Absolute DMV
Absolute DMV
DMV Filmmakers on "The Pushover," Male Perspectives
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Have you ever wondered what it feels like to step into a man's shoes in a challenging relationship, often labeled as a "pushover"? Filmmakers Abdul T Sesay and Darren C Murray invite you on an eye-opening journey with their innovative film, "The Pushover," now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Welcome everybody to another episode of the Absolute DMV Podcast. It's your man, ace Boogie, and I'm here with a few good guys. I'm here with my man, mark. Hey, what's going on? Everybody and my man, ego, on the board. I'm on the board. We are joined with special guests today. Special special guests. Yep, at this point, I, I'm gonna refer, I'm gonna refer to them as film royalty. Yes, we are here with the good brothers abdul t c say yeah, and the good brother darren c.
Speaker 2Yo give it up, give it up get it up, dmv owns, you know, production company over here, these guys.
Speaker 1These gentlemen are joining us today, blessing us, blessing the podcast, because they were able to do something amazing for the DMV putting it on the map and all over. I mean they're dropping a movie. Putting it on the map and all over.
Speaker 2I mean they're dropping a movie, the Pushover.
Speaker 1They already dropped it.
Speaker 2Oh, excuse me, they dropped the movie.
Speaker 1I say they dropped the movie. Yeah, it's dropped. They dropped the movie. It just dropped today on Amazon.
Speaker 3Gentlemen, yeah, amazon Prime Video yeah.
Speaker 1Man tell us a little bit about the movie.
Speaker 3Okay, well, the Pushover is about a guy that just got out of a bad relationship. His friends hold intervention in hopes of keeping women from walking all over him. That's the name the Pushover, yeah, Okay, okay. Narrative slash documentary where you see guys that are like analyzed by, like other people, like whether it was a barbershop braiding salon. We have a professor at.
Speaker 1George.
Speaker 3Washington University all over. We did it in the East Coast and the West Coast, and pretty much what we do is we have those people analyze the film, we show them different segments of the film where there was conflict, and then from there we recorded their reactions to the actual scenes that they saw, and then we captured that in the film, then we encompassed it in the actual film.
Speaker 1Okay, I did like it Okay okay, I did like it. I love the way that you guys shot it because it was very interesting to be what half almost like reaction video, Right right, it brought a little bit of realism and 21st century to it, because normally when you see a movie you react to it in your own time and you tend to wonder if other people may have seen it the way I saw it.
Speaker 3Right.
Speaker 1And you guys.
Speaker 2Gave it to them. Yeah, you gave it to them.
Speaker 1But you basically allow people to come up with their own thoughts with it and also see what other people thought about it, and a very, very large group of people, I mean. From what you said, you shot it in two different places, I mean two different coasts.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1So I saw that you guys, like you said, you had the professor at GW, then you also had the um the panel yeah, with the panel, and that was in Valley Village in California. Yeah, that's crazy tell me about that. How did you guys like come up with? Like come up with that?
Speaker 3okay, all right. So Darren, okay, so okay. There's a film that Darren and I are very fond of. It's by Tim Alexander. He it's called Diary of a Tired Black man, and that came out in 2005. And so he did something similar in terms of the actual format, where you have narrative, you mix narrative with documentary, right, and so it was more so. He was talking about a man that was just tired of a situation and stuff like that. So when we were shooting it, darren was just like, hey, you know what, we should probably add that kind of element as well as far as the documentary version of that and encompass it and put themine intertwine the two worlds, and so that's pretty much like the genesis of that concept.
Speaker 4Yeah, I think when it comes to filmmaking, I specialize mostly in the documentary aspect. I've always been that type of person that just loves documentaries. So, like when Abdul was did his concept, I was like you know what it would be really dope to get somebody to, um, just speak on it. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2Like speak on the movie or speak on this actor? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5Yeah, I mean so, yeah, I think that, I think that was really cool because, as a viewer, you know you have this movie based around sort of you know relationships and, in the heat of the moment, interactions and how it's being viewed by people.
