Changing Roads Podcast
Changing Roads Podcast unveils the profound essence of travel, exploring not just the destinations, but the personal transformations within. We unravel the various themes, aspects and narratives of travel that define us, shape us, and lead us to the heart of our own stories.
Changing Roads Podcast
Silver Screens and Black Tops: The Relationship of Cinema and Travel
This week on Changing Roads, Brad and Ranger, along with guest Adam Smith, explore the deep connection between travel and cinema. They discuss how each plays in important part in the modern experience on one another.
As the reels turn, technology reshapes the canvas of film making, a topic they dissect with great interest. The pandemic-induced shift towards green screen use is just the tip of the iceberg; they delve into the heart of how travel and technology intertwine to impact personal career paths within the industry. Exploring the sociological aspects, they discuss the responsibility of filmmakers to accurately portray cultures, the importance of understanding the reality of those cultures, and the consequences of falsely portraying these communities and travel destinations. They take a hard look at social media and influencers and their evolving impact on travel and tourism., for better or worse.
Brad and Adam further open up about their battles with epilepsy and how they navigate the challenges it poses within the travel and film sectors, proving that obstacles are merely stepping stones for the determined.
Closing the curtains, they champion raw and unfiltered storytelling and encourage listeners to find beauty in the undocumented moments, just as they have, and to cherish some scenes in life without the interference of a lens.
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Welcome wanderers, dreamers and fellow seekers of the open road. This is Changing Roads, a sanctuary for explorers of the world and the self. Silver screens and black tops have been by nature bound together since the thrilling invention of the movie camera. Films have often served as catalysts for the inspiration needed to step out our doors and into the theatre of the world, whose high definition feature, motion picture is our colorful lives. They ignite a desire in us to follow the paths walked by characters on screen, to witness firsthand the majestic landscapes that serve as their backdrop and to immerse ourselves into the cultures they portray. For some, cinema may be the only passport they will ever possess.
Speaker 1:Film is a form of travel in and of itself, giving people to far off places and along for adventures they may not otherwise get to experience. The importance of cinema in this regard is an aspect that should not be overlooked, and many hold tightly to this personal connection. From classic films that immortalize iconic destinations to contemporary masterpieces that create new worlds, cinema has long been a compass which guides us through the wonders of our planet. It captures not just the physical locations but their essence, the spirit, the stories and the atmospheres that render each place unique. In turn, travel enriches the cinematic experience. Stepping foot on locations where legendary scenes were filmed offers an intimate connection, a chance to live out the magic scripted on screen. As we explore their connection, we quickly realize that travel and cinema are two sides of the same coin. Storytelling fuels our curiosity and our curiosity fuels the need to tell stories. Our roads become movies and our movies become roads. Both dare us to dream.
Speaker 1:Please do not throw popcorn at the screen and please silence your phones at this time. The auditorium lights are dimming. The movie is about to begin. Hi, welcome to Changing Roads. I am your host, brad, and I am sitting here with my co-host, ranger, my loyal travel companion and service dog. I suggest grabbing popcorn and candy, because on this episode, we are going to be talking about the connection between travel and cinema. My guest today is Adam Smith. He has a pretty big background in film and cinema, so he's the perfect person to do this episode with. That being said, I would like to introduce you to Adam Smith. How's it going, man?
Speaker 2:You're doing very good, Brad. Thank you for having me here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a pleasure how you and I met. I was on the road with Ranger and we were doing our journey. You were working with the Pet Collective and you picked up our story and did a feature on us and that was really cool. I appreciate that and you and I have been friends since then, but this is the first time I've talked to you face to face, so it's really nice to have you here, man. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. I agree it was a lot of fun. I worked an internship at Trusted Media Brands for about six to seven months and in that six to seven months, I'd say that the interview that I did with you was by far my favorite piece of work.
Speaker 1:Heck yeah, that's super awesome. I love the fact that was your favorite project. It was your last project, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was my last project with the Pet Collective because at the time I was working for the parent company. The parent company is named Trusted Media Brands and they probably tend to 15 different conglomerates, just like the Pet Collective. My main job was at Fail Army, which is a pretty big channel. I edited a bunch of just fail videos. But my last big project with the Pet Collective before I quit was the piece that you and Ranger did.
Speaker 1:I love Fail Army. Good stuff, man. So what were you doing in your internship? Was it a role?
Speaker 2:So my role was just social media intern and I don't think that they knew at the time my experience in the field. And by the second or third month my internship got extended. It was a two-month internship but I ended up doing seven months total. But I ended up doing full-time editing for Fail Army, full-time editing for the Pet Collective and then every other Friday I would go into the studio for the Readers Digest magazine and do a cooking show or sometimes a construction show, just kind of whatever the magazine wanted to highlight that month. I would go in every other week and help there.
Speaker 1:Cool. Actually, social media is something that I want to touch on at some point in this episode, and I'll get there. But what do you want to talk about, man? You're the expert in this and you have a lot of travel experience, just like me, so I'm going to whatever you want to talk about.
Speaker 2:Okay, I think the way I want to go with this is kind of my general background in what led me into film, because I've only been in film for about five to six years, which is a long time for some people, but also I'm a beginner for a lot of other people.
