I didn't know how to do a budget, I didn't know what fringes were. I didn't know any of that stuff because we never did any of it.
Scott Mosier:Like if I looked on a call sheet, I'd be like I don't know what half these people do. So, walking into it, I was just like this is going to be tough because there's you know, there's imposter syndrome. There's a million sort of things that come into that moment. But we were all really young and somebody opens the door and goes like all right, like here's your dream, go do it. And so you're filled with anxiety and stress and and a sense of oh my God, are we going to fuck this up? All of that's looming over your head all the time the fear of being found out for years, like just keep going, because they're going to catch us. They're going to be like what the who let you in here.
Jennifer Coronado:Why are they giving us money, man?
Scott Mosier:Well, I just. It was more like it's like you got led into a party and then suddenly, and then it's like you're just waiting for somebody to be like hey, man, we didn't invite you. Like, put the dip down, get out of here. We're just waiting for the other shoe to drop for a while like for years and years and years.
Scott Mosier:And then the reality was it was tough. You you know all that sort of uncertainty and but I had an amazing line producer. There was an amazing line producer on the movie named laura greenlee and she I remember just sitting down there and going like I don't know how I can help. I was a co-producer at that point and then they may bump me up to produce her by the end and I was, you know, I was like game to do anything, but I just didn't know anything. And I remember telling her that I was like I don't know anything. I was like I don't know how to help you. And she was very like I'll teach you whatever you want. She's like if you want to learn, she goes, but your job is to to your job.
Scott Mosier:It's like you know we're all here because you guys made a movie that did really well and has a cult following and like your job is to just sort of be with Kevin and be his right hand man and be with him through this. Because it was. We were way over our heads. I mean there's no, we should have never made a movie at that budget, like at that time, right, like you only understand conceptually how to spend that kind of money, but then practically you just don't end up doing it. You know, and and if chasing Amy is more of the movie we should have made, second right, which is the budget's, like a million ish all in, you know it's taking what we did before and sort of giving us just enough more to sort of keep pushing.
Scott Mosier:It was after chasing amy where I kind of that was the movie where I kind of found my confidence in what I was doing. That was the first movie I was like, oh, I'm a, I'm a pretty like I produced this movie. Like not even on clark's, really I didn't have that sort of sense because I, it wasn't it, you know, it was just kind of us all running around doing stuff. But this was the first time I was like, oh, I produced this movie, I did this. And then you know, from then on I, you know, still there's an element of doom that you feel when you not everybody, but there's always an element of like, oh, what the fuck? You know, what can go wrong is always in your mind and you're sort of just prepping feverishly to eliminate as many things that can go wrong as possible, knowing that something still will go wrong. But you're like, oh, we can get rid of the easy stuff, we can get rid of these 10 sort of really obvious things. Then we'll be ready for the surprises when they come up.
Jennifer Coronado:You had said earlier in your career that you used to take things personally.
Scott Mosier:Yes.
Jennifer Coronado:Do you still feel that way or I mean, everybody does, we're all human, but do you still take things as personally as you did when you were?
Scott Mosier:early on in your career. No, no, no, no, I don't. I have moments, but it's more like fleeting, you know, and I think I have the, the awareness and the distance to be like, why are you taking this personally? Like that's has nothing to do with you, but that back then it was like, yeah, I took everything really personally because we were young and I think you had this.
Scott Mosier:I had this sense of sense of. I had a sense that I was being evaluated constantly, because when you don't know something, or when you feel like you don't know that much, there is an awareness like, oh, everybody's watching, which is a story too right, like that's not true, everybody was. But I was always like, oh, everybody's watching me, waiting for me to screw up, or whatever. But I was always like, oh, everybody's watching me waiting for me to screw up, or whatever. So I think part of taking things personally is that if you have the anxiety or the stress which I had of trying to do a good job but not necessarily knowing how to do it, that little gap creates taking things personally.
Jennifer Coronado:Another thing you had said earlier in your career and you sort of talked about this a little bit earlier was I'm not really a writer. But then you went on to write Screenplace and an animated feature called Freebirds. How do you make that shift mentally and how did you find that opportunity?
Scott Mosier:I was into writing. It was still something I was excited about. So I'd written like maybe one script or so during my whole tenure with Kevin and then, after Zack and Mary Make a Porno, I decided to stop producing and I wanted to go into animation. But I also wanted to take a stab at writing. So the first thing I do that year that first year is I wrote two specs, um, and then those got me a job on a friend of mine, a guy I met named joe casey, who worked on ultimate spider-man, a cartoon on disney plus. Um, he had read this action script I wrote and he was like, do you want to write an episode? And I was like, yeah, sure, of course. And he was like, look, if you totally fuck it up, he goes, I'll just rewrite it, it's fine.