Speaker 5You know the people in the movie itself and then the people reacting to the movie. And I thought that was really cool as a viewer of both of those different pools of reactions to sort of see. As a viewer, you know there's different perspectives. People in the movie have different perspectives, Even the reaction. People are siding with different people for different reasons. So as a viewer, it's kind of cool to see, you know, that your side is validated because everyone's going to react to a certain way. People are going to agree to a certain extent with one side to another side, to a certain extent they might not agree with anyone on one side at all, but it's kind of cool because everybody's reaction was kind of covered by someone in that. So that was a cool, a cool way as a viewer to sort of be like oh, I identify with this reactor person because no they're right on the money.
Speaker 5No, this person's totally wrong. You know, like that was cool to see.
Speaker 3Thank you, thank you and uh, yeah, and the purpose of that was to like, like to create discussion, to have like water cooler talk. So even like, when we had their screenings in LA, we had like a red carpet in LA and then we had a red carpet out here in DMV in Green Boat. While the film was going on, you could hear people talking and chattering in between. You know different scenes because of the documentary portion. It was the catalyst for discussion and that's what the purpose was is to generate discussion genius and it definitely did no, it definitely did.
Speaker 1Because, like I said, the way it was shot with reaction video was it gave you something to to think about or comment on. Because you got to comment on the movie like the actual film portion, right, and you got to comment on the commenters, right right, yeah so you know what I'm saying. So it was like it was just one of those things where it was like this is a very, very cool way of it being shot. Um, I there were some things about the movie. I liked and there were some things about the movie.
Speaker 2I didn't like Not to say.
Speaker 1I didn't like. I was just like. I just wonder. It was left open ended.
Speaker 3Okay, gotcha.
Speaker 1And somebody like me. I like to critique things, I like to break things down, gotcha. So what I liked about it the most is it actually is almost like an educational video right right it's something for the young man out there to understand hey, this is what you need to do in certain. Don't be a bitch in your relationship yeah, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3Don't be a bitch. This is what you need to do in your relationship set standards, set boundaries?
Speaker 1yes, because if you do that, you stand less of a chance of these things happening to you exactly, yeah yeah, so I definitely definitely like that because, even to see it, it wasn't. It wasn't shot with young men right, it was shot with older gentlemen, so you know not even older gentlemen, right, not even older gentlemen, but gentlemen of our age, right, right right right. So you know what I'm saying and if younger people to see that they was like damn they going through that too.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Exploring Masculine Perspectives in Relationships
Speaker 1Yeah man, everybody going through Right right, you know what I'm saying so. It was a very relatable thing. It was a very relatable movie. Yeah, absolutely. I definitely like the way y'all did that. But one of my open ended questions okay, things that left me open-ended with the movie uh-huh was how come you guys did not show the woman's point of view. Okay, all right.
Speaker 1So okay, you know what and that that to the ladies I'm gonna hold y'all down, real quick, because when you see the movie, y'all going to understand why you don't need to be held down. But I'm going to hold y'all down real quick.
Speaker 3And that's a great question and I appreciate that. So we have a lot of films, right, or podcasts, whatever the case may be, that speaks from a woman's point of view, right, and so this was something that I was like, well, let me see from a guy's point of view, right, and so this was something that I was like, well, let me see from a guy's point of view. So this film, I actually wrote the screenplay back in 2011. No, no, no, no, yeah, 2011. I wrote it in 2011.
Speaker 3And it was actually like my very first script and it was based on people that I knew personally that went through similar not exactly, but similar situations, relationships where I was like where's that voice for that, for that male, that that needs, that needs, that um, that light shine on that person, right, and so today, you know they call that, they call it, you know the pushover, they call it a simp, right, so, so it's just speaking through that lens, opposed to just saying all right, because, because, because, if you, if you ask, like majority of men, they'll be like ah, I run things, I run things, all this bravado, but there are people that go through it and it could be because you're in a relationship and you love the girl so much and you let certain things slide. It could be a situation where you moved into a woman's place and, because it's her place, you have to hold your tongue on certain things. It's so.
