Lydia Nicole's Acting Smarter Now Podcast
Immerse yourself in the rich, dynamic world of 'Acting Smarter Now" with Lydia Nicole,
your vibrant guide to mastering the business and craft of acting. With Lydia, a
seasoned industry veteran of 40 years, you'll experience a journey of practical
wisdom, brimming with empowerment, and street-wise common sense.
Join Lydia Nicole as she transforms the mindset of actors and creatives, infusing confidence and cultivating fun while executing their craft. As a multifaceted creative—actor, stand-up comedian, radio programmer, music marketer, and more—Lydia offers a treasure trove of wisdom from both her victories and her blunders, allowing listeners to navigate their paths with more ease and insight.
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Lydia Nicole's Acting Smarter Now Podcast
How Standup Comedy Can Make You a Better Actor | Joel Marshall
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Ever wondered what happens when a classically trained actor steps onto the stand-up comedy stage to find his true voice? Join host Lydia Nicole as she sits down with the multi-talented Joel Marshall for a deep dive into the realities of a life dedicated to the arts. This conversation is a masterclass in resilience, creative evolution, and learning to own your worth in a competitive industry.
Joel shares his fascinating journey from a childhood dream in Washington to the legendary Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago and eventually to the prestigious Cal Arts. He reveals the struggles of dealing with impostor syndrome and how he transitioned from being the fix-it guy for computers to a powerhouse in stand-up comedy and podcasting. You will learn about the surprising connections between Shakespearean rhythm and comedic timing, and why every actor should try stand-up at least once to find their center.
Throughout the interview, Lydia challenges Joel to recognize the diamonds in his own backyard and sets a bold 18-month goal for his upcoming film project. This episode is packed with practical advice on producing your own work, maintaining a creative routine, and the importance of being a thermostat rather than a thermometer in your career.
Chapters
0:00 Welcome to Acting Smarter Now
2:15 Introducing Joel Marshall and Lunch Therapy
5:30 Early inspirations and family roots in art
10:45 Discovering theater through A Christmas Carol
15:20 The struggle with impostor syndrome and anxiety
20:10 Learning Shakespeare and iambic pentameter
26:45 Acting Smarter Circle and career strategy
31:30 Moving to Chicago for Steppenwolf Theatre
36:15 Trial by fire in the box office
41:00 Blue-collar acting lessons from the legends
46:30 The decision to attend Cal Arts
52:00 The value of formal graduate training
57:15 Meeting Kamala Lopez and starting FatFree Film
1:02:30 The early days of vlogging and podcasting
1:07:45 Interviewing Leonard Nimoy and Peter Bogdanovich
1:13:00 Taking your seat at the table
1:18:20 The story of the diamond farm
1:23:45 Lessons learned from 500 interviews
1:29:10 Why artists must think about the business
1:34:30 Reclaiming identity through stand-up comedy
1:39:50 Working with Cynthia Levin and finding a voice
1:44:15 The art of bombing and the 12-step system
1:49:00 Studying with Ivana Chubbuck
1:53:20 The 18-month movie challenge and closing
If you enjoyed this interview, please subscribe to the channel to help us bring you more great content. Don't forget to check out Joel Marshall's channel, Lunch Therapy, and join his live community every Tuesday and Friday!
#ActingTips #StandUpComedy #JoelMarshall #LydiaNicole #CareerAdvice
If you are looking for an acting community to support you, help you with career strategies and accountability, come join us at www.actingsmartercircle.com, where we meet weekly on Zoom.
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SPEAKER_01Well, one thing that it showed me was that a lot of them had done what I was doing. You also learn the audience is a mirror for you. And I think it's one of the most powerful things you can do to keep your thoughts in the real world and not just flying away.
SPEAKER_00Hello and welcome to Acting Smarter Now. I am your hostess, Lydia Nicole, actor, producer, and your acting career coach dedicated to helping you cut through the noise, own your craft, and take your career from undiscovered to unstoppable because that's what we do here. So I have a question for you. What does an actor who starts doing stand-up look like? Well, first of all, he's fire, just fire. His name is Joel Marshall. He has a YouTube channel that he does every Tuesday and Friday live called Lunch Therapy, which is amazing. I mean, he does such a phenomenal job. First of all, if I had to do this live every Tuesday and Friday, I don't know about that. I don't know. But he does it so well. He is phenomenal. First of all, he's an amazing stand-up, a wonderful actor, and just a tremendous human being. Just giving, so sweet, so kind, lovely, and he's my friend's husband. So, you know, I gotta talk about him because he's all that in a bag of chips. Without further ado, let's go to the interview. What have you learned from doing stand-up that you have been able to apply in your acting? Oh wow.
SPEAKER_01You know, I think one of the big things about stand-up that you learn as you continue to do it is to always be personal and always come from a place of um truth. Strangely enough. I mean, when I first started doing stand-up, I wanted to talk about things that were totally absurd because I was um I was kind of brought up on Steve Martin's comedy where he would say stuff that was just totally off the wall. And that still has its place, but you have to find your voice and come from a place of real truth to really connect with the audience. And I think that stand-up taught me that, strangely enough, more than even acting.
SPEAKER_00What made you want to be an actor?
SPEAKER_01I have wanted to be an actor since I was three years old. My friend Paul Barbano asked me one time. I know exactly where we were standing in the neighborhood, and he said, What do you want to be when you grow up? And I said, I want to be an actor. I grew up in Edmonds, Washington. There weren't a lot of actors around. Um, I'm not sure where I got that. There's probably something deeply psychological about it. My my dad was an artist. Um, I always have held the arts to be um the highest expression of humanity, and uh that has always been sort of ingrained in me. I don't know if I considered acting an art at the time. I know that my parents really liked going to the movies, and they weren't necessarily um movie buffs or movie aficionados or knew every director or anything like that. I think they just loved the experience of going to the movies and having a kind of a uh uh release, you know, a sort of a release from the stresses of the world and some kind of a connection into another world. And I think maybe I was like, I want to be up there too on the screen. Who knows? Maybe I wanted my parents to pay attention to me, so I wanted to be on the screen that they were looking at. I don't know, but it was a real family kind of thing. We were, we I grew up in Seattle, as I said, and and um my parents came from Pittsburgh, and we moved all the way out there uh when I was very tiny, three years old. And we didn't really know anybody uh when we got there. And my parents were sort of isolated um in that way. They took a big risk because my dad got a job at the University of Washington teaching sculpture sculpture, and um, so on holidays we wouldn't have like big parties with all of our relatives because our relatives were on the East Coast. Um, so we would have a traditional, say, Christmas or whatever kind of event it was, and then we would go to the movies.
SPEAKER_00What made you okay, you as a kid you wanted to be an actor, but what was that thing that said, I'm gonna pursue this as a career?
SPEAKER_01That was later on. Um, I went to the theater in Seattle called A Contemporary Theater, which is still there, um, and we saw a Christmas carol. And Jacob Marley came up from the floor, the like a trap opened up, and he rose up from the floor, and he had all these chains and he was a ghost. And um, I was just like, that's for me. That's what I want to do. I want to be Jacob Marley. These are the chains I bore in life. You know, I just I don't know, something about it made me just go, this is what I want to do.
SPEAKER_00You come to California, Southern California, to go to CalArts. Did you know when you were coming to CalArts that you were your intention was, I'm gonna be an actor.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, but that was well down the line. I had gone to the University of Washington where my dad taught. And I went, I declared my drama major, which was I was in a fraternity. I was like not on in that line at all, but I knew that's what I wanted to do. So, and they had a really good drama program. So I I declared a major of drama, which I thought my parents were gonna be super happy about that. But, you know, as many of us, uh, and I as I can understand now, uh they were worried and they didn't necessarily want me to do that. And I was totally out of my element because I had not really done a play, I mean, except in like elementary school or something like that. But I really was just so totally certain about it, and I I that's when I decided that I was going to pursue this as a career. And in doing it, I realized that I had a lot of obstacles in the way. Just uh I just was not naturally suited towards it, but I loved it. I knew that I loved it.
SPEAKER_00Why did you not think you were suited for acting? What was that?
SPEAKER_01Well, I've always had a little bit of an imposter syndrome, I suppose. Um, because I was super nervous. I would get up there and just my whole body would vibrate, you know, and uh I would sweat. And I can't say I was like good at learning lines. You know, some people would pick up a script and they just know the lines like that. I literally would have to drill, drill, drill, drill. I had to work really hard. And then I was also resisting this. I suppose, suppose it was part of that imposter syndrome, that I was doing something, I felt like I was like high up on a highwire, walking a high wire when I was acting. And so I was like, wow. And some people say, you know, they get on the stage and that's when they're truly free. And for me, I don't know, I felt like uh the opposite of that, strangely enough. But I loved it. I loved it so much, and pursuing it was just, I didn't really feel like I had an option internally. I just, and I also would not be cast in things. You know, they put the poster on the wall with all the names and stuff, and I I never got cast, mainly because I would go to the audition and I would just be freaking out. I'd be so not present. I think also, I was a really good student, and um I think also this was something that was challenging to me, really challenging, and that drew me to it.
SPEAKER_00So you're you are in uh college and you're taking theater courses. And did any teacher there kind of say, hey, this is normal, this is what happens, uh uh you know, that there is a process. You do get it, you do get anxious and nervous, and you're gonna forget your lines and and and and you're gonna have the shakes. There was nobody there to like let you know you were this was this was normal.
SPEAKER_01I can't say that there was, but I also can't say that I was that communicative about it. I was hiding it. Okay. And also, I think at that time, which was the late 80s, I was uh it was not maybe where you were, I don't know, but where I was, that was not something mental issues were not really talked about, and insecurities. You were to cover them so that no one could see that you were having a problem. And I that's what I thought is that I have to just cover this and I have to get through it somehow, whether it's breathing techniques. I tried all kinds of breathing. We were doing at the time. Wow, this is really interesting to think about, but um, the drama program at the University of Washington was highly impressed with itself. It was a ranked program. It was mostly because of the PATP, which is the professional active training program that was there. They were like ranked in the top 10 or something like that. And they were um, I mean, I I maybe it's rude to say that they were impressed with themselves, but I think they were trying to keep a level of um standard. And so there was not a lot of discussion about failure. You know, now I hang out with clowns in LA and I failure is like the goal. But I did not understand that. I was really trying to hide my failure. I got myself into a um Shakespeare class too, this guy named Edward Payson Call, who was this amazing um Shakespearean director that would direct throughout the country, and he was teaching this class, and I had knew nothing about Shakespeare. And um, they were talking about iambic pentameter, which I had never heard before. And they were having us go up on the board and like mark the text in iambic pentameter, and I just didn't know what the hell was going on. And I learned a lesson though, in that somebody in the class was like, You gotta read this book. So they gave me this book, and I read it, and it explained iambic pentameter so well that I became the expert in the class. What was the book? That's a good question. Remember? I don't know. I don't know. It was they even gave it to me in a printout because they didn't even have the actual book. They were like, Here, read this. And it was just a photocopy of the book, but it was kind of brilliant.