Speaker 2:My family is originally from upstate New York, but whenever I was two years old I moved to Southeast Missouri, and the area of the country that I'm from is called the Blue Hill of Southeast Missouri, because if you look at the bottom right corner of Missouri it looks like a boot hill, and so it was just from the very beginning of my life. I was traveling, moving here and there, and I'm now in Milwaukee because after I graduated college I moved from Southeast Missouri and ever since I've moved I've taken jobs all over the state. I've taken jobs in Chicago. About three weeks ago I got back from going abroad. I got to go overseas and do a TV show for about three weeks. So I think the way that I want to go with this is just kind of how this industry pulls people like me that never really saw themselves leaving Southeast Missouri and ended up in a different country in a different part of the world within two years of leaving Southeast Missouri.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Yeah, that's awesome. Such a big part of cinema is traveling and not just pulling people like you in the direction of their careers. But in general, film is encapsulating these different places and bringing these different places to people, and I think it's a form of travel You're watching a movie and you get to go to somewhere else.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, mental travel right yeah yeah, for the most part I've done commercial productions ever since I moved. I haven't gotten to direct yet. I'm building a network in order to direct more projects in the future, but for now I'm in the commercial worlds, but just in the commercial world itself. I've been all over the place. My first job was in the Green Bay Packers Stadium. I was on Lambeau Field, my very first job in Wisconsin and two years ago, when I was in Southeast Missouri, I was only waiting tables. I could have never imagined half the places I would have been in just the past year and I would say just the people that you meet along the way. It's constant networking, it's constant keeping everyone you meet as a contact and making a very good first impression, because a lot of the times that's the only impression you have to make.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. I'm glad I made a good first impression on you, I'm glad we stayed in touch. But that's what it's about. It's. A big part of travel for me is just keeping those connections and meeting those people and just building relationships and networks. It's a really neat thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, I would have never met a lot of the people that I've met on this traveling expedition. I mean, I'm just still brand new to this. It hasn't even been two years yet and I've already met so many people.
Speaker 1:Heck yeah, have you met Quentin Tarantino yet?
Speaker 2:I haven't got to meet any cool directors yet, but what I tell my friends around the area is that we're one day going to be those cool directors that people want to meet. So until then we just got our pretty nose down and just kind of do what we got to do to get there.
Speaker 1:You have your own production company, don't you that you're trying to build right now?
Speaker 2:Yes. So before I left Southeast Missouri, about a year or two before I left, I switched from journalism because I was actually a newspaper journalist for a long time. I switched to film because I fell in love with screenwriting during COVID. When COVID hit, I had a lot of time at home, just like a lot of other people, and screenwriting was my passion during COVID and it was a good way to just talk about things that I usually don't talk about, and I was able to do it on paper, which was really nice. So I directed three or four different projects during slash post COVID. We took the safe measures to do so, but we also I grabbed four or five friends and said, hey, for the next six months we're going to try to produce something once every month, and I wrote and directed every single one of those, and that was kind of my way of getting my own experience under my belt.
Speaker 1:I was actually going to bring up COVID too, because I know a lot of these TV shows and movies that were being produced during the time of COVID. They really stopped in a large way doing on location right and going and traveling to these different on location places and develop these immersive green screen technologies. What do you think about that on location versus green screen?
Speaker 2:I would say for the most part I prefer on location shooting, but it's just. I like to travel, I like to be in the heart of somewhere. It's nice because my typical role right now is production assistant, so I'm helping every department, so I go to every part of every set we're at. I know every single person. So it's nice to be on these locations because I can just be in a random corner of this really historic place and just reading about the information about this place, because I'm a history buff too, so I like to learn as I go.
Speaker 2:But the good thing about the COVID times of doing everything cheap and at home or in the studios is that it paved the way for a lot of filmmakers like myself who don't have the money and resources to create, and a lot of people taught other people through internet how to build green screens at home for less than a grand or stuff like that. So I do cherish COVID for that. But really helped low budget filmmakers, because 30 to 40 years ago, before everything went digital, there was no such thing as a low budget filmmaker. You had to have money, because film costs it so much money and all the equipment costs it so much money. So I think COVID really made everything more realistic as an industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the technology advanced pretty quickly with it, and I've watched shows and movies that I didn't know were green screened and I'm a history buff too. I like to dig beneath the surface and I would go watch the making of and find out that it was all shot on green screen and they are able to portray these backgrounds and landscapes in a way that is phenomenal. You would never know the difference, and the point of that technology is changing the way that we travel and cinema. You don't have to travel on location anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't have to. I think another part of the industry that not a lot of outsiders know is that with this new green screen and tech heavy industry it's kind of gotten rid of stuntmen. Their job is not needed anymore because we can digitize that. We can do all that through the computers and you've got people like Tom Cruise that spent 40 years doing all of his own stunts. He is the epitome of a stuntman in Hollywood, but his face is on camera and it's his body doing the stunts too, and thankfully for him is a lot of the stunts aren't needed anymore. But that's the bad side to this whole tech industry is that a lot of positions are being kind of pushed aside and not needed as much anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you ever need a stuntman, hit me up, I got you.
Speaker 2:Well, that sounds fun.