Speaker 5It's so many different factors and variables that that you could look at and and they just they're not touched on, touched upon, so that's why I wrote it yeah, okay and and I think that it was really cool to see also that obviously the panels of people who are reacting, a lot of them is very mixed, so you have, you know, male, both male and female perspectives in there, right, and it was kind of cool to see the difference of just how many you know females were siding with. You know, the, the, the male protagonists in the story.
Speaker 5Yeah, seeing like, well, that situation is crazy, or like, or he should have done this or he should have, he should have done what they're saying, but in this way right so it's very cool to see that, that different perspective, um I think that you know there there were some scenes in there that were really cool and spoke to a lot, not just sort of being sort of pushed over, um, you know, but also just sort of a toxic relationship and like how to set boundaries in that and when something's toxic? When is the limit of like a boundary, because you don't want it to get too far? Where then it's a blow-up reaction but like where's the gentle boundary?
Speaker 4exactly, I think, uh, I think what, while we were filming it, there was one scene and I don't want to get too much into it but uh, there was one scene that was happening and I was like, ah, is this realistic? And even when I was even scene that was happening and I was like, ah, is this realistic.
Speaker 4And even when I was cutting it. It was really over the top. And I talked to Abdul on the phone and I was just like yo, is this? Are you sure this is like this happens, man? Like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2That's weird because didn't we just talk like that man, like so? You know what I'm saying. It's weird because didn't we just talk about.
Speaker 1The funniest part is I'm looking at him and I'm like I I know what part you're talking about, see, and I just and I hope we're on the same, because yeah because there was one part of the movie where homie was going, homie was going eight, and I was just like yeah, and I was just like I was just looking at it, like bro, it can't go down like this right but this is and and, but that's how I was feeling
Speaker 1but it needed. But the funniest part about it is it needed to go down like that.
Speaker 4Yes, for giving the situation that he was going through and how he needed to set these boundaries, just taking a serious L in that yeah and it was, so it was so flagrant in front of everybody.
Exploring Emotional Impact in Filmmaking
Speaker 1I was just like no, bro, I was, and and that was the one, and that was okay. That's, that's the main thing I didn't like, right, right, that I was just like. Yo y'all picked the three most egregious things a woman could do to a man.
Speaker 3Right, right right.
Speaker 4That's how I felt when I was cutting it. I mean, like I said, I read the script and I was just like damn, that's crazy man. And then just shooting it and then seeing it in front of your face, seeing it in front of your face, bro, and then after that you have to cut it to make it look so good, but like so over the top. I mean I was proud of what I did and what we, and what we did right but I was just like dang, no, no, it was crazy.
Speaker 1So now y'all did a great. That's what I'm saying. Y'all did a great job because that's the part of that, I feel like that's the great part about filmmaking that people tend to forget. Is that filmmaking, storytelling, is meant to evoke emotion? Yes, so the fact that I didn't like things and then I did like things lets me know that y'all did the job that you were supposed to do because if it just would have been one solid emotion of you know what I'm saying because that's why, that's why I was like.
Speaker 1That's why I was like. That's the why I said I didn't like it, because it was so egregious what she was doing that it was like we have to be against her, and that's why. That's why I even led with the first question of that.
Speaker 2It was like bro we have to be against her. You know what I'm saying. You know what I'm saying. We have to be against her.
Speaker 1And that's why I even led with the first question of why didn't you tell it from the woman's side, Because what she was doing was so crazy that we had to see her side Like it had to be Right. I know Like people just don't act like this, just to be like this.
Speaker 3But you know what I'm going to, okay, and I'm going to tell you, okay, I know situations that are worse personally and when I say personally, I'm not talking about like me, but stories that I've heard People getting locked up because of.
Speaker 2I mean it gets real.