SPEAKER_00Hey, actor, where are you gonna be in 90 days from now? Is it gonna be with that same old headshot that is not getting you anywhere? That same old story that it's everybody else's fault while you're not booking, or even worse, depression, because nothing is happening for your career. Well, let me help you. Because in 90 days from now, you can have a whole new set of pictures that are built on your brand. You can have a list of agents that actually would fit what it is that you sell and a plan to have a more prosperous career. Listen, I cannot book you, but I can make you bookable. So if you are ready, willing, and excited to change your circumstances, come and join us at ActingSmarterCircle.com, sign up and get started. We're a weekly community that helps actors get in gear and get the career that they deserve. Just for laughs and giggles, tell the audience what I am pig. I can't even pronounce it. Iambic pin pentameter.
SPEAKER_01What is well Shakespeare is written in a sort of poetry, and the simplest thing, and it's in the poetry is done in iambic pentameter because that's the closest to the way we normally speak. Dun dun d dun d d dun. And there's like five of them dun dun dun dun that in a line. And then in Shakespeare, so it's sort of like music, and it it gets in this rhythm, but it changes, the rhythm changes all the time. The way we do in music, the way we do in jazz, you know, they'll they'll set a uh uh pattern and then they'll break it. And that's kind of and that's what we do in comedy too. We set a pattern and we break it. We we're going one way and then we go another way. And iambic pentameter is like that, and you can, if you know about iambic pentameter and you can uh sketch it out on your script in Shakespeare, you can learn a lot about what Shakespeare intended. It actually directs you from the rhythm of the language. And the other thing that's remarkable about Shakespeare is that when you do it, sometimes you'll do a play that lasts two and a half hours, and you'll come out of it with more energy than you started with. Because of that, I don't know. It's sort of like I guess music does to you, you know, there's a rhythm that gets into your body and also gets into the body of the audience as well, if it's a live performance, especially. And it's it's a really beautiful thing. And I mean, Shakespeare did it the best. Um, people still do that, like Sam Shepard wrote in certain jazz, you know, he was a jazz drummer, so he wrote in in kind of jazz rhythms. And you can feel that. You can feel that in a lot of different writers, maybe whether they do it purposefully or not. David Mammoth is another one. You do a David Mammoth play and you start to talk like the David Mammoth characters because they speak in a certain rhythm that hits you on a different level that is sub sort of subconscious, I guess.
SPEAKER_00What took you um so you're you you uh studied at Washington. Did you go to Stephan Steppenwolf next? Was that what you did after that?
SPEAKER_01So, what happened to me was I studied as an undergrad at the University of Washington. I did not really understand when I got into it that the undergrad program was mainly about um knowledge of the theater. Okay. Wasn't about performance really, but you got to do like a thesis, but I never got to really do it because I was just too quiet and shy and feeling like I was an outsider, and I um never got to do a real, real full-on play. And I was always trying to find some other way to do it myself because I was struggling so much, and I also was hiding. So after that, I graduated with a drama degree, and I was like, what am I gonna do now? So I went around to the different um theaters in Seattle. In Seattle, they had the Seattle rep, they had the ACT theater that I was talking about before. They had a few regional theaters that were really, really good. But I went and auditioned, I remember specifically going to the Seattle rep and doing a monologue, which I still did not understand what you were supposed to do in a monologue exactly. Well, how am I supposed to impress these people with this monologue? You know what I mean? And um they saw me do this monologue and then they said, You look like you're 12 years old. I remember them saying this, you look like you're 12 years old. You need to go somewhere else because in Seattle, the people who there aren't very many actors making a living at this, but the ones that do, there's about five of them, and they do every play, and they do the different regional theater, uh, regional theaters, and we get other people from New York and LA. And so I was like, oh wow, I gotta go somewhere and have some experience. And I had gotten, when I was in undergrad, I had gotten this tape of True West, another Sam Shepherd play with John Malkovich and Gary Sinise. And I got it from the Blockbuster video and I put it in, and I didn't really have a lot of people around me that were into this kind of stuff at all. Um, because I was in a fraternity, and um I was just like, what the hell is going on here? This is not what I've been learning. This is something else. And I was I was like, I gotta find out more about this. So my friend Kevin Sherman, who was one of the most creative people I knew, and still to this day know, um, somebody I went to high school with, he's he went to Northwestern and he had a girlfriend and he was gonna go back to Chicago and live there. So I was like, well, these people are from Chicago. And I had then seen uh Death of a Salesman with um Malkovich and Dustin Hoffman and Malkovich again, I was like, what is this guy doing? Like it's really, really interesting, but I don't know. I would never have chosen him to play, you know, Biff in Death of a Salesman, but there he is with a wig on. And I'm like, what is going on with this guy? And then I saw other actors from there too, and was like, oh, these people are all from this theater Steppenwolf in Chicago. So I'm gonna go with my friend, move to Chicago, and we got in his car and we put all our stuff on the car. And I don't know, I don't think my parents were very happy with me. Um, and because it was sort of like, what are you doing? You know, I just knew I had to go there. And I got in the car with him. We drove to uh Chicago, and that that night or a couple nights in, we were at his friend's house, who was our gonna be our other roommate. We were at his parents' house, and the parents were like, What are you doing in Chicago? And I was like, um, I am gonna work for Steppenwolf Theater. I'm like sweating, like, sweating. And they're like, they're like, Oh, you're gonna work for Steppenwolf Theater. Oh, wow. Um, what's your job gonna be? And I'm like, I don't know what it is because I have never talked to them before. And then they they were like, let's look it up in the phone book. So they open up this phone book and they looked up Seven Wolf, and they they got the address of it, and they were like, Oh, that's you know, that's uh Unhalstead. And so I went there.
SPEAKER_00You were already in Chicago at this point, yeah.
SPEAKER_01We're in Chicago. I've never been there, but I've moved there. I love it. I love it, and it's this really mainly just because of that blockbuster videotape and the guy at the Seattle rep that said, You gotta go someplace else. And so I um went to Steppenwolf Theater, and I went up to the box office, and there was this guy, Wilson Milam, was his name. He was running the box office and he had a Hawaiian shirt on, and he was this tall guy. And I was like, I'm here to work for Steppenwolf Theater, and he was like, Oh, you'll never work here. That's what he said, like immediately. You'll never work here. All the interns are from ISU, Illinois State University, and it's a very coveted thing to be able to work here. And and all the actors, they do all the all the backstage stuff. He said, John Malkovich designed the costumes for the last play. And I was like, okay, here's my phone number. I had a phone number. We had a landline. I was like, here's my phone number. Call me when you need me. And they called me that night, and they were like, Wilson Mylam, quit. Can you come and run the box office? And I was like, okay. So I went running over there, and uh, it was packed, it was just packed with people because it was when Steppenwolf really took off. They had had True West, and that was on Broadway, but now uh Grapes of Wrath was on Broadway, and people were just clamoring to be rich people, mainly were clamoring to be subscribers because it was the cool thing to be, and it was still in this tiny storefront theater, and um, I got behind that thing, and I mean it was like a war zone in there, people trying to exchange their tickets and you know, just like, and I don't know anything about even how the whole place works. So it was a real trial, trial by fire, and I ended up being there for a couple of years, um, doing the box office, doing kind of making my own internship. And I was became friends with the interns from ISU, and they were really cool people. And um I did a lot of backstage work and I did get on stage. I was um I understudied um this play called Tennessee and Bite the Hand. They were two one acts that Jim True was doing, and he asked us to understudy it. It was me and this guy, Richard Maxwell, who is a very avant-garde um director in in New York now to this day. And Richard and I had to split the costume of this one guy who played the hammer dulcimer. So there was a guy who sat on the stage and played the hammer dulcimer during the play, and he was also somebody who was in Grapes of Wrath. Um, but he slipped and fell on the ice one night and hit his head and couldn't go on. So um Richard and I had to go on. We split his costume, we each had guitars and we worked out something to do for that. And Richard was pretty good at the guitar. I was terrible. And um We sat at the edge of the thing with his costume on and played music in between the scenes. And Michael Rooker sat right in front. He was sitting in the front row. I don't know if you know Michael Rooker is right. He's an actor. He's an actor. And at the time, he had played a serial killer in this really scary, scary movie. Um called Portrait of a Serial Killer. And he's sitting there right in front of me. And I'm like, of course, webbing up the storm. It's actually quite terrifying. But it was my I got on the stage, which was a major thing for me to get be on the Steppenwolf stage and participate in that theater, which was, I mean, it was a it was a real masterclass for me just being around those people, people like Joan Allen. Joan Allen was just an amazing actor. And uh, you know, that was just I learned so much from them, and they were so um blue-collar about acting, like they were not pretentious. What at Sea at you know, University of Washington, the drama program, they were kind of working at being pretentious, I feel, and maybe they hope they're right. No, but there's a like kind of pretentiousness, you know, it's like, and they're like, I'm not gonna do movies, and you know, they're just weird stuff um that is about ego. And at Steppenwolf, they were very just blue-collar. Lori Metcalfe. Um, she I remember, and this is a story that about her backstage where she's like had she was reading in the the local newspaper, I think The Reader, and it said, Um, you know, when you're an actor, you can't just put down your crossword puzzle and go on stage. And she's like, Oh yeah, watch me. And she puts down the paper and she goes on stage, just blows people away. That's the way they were, you know. I guess I I learned a lot about this non-pretentious acting. Some of it was dangerous because they'd actually like punch each other. You know, some of it was a little too much. They drink real beer on stage or whatever, but it was so I guess what we're saying about being um true and genuine and being in the moment. There one day they were doing a play, and somebody walked in off the street, and the play took place in a bar, and the the person thought it was a bar. Walked drunk, they walked on stage, ordered a drink, and the actor on stage got him a drink, and the guy sat there while they did the play, and then like suddenly realized, oh my god, there's like 100, 250 people. What the fuck is going on? He ran out. That's hilarious. Like, there's a lot of stories like that that uh that are just inspiring, I think. And that they were inspiring because they were a theater company that made it work.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes, absolutely. So you're um so I'm gonna fast forward a little bit because you your career is so dense, you have so much. Uh uh, and and I want to get to some of the meat of it. Um, so now when did you decide I'm gonna start uh pounding the pavement as a working actor? Oh my god, I don't know if I've started yet.