Speaker 1:But yeah, that's another interesting point that a lot of these jobs are going away with that, because I'm assuming when you travel and go to these places on location, the amount of background support that you need to do that is huge. The people that are even catering and all these behind the scenes work right. There's a lot of positions that directly involve on location filming, right?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, I mean, for every actor that you see on screen, there's probably 10 people behind that one actor. There's probably 10 crew members per cast member and I just did a show from August to November and we filmed five days a week and I think just production assistance alone, we had over 85 revolving production assistants and those are just assistants to other departments, where these departments probably had five to 10 people a piece.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's a little off subject. It was Robin Williams, I think that required that he go out and hire a bunch of homeless people to be on his crew and set right Yep, I always love that about him to reach out to that group as well and make sure that's a part of what he does. It's really special that he did that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he did a movie in the 80s called the Fisher King and he took a lot of inspiration from homeless people during the Fisher King and whenever he did take inspiration from him, he kind of realized that all of them were also humans too. And a lot of people in our industry, especially people that were born into the industry, aren't really aware of that. And it's really prominent on the West Coast, where the majority of our industry is at. It's kind of just like they kind of turn a blind eye to that. So it's really cool to have someone like Robin Williams, who is like the epitome of Hollywood, prioritize that. It's really nice and it's one of those things where a lot of people like myself want to do the same for other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. You give as much as you take. And that's what we're doing as creators, right? We're trying to give back to this world and share with this world, so I think that's what makes a great director. Is that mindset in the first place, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. Right now I'm only 26 years old I cannot imagine being the director of a million dollar production or anything, because there's just so many pieces involved that you have to prioritize together. There's no body more important than the next and I just cannot imagine. I really want to do it, I'm really excited to do it, but I definitely am nervous to do it.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, dude, You're going to be on doing Messiah as the director. That's super cool. Going back to on location versus green screen, I really appreciate on location shooting and in my travels I find myself in a lot of these places that these major movies are shot and it's so interesting and it adds so much to experiencing these places Like Astoria. I was up there and that's where they shot parts of kindergarten cop the Goonies even, I think for McCarthy's the road Death Valley was Star Wars Tatooine. I was just outside of Badlands National Park and that's where they shot a lot of dances with wolves and they did no mad land there too, oh cool. So I love being able to go to these different places and you look around and it's so cool and it puts so much perspective not just on where you're at traveling but also into the movie as well and your experience with that. So I love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, part of my Christmas activities just a couple of weeks ago was I went out of my way to go to the Home Alone House. What's the cool thing about those on set films is that if the film is historic or if it holds a legacy in our country, people will go out of their way to still see these places 40 to 50 years later. You're talking about the Goonies. The Goonies I went to one of the filming locations of the Goonies a few years ago over near it was on the West Coast and Oregon, somewhere they did the when they held the rocks up with the coin. I went to that filming location. I mean, that movie is 20 years older than me, but I was still so excited to be there and that wouldn't have existed if it wasn't an on set shoot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you think people base some of their travels just around that? I know what you were just saying. Do you think people go on vacations or journeys just to find these places?
Speaker 2:I would say so. I would say at least people make a couple of turns to the right just to make sure they hit that place. If it's not the destination, I think people definitely work it into the destination because a few years ago, whenever I drove from Southeast Missouri to Missoula, Montana, we went to the Badlands. And when I went to the Badlands I was really excited because that was the year that Nomadland was out and I'm a big fan of Malcolm McDowell and I was really excited to see the places that she filmed at. And then I also learned the history of the dancing with the wolves, because I asked people about the area and I would definitely say that people work it into their trip. It might not be the main destination, but I'm one of those people that always works it into my trip.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you also ended up in Missoula, montana, where I used to live and correct me if I'm wrong but is that not? A river runs through it? No way you notice his fly fishing tattoo. That's awesome, man. I tie my own flies, so that's really cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my birth mom lives in Missoula, montana. She's been there for about five or six years now and a couple of years ago, for her wedding, she booked me a class with Norman McLean's fishing partner and he took me fishing on the Blackfoot River and it was one of the coolest experiences of my life.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I've rafted the Blackfoot, I've fished it. Norman McLean is the author of the original book, so everyone knows. But that's really cool that you get to have those experiences traveling that directly relate to cinema in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2:So I'm very fortunate that I have the mom that I had. I didn't live with my mom growing up, but the custody situation that we had was the second that school released for the summer. She was there to pick me up and then she dropped me back off a week before the next school year started. So I spent about two and a half months every year with my mom, and my mom is very much so the typical stereotypical U-Haul lesbian. She's in a different city with a different woman every year.
Speaker 2:The whole thing about that was that I got to go to all these different places every summer because for 10 months out of the year we didn't leave Southeast Missouri. My family didn't have money, so during the summers I got to do all this, and my mom's a huge just media buff. She's more so music than she has movies, but went out of her way to take us to those kind of things, and when a movie meant a lot to her, she would go out of her way to take us to these places too. So it was really cool to spend every summer going to these random places all over the country.
Speaker 1:Super cool. Do you think that ability to travel in these places that your mom took you, do you think no-transcript Did it inspire you to do what you're doing now in film?
Speaker 2:I would say it definitely inspired me. It might not have directly inspired film, but it definitely pushed me to want to do journalism because when I got to high school I was constantly trying to dig into people around the school. I didn't care to interview people around the town, I cared more about finding those weirdos or those really cool stories or those stories that don't relate to others. At my own high school One of my biggest accomplishments as the editor and chief of my high school newspaper was I got to meet and break down the life of our janitorial staff.