Speaker 3So when Darren was telling me and that scene that you're talking about, uh, darren was like did this happen? I was like yo, I know things that are worse, worse so, so what I'm so, so what I'm what I'm talking about. It's like stuff that's kind of toned down from what I actually, because I I couldn't, I could not put things in that from because people told me things in confidence, I couldn't put that in the film Like, oh yo, why'd he do me like that?
Speaker 2He didn't want to go gutter on it.
Speaker 3I know things, situations, scenarios.
Speaker 2He didn't want to go, bet, yeah, he wanted to keep it. He wanted to keep it. He wanted to If he would have killed her.
Speaker 1What was the movie? What was the movie? The Best man yeah. Where the homie wrote the book yeah, I knew what was going on in the book. I can't have one of those. You're the best man, your homies yeah. So I'm not going to out anybody.
Speaker 3And it's like there's scenarios that I kid you, not that you would not believe. You would not believe, and you would Because of that situation being in love, and maybe they don't, maybe that person the other person's the breadwinner, and then he feels like he has to hold his tongue because he doesn't. You know what I'm saying. I mean, I've seen situations bad, bro, I'm talking about bad.
Speaker 5It's like the choosing to ignore stuff and prioritizing other stuff, and then it's almost like it speaks to. I think anybody can identify with it, regardless of like if you're in a relationship or if you're single. If you're male, you're female, because it's almost like when someone says something that bothers you, yeah, and in that moment you don't react to it or check it. You have that moment when you get home and you're driving home being like, damn, that really bothered me I should have said something yeah, that really pissed me off, yeah.
Speaker 5And then you have that self-loathing a bit, because you're like I should've stuffed up for myself, I should've said something, even if it wasn't like checking a full thing, I should've just set some type of boundary.
Speaker 1So it's kind of like being a pushover, getting pushed over. In this case, I should've. I should've punched that motherfucker in his mouth. No, that scene was egregious. It's crazy, because that's the only word I can think of.
Speaker 3Right, right, right it's just egregious, because I'm like.
Speaker 1I don't know how, as a man, you sit back and calmly deal with that.
Speaker 3Right right, right right.
Speaker 1Yeah, because that's like I said. Half the time I was watching the movie I was like this guy isn't a pushover, he's a cold bitch. Right, right, right.
Speaker 3But you know what. So, okay, back to what you were saying about evoking emotion, right? So when you're writing a narrative and it's fiction, right, it's fictional, but it's based off of things that could happen or could you got to, you have to embellish it, right, you have to embellish a bit, right? So there are certain things that, like I said, I've seen things and I've heard of things that are worse, but there's certain things where, in order for the story to work, he has to be this passive type of guy where it builds up and and then you know the situations where you know he might, he, he might, may or may not be out of work and and and he's got to kind of hold it and he's kind of holding his tongue, so there's. So there's certain things that's happening in that situation where he wants, he may want to do something, but he's just like this, just like this might get out of hand. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3So, again, there's a bit of embellishments, but at the same time, it's supposed to evoke a feeling you know what I'm saying and the feeling whether it's angst, whether you're upset with him for not stepping up, you're upset with her for going too hard on him, wherever that may be. That's what I want. I want a reaction. I want a reaction. So, if you don't rock with him, you don't rock with her. You like him, you don't like her. You're sympathetic to her, whatever. I want to hear all of it and I want to hit all those chords.
Speaker 2And I think that's hear all of it and I want to hit all those chords and I think that's how you cut it. I mean, I don't know if you and Darren you pretty much, even when you were talking about the hand how you cut to the hand grabbing and they would walk with hands. I was like this mother?
Speaker 1Yeah, because I was like see, they did that on purpose, they did that on purpose.
Speaker 4Like yo, come with me, Come to my.
Speaker 2yeah, that's the thing about, like I see what you did. You did a lot of cuts like around to make him like I, this motherfucker, yeah, even alan, like I said, even um the person who actually played mike, um, he's really good like alvin gray.