SPEAKER_01I um, you know, I mean I have been, but I I've I don't know, run into a lot of difficulties. I I moved, well, okay, I went to CalArts. That was for your grant? Yeah, I wanted, you know how I was like not feeling like a legitimate actor, essentially. So I was like, I gotta get a master's degree, and maybe that'll impress my parents, you know, because my parents still were kind of confused about what I'm doing. I don't think they are now, but I think they were confused about what I was doing, and I was confused. So I got I well, what happened was they had a these auditions for grad schools in Chicago, and you could go to this hotel and you could audition. But I hadn't signed up for it, I just heard about it, and I was like, Oh, I gotta go to grad school. So I went to the hotel where they were having the auditions. I walked into the Yale audition, and there was a guy there with one of those throat things. He was a master acting teacher, I think. I don't know who it was. And I said, uh, I'm here. He said, What are you doing here? And I was like, I'm here to audition. He's like, get out like that. And I just left. And then I bumbled into um the CalArts room and I auditioned for them, and they were so great. Um and I had also at some point met with somebody who went to CalArts, and I knew that Ed Harris went there, and I knew that um, you know, Pee-wee Herman, I guess, and and I some of the people that I knew had gone there, and I was like, that's the kind of place I want to go, because it seems like seems like an incredible place. And I also heard that they learned Tai Chi there, and you know, it's it's a it's a all the arts under one roof. So I got into that program, and then um I moved from Chicago, and I'm not sure whether that was the greatest decision. I know Joan Allen and some of the people that I knew at the time there, they were like, Why are you doing that? You're already, you know, in it. They were questioning you about grad school, yeah, about grad school, about grad school, not about California, because a lot of them were working in California, you know. Okay, so that was not the thing. It was more about like, why are you spending three years getting a master's degree? Why do you need to do that? And I needed to do it for myself. You know, I needed to really, but I it was hard there.
SPEAKER_00And so when you came out of there, but then it was time to paint pay pound the pavement, as you say. Okay, but when you came out before you start pounding the pavement, when you came out of there, what what did you feel like you had um uh underneath your belt at that time? You know, it's like tools. What what tools did you feel like? Okay, I'm a little more equipped.
SPEAKER_01It's interesting that you say that because sometimes people get a graduate degree and they think that they're done training. And you're not done training, but you get an overview of all the different things voice training, movement training, you get experience on the stage in some productions that are better than anything you see anywhere. You know what I mean? Productions that I saw at CalArts were as good as some of the things that I saw in Chicago, because they have the resources, they have the time, they have the focus that a lot of people don't have later on in life. So I got uh I felt like I got a really solid training, and also in speech work and accents and all the particulars of being an actor, but it just gives you like a glimpse into these things because as you know, it's a lifelong training acting. And I think and also I went through some really hard times there. Um that also I think sometimes when you go to college, like even when I was at the University of Washington too, you learn social things and things about competition and things about people trying to undercut you or support you, you know, you learn that in that environment, in a very intense environment. Um so I think that I was I got a little bit of confidence in myself because I had a degree and I made it through. And I also got a lot of technique, a lot of technique that you know, you can learn otherwise, but um in learning it in one place with that kind of focus, I think is a really good solid foundation.
SPEAKER_00Now I want to get to um some of the stuff you've done moving forward because you haven't it hasn't been one straight line for you. You've you've gone in a lot of areas, and I'm assuming it's because you didn't feel like you were enough as an actor. So you've been doing other things um that lie that was just making itself a nuisance. So um you started uh doing um fat-free fat-free films.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, tell me about that. Okay, so it's 2005, maybe. And um I I wanted to learn more about making films because my wife Kamala, who I had met, who is fantastic.
SPEAKER_00Let's stop for a second. Kamala Lopez is a wonderful actor. We love her and an activist, and she has a nonprofit called Equal means equal. Um, and everybody who's watching this or listening to this, you need to look her up. You also need to know that women don't have rights yet, and and Kamala is one of the few women that's fighting for that. So you got a badass wife.
SPEAKER_01I got super lucky because I met her auditioning for a short film. She was doing a short film. That's how we met. And I got the role, and then I got the role of her husband too. I always say we met on the casting couch, but that's not what happened. Um we basically, you know, just really hit it off making a short film. And um, afterwards, we're like, we were both like, I'm never getting in a relationship again, I'm never living with anybody, and we've been living together ever since. I mean, we've married and we're 26 years in. Um so yeah, so she was a filmmaker and also an established actress, and she knew a lot about filmmaking and that kind of stuff. And I wanted to learn more about it because I realized from her that you really gotta do it yourself. You know, a lot of times you can't just sit around waiting for the phone to ring. You can't be trying to please everybody with your monologues, you have to switch the tables a little bit. And you know, when I was at Steppenwolf, um Gary Marshall said the same thing to me. He said, you know, if you want to make it in this world, Joel, you gotta write your own projects and attach yourself to them. That's what he said. And it was so true. I just didn't know how to do it. I didn't know what, you know. Um, but so that kind of rang in my head again. And so I was like, I gotta learn how to make some movies. Because at the time, digital was just kind of starting out, but it didn't look like film at all. And it looked amateur, um just digital nature of digital, yeah, it was too digital. It was looking like public access or like a soap opera at the time, you know, too. Yeah, real video video and no depth of field and all that stuff. So I was like, I gotta learn how to make my own films, and we were Camel and I were really gearing up to do that. We were wanted to make short films and make our own projects, and which is you know very intense. Um so this friend of actually somebody she went to school with, Dr. Jesse Rhines is his name. He's kind of an intellectual, interesting guy. He said to me, You want to do a vlog? That's what he said, a vlog? And I was like, What's a vlog? And I at the time I was doing a lot of computer stuff. I'd gotten really I don't know. I I'd gotten really adept at computers. And he said, um, it's a it's a video log where you interview people. He didn't quite know what it was, but it was like blogging, but with media. So I was like, yeah, let's do it. And we decided to do it, something called film shots, where we'd interview people about film and raw food for some reason. He said he wanted to talk to people about film and raw raw food. So we started interviewing people, and what we do is we just take a camera.
SPEAKER_00That's a great improv. That's like a great interest right there. It's two contradictory things.
SPEAKER_01That's what was happening. And we'd set down a microphone essentially and just record the audio because I found out, oh, you can make a what's called an RSS feed, and that will make a um podcast. It's a new thing called a podcast. And uh so I would record it, we'd record the whole conversation like we're doing now, and but it was all audio, and then we would um edit it, and I would, I don't know, program this RSS feed and make a make a podcast, and then it shows up on um Apple iTunes. And this was like, wow, this is cool. And but not many people were doing it at the time because it was 2005. We were even at the top of iTunes, like you'd open up iTunes and it would say film shots. And so um we did this for a while, and Jesse he wasn't as interested in the filmmaking as I was. So we eventually kind of parted ways, and I started I kind of segued over into this thing called fat-free film, which was about making films for low budgets, you know, just cut the fat from your film. And at the time Camel and I were making these short films and going to like Cannes and different places with them or the Tribeca Film Festival, and so I started interviewing filmmakers and actors about the craft and long-form interviews, which at the time there was, you know, like Larry King and maybe Fresh Air, but they didn't have these kind of interviews. So I got really amazing people, and Kamala started co-hosting with me too, and we got Leonard Nimoy and Katricia Arquette and Thomas Jane and Peter Bogdanovich and just amazing. You need to repurpose them, you need to bring them back, repurpose them. And what I'm waiting for is when you can make video, you know, AI can make video to go along with the podcast or something, because I don't know exactly how to put them. And they're out there. There's fatfreefilm.com, and you can listen to these things, and it's on iTunes still. There's about 80 interviews. Wow, and they're pretty amazing interviews because the person that I was interviewing didn't really know what we were doing.
SPEAKER_00But you can bring them back. So so let me just let me just be all in your Kool-Aid. You can bring them back and you can talk about them and show us the clips.
SPEAKER_01But the problem is I can't show you the clips, I can only audio you the clips.
SPEAKER_00Oh, well, then just put uh just say waveform uh a picture of them, yeah, a picture of them and do it. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So many things that I want to do. So many things that I do.
SPEAKER_00You got it's good, you could let me just say this about you, Joel, because as I was uh I was researching you, I you are a master of a lot of stuff, not a jack of trades, but you have mastered so much, thank you, and you're so unassuming. I want to slap you. I just want to slap you and go, come on now, come to the forefront, take your seat. You belong at the table, brother. You try to come be at the table. You you get to sit with the big boys, you are a big boy. So no, you are.
SPEAKER_01I'm just saying, I'm I'm trying to say, like, what what am I doing that is not? I mean, I'm not complaining. I I have learned to live my life so that I am self-funded. Um, and but I work my ass off. Um I like to sit at the table just because I would like to be able to be more focused on, you know.
SPEAKER_00Well, don't like to sit at the table. Just take your goddamn seat at the table, brother. Just grab your seat, just grab your seat and come to the table. Ain't nobody gonna give you permission. You gotta take it. Anyway, take your place about that. Take it. You take it, Joel. You've you've earned it. I want you to know you've earned it. Okay, uh that's enough for me.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I don't know what it means yet, Lydia. I don't know. I mean, I know what you're saying. I know what you're saying.
SPEAKER_00We will talk off thing because yes, you can do that. I want to hear that. I want to hear that a lot. I don't know how to.
SPEAKER_01I don't know how to do that.
SPEAKER_00All I know is how to make things, but that's it. The people who sit at the table are the people who make things, yeah, and they do not wait for anybody to validate them, they just grab their seat and take their place, and so I just so I I just want to say that to you from a a girl from Spanish Harlem who I love it. Nobody, nobody was uh giving me like, come on in. And I was like, hey, I'm here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you really did. You're right. You really did go. I'm here. Yeah, you did go take your space.