Speaker 2:I came to find out that one of our janitors was a lifelong boat captain. After he retired from the barges he got really bored at home and then he wanted to work around kids. His kids got old, moved on and he was just really bored. Then he was the janitor at my high school. No one ever knew this guy's story and he had worked there for 15 years. No one knew his story. So then I highlighted this guy's story. I think, without my mom taking me to all these different parts of the country and just talking and meeting new people, I don't think that love or that passion would have been there without it.
Speaker 1:Sure, everyone has a story to tell. If it's not told, then it dies with them. That's always interested me. It immediately leads me to thinking about Into the Wild and Chris McCandless and his travels across the country and his journey. That story would never have been told if it wasn't for John Crackauer picking that up and seeing the importance of it and really diving into it, then Sean Penn picking it up and turning it into a movie that put that story out to people to connect with.
Speaker 1:I think it's required reading in school now in a lot of schools, which is really neat because of those two people. They're inspiring people as well, including me, to get out and explore. That was a very important movie in my life. I watched that and it just lit this passion in me. These Hollywood directors and these creatives and these journalists are inspiring people to travel that normally maybe wouldn't, whether it's stuff like that or going to onset locations that are really interesting, or just film in general, seeing all these different places and backdrops and cities and countries. Without cinema, don't think the world would have as much passion to go out and see it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I fully agree with that. I don't think that a lot of us would know about places around our country without it. You can name your top five to ten favorite movies of all time and a lot of the times they're based on real locations. A lot of the times the story might be made up, but they do base these in real places. That's the cool thing about it is it gives something to value this place. I was in sixth grade when David Fincher came to my hometown and they did Gone Girl about 30 miles from my hometown. They spent about six months in my hometown. This was before. I was super invested in film and knew that I wanted to have a career in film. But even till this day, every time I pass those locations, I point those locations out because of that movie.
Speaker 1:That's really cool. Actually, it kind of leads into it. I was wondering when you go and travel to these different places and these different cultures, you as a director have a responsibility to correctly portray that culture and not make it seem something that it's not. It's a responsibility to that community, would you agree?
Speaker 2:Oh, I fully agree. That's why, right now, me as a screenwriter, I try to base everything in Southeast Missouri, because that's kind of where I was raised and I can accurately tell that story as a Southeast Missouri. It would be kind of hard for me who hasn't spent enough time in other places, to tell their story. I don't think I would want to do that yet. I do eventually want to tell other people's stories, but for now I do base everything in Southeast Missouri because that's what I know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it kind of reminds me of Yellowstone, the TV show. There's a lot of locals that are like, yeah, that's not accurate, that's not what Yellowstone is. But on the flip side, it really interests people and they want to go to Yellowstone now and you go into the National Park and you go into the gift shops and there's literally the TV show, Yellowstone brand t-shirts you can buy. So I don't know, to some degree I guess that it's not totally inaccurate, but you can still shift it around a little bit to make things more interesting and that attracts people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we have to do that, though I think for the most part, a lot of us are very similar, a lot of us are very ordinary, a lot of us are boring in the sense of film terms, a lot of us don't have that story that's going to sell millions of dollars. So you do have to lean into a lot of the made up stuff about the area. I'm working on a project right now about a monster catfish. Obviously it doesn't exist and obviously I'm leaning into a more redneck-esque part of my characters. They definitely have and talk a little more redneck than what the ordinary person in the area talks, but when someone on the west or the east coast watches it, they're going to be like oh yeah, that's what they sound like.
Speaker 1:Come down to Texas and I'll show you a monster catfish. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:I've seen some pretty, pretty big ones. The locks on the Mississippi River are pretty scary, that's cool.
Speaker 1:I mean you are exaggerating these places and these situations, but that's part of art and music and cinema in general is the exaggeration which brings this crazy color into it which catches people's minds and eyes. So there is an amount of exaggeration that has to go into that Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you just can't be offensive about it. I mean you can't exaggerate to a point where you're making these people look like something that they're not. There's a fine line there. You can exaggerate, but you have to tell an accurate story. Still, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Even on this podcast, my travels. I have a lot of stories to tell and experiences in these different places and I'm very careful to not overstep boundaries and not offend and portray these communities as they are and leaving my opinion out of a lot of those things, because I think your opinion can exaggerate things in an incorrect way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, a lot of the times whenever you're sharing your opinions with people in this kind of environment, we kind of just agree with it and roll with it, and a lot of the times your opinion can kind of shape the way it moves and you don't really want to do that and that's a big part of it. You don't want your opinion to be the one that is the driving force if you're interviewing somebody else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. What's your opinion of me?
Speaker 2:I see a lot of me in you. What draw me to you in Ranger not only was the love for your dog I have my own two dogs but we're epileptic warriors and it's one of those things where you look at me, you look at you. You can't tell. We've talked about this before, and it's really cool to see someone as driven and motivating and motivational as you are, because it's kind of what I want to be too. You've got a couple years on me, but I definitely don't see our stories being that different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they really aren't. On my journey with Ranger at all the national parks, it was my message that with a disability, with my epilepsy, that I could travel, I could do these things and you don't have to lock yourselves into these boxes and to me. I connect with you on the same way and I think that you're doing the same thing right. You're taking that and you're proving the world wrong, because there's a stigma behind disabilities, especially unseen disabilities, that we're not able to step out into the world, and that's absolutely untrue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, and in just the past year and a half of me working in this corporate commercial world, I've realized that a lot of this industry is not shaped for epileptic people, because on the photo world, which is where a lot of the jobs are, here to its constant strobe machines, that automatically puts me out of the room and that automatically takes away jobs for me.