Scott Mosier:And well, that's the faith of a friend, right and, uh, you get an outline and you have like three days to bang out a draft and I had no context for anything. So I was like, yeah, of course. And so I did like five or six of those, like you know, everyone was happy, and so they kept feeding them to me. I kept writing scripts, I wrote a couple more and then Freebirds came up, which was called Turkeys, which I was not hired to write it, I was just hired to come on as the creative producer and that was really my friend, aaron Warner, who produced all the Shreks, had taken over at Real Effects, the studio, and they had a movie called Turkeys at the time and he was like you know, I need a producer and he goes. If you want to learn animation, like, learn animation, I'll throw you on the deep end on this. And I was like sure. So I dove in and the writing was more a byproduct of the intense and crazy schedule on that movie. So I would work all day and then I would write for hours and hours and hours at night until like 3 in the morning. I'd write pages and stuff and it was more of a void and I just started filling it and partly because I enjoyed it. You know I was really. I was into it and I liked the challenge of it, and so by the time I finished that it was a pretty brutal schedule. So I didn't know if I was going to do animation again. I was kind of like I don't know if I want to do it. And then I was editing. In between I was also a picture editor, so I was like, oh, I'll get a job.
Scott Mosier:And on a real practical level, to get my health care back, I immediately went out and did like two or three jobs in a row and that's when um chris melandandri from illumination had called because a guy named brian lynch, who a writer, he was the craft service guy on Chasing Amy. He was from that part of New Jersey and we'd always kept in touch, yeah, and he always wanted to write and he was a prolific, really prolific writer. He had been in LA for a while and he'd started working with Illumination and he wrote the first Minions. And so he mentioned me to Chris because they were doubling or they were increasing their productions, so they were going to try to do more movies and the Grinch was like the one that was the farthest out. There was Pets and Sing. And so he got in touch with me and I was editing across the street in Santa Monica and I remember going like I don't know, I'm just that I don't know about animation and the directors, the Dowdles, these two brothers from Minnesota.
Scott Mosier:It was a movie called well, it's called the Coup. It was like Owen Wilson and Lake Bell and Pierce Brosnan. It was a really fun thriller and I hadn't caught a thriller so I was excited about it. It ended up being called no Escape or something, because when we test screened it everyone was like what's a coop? Like, why is it called the Coop? And I was like all right, all right okay.
Scott Mosier:And then the director was just like he's right across the fucking street, like All right, okay. And then the director was just like he's right across the fucking street, like don't be a baby, just go over there and talk to him. So I went and talked to Chris and was very honest. I was like I don't know. I was like I had a rough experience on the last one and then we talked for like probably six or seven months and just kept having meetings. And then I was brought on as the producer of the grinch and and then became the director and and so I didn't really write a ton during that process and then, when it was done, we're in paris and you know I, you know it's like a visual effects schedule, it's like you're in the crucible and like delivering, like like you're kind of at the top of the peer of the grid and you're like holy crap, you're working non-stop. And then suddenly it just falls precipitously where it's like suddenly there's not that many shots in animation and like you go from working 14 hours a day to three, and so I'm in paris kind of wandering around, and I remember Garth, uh, who directed Sing uh, we were at lunch and he was like, just, you know, go out and take your notebook and just go go to these cafe. He gave me some cafes that he liked and I was like, all right, I'm gonna start to do that.
Scott Mosier:So I was wandering around and, um, wondering what I was gonna do next, and I knew I was really like, well, what's left? Was my big question. You know, I was sitting there going like produce all these movies for Kevin, which was an amazing experience and, you know, like a career, like I had a full career. You know that what I did with him, and then I'd sort of throw my hat over the wall. I was like I'm going to direct an animated movie and so, you know, here I was in this. You know, next plateau where I was like, oh, I did that, okay, and it kind of came back to this the kid or the person who really started out. I was like I want to like try to write my own ideas, like that's what I'm excited about.
Jennifer Coronado:I want to talk to you about two things now, as we get close to wrapping up, and the first thing is what project have you done that you're really proud of, but it didn't get the attention that you would have liked?
Scott Mosier:There's a few. Now. I know every time I start something that there's no guarantee anyone's ever going to make it or sell it, or but it's still you, still. You know, for me there's still an incredible amount of value in in the exploration of those things, because you know you're working through stuff, you know you are just exploring yourself through all this stuff and usually after the fact, like I'm not, I don't sit down and write something specifically going like oh, I want to work through X or this is representative of that.
Scott Mosier:It's more that you pour yourself into the thing and then when you read it later on you're like oh, like, that's me, you know, dealing with this or processing this or expressing this part of myself. So even in the world where things don't sort of sell, my thoughts always like well, the first level of value comes from you loving what you did and understanding why you did it. Then, of course, the next day I'm like well, I fucking want to make it so, like, but still you have to take a moment to be like oh, the value, like I've extracted value in it. That's why, like, there's just certain things that I can't sort of do, because I'm like, if it has a personal meaning to me, then, whether people like it or not, or want to do it or not, doesn't affect me in the same way.