SPEAKER_00You are amazing. I mean, I'm listening to you. Um just just in our conversation right now, I'm listening to you, and I'm gonna, oh my god, this man has so many jewels. He he's so full of diamonds, and yet he doesn't see his worth. It it is um, I don't know if you ever heard the story about the guy uh that owned a farm in Africa, and he had a there was like a little river that ran at the back of his yard, and it was very rocky, and he hated, he hated his farm because he felt like he couldn't grow anything, it was all these rocks. Yet, next door to him was another farmer who really loved his this guy's farm. He was like, Oh my god, you have you have the river, you got all this stuff, and he was like, I hate it. And and the guy who had the farm heard that there were diamonds in Africa. And if you had diamonds, you could, you know, be a millionaire. And so his neighbor, uh, he was like, I'm I hate this farm. He says, I'll buy it from you. So he bought the farm from him so the guy could go off and look for diamonds. The guy loved the rocks on his farm, picked up one of the rocks that were huge, and and cleaned it off, put it on his mantle. Somebody came to visit him one day and said, Oh my god, where did you get that diamond? That is the biggest diamond I ever saw. All those rocks were diamonds. The guy who owned that farm previously went off and did himself in because he never found the diamonds, not knowing the diamonds were there the whole time. I want you to know the diamonds are there. You have them the whole time. You are you are ensconced in those diamonds. Uh and as someone who's looking at you, and I don't know you, I'm just telling you what I see. I see the diamonds around you. It's just a matter of you just having a moment and reassessing all the amazing stuff that you have that you bring, that you, Joel, bring. So I so that's all. Just want to say that to you because you got so much. I mean, I'm listening, just listening to you uh the little bit. I'm I'm like, oh my god, this guy, he's got, oh my god. Anyway, all right. You started fat-free films and you started interviewing all these amazing people. Yeah, that was cool. And what what were some of the takeaways for you and your career that you know, as you are as you're interviewing Leonard Nimoy and interviewing this person and that person, what what has it poured into you?
SPEAKER_01Well, one thing that it showed me was that a lot of them had done what I was doing. Peter Bogdanovich started out interviewing people to learn how to make films himself. And he'd interviewed all these incredible people. Um the the um there's a guy named Stuart Stern who was one of my greatest interviews.
SPEAKER_00Rebel without a cause, right?
SPEAKER_01Oh, you know, you know. So I I did not know who he was. I was at Seattle Film Festival, I was in a coffee shop, I was feeling sort of like out of it because I was trying to interview people for the podcast, and the press people were not lining me up with anybody because they didn't understand podcasts or anything. Sitting there talking to this guy about cats or whatever, this older guy. And we were just had a nice conversation, and then we leave and somebody's all these people start coming up to him. And then I was like, Who is this guy? And then I found out he wrote Rebel Without a Cause. And so I was like, Would you do my podcast? And I went over, he's like, I don't know what that is, and uh, but he's very really beautiful person, this guy. Um he said, Um call me and we'll find out if if we can do it. And so he said, Yeah, I want to do it. I went over to his house, interviewed him for like an hour and a half, and um it renewed my fire for why I got into this. He was talking about his friendship with uh Paul Newman and you know, and Joanne Woodward and and making of Rebel Without a Cause, and also about um Sybil, which he also wrote. With Sally Field, who won a bunch of awards. Well, he talks about Sally Field. He when she came in to audition for the role, because they were auditioning everybody, she came in and he was so tired from auditioning people that she started talking and he fell asleep. He's he like fell asleep for a second. Woke up and he thought it was a different person because she was playing the other character. And she thought he thought it was a different actress. He was like, Who who the h? And then he realized it was the same person. He was like, We gotta go to that lady. Which I think she really found her a part that was just ideal for her. But I learned so much from these people, and some of it was practical stuff like make sure your sound is good. You know, if your sound is not good, everything else is shit. The picture could not be good, but if people can't hear, they're gonna get really irritated by the um sound. And you know, so practical things. Also, it was a transition that we were going from film to digital for major movies. So we were like interviewing people about all this technical stuff about like the the red camera. I interviewed the person who who invented the red camera before there was a red camera. We were at the CES or one of these conventions, NAB, NAB, and he was telling us about this, and they were he was saying, Yeah, everybody thinks it's vaporware, that it's not a real thing. And the next year they came out with the red camera, which is still used today in major ways. Um and I and kind of revelized revolutionized um digital filmmaking. So I learned that, but I also learned, and I think Ben Gerbich, who's one of our listeners who was in Australia, who changed his life, he was working in a Radio Shack, and he said because he listened to this, he was realized that all these idols of his are just people who just kept walking down the path. And he said, um, and he quit his job at Radio Shack and became a camera operator. And to this day, that's how he makes his living, doing you know, videos and camera operating and has a family and everything. And um he said that he just didn't even realize that. And I think that's the biggest takeaway from interviews like that is you can interview the most you know successful person in the world, and you'll realize they're just like me. They had imposter syndrome, they had, you know, all kinds of they had things that were in their way, they had things that seemed like insurmountable obstacles, but they actually kept going. Where people go, I can't, I'm not good at math, or whatever they do.
SPEAKER_00So is that something that has helped you to keep going? Because you've been going. I mean, you know, you have been consistent in your in your path in going, whether you've still at times. Well, no, I I think sometimes what happens is we take a respite.
SPEAKER_01Well, what happened to me with Fat Free Film, and maybe this is why I'm so tenacious with lunch therapy.
SPEAKER_00For those of you who don't know, lunch therapy is his newest podcast, and you can find it on YouTube, you can find it everywhere, but it's on YouTube, and it's live, so that's scary people. You don't know live is scary, but go ahead. Okay, go ahead, go ahead, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I want to talk about that too. I want to talk about that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, fat-free film sort of fizzled out right before people got iPhones and people started listening to podcasts regularly in their car and all that stuff. And it was mainly, I have to say, it was mainly my fault because I listened to other people that were saying, like, how are you gonna monetize this? What are you gonna do? Um, you know, why you're not making any money, you can't put it out for free. All this stuff that is like sort of antithetical to the new kind of media world that we're in. Um, but we were just on the threshold of it. So, and also I was doing it every week. And there was a point where I think I was influenced by some just random people that I would talk to. And you were also paying for it. And I was also paying for it, and they're like, You're putting money into this thing, what are you doing? You know, how are you gonna monetize it and all this stuff? Which is all very legitimate questions, all very legitimate questions. But rather than finding the way to monetize, I tried to find different ways to monetize it, but I let it kind of fizzle out.
SPEAKER_00That's the artist in you. It's like you're you're thinking the art and not the business, which is a way that I tend to do a lot, and it maybe has gotten me into trouble. But that's what artists do. We we are thinking about the art. How can I make this better? What can I do here? We're not thinking about the monetization of it. Today's model is know what you're selling and then do the podcast.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, right.
SPEAKER_00So I I I understand completely, but go ahead. Um I just want the audience to hear the process because sometimes as artists, we we don't realize that we're ahead of something, and then we hear uh the the beam counter people, yeah, and then we pull back.
SPEAKER_01And we see it, we see it. Because that's one of the things artists do is they see things in the future that don't exist and make them. And so it's like when you're doing a movie and people are like, I'm in a movie, and they're like, What's the movie? And I'm like, Oh, uh, and I say the name of the movie, and they're like, Oh, I never heard of it. Well, of course you never heard of it. It's not made yet. But that's the mentality is like, oh, I haven't heard of it, so it's not important. And so you have to be like, This is important, so much so that you keep making it manifest until it actually manifests. And that is not just in your mind manifesting, that is like taking steps every day to manifest it. And then you manifest it, and then you're like, okay, what else can I do? What else can I do with it? And that I got that a little bit that way with um Fat Free Film, where I got a little frustrated with myself for not like I did so many interviews, I'm like, oh, you're asking the same questions all the time. Like, what kind of camera did you shoot on? What did you do? You know what I mean? Like it started to get a little bit rote or phoned in. And I also gotta say that I had not found my voice. Coming to Los Angeles, I law, I feel like I lost my voice in the this business. And I took me a long time to find it again. And I lost my self-esteem a lot, and it and um it took me a long time to find it again.
SPEAKER_00Can we talk about that for a second? Because I think it's so this town can eat you up if you don't know who you are, and so in you losing your voice, what triggered you to say, wait a minute, I'm not me right now. What do I need to do? And what did you do? Stand up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, stand-up. Because I was having a I did a period of time during while I was doing Fat Free Film, we were making short films, we were doing doing film festivals, we were doing a lot of the things that we should be doing. Um, but I also kind of lost myself in that I started doing freelance computer support where I was trying to go around the town and help people with their printers and everything. And uh um it became too much. And I also made a reputation for myself as being valuable because I could fix your iPhone or I could fix your computer or I could fix your printer. And so there were people in my world that were in the entertainment industry who just came got to know me as the computer guy. And I was like, the fix it man. So much so as I would see somebody and they'd be like, here, and they'd hand me my their phone before they'd even like talk to me. I was like, I gotta redefine myself because I have defined myself as this guy that's gonna fix your computer. And um, I went back to working for law firms, which was again something that Gary Marshall recommended to me. Um he said, you know, not only did he say you gotta write your own things and attach yourself to it, he said, uh, I said, Well, how am I supposed to make a living? And they he said, Well, a lot of actors in New York work for law firms, big law firms, because you can work at night and be available for audition. So I went back to working at a law firm. Um and that is hard because you're you've got hours that you gotta fill and you gotta know all that stuff. But the great thing about it is I punch out and nobody can call me. And I at the time when I was doing freelance computer support, I would be, I'm literally was doing a movie, about to walk on set, somebody calls me, and I pick up the phone because I'm an idiot, and they're like, I forgot my password, you gotta do it. This thing's not working. And I'm like, I'm about to walk on set right now. Can I call you back? And they just don't even hear you because they're so into their problem that you're like, you know, you kind of have to hang up and go on, and then you're not in the right mind space. And so I had to make boundaries, I guess is really what it is. And what the one of the reasons I worked for a law firm is I could get health insurance and fund my own things and have boundaries. Then I started doing stand-up again.
SPEAKER_00You started because of a woman named Cynthia Levin.
SPEAKER_01Yes, oh nice.
SPEAKER_00So Cynthia, we we have so many people in common. Cynthia was part of Funny Ladies of Comedy. Of well, I should say funny ladies of color, my group. Yeah, and Cynthia I knew as a waitress because of a friend of mine. Um, she worked at a restaurant called Cafe Figaro, which is no longer in existence, but it used to be on Melrose, right at the tip of Doheny. And you could go there, it was very artsy at night. You could go there, it was one of the few restaurants back in the 80s uh and 90s that maybe the 90s, that you could go and stay till like two in the morning. So if you did a show, you could go and sit there and whatever. And Cynthia worked there as a waitress. That's how I met her. And then my friend, who was a music uh producer, um, when we were putting it together, he said, you know, uh Cynthia uh is a great stand-up, and she would be great. And and that's how. So I love hearing that Cynthia got you into your comedy. Uh love Cynthia. She is one of my favorite people in the in the whole universe. One of the funniest women, one of the funniest, funniest women. And so unique. There's nobody like Cynthia.