Speaker 2:Because I can accept certain jobs and it's one of those things that I do my best to still be useful. Even if I can't be in the room, I still prove that I can be useful and for the most part, I want to evolve the industry in a way to where strobe lights aren't really needed all the time and People that don't have epilepsy don't think about it. And whenever strobe lights go through a movie or go on to a TV show, a lot of people don't really even consider thinking about it and Us as epileptics is the first thing we think of. It's like how do I avoid seeing this? How do I avoid the risk of a seizure? And the film industry has shown me that you have to evolve and you have to constantly be on your toes because you don't know. You don't know what's going to affect you in that way and I don't know it's. I didn't realize that as an epileptic in the film industry that I was going to have any kind of different Approach at things, but it definitely a different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, has that affected how you're able to travel and move and make these films? Because I know that traveling with epilepsy, it In some ways did make it difficult for you. People like you and me we figure out ways around and we we break those barriers, but there's a reality to it sometimes that it does limit what we can do, so in your field and doing film and cinema and your need to travel and do all these things, do you think it is going to affect you or do you think that you're going to find ways around it?
Speaker 2:I've always found ways around it. It's. I've never seen my epilepsy as a disability. I've always seen it as another fun fact about myself and I've always said it that way. It's on paper into people that don't have epilepsy it's a disability, but to me it's just another thing about me and it hasn't affected travel. The first couple months after I was diagnosed it was constant fear and it was constantly. You know, anything that I could think of that could trigger a seizure I was always thinking about. I was always trying to go out of my way to avoid the risk of a seizure. But at this point in my career I've been diagnosed for 14 years. It's not an excuse. It's never been an excuse for me. It's just something to work around.
Speaker 1:I'm glad that you brought that up and I'm glad that we had that conversation in here, because it's it was the original idea behind changing roads. What I was doing and what I am doing, it was the roots was breaking through that barrier. So all of this that I'm doing this podcast, my journey with Ranger that stemmed from my refusal to let that disability define my life. So I'm really glad that you brought that up. It's important for people to hear and know that as creatives, it's not for us. We have to approach it in a different way and it's a little, it's more of a. We have some barriers to break through that a lot of people don't. So I'm glad you brought that up. It's real and that's what connected you and me in the first place when I was on your journey and you were doing this piece on me and Ranger. When I found that out, I was like, oh yeah, man, we're in this together. We're in this together.
Speaker 2:So all my managers at the time at trusted media brands in the pet collective. The moment that they saw that tied us together. There was no one else they were gonna let do. That story like this was my story to tell and I think I did a pretty good job of telling that story.
Speaker 1:You did an amazing job. It made me cry every time I watched it. I watched it like 20 times and I cried every time. It was great and not you did a. My message was traveling with a service animal to all these different places and overcoming that and letting people know who have disabilities that they can do that. And you, through film, you captured our journey in a way that, when it went out to the world, the feedback that I got inspired people and it made people less afraid to do things like that, and I think that, as a director, that's a responsibility that you have is to take your situation and change people's lives and in this situation, adam, you did that. You did such a good job on that and it inspired a lot of people.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that a big part of that project was. I wanted to tell the story as another epileptic and I was really excited that everyone was excited for me in the company. But I knew that I didn't want the viewers to know that another epileptic made it. I wanted to almost feel like that was solely your story and the cool thing about it is, until this episode right now comes out, still no one knows that it was an epileptic and another epileptic doing it together. And I was really proud of the way that my supervisors handled the situation to, because they set back and just let me take over and it was really nice. They had a lot of respect and admiration for me at the time and I was really excited to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have the same respect and admiration, man, I appreciate it. Hell yeah, if anybody could do a score, a movie score on our lives, who do you? Who would you want it to be?
Speaker 2:Just for a recency bias. I mean, john Bates, you need to watch that documentary. I know it's the top of your list, but watch it, he, it's so crazy good I'm. I like documentaries. I try my best to watch as much documentaries as I do narrative film. I don't in. The sad reality is I probably watch one documentary for every 15 narrative films that I watch. And right now I'd say the way he was able to tell his story amidst heartbreak because he was going through chemotherapy with his wife, it's one of those things that I can relate to, because it's always a worry as someone, an epileptic, it's always a scare, it's a fear, and I think he showed what it means to overcome fear and to put together an instant in a masterpiece. He created a masterpiece amidst the fear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the score writers that do create masterpieces and do become people that are the stature of him and Hans Zimmer, john Williams, that's what they do is they put that, they put themselves into it in a very intimate way. Their personalities are in there. And I watched the making of Dune I don't know if you've seen it, but the new one or the older one. The new one, they did the making of it and they go into Hans Zimmer's production of that music and how important it was for him to create these musical scores that were so different for each planet. Right, because he was, he wanted to capture the environment that he had, he was portraying and he was like building brand new instruments out of scratch and diving really deep into these different cultural music and instruments and it was really important for him to capture that environment correctly.
Speaker 1:So I think that score making overlapped on these places that you're trying to betray is. It's essential. With without that kind of care, without that understanding of these places in the world or in other galaxies, it it falls flat. It's a very important part of cinema. When do you agree?