Speaker 2Yeah, alvin gray, alvin alvin gray and, like I said, get big ups to him. He's been in. You know he's been in what the wire? Um, he's he's in a wire. Yeah, oh, okay, okay, yeah, he said he's been in the know he's been in what the wire, um, he's, he's in a wire. Yeah, oh, okay, okay, yeah, he said he's been in the wire, he's been. I don't know if he was a kid or whatever. When he said, like I said, he told me that and like I said, I was like, oh, I don't know how he's a filmmaker, though he's like he's a lot of films, there's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3Oh yeah, what's the name hold?
Speaker 1on. I don't know how y'all were able to keep the raps on Desi.
Speaker 3Oh.
Speaker 1That, to me, that's the I felt like was going to be the hardest part, because once I seen Desi in the promos I was like, oh, now he about to act a fool, right, right right right.
Speaker 3But y'all were able to keep him like, keep him calm, like yeah keep him calm without having him take over the movie and turn it into a comedy. Right, right.
Speaker 1He was able Shout out to Desi Banks man.
Speaker 3I'm not Desi.
Speaker 1Banks my phone. Damn Desi, alexander, desi Alexander, my bad, desi Shout out to Desi Alexander man, Because, yeah, he did a really great job with that Very relatable character.
Speaker 3Right right.
Speaker 1And Right right. So that's why I'm like sometimes I'm like you gotta shut up, bro, because there has to be a movie. Right, right, right right right.
Speaker 3You know what I'm saying. I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1I'm like how y'all even let it get that far to the point that everybody had a story.
Speaker 5It has to be embellished too hard to have the story. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1And once again, that's why I'm like I loved as much as there was stuff I liked and I didn't like. I loved the storytelling. It did what it was supposed to do. I wanted more. You know what I'm saying. I I really wanted more because I wanted, like I said, I wanted to see the woman's point of view right, right right I wanted to see the um, the kind of the whole relationship, how it started right because one of the things I wanted to see was nigga, how you even get this girl if she don't even like you.
Speaker 3For real Right right.
Speaker 1So I need to know if you had the job, if you had the money.
Speaker 2Right, and she was like obviously, obviously, yeah, obviously he wasn't. I know, oh, yeah, okay so, okay, so to answer that okay.
Speaker 3So, to answer that, okay, so there's a thing in writing that's called, and it's usually specifically for like scenes, right? So it says start in the middle, start in the middle and then you end it. Start in the middle and then you end it. So, basically, like so example All right, I'm calling you Ace, right, I'm calling you Ace and I'm like hey, what's up, ace, how are you doing? And you're like hey, what's up, abdul, how are you doing? Blah, blah, like no, we're going to start from the middle of the conversation. We're going to start this scene in the middle of the conversation. So I'm like so what are you going to do about it? That's how.
Speaker 3So in this scene, the correlation I'm drawing now is now things have, they've gone to like whatever the history was, whatever the backstory was, whatever it led up to that we're in the middle now. We're in the middle of like it's over, the relationship is. You know what I'm saying, and that's how we start the story. And so I understand you would like, would like to have like a backstory, but like well, what, what, what did he do to make her feel this way? And and what did she? What did he do where she feels like she can carry him that way, but at the same time, it's like we started at the middle so we could tell the story, because if we go all the way, all the way back to how that happened, then it's like okay, well, maybe we need a prequel, or whatever the case may be no, I mean to me like I feel like y'all are just set up for you, set off, yeah, for a couple spin-offs once again you set off for the women's point of view.
Speaker 1You set off for the prequel. Right, you know what I'm saying. You can be set off for the women's point of view. You set off for the prequel. You know what I'm saying you can be set off for the sequel to see how he treats his next girl. Right, right, you know what I'm saying. Excellent, hey, you know what I'm saying. Hey, I'll take a little writing credit if you got one.
Speaker 3And actually I'm actually working on the pushover two right now.
Speaker 4Yeah, I'm working on that now.
Speaker 3So like it's going to be a little different, but again, like I said, I wrote this in 2011.