SPEAKER_01So what happened with that is I had been doing com stand-up comedy. I lived across the street from the comedy store when I was when I first got back to LA. And I would go over there and do the potluck, but only just on a lark, you know. And it was in the the um original room at the time. So I'd go over there with my friend Kevin Sherman, the guy I moved to Chicago with, because we had been working on this project that we won't we could talk about, but that's a whole other thing. Um, but this was early 2000s, no, late 90s. And um, we'd go over there and um do some wacky comedy. Like one time I even dressed up like a clown and pretended I was a German clown that only spoke fractured English. And so we got to do all kinds of fun stuff there. But then I stopped doing it, and it wasn't until many, many years later I was um I went to go see my friend Sarah Taylor, and somebody went to the case.
SPEAKER_00And Mitzi never saw you doing that because that's no, I mean I didn't know who Mitzi was, I didn't know any of this stuff. Mitzi loved that kind of stuff, really. I didn't know who Mitzi was.
SPEAKER_01I I was just, you know, up there. I didn't know have any technique or anything. I would have loved, I never met Mitzi even. So um, yeah, and so but that's my fault. I didn't do my research, I guess. I didn't I back then I don't know how you would, but it's no fault.
SPEAKER_00It's just you're living, you know. It's just you're you're trying to find your way.
SPEAKER_01So years later, I was at the AC Bar on Sunset, and I was going to see my friend from uh CalArt, Sarah Taylor, and she was doing stand-up comedy. And afterwards, I was talking to her and I was like, I'd like to get back into stand-up comedy. And she said, Oh, you should talk to Cynthia. And Cynthia was also in the show. This is Cynthia Levin. And um, I started doing classes with her at Adam Barn. Barnhart was living in a house with a garage and all this clown stuff in it. And we'd go over there and it was down the street from my house, and we just I started doing workshop and doing um shows at different places, you know, just all kinds of places. Skinny's, I think, is one place we did it in the valley. And and um, I just was like, oh, this is something I really, really enjoy. And I've been doing it ever since, I guess, um, in various forms, and and I also found seem to be finding still uh and this is an ongoing process for everybody, I think. Found my voice, found also some kind of a grounded thing that I can do that doesn't cost money, doesn't rely on anybody else's schedule, and is when you're up there doing stand-up, you're up there by yourself, live or die. And uh and I just I and I also found that it made me happy, which is gold, you know, because of the ups and downs of this industry. If you can find something in it that just really makes you happy.
SPEAKER_00And I think for every actor, whether you do it regularly or not, you should get on uh a stand-up stage and do it a few times because it teaches you things that um really help center you. In in stand-up, you have to drive the train. And as actors, we are waiting for someone else to tell us how to drive the train. But in stand-up, when you don't drive the train, the audience hates you. Yeah, and you feel and you bomb. You just you you have to. I totally feel it. And so let's talk about bombing. Um, what has bombing taught you as a stand-up? Hey Hector, are you tired of being tired of being tired of being tired? Your pictures aren't working, you're not getting into auditions, your agents aren't calling you back, or worse off, you can't even get an agent. Well, if that sounds like you, if it sounds like you are at your wit's end, that you just feel like all is lost, you don't know what to do, come and join us at the Acting Smarter Circle, where we are a community of actors who help other actors. And I am your guide and your coach to help you with a plan, strategy, and your branding. So if you are interested and you're tired of being tired and ready for change, come and join us at ActingSmarterCircle.com. We're waiting for you now.
SPEAKER_01Bombing has taught me that you do your act and you get off the stage and you don't judge it. You don't rank it, you don't rank the audience, you don't do any of that stuff. You just do it, you take what you learn, you learn it in a very analytic. I try to video everything that I do. You learn in a very analytical way. This got a laugh, this didn't get a laugh. This thing that I said at the beginning turned everybody against me, so I'm not gonna do that again. You also learn the audience is a mirror for you because you learn how they're seeing you, especially if they respond to you uh while you're up there. And also, one of the really good things to do is after a show, if someone comes up to you and says, I really liked your act, is to ask them why. And they will give you something that maybe you didn't even realize about your act that you want to reinforce. And uh that I learned from this guy, Dean Lewis, who's out of uh Texas, who's a road comic. I learned so much from people that are road comics because they're just pros and they can do stand-up in any situation. Um, but the more you you gotta make it personal, but then you can't make it personal, too. Like the you can't make it, you can't make the rejection personal.
SPEAKER_00Right. You you you gotta make it personal, you can't take it personally.
SPEAKER_01Can't take it personally. That's exactly it. That's one of the things about being an actor and being perseverant in your career, is you can never you you have to really modulate taking things personally.
SPEAKER_00One of the things I learned early on, because I started doing stand-up because as an actor, I felt I needed, I needed to get in front of the other actors, you know, and I didn't sing and I didn't dance. And so stand-up for me was like, well, I could I can get up there and be silly and do stuff, but what I learned in stand-up was that I had to be full when I went on stage. I had to center myself because when I went on stage needy, which is what I did a lot of times in acting, like me, like do you like me? I was I was the um I was the temperature taker. I was I was the thermostat, the the thermometer. And stand up taught me to be the thermostat. I set the the the tone, I set it. Um I don't know if you know Jackson Purdue, but Jackson was one of my uh mentors. He was a regular at the store for many, many years. And one of the things Jackson taught me early on was turn down your laugh meter. As comics, we're laugh whores. We want everybody to laugh. And when you go on stage in that place of wanting everybody to laugh, they're gonna be like this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But if you turn down your laugh meter and you just go on stage and just are of service, somebody needs to hear what it is you're saying, it's gonna, it's gonna change their lives. You're bringing medicine to that stage. Everything changed for me. And I was able to use that in acting, I was able to take that into auditions and go, okay, I'm here to service the piece. It's not about me, it's not about what I think. I'm here to service it. You it hopefully it'll work, and if it doesn't, it's okay. I'm still intact. But I think when you start out as an actor early and you are so needy to be validated that it can it can hurt you in such a profound way that you might not be able to recover because you think talent is everything, and it's really confidence and then talent. You have to come in with what it is that you have and then do what you do. And stand-up taught me to do that. So it's interesting to hear because you are an actor first, who then got into stand-up to reclaim yourself, you know, which is um it and it's so valuable.
SPEAKER_01Well, I also think it relates to the Shakespeare thing that we were talking about earlier, is that in Shakespeare, people don't always realize this, but in Shakespeare's time, they talk to the audience a lot. And so a lot of times in the characters that you play, it's different from what you what you normally do with the fourth wall, is you break the fourth wall all the time in Shakespeare. And then at the same time, you're doing that iambic pentameter that we were talking about. Um, but in comedy, there's a different rhythm to it. And a lot of it is about, like we were saying, it goes one way and then it goes to some other way that no one expected. And so it's very similar in that. And it you realize that you get timing and all these other things that you can use in your scenes, whether it even if it's a dramatic scene, there's still timing in it. And doing stand-up actually helped me kind of find myself as a comedic actor as well. Because a lot of the problems that I was having, I think early on is that I took myself so damn seriously. Because I went to theater school and I'm gonna do all these dramas, even though all the Shakespeare that I was doing were the comedies. And even when I did play Romeo, it was a comedy take on it. He was a you know, a buffoon almost, not a buffoon, but he wasn't a buffoon, but he was um comical because he was always striving for something in Folly. So being a stand-up comedy, a comedian really helped me find my voice as an actor. And then I met Ivana Chubak. I interviewed her on my show, and I had been taking classes at her studio. The goat. The goat, yeah. The greatest acting teacher alive. We love Ivana. Yeah, yeah, she's amazing. I interviewed her on my show, and that's when she was like, I want to work just on comedy with you. So I've been in her class just doing all the great comedies and just having a blast.
SPEAKER_00You are in the best place, my friend. You are in the best place and I have I have also found my voice in that way.
SPEAKER_01But also I have a place to kind of try things out, and I have an audience of, you know, even in that class, there's like a hundred people in there, you know, that are from all different classes and different things, and um, you know, in the audience. And so you get a real chance to kind of try things and discover yourself. And I've just found that super valuable.
SPEAKER_00So, what have you learned from Ivana uh just for yourself that you get? To take into the world, whether it's acting or comedy or just um your podcast, which is we're gonna get to that. Um uh Lunch Therapy, which is fantastic. What have you been able to take from that that you can like spread it on everything you do?
SPEAKER_01Well, one of the things that is super important that I learned is that there's a lot of comedy and drama, and there's a lot of drama and comedy. And that comedy is really about high stakes with sort of mundane things. And a lot of it also is about the it's about the writing. You play a comedic role the same way you play a dramatic role. It's just that sometimes in the comedy it's just sort of ridiculous things you're talking about that are super important, like so important as it's if it's a horror movie or something. And also, she's really I really learned a lot about using physicality because I kind of got beaten out of me when I came to Los Angeles, and then I think it was because of the times. Everything was very still, very internal, and I think it's changed now when you watch streaming television, things like that. You the characters are very physical, but you still have that beaten into you, like you gotta stay completely still, which is not my nature. And um, so I've learned that I've also got a technique that is a structure that I can always go to, um, regardless of the situation, regardless of the amount of time that I have to work on a project, and I can feel like I've thoroughly uh explored the character and all these different aspects. She has like a 12-step uh system, and then of course the 12-step is to let it go, which is majorly important. Throw it away. Throw it. I have realized that I always will feel unprepared, and that's just the starting point. And you just have to let it go at some point. You did all the work you could do up to this point, even if it's like an audition where you had like an overnight to look at it and you had to work. You still you do the work in your in-between time as much as you can, and when you show up, it's like time to let it go, and just trust that it's there, and trusting it is there because if you do the internal work on a character, you don't have to then do the work in your head while you're acting, it's just gonna bubble up. But that's only if you've kind of done the work, right? It's doing the work, doing the work is the thing that frees you because maybe that's a that's a sound bite there. Doing the work frees you as an actor, and it frees you as a comedian as well. It when you do the work, you make it look easy, and that's the best compliment you can get.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, when you don't do the work, you you look tired and amateurish.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So uh with that, I want to get to lunch therapy. Okay. Um, I love that podcast in that you you have found your own groove, your own rhythm. You start out with meditation, and then you go into the the whoever the subject is, whoever you're interviewing. And what I love is about it is how, first of all, you're you're a gentle man, how gentle you are in the conversation and how caring you are, and that you're present and that you listen. So, which is I want to say a little unusual, um, because we know comics who never are present and never listen, like the call uh that person made to you as you were getting ready to go on on set. Yeah, my password, I can't, you know, just in uh, but you really bring a calmness to you in in uh lunch therapy. How you know, after you did fat-free films and you regrouped to start doing lunch therapy, what were you thinking of before you started it and and where you are right now? Did stuff start evolving, or was that already set in place when you started? This is gonna be the format, this is what I'm gonna do, this is how I'm gonna do it.