Speaker 2:I fully agree. One of my favorite films of all time is interstellar, and that's Hans Zimmer too, right, yep, and I mean, you know, when you're in a different place, whenever you're supposed to feel different, like, like, even without someone saying anything or without you even seeing anything, he the sound the composing makes know that you're somewhere else, and I really like that, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's Jurassic Park is one of my favorite movies and it's the same thing, right, you're bringing these people. You're bringing these people on a adventure, in travel to another location, right? So you have something like Jurassic Park and they completely capture it, the whole journey, the whole environment. And, yeah, I just think that it's such an important thing. And Jurassic Park wouldn't be Jurassic Park without Hans Zimmer. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:It's impressive there, too, because they're portraying places that don't exist, and they are solely responsible for making something so impactful that you know that's that place because of the sound they incorporated with it, and that's the cool thing about Jurassic Park. That's the cool thing about Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park is much older than I am and it's still one of the most impactful films for people my age and even younger people still. That's still like an epitome of a masterpiece in our industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's an interesting point, that you guys don't just take people places, you also create places, which makes the world look even bigger, right, and that's a good example of that, I think, what it was shot in Hawaii and it was.
Speaker 2:And probably the Dominican. It looks like the Dominican Republic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you're creating brand new places for people to travel to that don't exist, and that's amazing. And you're inspiring people to discover the world and see these new places, even through false places, which is really interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you're also telling the story for people that don't get to travel and that don't get to go to these places. You're making the impact of that film as great as possible, because what if that person does never leave? What if that person never goes to a similar place or sees a similar thing? You're not doing it for just those people that do travel, but for the people that don't travel as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually I brought that up in my last interview with the woman I was talking to. Her band writes a bunch of music in different languages from different cultures, and that was my point to her as well, and she agreed that you're taking a culture that people may not be able to travel to and you, as an artist, you're bringing that to them and allowing them to see and experience these places, even if they don't have the capability of going there themselves, and that's a thing that you add to people's lives. That's their version of travel and maybe that's all they have. That's all they have to experience this world and see it. I think that's really important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for the most part I had a pretty rocky upbringing, so movies was my outlet If I wanted to get away or if I wanted to ease my mind. It was a movie, it was popping in a movie, because I was lucky enough to be born and raised in a generation where there was a VHS player or a DVD player everywhere, all the time and even till this day I'm probably one of the only 26-year-olds you're going to meet that has a thousand DVDs physical in my collection, because I do value the impact of what movies had on my life and a lot of similar people just like me, because movies and TV shows and stuff like that is definitely an outlet for a lot of people that don't get to leave.
Speaker 1:Yeah, indiana Jones was the first time that I traveled to the Middle East, to Germany and Asia. Nope, it made me want to see those things more. And when I went to Germany, I had Indiana Jones in the back of my head the whole time. So yeah, cinema is a form of travel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, big time. It's such a good medium of therapy too. I definitely feel like the best therapy I've ever had in my life is watching movies Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Can I ask you a little bit, can we go down the route of social media and influencers a little bit? Because this is something that I think about a lot and I scroll through my Instagram and there's these influencers that are portraying these beautiful places to go to. And it's good, on the side, that it makes people want to go there and maybe they do travel there because of some of these things, but there's also, at the same time, they give a false perception of what it actually is. It's them on this beautiful, quiet, silent beach and then you go there and there's 100 people standing on the beach. So people have these expectations when they travel and then they get to these places and it's not what they thought it was going to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I definitely see the point you're saying there. I worked at a really popular touristy spot in Southeast Missouri for six and a half years before I left. I was awaiting tables at a restaurant that often served about 3,000 people in a day, and we were driven by social media influencers because people would always go there, film and then dip. So there's definitely a sense of I don't know what the word is. There's not a lot of authenticity behind social media influencers. A lot of them are doing it strictly for the views, while a lot of us are watching it because we actually care about the place. We're actually wanting to find more about the place, and I saw that a lot while working at this restaurant was a lot of you can tell it wasn't authentic and you can tell they weren't there to tell a true story. It was more so. The best story and I think that's the problem with social media influencers today is they're trying to tell a story that will give them the most views, not really the most authenticity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did people show up and become disappointed that it wasn't what it was?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, they would show up and they'd wait two and a half hours to eat and they'd be like yo, like they didn't tell the true story. They didn't tell the story of you're going to set outside in 110 degrees and you're going to wait for two hours before you get into eat. They didn't tell that part of the story. The story they told was you walked in, you sat down, you had really good food, and there was a lot of the story that they missed. There's a lot of story that they skipped because they knew that it wasn't good for the video.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there in lies the responsibility of the creator to portray something accurately, right. And it reminds me of Anthony Bourdain in a lot of ways. And when they first started, doing no reservations, and they were taking him to these different places across the world and he was really struggling with finding his groove because they had scripted it in a way where they wanted to show these fun and interesting places and portray it as something interesting to see on TV and it wasn't working. And when Anthony Bourdain was like, nope, you know what, if I'm going to be a part of this, I'm going to show these places for what they are and I'm going to dive deep into these places. And that's what people found interesting. They weren't watching another travel show, they wanted to see the real side of these locations and that's what made him such a profound creator and traveler just individual in general, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the cool thing about Anthony Bourdain is that, because he was so authentic and I would say he's probably one of the most authentic figures we've ever seen in the TV industry is that he was not only a role model to travelers like you, but he was also a role model for filmmakers like me and the chefs and servers and back of house cooks, and he was telling every bit of the story. He wasn't telling the story as a journalist going to the place. He was interviewing servers. He was interviewing people that were homeless right next door to the restaurant. He was telling the full story, he was. The cool thing about his show was that you knew he was watching every bit of the room and it never felt like the cameras were turning their backs to certain parts of these places.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree. I wish that travel and these locations were portrayed more like he, in a way that was more like Anthony Bourdain did. Right, I think it would change the not just the view of the world in these locations, but also how people travel and where they go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, there's a guy that I like right now who's from Milwaukee and Tommy, I forget his name, but he's from Milwaukee right now and he goes to different parts of our country and he goes into more of the controversial violence, slash, really poor parts of these cities and he's doing a really good job of like showing people the dangers of these environments and what people that live here and stay here go through to live a very normal life, and I think we're desperately in need of more of that, because the TikTok generation has made it where we're telling a 30 minute story in three minutes.