Scott Mosier:Like I've pitched things where I was more sort of you know, bending what it was to other people's sort of expectations or needs, and then we pitched it and everyone said no. And I remember feeling like shit'm. Now it's in my head like if I, if I do exactly what I want to do and everyone just says no, it doesn't stick with me. I never sit there and go like, well, maybe if you've done this or maybe you've done that, like I'm always like how do I eliminate that? I want to know that everything I put into this I did exactly what I wanted, and if people don't want it, people don't want it. But I got what I wanted out of it and I'm excited about it.
Jennifer Coronado:For someone who said he wasn't very good at school. You sure have spent a lot of time educating yourself on things throughout your career and your life, so you should give yourself a little more credit, I think.
Scott Mosier:I'm still terrible at school. I love learning. I just think they're two separate things. I want to learn at my own pace. It's like going to exercise class. I'm like I want to do it at 10. And if I have to do it at five for everybody else going to do it at 10. And if I have to do it at five for everybody else, I'm out Like I'm not going to do it.
Scott Mosier:It's interesting because you think about school and you're like sometimes I'm just like, yeah, I was bored, some of it was just boring, some of it I didn't want to learn, you know, and I don't think that that's weird. There's just classes where I was like this is boring and I know that, like as a kid, you're just like, well, I'm never going to use this or those things kind of come out and then you're an adult and like you try to pretend that's not true, but it's true. I learn more at my own pace. I read a lot, even working with all of you and coming there, I loved it because I was like, oh, I get to throw down and get in a room with a bunch of people and learn, but also sort of like understand and try to become part of the conversation. I had the same thing with sound. Like I remember we did dogma skywalker and that was our first like big sound mix and I remember distinctly being like what is this all about? Like how do I learn more about this so I can actually be in the conversation? You know, and part of it is as an artist, I think, when you're on the receiving end, like I've been an editor and sat there in rooms or it's like I don't know, it's just something wrong and I'm like all right, like I'll do it, like I can maybe figure it out. But I always am like I want to be able to be a part of the conversation in a meaningful way, like I want to be able to like express myself, so artists aren't just all walking away going like oh jesus, like what the fuck are we doing?
Scott Mosier:If I can say, the one thing about creativity over the last few years that I've sort of come to understand is that I have no idea where it comes from. A lot of the ideas that I have or the things that spring into my mind are just sort of arrive, and I think part of it is being open, you know. Part of it is like you have to open yourself up to that. But I do think that like it's more about being in a state of mind than it is doing an exercise is one thing that I think I try to impart to people. Like it's not about like, oh, just do A, b and then you'll have a good idea. It's like you know. I mean some of it's just like be bored, be sort of just like.
Scott Mosier:You know, when we were kids we came up.
Scott Mosier:I mean, when we were kids we just came up with tons of shit and it was because we were bored.
Scott Mosier:And you know, sometimes, like right now I'm too busy, so I'm not in a receptive mode, I'm more in an output mode. But I'm always coming back to being like how can I create the space to just be in receptive mode, which is really just laying around and staring at ceilings and sort of walking around and doing stuff that's sort of not on the surface doesn't seem very productive. Alan Moore has this idea of something called idea space, where he thinks all these ideas are sort of like in a cloud. He's like that's why people can independently come up with the wheel, or ideas will spring up all around the world at the same time, because the idea is just it's their time to come, and I think that's a really interesting take on it and your job is really just to connect to that kind of space, which is about being open and sort of letting go of anxiety and worry and just sort of relaxing and and open yourself up to whatever weird wild ideas are going to come in.
Jennifer Coronado:Yeah, and sometimes I think it. It comes from connecting just to your humanity and who you are at a base level.
Scott Mosier:Well, I think that's, I think that's, I think it's the same thing. I think it's like all you're saying is like you just scrape the business and the all, the, all the things that come with it and the is it going to sell or is it not going to like all these things that sort of come with it? It's like you have to strip those away, and some of it is just me going like, what do I want to watch? Like, if you sit down, like what do you want to read? What do you want to watch? What? Like? What piece of art do you want to look at? Like you can do that better than you know. That's the, that's your superpower is like you can actually figure out what you want to see, and so really your job is just to figure that out and then, you know, then sit down and kind of start to make.
Jennifer Coronado:I appreciate you taking time to meet with us.
Scott Mosier:Of course. Hopefully this fits inside of what it's supposed to be. I didn't go off on weird tangents.
Jennifer Coronado:Thank you for listening to Everyone Is. Everyone Is is produced and edited by Chris Hawkinson, executive producer is Aaron Dussault, music by Doug Infinite. Our logo and graphic design is by Harrison Parker and I am Jen Coronado. Everyone Is is a Slightly Disappointed Productions production, dropping every other Thursday. Wherever podcasts are available, make sure to rate and review, and maybe even like and subscribe. Thank you for listening.