SPEAKER_01Interesting question because it's totally the former, it evolved. It evolved from um, I had a show, Cynthia and I were pr producing a show called Laugh Therapy at a restaurant in Silver Lake with um Harlan Gleason, another one of our friends. And we were just doing this show, and and every month we were doing it and we had to cancel it. And that was like, what? We're gonna cancel the show because we were going into lockdown for COVID. And so we went into lockdown on March 15th or something of 20 2020. And um, I was like, what am I gonna do? And so I was like, oh yeah, you know, I used to do that podcast, what can I do with that? What can I do with my you know technical skills? So I started live streaming to YouTube for half an hour a day, just doing stand-up, and I was doing every piece of material that I could, and other people, because it was we were all in lockdown, a lot of my friends from Seattle and a lot of people that I knew would come on and chat with me. And so then I started putting their chats on the thing and just talking to them, and I ran out of material, so then I told every story that I could possibly tell, and I was doing this every day. I told every story I could possibly tell from my life, and then I was like, well, I gotta bring somebody else on. So I brought somebody else on. I can't remember if it was Tom Kearney, who's another comedian, actor guy, um, really great guy, or if it was Jimmy Shin, but it was one of the two. And I brought them on for an interview, and I had, you know, had to figure it out essentially how do you live stream. And I decided to do live stream because with Fat Free Film, one of the things that got me bogged down was all the editing. And editing of audio was particularly difficult. And now we have a lot more tools to help us with that kind of stuff. Um, but at this time I just felt overwhelmed with all that all the editing and everything that I had to do. So this I decided I'm gonna do live, and that's gonna be what it is. And I'm gonna try and make it like a show. And I started using this thing called eCamm, which is a love streaming thing. Love it. ECAM's great. Yeah. And I chose Ecamm because it's great for Mac Macintosh computers, and I became sort of like a DJ podcaster, you know, because you're like doing it on the fly like you're a DJ. And I started subscribing to different things that would give me music and different, you know, uh bumpers. I made bumpers and all this different stuff to try and make it as much like a regular show as possible. And it's just evolved. And my whole thing has been try to make it 1% better. Every show, try to do it 1% better. And it it's now evolved. So it's on Tuesday and Friday. Friday, I do the interviews. They're like two different shows. I do um Interview Friday, where I bring on a guest like yourself, somebody that I just find really incredible, and somebody that's gonna have something to give to the people, and somebody that has a lot of great stories.
SPEAKER_00And you have over 90,000 subscribers. 90,000 subscribers. For those of you that are watching or listening, I need you to go to YouTube, go to Lunch Therapy with Joel Marshall, and I need you to subscribe because we need to get him a button. We need to get him a silver button, people. I'm gonna get a silver button, hopefully. That silver button, and we need it now. So go now. All right, thank you.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for that. Yeah, so that is has been great. Oh, on Tuesday, we do a show. So on Tuesday is the show that's sort of freeform. I used to tell all kinds of stories about cults and all kinds of different things, anything that I could do to entertain people. And so now um I met a comedian in Kansas. Her name's Jay Patterson. Um, she's 72 years old, I believe, maybe 71, and she and I just get along really well. So she co-hosts with me. And we do a trivia quiz in the middle of the thing because I just we're we're always trying to figure out what we can do to help people out, what can we do to make it more fun. So we do the do a trivia quiz in the middle, and then around it on the sides of it, we do um sketches, and I have a friend, Jeff Lohman, in Thailand, who does roving reporters and he has drones, and we just try and entertain people for an hour. And the whole idea is just to give people a break from the crap that's going on in the world. Time to take a breath. We always take three deep breaths at the beginning. I did that originally because when I started live streaming, I was feeling really tense about it, and I needed to really let go. So I started doing three deep breaths with everybody, and everybody was so stressed out at the time because we were all locked down that that just became a staple of the show, and I still do it to this day. And I use usually Healing Vibrations, which is a a website, uh YouTube channel where they do sound bowls. And they're I've had them on the show. They're just great guys up in Seattle, and they allow me to put that as a background while we breathe. And um the whole goal is just to give people some sense of relaxation and peace and laugh.
SPEAKER_00So let's talk about your spiritual. Um, how how do you ground yourself as an artist to be able to deal with all the stuff you have to deal with? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I gotta tell you, it's not easy all the time, and I want to be completely clear about that. Is that there are times where I'm like, what am I doing? You know, I get up, usually in the morning. I get up in the morning, I'm like, what the hell am I doing? Um, you know, all the negative thoughts come into the head. And you have to get past it somehow, because those are the things that are going to stop you from finding the diamonds in your soil. I use meditation. I do I try to meditate every day. I don't do it for a super long time, I do it for 12 minutes. But everybody can find 12 minutes to do it. I have a little timer, insight timer that I use on my phone. Um, I also exercise because I find that exercising, I have a little gym at my house where I I um do video exercises, but I try to do it pretty much every day because I find that that gets the blood flowing. It also makes you uh obviously more healthy. But creative ideas come to me all the time when I'm exercising, when you get out of that using your head all the time.
SPEAKER_00How are you capturing those ideas? Because when you're exercising, it happens, but then the recall of it, it's like, what was that thought? So do you have something while you're exercising that helps you to capture?
SPEAKER_01I keep my phone right there, and I go to notes and I put them in the notes. I also um you can't really see it because I I have a green screen behind me, as you know. Um, but on this wall over here, there's note cards, and I have these um, you know, note cards that I put. I love it. Old school. I have a Sharpie and I put, you know, a topic on there. And then I sometimes will make notes on the back on the little beats of the topic, and I put it up there. And sometimes when I go to do a mic or uh like an open mic, I'll grab a couple of these note cards and I'll be like, these are the things I'm doing. And it's not all written out, it's just the basic core of it. And the I think that note cards on the wall, and I've not mastered this as far as screenplay writing, but I know that that's what the screenplay writers do too, and I know that's what they do on all the pro sets out there, you know, when they're making television, is they have note cards on the wall. And I think it's one of the most powerful things you can do to keep your thoughts in the real world and not just flying away. And I keep I also do it at night too, you know, because you have dreams or whatever, and you wake up and and you will forget it. And I always put it into the notes on the phone.
SPEAKER_00Do you find you have a certain time of day where you are the most productive? Like stuff is just coming, is just oozing out of you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I go through these cycles of the day that are kind of emotional roller coasters. Um, but late at night is where I find the most creativity. So I work, you know, I work at a law firm at from home most of the time. And I work until 1 a.m. So from 1 a.m. till 3 a.m., this sounds crazy. But from 1 a.m. till 3 a.m., I work on the show, and that's when I'm the most creative, and that's when it's the most focused. I try to pick up in-between time everywhere, and also before I work start working at 3, so there's this space of time every day that I work uh before three that I rehearse, I write, I I have a oh, this is another little trick. I have uh this guy, Dean Lewis, that I was telling about who's in Texas. And he has this thing called the um joke writing challenge. He sends you a PDF every day of a joke structure, and he gives you a bunch of examples and he gives you like a way to write a joke like that. And you have to write three of them and send them back to him, and then he evaluates it. And you do it every day. And that just keeps that muscle going, yeah. Muscle going, and and then after a while you can go, oh look, I wrote 90 jokes in a month. They're not all gems.
SPEAKER_00No, but but but you're stretching, you're working it out. Yeah, I'm loving it.
SPEAKER_01You're training your brain to think that way, you know? That's beautiful. I think that's super important. And then, like, you find that even when you're improvising comedy, you can find the iambic pentameter of the joke, you know, and uh, and it's just there naturally. Because some of my some of my uh idols are are not role models, I guess, are people like Rory Scovile and um Tim Heideker, and these people that are out there putting their ass on the line um doing comedy where they will even like improvise an hour to do like a whole show where they improvise it. And um I would like to get to that level where I mean clearly it's everyone knows they're improvising, it's their fans who show up, so it provides a space where they can do that, but they're also just really good at it.
SPEAKER_00Yes, Josh Johnson does that as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he I'm amazed by people like that.
SPEAKER_00He that he's always doing a new routine. I mean, he just keeps keeps it going. But but that's also part of the road comic, you know. It's like if you're on the road all the time, it's like you are building an incredible muscle, which is different from being a comic at the store or at the laugh factory, or at, you know, where when you're in a bit of a cocoon. I say that as a comic who is in a bit of a cocoon, but when you are a road comic, you're a road warrior, I mean, you are fearless and you bring that out people are amazing. You bring that out in lunch therapy because to be able to get up and do it live Tuesdays and Fridays is no joke. I mean, yeah, the internet goes down, people. So tell us about some of the stuff you have.
SPEAKER_01Everything has happened. Um, the internet goes down, and when I started doing it, the internet would go down all the time because I had a very unreliable internet. And my thing is the show must go on. And so I would always like come back on, and and it became like a a joke with the you know, people that were chatting with me. But I have such a great group, core group of friends who are always there for me. Um, a lot of times they call themselves the hummingbirds on the show, and they're just very supportive people that will log in and and chat. My wife, of course, is a major one, she's there every show, chatting along, just she's so supportive. And um, but yeah, everything's happened, and I try not to make it too traumatic for my audience because they worry about me, which is really nice. But I start to get worried, and uh, and I'm kind of transparent about so now I try not to make it a big deal, but I've had I had one guest twice this happen to me where I had guests not show up, and and my work ethic is I'm gonna do the show anyway. So I had to do there's one in particular where I had to do it for an hour. Um, and I I always have things to go to. Like I look at the animals at the Oregon Zoo, or I've got somebody who's playing the handpan. And I I I find that's part of the fun of it. And part of the fun of stand-up comedy is when things go wrong. I I've always thought that about theater too. When things go wrong, it's the recovery in that moment that is the most exciting thing. I've been in plays where the light's turned off and then you don't know what to do. Like, how long is this gonna happen? Do we talk? What do we do? And those moments are so incredible. When when I first started acting at the University of Washington, I did a scene from something, and I kicked over a little um trash can, and there were like cans and liquid and all that stuff that just sprayed all over the place. And I remember that moment, though, being a huge teaching moment for me because it trained me to keep going, and there would be probably diamonds in your in your field after that moment. The magic magic happens. So there's a lot of magic that happens in lunch therapy as well, because of the constraints of the internet and because of the live nature of it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Roy London um would always say, you want to do the work, then you throw it away and let the magic happen. So any accident that happens is magic. It's like, there you go. Now do it, now work on it, now, and and you are really again, you don't realize how seasoned you are, Joel. Uh-huh. That's nice of you to say. Oh, I'm it I'm not being nice. I'm not a nice person. I'm just telling you that you are so seasoned, but you have that little critic in your head that you need to uh get rid of or shut it, shut their volume down all the way because you are so seasoned, and you come across as so chill, and that is such a superpower, such a superpower. I I just want you to see as you're meditating, see all the diamonds that you have in front of you because you got so many superpowers. Work ethic. You you you if you're ruffled, we don't see it. And that's from you forcing yourself to go, I'm just gonna do it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, imagine the path that I've gone on from the just like not being able to hold the script. I really for me, I feel like, oh my god, this is a conflict, the accomplishment is real.