Speaker 2:And that's all we're missing out on. A lot is because our time, our span of concentration is just so minimal, because of TikTok.
Speaker 1:It reminds me of a winter's bone. Have you ever seen that? It's about the reality of poverty and drugs and violence in West Virginia. Believe it is. It's a very hard movie to watch, but I think part of being a filmmaker, like you said, is accurately portraying what these places are, in order for us to be able to connect with those people and feel empathy right.
Speaker 1:And we need to understand the people in this world on a better level and I think that a filmmaker is in a really special place to be able to do that and not just travel is not all fun and games. The world's not all beautiful. Some of these places are sad and some people are stuck in these places and situations and we need to be able to understand that and be able to empathize right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it definitely needs to come from people that can relate. A lot of directors and a lot of just people in the film industry that are born into the industry can't accurately tell these stories because they didn't live the same struggles as a lot of parts of these countries, and that's why I do value those kind of stories, because I can relate to a lot of those kind of people. I grew up in Southeast Missouri where everything is getting wrecked by fentanyl and it has been for five years and before that was other things, and it's one of those things where it was never. It was always so prominent. As a kid you saw it, you experienced it all, and those stories need to be told by people that have experienced it as well. And that's the really awful part about the social media generation is a lot of the times these stories are being told by people that have never left their bedroom, that have never experienced hardships, and they're doing it because they know the views for there.
Speaker 1:Completely agree. But that's why I wanted to touch on social media and influencers, because I think that's an important thing to point out here, especially talking about travel and cinema. Cinema has been handed over in a lot of ways to the general public with social media and the internet and these different ways of the ease of creation. So no longer do you have these filmmakers that understand their responsibility to portray these things accurately, because anybody now can just create their own movie, anybody can on their iPhones. So it kind of becomes an out of control situation in my book and it's hard to separate out what is real and what is not. And it does affect people, it does affect the way that they travel, it does affect the way the places that they go and it's a recipe for disaster in a lot of ways sometimes, which I think something that we can use today.
Speaker 2:That is a very good comparison to that is the sphere in Vegas. The sphere in Vegas has been open for about six months now. They've been working on it for years and people have had tickets for years, and people are going to this event and they're sitting under rafters where they can only see a third of the screen, and it's not fair, because what we see on social media 90% of the time is we see the full screen, we see the full experience, we see what the celebrities are paying to see A lot of us that we're spending half of our savings to go to places like this and you get stuck in a back row with a rafter over your head. You don't get to see anything, and that's the really awful part about social media, too, is that it doesn't tell the full story. The sphere is a big example of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great example. Yeah, the lash back and feedback from that has been pretty profound.
Speaker 2:Great idea, but it's just there.
Speaker 1:For the most part, they're benefiting the people that can afford it most and they're not really Considering the people that can't yeah, yep, and then they're spending a crap ton of money to travel to that place and yeah, then they get there and it's a giant letdown and, you know, a waste of money that people might not have to waste. So it's unfortunate, but I don't know what the answer to things like that is. That's, I think it's gonna take maybe it's Unreversible, maybe it's just gonna take a long time to figure out, or people like you and I that understand that to find ways to Head that off, to spread that Aware. That's the thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's everywhere. I mean any, anything, especially in America, because America is just so money hungry. Every part of America there is that there's always the side that you can be stuck in and really not enjoy. We've all been on vacations where we have not liked certain parts of those vacations or trips and we weren't told beforehand. The first time I ever traveled outside of southeast Missouri to New York City and I Was blown away by the stuff that I didn't expect to see on the streets and it was one of those things. Well, I was like I really wish someone would have prepared me for this, because you don't really see that on TV.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, kidding man, but that's a super good point. All right, man. Well, we're running out of time. We just did a solid hour pretty much. It was a great conversation with you. I mean really excited for people to hear this. I think this was great. I have a question for you, though what is your favorite movie scene of all time?
Speaker 2:Oh, my favorite movie scene of all time is at the end of there will be blood when Daniel Plainview it's just beating the shit out of Paul Dano's character in the bowling alley. That is my favorite scene of all time. It has everything that I want. I really love a Political or religious commentary, I love it and everything about that scene is really cool. I really want to Mock that scene for a music video one day. I think it'd be really cool to introduce a music video through a very similar scene just like that. But undoubtedly my favorite scene. I love it.