Speaker 2I told you Back in the day.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah it was my very first script, so, like where I am now is like leaps and bounds further as far as thought process, understanding, writing, even like how we shot it, shot it like we know what we need to do to even improve it, to make it even better. You know, I'm saying cinematically, so there's a lot of things that that you know. It was just it's stepping stones and and we're just taking our time to like learn from how we can improve, like learn and see how we can improve and just become better filmmakers in general. So it's going to, aesthetically, it's going to look better, you know, and and it's going to sound better. The, the storytelling is going to be even better. It's going to it's going to be a lot more other nuances to it To make it better, just a better film altogether.
Speaker 5Yeah.
Speaker 4Nice. I think another thing you got to understand with Abdul is he's an extreme guy when it comes to telling stories. There's no like subtlety. It always has to be something like extreme.
Speaker 1You know what I mean. Nah, bro, we African bro, we got to tell a big story.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's what all the Nigerian movies. Everything has to be.
Speaker 4But I think that's one of the reasons why it turned out the way it is, because that's part of Abdul's personality he wants to drive home his point really hard. So I think that's one of the reasons why, you know, the movie was like that. I mean, I've known abdul since like 96, 97 you know what I mean, so I I know where he's coming from, like the time when I was just like yo, you sure, abdul, he's like yo, I'm telling you, man all right, it's great, it's gonna be epic yeah it's gonna be all yeah.
Art of Friendship Documentary
Speaker 2So yeah, also d d murray. Uh, you had some stuff that you were working on, as you said. You're talking about the, uh, the documentary stuff. Um, there's a little project you you actually done, you know as well.
Speaker 4You could talk about that a little bit um about a year ago I went to mali, africa, and I was there to really show the process of handmade jewelry and leather goods. So we were originally supposed to go to, uh, timbuktu, but unfortunately in mali, in the northern part, it's it's like really dangerous. So we settled in the southern part of mali and, um, we were straight up in the desert. Yeah, I mean, it was like 102 degrees y'all weren't like yeah, it was wild.
Speaker 4I was in my original garb and everything and sweating, but not because of yeah, that's, that's, that's something that people don't know about, it's like, just because you're wrapped up doesn't mean that you're hot yeah, there you go, linen people, yeah, there you go americans don't understand linen, yeah unless you're in the caribbean.
Speaker 5Yeah, once again, that's not american just appreciate linen for like bed sheets and stuff my wife is from brazil, so like when we got married down there, I I wore a linen suit because it was hot.
Speaker 4What part of Brazil?
Speaker 5She's from Sao Paulo, the state of Sao Paulo, jacare is the city. It's like a suburb of Sao Paulo.
Speaker 4That's nice.
Speaker 2I have a certain love for that I know I got love for Brazil.
Speaker 4Oh, nice People that have been there. They know how beautiful Brazil is.
Speaker 1Weather, the women, everything Shot some good stuff down, some good content down there, some good content.
Speaker 4I didn't shoot anything, I just kept everything in the memory. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2Nothing to incriminate himself.
Speaker 1Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2I'm going to keep this right here. Old school.
Speaker 1Old school. I like it.
Speaker 4Every time, you know, when Brazil is brought up.
Speaker 2I like light up, I'm like you know what I mean I need to go. I need to go, I don't know for some different reasons, though I know I was about to say you know me, you know me.
Speaker 1If you come from, a certain time period is very important to you and however you want to take that, however you want to understand that, that's on you.
Speaker 4For everybody that. But yeah, yeah for people that don't know, rio is not Brazil. It's not the only spot in. Brazil. There's so many other places.
Speaker 1So many.
Speaker 4That are just as beautiful. So many, but I digress. You know what I mean.
Speaker 5I mean there's other places to check out. I mean it's a big country, it's big.
Speaker 1But you said but, Darren, you said you were working on that. You're working on what?
Speaker 4Yeah, it's a documentary called the Art of Friendship. Okay, and as far as like the documentary, we pretty much was pretty much checking out all the people like the Tuareg people. Before I started the project, I didn't know anything about the Tuareg people. The Tuareg people are folks that are actually I'm sorry, but yeah, these are nomadic people in Mali, Algeria. It's huge. The whole area is full of Tuareg people.