SPEAKER_00But that's a superpower. I mean, you have made these, you've made these um, I I don't want to even say challenges, but you've made these impediments. You've made them your superpower, you've made your fear a superpower because you gotta be fearless to say, we're gonna go live. Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do I'm gonna go live. Entertain you people for an hour. I don't know what I'm gonna do, but we're gonna do it. That person didn't show up.
SPEAKER_01What a you know, so I love that the I it really tickles me, though. The idea of it really makes me excited. You know what I mean? Yeah, that moment when it happens is like really like, oh my god, here we go, here we go.
SPEAKER_00But but it's because of the magic. But it shows how seasoned you are. I really need you to wrap yourself around that that you are so seasoned that all those people that you have interviewed, you've interviewed almost 500, maybe more of people, and you cannot you cannot move forward without having taken some of that with you and to interview at least 500 people or 500 people, and there that there's energy is exchanged, right? You're talking to Roger Corman, you're talking to Leonard Nimoy, you're talking to Bogdanovich, you're talking to these people who are they have been uh big in their own in their own space. They they created something out of nothing. Um and that you walk away with a little bit of that, a little bit of all of that, you know, uh Gary Marshall, you you walk away with these titans, I want to call them. Yeah. How can that not get on you? I I just want you to see that. You're not just a fly in the wall, but these people are empowering you. Every time you interview them, they're empowering you. It's like, wow, I got this away. First of all, the fact that you've been able to interview all these badass people, and I mean it in the best way possible, but that you, Joel Marshall, have been able to interview these people. You did it. You did it. Not anybody else. You did it. You gotta own that. You gotta go, wow, I did that. I did that. You need to throw yourself a little party to celebrate you. Because sometimes, sometimes as artists, we're so busy feeling like we're in the struggle that we don't take that time to just stop and go, wow, I did that.
unknownI did that. I made that happen. I did that.
SPEAKER_00You got to throw yourself a little party. One of my favorite books is The Artist's Way. Yes. And I I have probably tapped into that book over the years, maybe 11 times. It's probably time again for me to tap in.
SPEAKER_01I probably should too, because it's been since I was in my 20s, since I read it and had the journal.
SPEAKER_00It what it does is it starts to strip away all the gook that has gotten on you, all the all the um uh what do you call it, the plaque that has gotten on you from negative people and negative situations and negative things. And it's like, okay, it's time, time to clean the plaque. You know, it's like the barnacles will bring the boat down, and we gotta clean the barnacles to keep the boat buoyed. And you bring so much to the party, but you've let barnacles get on you, and you gotta clean that up. You gotta go, wait a minute, I'm the shit here. I I do I do good stuff, I bring good medicine to the table. You you have interviewed so many incredible people. Uh, and I'm just talking about what you said from uh the fat-free films, but looking at what you've done through lunch therapy, all these amazing comedians and amazing the therapists, and and you've gone all over the world um with your podcasts and doing all these things, and we forget podcasting is global. If you are on YouTube, you are global. Yeah, that you you are global, you've done that, you've done that. So, and and and you have continued to work on your craft that again, we go to that big old diamond of work ethic. Work ethic. And so I just want you to know as an artist, you may not realize this, but you have continued, as Julia Cameron talks about in in the artist's way, is without you realizing it, you've continued to fill your creative well. And so that's something you gotta you gotta remember. You are filling your well, even though you might have gone from one medium to another medium to another medium. It's not that you stopped, is that you found a different well to uh um take from, you know, and sometimes we as artists we start to beat ourselves up and we go, I should have stayed with that, I should have kept that. No, that was done for that season. You know, sometimes things are just a it's it may be a quick season, sometimes it's a long season, but as an artist, look at how you continue to fill your well, and then you're married to another artist. You can't be in a room with another artist and not fill your your your well in some form or fashion. Either you two are talking about art, oh I uh this is what happened today. I was working on this piece, this is what happened. So I just I you know I just I I'm I'm watching you as an outsider, and I'm going, this is a bad mofo. He's a bad mofaux. And and so it's just important, you know, that we cheer each other on as artists. I know how difficult it is to go from acting to stand-up and then have haters in the room because they don't see you as a stand-up. Oh, you're not really a stand-up, you're an actor. Well, you do is stand-up, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, and that you have found your amic pentameter, you have found your rhythm, and and I want you to know you are there already. You are already there, and you just need to know that you are there, that it's not a thing of I'm, you know, I'm I'm looking for it, I'm looking for it. No, brother, you the diamonds, you in the diamond farm. You got to own your diamonds, you gotta look at what you have. Look at how, you know, I was watching some of your uh lunch therapy interviews. I'm like, oh my god, this is so good. I was watching Amy London's interview and watching some other people. I was like, oh, oh my goodness, this is so good. It's so you bring excellent medicine because you listen. You listen to people. You could make lunch therapy about jokes and blah blah blah. But you listen to the subject, you listen, you ask really provocative questions, you're really smart. Um, not book smart, but you're really, I mean, you're probably book smart too, but you just are really smart and you're really intuitive to know what's happening. So I I just need you to own it all. I need you to own it all. I need you to to to to be that big guy on the outside that you are on the inside. Be that big guy because you are. I'm gonna have to snip this out of here and put it in my phone and look at it in the morning when I wake up. You you talked about being a fat kid. I I I've heard this a couple of times in in stuff you talked about being a fat kid, but what you don't understand is that that fat kid has given the adult you wonderful um not just tools, but but um you you've gotten a lot of fodder from that fat kid. And so there you you have information because of that fat kid that really makes you a better artist because you've got the sensitivity, you got the vulnerability. You know how many people who are acting don't know how to be vulnerable, they don't know all of the stuff you got from that fat kid, you can pack it into your acting now and give an award-winning performance, my friend. Not only that, but you're with the teacher who takes people to Oscar. I just want to tell you that I just want I just want you to know that that fat kid has been the best gift for you. Like I think about my childhood, I think about being, I was the skinny kid, I was the kid everybody made fun of. You know, I was the toothpick, I was I was the backbones. I was I love that kid. I love that kid because that kid was was spicy and and didn't take no for an answer. And you gotta look at who your kid was and and how amazing, what an amazing job your kid has uh given you. Not job, but but just gifts. Gifts. You gotta be.
SPEAKER_01I say that I've been saying that recently in stand-up comedy. If I had a kid, I'd want him to be a fat kid. Because you just get so much out of it.
SPEAKER_00So so I just wanted to say that to you. Um I uh I I want to find out what you would like to be doing in the next five years.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Well, okay, you gave me those questions. Um, some of the things that you asked me about were what would you tell like a 25-year-old if they got to Los Angeles?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yes, yes. And all that's I like to give I like to give my person a lot of a lot of uh questions so they feel but it got me thinking about things like that.
SPEAKER_01Um when I first came to Hollywood, there I was subletting from this guy, Ben Hammer, who was a uh seasoned actor, an older guy, who's in a lot of plays, and he gave me a uh he gave me a bro uh some kind of program for a play that he was in on Broadway um that was signed by Arthur Miller and it was ride down Morgan Mountain. He's somebody that's been in in the theater forever and also in movies. And he said to me, Joel, you better hurry up. And that made me so stressed. And I didn't help, I don't think it helped me at all. But anyway, I wouldn't want to tell a kid, you better hurry up. But what I would tell a kid is similar to what uh Gary Marshall said is produce your own things because nobody's, you know, I mean, sitting around waiting for the phone to ring and trying to preserve your your abilities for that day when somebody gives you the opportunity. You just turn the tables completely when you do your own stuff because all of a sudden you are in charge of it. It also draws other people to you, other people that are talented and and um that can help. And so in the future, I would like to be more collaborative and do some of these projects that I have been dreaming of for the longest time.
SPEAKER_00What's one what's one project?
SPEAKER_01One is called Old Joel. It's old Joel, and it's about a a guy who is over the hill chasing his dreams in Hollywood. And as you know, all of the things, all of the things that happen to us, there's so many hilarious things that happen to us as especially as people that have been around for a long time and are like trying to make it. And I just think that there's there's so much comic um possibility in that. And I think so many people can relate to that, whether they're actors or not, you know, is just being of a certain age and going after your dreams, and while people around you are retiring and things like that, and also going to the doctor and all the stuff that happens. So I've got this, and I've written many scenes for this, and I've performed some of them in class and even videoed some of them, and they're on YouTube. But I'd like to put that together.
SPEAKER_00Make it happen in 18 months, sir. Make it happen in 18 months. Yes, you already have it, you already know it. Just do it. This is your 40-year-old version. Do it.
SPEAKER_01So I like your 18 months because a lot of times I need a deadline. So that's why I do the live show, is because I got a deadline. It's well at noon on Tuesday, noon and Friday. There's gonna be a show. God knows what it's gonna be. 18 months. You better figure it out. Okay, 18 months.
SPEAKER_0018 months. You can do this. You you've been doing it in class, so that means it's already in the front. It's already in the front, and it's timely. It's timely. So I'm not gonna tell you hurry up. I'm just gonna say you can do this in in the next 18 months.
SPEAKER_01I'll put it on my counter.
SPEAKER_00You have the tools. The thing is, yeah, you already have it. It's just in your head going, 18 months, okay, and then work backwards, right? Work backwards. Yeah. What do I need? Uh uh, you know, I need to have the script in the next two months, and then I'm gonna do a table read. Then I'm gonna do a read write. Then we're we're gonna do it. Do you want to direct it? Do you want somebody else to direct it in your other star? This is where you now start focusing and organizing it and going, okay, I can get this done. You you you I'm giving you permission, Joel. 18 months. You can you can work with time.