Speaker 1:Super love it. It's a tie between the very end of Fight Club, when they're holding hands in the city's collapsing. It's between that, or In Sean Penn's film the life of Walter Middy, when he's been looking for Sean Penn throughout the whole movie, right, and then he finally finds him way up in the Himalayas and he climbs down next to him. And Sean Penn's been trying to get this shot of this white leopard for ever. And then the then it comes out and it comes right into his camera view and Walter's sitting there waiting for him to take the picture and he's not and he's like, hey, there it is, why are you not taking the picture? Sean Penn says sometimes they don't take the picture, sometimes I just want to Experience it and see it with my own eyes and keep that to myself and I love that. I think that's so profound and I think you can probably relate to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an awesome movie, it's an awesome scene, it's a. I wish people my age and younger Valued that message more. We're a generation that has our phone in our face non-stop. I'm guilty of it. My average daily screen time is just embarrassing. But it's one of those things where I wish more people would value that, because we would understand a lot of each other better and we'd be able to cherish those moments better. You know, most of my favorite moments growing up traveling was before I had a cell phone and it was being able to remember those things without pictures, and I'll always Cherish those for the rest of my life. And it was because I didn't take the picture and it was Comparable what Sean Penn said in that scene. It was one of those things where I took it all in because I was I could.
Speaker 1:I took it All in because I knew that was the right thing to do, absolutely as much as I love photography and cinema, the best cameras are Our eyes and our brains.
Speaker 2:I Agree, yeah, I agree. I have a question for you, cool, go over it. If you could recommend any movie to me, what would it be? I've seen a couple of the ones that you've mentioned, but like what's a movie that if you could convince anyone to watch that you don't think they've seen? You don't. You can't name the Jurassic Parks and the forest gum. You can't name those films that everyone knows. What would the movie be? It's a good question.
Speaker 1:I Like to introduce people to idiocracy.
Speaker 2:I'm writing my own idiocracy right now, cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the one movie where I'm like if you've never seen idiocracy, we are sitting down Right now and we're watching it. Drop everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really good one. Mine would be. I watched after a son. It came out last August and it's about a little girl who retraces her memories with her dad from a trip that they took when she was a little girl and she's at the age that he was at the time of the movie. She's 37. That's where the movie starts. She's a 37 year old woman and she's retracing the memories of a trip she took when her dad was 37. And If the actor Paul Mascow got nominated for best actor last year, he was among some of the best actors of all time. He didn't stand a chance, but it was one of those movies that went under the radar and I think it perfectly tells. It's a good traveling story, but it's also a really really good depiction of a dad and daughter relationship, or just a dad relationship.
Speaker 1:Wow, I have not seen it. I am go cry for a week. I'm immediately putting it on my list. That's right on my alley. That sounds amazing, it's very good.
Speaker 2:It's stuck. It's still to this day when I think about it it's. It really hits me hard. It's one of my favorite movies in the past 10 years and I really wish more people would see it.
Speaker 1:Well, well, everybody that's listening knows to go watch it right now, so you just hopefully convinced a Lot of people to go out and watch that.
Speaker 2:Well, don't forget the box of tissues, because you're definitely gonna need it for that movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the popcorn, and the candy. Oh yeah, thank you. Awesome, adam. Well, thank you so much for being on. Like I said, this was a great conversation and I really appreciate it, and I think that I think that we gave people a lot to think about. Actually, real quick, one takeaway from this what's one thing that you would like to Share with these listeners, that you would like them to take home after hearing this?
Speaker 2:As someone that kind of has pulled myself out of situations that a lot of people don't I'm gonna rephrase that as someone who came from the same background as me is same kind of rocky upbringing. I would say don't let your past be your excuse. You don't try your best not to find excuses. A lot of people want to blame what has happened to them for why they don't get out of that rut and as a creator, it's really easy to get into a rut and to lose your motivation to create, and I think it's stop making excuses. It's really hard to say that and do it. It's two different things. But try your best not to make excuses.
Speaker 1:Well, I love that man. It's perfect. Do you want to share your links to your production company or your social media? Are you ready to do that? Is it ready to go?
Speaker 2:Here. I'm not officially LLC or anything like that, but I go by wishing wells motion pictures and To explain the name, a wishing well, where you would go to flip a coin to make a wish. I wanted to incorporate that because, as someone who came from where I came from, rural Missouri there's not really been a famous filmmaker yet and it's kind of like me tossing a coin into a wishing well and I also. The name is actually the animal well, not the wishing well structure, because I consider myself a well in a really small fish tank, because I was in a very Rural, secluded area of our country and it's kind of the old saying of big fish in a small pond. That's the name of my production company. It's based off that because I think, in the sense, all of us creators or wishing wells, we're all trying to make it out of our fish tank Perfect or or a monster catfish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or a monster catfish cool dude.
Speaker 1:Thank you again so much and it's been a pleasure and I hope to continue working with you on many projects in the future.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, dude, I'm always a text away, so never be afraid to holler at me.
Speaker 1:Cool and, like I said, if you ever need a stunt man, hit me and ranger up.
Speaker 2:Sounds good, dude.
Speaker 1:All right, brother, you guys have a good one. Thank you guys for listening and we'll see you next time.