Speaker 1Like the northern Africa and northeastern type thing.
Speaker 4Yep. So yeah, I mean I was just there and I made sure I showed everybody what they do out there as far as the arts and everything, and it was awesome.
Speaker 3How many generations too, man? Eight generations, wow, yeah, that's amazing, that's dope and everything, and it was awesome.
Speaker 4How many generations to man eight generations. Wow, yeah, and we, like, we stayed there for about six days and we just looked at the process on how they made handmade jewelry and leather goods like they. They melted the steel, they melted silver and just made rings and earrings and this and it was crazy and all by hand if we went back.
Speaker 2No man, what's the?
Speaker 1call when. When's that gonna drop? Um, it's, it's out right now it's all right, right now.
Speaker 2Yeah, we'll put the link. We'll put the link on the video.
Speaker 1We're going to link them all up.
Speaker 4So it's out in the sense of it's in Festivals right now. So like within a year or so it will be out, okay.
Speaker 1So yeah, we got, like you said, if we got a link.
Speaker 2We'll put it up there. You know all the info, all the D Mary info will be up on the link, do you want?
Speaker 4to talk about Regways, regways, regways, strong.
Speaker 2Yeah, go ahead, it's still early, it's still early Abdul trying to leak some stuff.
Speaker 1We're going to have to bring you back then. We're going to have to bring you back then.
Speaker 2I'm going to put it on you yeah, yeah, yeah, but no, I mean it's coming, it's coming but.
Speaker 1Abdul, you got anything. You said push over too, but anything else.
Speaker 3Yeah, so I have several scripts right. So I have a drama series that I already have the pilot for. I'm writing some episodes to that. It's going to be pretty dope. I have a full feature. It's a romantic comedy and it's I can't say the names right now, but it's going to be. So we're going to be. Actually, the plan is to start shooting it in December, maybe January, and what we're going to do is we're going to shoot a proof of concept. So it's going to be a short film where we're going to extract key points and stuff so people can understand what the film is about. And and and. Then from there, we're going to use to use that as a catalyst to um for funding, you know. So we can shoot the full feature, but that that's going to be pretty dope. And then I have I got some so many other things that I've written that you know and and and and. These are things that I've written, like you know, like 2020, 22, 2021 and all that stuff in 2023.
Speaker 3Currently 2024 that I've I've written where you could see like my thought process and like how deep I get as far as like when it comes to writing. You know the complexities and the intricacies of like my writing and stuff, so yeah, yeah, that's dope.
Speaker 5Yeah, so for for the pushover, you said you wrote it in 2011 yes, yeah when did you? Because I'm guessing there were there's two segments to the filming. Basically, you filmed the actual movie and then you filmed the different reaction videos.
Speaker 3Okay, okay.
Speaker 5Yeah.
Speaker 3Okay, so, okay, okay, all right.
Speaker 3So I wrote it in 2011. Okay, got it. It was November in 2011.
Speaker 3In 2015, I was like, hey, oh, darren, let's shoot something. You know what I'm saying. And so it was a short. That's what it was. It was a short and, you know, at that time I didn't know anything about structure, formatting or anything for like, because there's a certain format that you have to have when you're writing a screenplay. So, like, how I wrote it was like like how you would write like a play in, like elementary, junior high, you would like the name um, colon, dialogue, name, colon, dialogue, brackets that's the action and that's not how you're supposed to write a screenplay. So and so that that was the first script and I was like yo. So so in 2015, I was like yo, darren, uh, let's, let's shoot it.
Speaker 3But before we did that, we had like a table read in dc, in northeast, in northeast d. We were at the library and it was a bunch of friends of mine and some people that I didn't know, that another person of mine that I knew. He brought everyone together. And so we shot I mean not shot we did a table read, and so after that I was like oh, wow, okay. And then I revamped it a bit. And then from there, like later on in 2015, we started shooting. But when we were shooting, at that point in time, we had the DSLR cameras and everything. And you know, I had just bought these ARRI lights because these were like. These were like like studio, like film, studio lights, and I got them used and everything. And it was like these thousand dollar lights and we were them used and everything. And it was like these thousand dollar lights and we were so excited.