SPEAKER_01One of the things that I've learned also is work within your in your limit, if you have limitations, try to make them your ally. So um, but I'm not sure in this world that we live in what the product is in 18 months that I need to have to make this happen. You know what I mean? Um, like, is it a pilot? Is it it? No, but is it a pilot? Is it a series? It's a movie, it's a movie.
SPEAKER_00It's a movie. Okay. Okay, so let me just okay, so now now I'm gonna really get in your Kool-Aid now. Let's do it. Let's hear it. Okay, so what I'm seeing is it is a movie. You get to bring some of your comedic actor friends.
SPEAKER_01So many talented people around me.
SPEAKER_00And and go, okay, make a list of they could be this character, they could be this character, they could be this character. Um, you know how to put a film together. You've you've listened to every every big person about films. You you have uh Roger Corman. I mean, just let's just go with Roger Corman. How would he do this film in 18 days in 18 months? You know, take take take a page from his his book. How would he set and he wouldn't even uh uh uh go as long as 18 months, he would say we're doing this in six months, figure it out.
SPEAKER_01So many people got their start with Roger Corman. It's um unbelievable. That was one of the things I found out from interviewing people. Everybody was like, Oh yeah, Roger Corman gave me my first job.
SPEAKER_00And so and and you interviewed him. So even though there was a missed thing with the uh audience. You know about this. You know about this. I I was doing my work, Joel. I was doing my work. I'm really impressed. Really? I just want you to know I've been doing my work. What I'm saying is sit down with yourself with a notepad or your cards and go, what did Roger Corman tell me? What did what do I remember him telling me how he did the project? You can do this in 18 months. It's it's it's a no-brainer. And I and I wouldn't say that to anybody else, but you already have everything in you. You've been to film festivals, you've done all of this, you've gotten uh uh uh you've gotten incredible information from people. It's just having somebody holding you accountable right now and say, okay, that the clock is ticking. We got 18 months to do a movie. You can do it with with iPhones if you need to, you know, just get a bunch of iPhones and do it with iPhones. The technology that we have today, it just with the iPhones, we can make our own movies. Uh uh Sean Baker is has proven that. With the iPhone 4, he proved he made tangerine. Tangerine. You you know, you know technology, you know equipment, you you know, you could shoot this out in in less than um what 21 days you can shoot it out. So let's say 30 days, you can shoot it out in a month. So if you do it five days, um uh uh you know, five days, and you take your two days off, you you can shoot this out within a month. So it's really just getting that script to the place where it is shootable. So you you do your first pass um or your 30th pass, and then you do a table read of maybe some of the actors you think you want to use, or maybe not that you want to, but do a table read. Rent rent a theater, do a table read, invite an audience, shoot it so you can hear it back so that the writer in you can go, oh, okay, that didn't that didn't land, that worked well, that didn't work well, and then go back, write it again, make whatever changes you need to make, then do a more intimate table read because the big one really will give you the information that you need. Oh, okay, and then and so then you do a little table read just with the cast so you can hear it for yourself that worked, that didn't work. Maybe I don't need that scene, maybe I need to kill that scene, maybe that scene needs to be more than what I think it is, and that should not be longer than five months. Those two table reads and those rewrites. Then you go looking for your your um department heads, people you could work with. There are so many actors and comedians. What about the money though? What about the it's not about money, Joe? No, it doesn't. You feed them take some money? You feed them, Joel. Listen, I come from Hollywood Shuffle School. We didn't have any money. Oh, yeah, you're there. Did not have money. It was it was credit cards, and we fed the people. I know because I was the one that did the catering. I fed everybody, so you don't need a lot of money. Yes, you do need some money, but you don't need a lot, you know. Um, you could do it, you could get it done. Get get kids from film school that could bring their cameras and make them the DP, make them the, you know, and you give them uh $30, $50 for, you know, whatever. Or you could do a crowdfund me campaign. Say, listen, we're doing a film. Um, I need, you know, this is this is the budget we we're looking for. There's so many ways to make a movie today that we did not have access to. When you first came out, when I I came out in 78, you only had gatekeepers. You were lucky if you got two lines in a movie. We don't need, we don't have that problem today. So you just look at the kid who did obsession. I mean, he just did his own little video, and then that just started taking off. So maybe if you're really concerned about money, maybe it's just you do a couple of scenes, see what you can film with no money. Can you do it in your living room? Can you do it in your bedroom? Can you do it in the bathroom? Hollywood Shuffle was shot in uh Robert's apartment. A lot of a lot of the in the inside stuff was all in his apartment. There was no there was no going anywhere. And then the exteriors, he stole those shots. He, you know, they there were outlook, there were lookout people looking to see where's the popo, and you shot, okay, we gotta go.
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SPEAKER_00So it is it it's renegade filmmaking, but if you if you um as you're writing, start thinking about okay, where would this be, where could I film this that we could actually use it? Do you know some um restaurant people or some business people that would let you film in their space at from from midnight to six? You know, you would just need a really good set designer and stuff who would be able to uh take photos of the space before because you gotta put it back. You can't, you know, you can't mess it up, you gotta put it back. But to have somebody who's really anal that knows and the pencil goes here, and the you know, we gotta put the the cockboard back, and this was there, and this was there, but you can get it done in 18 months. I'm telling you, Joel, you can get this done in 18 months. It's really just how are you um how are you time managing the big pieces, meaning the writing? How are you managing um the the crew and the thing and and you know, do you take out some credit cards so that you can finance the food? Find somebody who would do the food for because really actors and comedians will come and work on a set if they're not getting paid for good food. So that's that's the most important thing. We fed those people so well, and we did it for a bunch of other shoots. There were other shoots that we did where it was about the food. We couldn't, we couldn't pay them. It was about the food. And then after, after, you know, we're gonna do this deferred payment thing and we'll sell it. And when we sell it, then you'll get paid. So I don't want you to think about money. I want you to think about your vision. I want you to think about how you're gonna, what's your vision? Who are the actors you see in these roles? And how do you um how do you set yourself up to be the star of it? How do you it because it's gotta be, it's gotta be your project and it's gotta elevate you. I'm not telling you do this film and find somebody. No, this is you gotta be, you gotta be the Rocky Balboa of this film. You you gotta be Sylvester Stallone and say, no, nobody can play this but me. This is me. This is old Joel is me. So that's all I can say to you.
SPEAKER_01I appreciate that. You've thrown the gauntlet down.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because I know you can do it. I I wouldn't believe me, I wouldn't be saying this to people who I didn't think could pull it off. I mean, I you could pull this off in 18 months. It's just a matter of you refocusing. You got all the tools. You you've done it, you've done a lot of stuff, you've probably helped so many people do their stuff. Bring it all in. It's time for you to make it work for you. Look at all the energy and time you've put into other people over the years because you didn't feel that you were worthy. Well, you are worthy. I'm giving you the memo. You are worthy. You are more than enough. You are ready. You you've you have trained for this for for a bazillion years. Well, I appreciate this. You you have been, you have been uh um you've been on the front lines of combat for years as an artist. Yeah, you know, maybe it's finding a good producer, or maybe Kamala is the producer of this. Hey, look at uh look at what they did with A Day Without a Mexican. Yeah, that was amazing. They did it, they put it together.
SPEAKER_01You know, yeah, those people are incredible.
SPEAKER_00Well, Kamala will be directing it for sure because she's a master director, and she also maybe you find another producer, find somebody because the thing is, once you start this train and once you start the sh the production, you gotta be a total actor boy. You it you you can't be putting out anybody's fires. So you may need a producer who can, you know, um have your back and take care of you. You know your wife is gonna take care of you from the directorial point of view, so yeah, look maybe it's Kevin. Maybe Kevin can be your producer.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I'm just saying, yeah, maybe Kevin can. But he's uh he's deeply ensconced in the advertising world at this point.
SPEAKER_00But maybe he can come out just to play with his friends. You never know. That would be great, wouldn't it? I'm just saying. I'm just saying. So are there any questions that I sent you that I I didn't ask because I didn't ask any of those questions. But were there any questions that that stood uh that stood out for you that you want to answer?
SPEAKER_01No, I like the fact that you sent me questions, but also you know, as I know, that you can make a list of questions, but it always goes after off what the person says. That's it. Your question always comes off them. That's it. And uh so I appreciate those questions though, because it made me start thinking about certain things, but I think we covered it.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I love it. And I am so uh first of all, let me just tell you how deeply moved I am that I've gotten to know you just a little bit. Wow and to know that someone like you is out here in Hollywood doing things. Because you are the real artist. You know, we we are so jaded sometimes in thinking, oh, if you don't have a big name or you haven't, you're not successful, you are successful. You have been successful in everything you've done, whether the world knows you or doesn't. You as an artist, Joel Marshall, are extremely successful. And you are you are moving according to your rhythm. You know, that to me is success. Not somebody who, you know, got a publicist and they got press everywhere. That's that's a different type of success. But as artists, sometimes we feel because maybe we're not a household name that people don't, that that we're not um, we're not valid. And that's a lie. That is such a lie. You have invested and invested and invested in yourself, and that in itself is successful. Do you know how many artists never um they never come to the to fruition because they don't see that they should invest in themselves. I think real artists are always investing, you're always taking classes, you're always learning something, you're always trying something else. That to me is success. You and and and you're the epitome of that. So just in the little that I know of you, you are the epitome of that. So I am so uh honored that I got to interview you and I got to learn about you a little bit. And I'll be I'll be I'll do what I uh what my friend told me not to do to um uh uh Oliver Stone. I'll be busting your balls now, Joel, because I know who you are. That's great.
SPEAKER_01I appreciate it, Lydia.
SPEAKER_00I'll be like, so what's happening with that script? What you doing, Joel? What you doing? Let's go, let's go.
SPEAKER_01I love it. I'm so lucky to have met you after all these years. So funny because I uh you know told Kamala that I was gonna have you on the show, and she's like, Oh, I've known Lydia for 30 years.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and and and again, you are with an incredible woman, and so she is great. You you got you got you got all the goods, you got all the goods, so that's what you need to know. So I'm so grateful. I thank you. I can't wait to I can't wait to go to the premiere. All right, mm-mm. So amazing. Check him out on his YouTube channel, Lunch Therapy. He is just such a good guy, such a lovely artist. I would love to know your thoughts. What was your takeaway from what you heard? And I need you to do me a favor. I need you to like, subscribe, and share this channel with your actor friends. And while you're there, buy me a coffee because you know you're getting a lot of value from me. You know that, right? You know that. Okay, and I got more value coming right up with this next episode. So don't go anywhere.