Speaker 4We're like yo still do damage with DSLR.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure, for sure, for sure, for sure so and and and so and and and we didn't know what we were doing, like on us, like I'm not on us, but on the cast and everything, and I like and I got people like from like from work, co-workers and stuff like that, and next door neighbor and was like hey, come on, we're gonna do a film and and we're shooting it and and it looked like, um, it looked like a game show or something like the lighting was just bad. You know, I'm saying it was. Yeah, it just looked bad. You know, I'm saying and it was a learning experience, yeah it was a learning experience.
Speaker 3Yeah, it was a learning experience, right, and so we did that in 2015. People, kind of a couple people, fell off, whatever. Then we recasted it with my man, james E Ingram, and then we shot in 2016. And then from there, james E Ingram he's actually in the film, he's the guy that plays Mark, he's like the best friend of mike, so. So, anyway, we shot it and it fell through again because it was just like certain people, will you know, like when someone's doing you a favor, when people feel like they're doing you a favor, that they might be like they're on their own time, you know, I'm saying so they're like yeah, I'll get there, I'll you know, and all those things yeah, I mean, yeah, it was a budget, it was a budget situation.
Speaker 4I think we were just so hell-bent on doing this idea and we were just like yo, let's just get some bodies that just want to do this. And we, after a while, we were over it. We were just like all right, I think we've graduated and we've hit our head against the wall and we're just like all right, we got to get actors for this. You know what I mean? Like the people that were there, they loved us and we loved them for them, just wanting to help us, but they weren't actors.
Speaker 1You know what I mean. Sometimes you just need that, yeah.
Speaker 4so we had to get serious about the concept and we just stopped doing it. And I want to say, years later Abdul was like yo, abdul did two short films. No, we did two short films.
Speaker 3Yeah, we did. Eric helped on all of them. Though. Eric helped on all of them. Yeah, that's right. That's right yeah.
Speaker 1Don't shout this guy out. Get his head bigger than his head.
Speaker 2I'm on to shout this guy out. Get his head bigger than all of you. I'm on the board.
Speaker 4I want to say Abdul was just being a family man for a while and he retooled, he got more equipment, he got more lights and he was just like yo, let's start doing things again. So we started doing things. We did our first short film, we did a second short film and then when we got those two under our belts, he was like guess what he's like we're gonna do the pushover again. I was like serious man he's like he's like nah man.
Speaker 4Yeah, you know, he was like nah man, we gotta get different actors. And I was just like facts man, we gotta yeah, we gotta rebuild. But he was hell bent on doing it because he was like nah man, we got to get different actors. No, it's just like facts man, we got to, yeah, we got to do it. But he was hell bent on doing it because he was just like yo, I know it's a good story and we got to execute this.
Amazon Film Promotion Panel Event
Speaker 1And it is a great story. Ladies and gentlemen, thank y'all for coming through. Thank y'all for coming through. Thank y'all for blessing us with the pushover out on Amazon. You guys check it out right now. Go see it, right now. Check it out now If you don't have an Amazon account get one, go steal somebody's.
Speaker 5I don't know, hit up your friend, make sure you rate it.
Speaker 2Rate it five stars rate everything five stars, so we can get money.
Speaker 1we just got money, if you like and if you like the pushover, like comment, subscribe. Let us know how you feel about it.
Speaker 2Put it on the comments, they'll respond back.
Speaker 1These gentlemen will also be here. They will. They will also be checking the comments to see what y'all got to say. Tell them you love it, tell them you hate it. Whatever it is, they want the feedback.
Speaker 3We want the raw. We want the raw yeah.
Speaker 2We want the feedback, yeah, absolute DMV.
Speaker 1Darren C Murray yes. Abdul T Cisse yes, Gentlemen, thanks again. Thank you guys.
Speaker 3Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen.