The Truth About FILM Distribution with Film Mode Entertainment's Clay Epstein 🎬

Welcome back, Film Hustlers! 🌍 If you’ve ever wondered if it’s actually worth raising a million bucks to make an independent movie, this is the one episode you cannot afford to miss.

Veteran film distributor Clay Epstein (Founder of Film Mode Entertainment)      pulls back the curtain on the harsh realities of the market, the myth of "gurus" telling you to believe in your dreams, and what it actually takes to sell your movie.

Turn up the volume, hit that SUBSCRIBE button, and share this with your crew. Our numbers are climbing, and we’re just getting started! 📈

🔑 Key Takeaways From This Episode:

• The 1% Rule: Why only a fraction of indie films find true commercial success, and how to make sure you aren't making a mediocre movie.
• The Mixed-Genre Trap: Why mixing genres without an Academy Award-winning star can be absolute "distribution suicide" on streaming platforms.
• The Self-Distribution Reality Check: The real story behind massive self-distributed hits like Iron Lung and Bus Boys—and why you can't just replicate it without IP or a massive built-in audience.

Transcript

Mark Roberts 0:00

Alright, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Film Hustlers. Boom! Film Hustlers around the world. I want to thank you, welcome you to the show. Global hustlers. Global hustlers. I want to thank you for listening. What's really important is I think a lot of people forget that we've done over 175 shows. And in those shows, we talked to lawyers. I I did a whole thing about how I raised money for my um documentary. We did four or five shows where we raised money for Beautiful Darkness. And that was like $65,000 right now. Boom. So you can go back and find like the lawyer stuff, the documentary, raising money for your documentary, all that stuff. Go back, find them if it's interesting to you, then you could use it and maybe get inspired by it. I mean, raising money doesn't have anything to do with how the market's doing. So, you know, you could go raise money for something that you're working on, and uh you could do well. But I want to thank everyone for listening all over the world. I also want to uh ask you to subscribe, share, share with your friends, like the show. You think that's doesn't matter, but it matters. It's important. Like our guest today, first thing he asked me is how many subscribers do you have? And I was like, not a whole lot. 25 million, right? Not a whole lot. Did you budget? Huh? We can't fudge it. No, but I but I showed him our analytics, and we have like you know, 27,000 views this year this month in 28 days. Our numbers are climbing, Robert. They are climbing, it's turning into a real thing.

Rod Rinks 1:33

So I told you year I told you fools years ago we need to do this, and nobody listened.

Mark Roberts 1:38

You were right, you're still right. Oh, and here we are, Davy. Here we are, season six. So, my my name is Mark Roberts. I'm a filmmaker, have been for a lot of years. You got a filmmaker over here, Rod Tootie Rinks, makes movies, creates verticals, does it all, and then David Dave. Poke your head in, David.

Rod Rinks 1:58

Davy Dave on the ones and twos.

Mark Roberts 1:59

Davy Dave picking it up right there. Uh also uh there's our guest back there. And then we have Clay Epstein, distributor, extraordinaire. He's been doing it for how many years now, Clay?

Clay Epstein 2:13

Uh I had to stop and think there for a minute. Graduated film school in '99 and went to work right after. So was that black and white back then? We just got into the talkies. I like it. Oh, Charlie Chaplin. I think Save by the Bell was still on the air. It was.

Mark Roberts 2:30

So it's been a minute. No, he's been doing it for a long time. He's very well respected in the business. His company's called Film Mode. He still goes to all the markets and sells movies. If you've made a movie, probably don't call him. But uh, if it's any good, call him. And you need to see a lot of people.

Rod Rinks 2:45

He's got a lot of questions for you today, Clay.

Mark Roberts 2:47

Yeah, we're gonna get into it today, Clay. We want to know a lot about what's happening. People need to know, man. It's it's it's getting it's getting serious.

Rod Rinks 2:54

It's juicy out. There's a lot of stuff on IG, a lot of stuff with like self-distribution, marketing yourself, theaters, the live action, yeah, DVDs coming back.

Mark Roberts 3:06

You need to know all this. I know you know the answers to so we're gonna get into it. If we go. If you are watching and you tuned in and you just accidentally found our show, if you want to know about film distribution, this is gonna be the one to watch.

Rod Rinks 3:19

This is it in 2026, Foods.

Mark Roberts 3:20

We're gonna get all the information. It's probably gonna happen today. So welcome to the show, Clay.

Rod Rinks 3:26

Talk about the cars about cars. What do you want? I can start. I'm on the Tikini. You want to Richard Giuff Tikini was another guest on the show. I'd take it. I'd take it.

Mark Roberts 3:36

You've been on the show before, uh, and um you know, you know what we do here.

Speaker 3:41

Well, I appreciate you having me back. We inspired people back.

Mark Roberts 3:44

Yeah, we've been you've been doing this for a long time. We've been at it for a long time. Yeah, Davy Dave is the youngest uh of us kind of moving into it slowly. And actually, he he's like it's like the matrix. He's one of the he's a baby born into the matrix. Yeah, he knows the business from net from here rather than from there.

Rod Rinks 4:03

Yeah, he knows like Davy's, you know, he got in the social space. You know, we're talking about him as he's right here. He can't talk the mic, but like he knows the social. I go to Davy all the time. Hey, I did my first, oh, I did my first um cap cut video. Did you see it, Davy?

Mark Roberts 4:17

I saw that. Why don't you do one for the show?

Rod Rinks 4:19

It was dope. Right after I sent it out, right after I posted, a buddy of mine who has a brand reached out and said, Hey, I need you to do that. How much is it? And I was like, Well, you gotta shoot the footage. It's a whole I did a day in the life. Right. I was like, I gotta figure this out. So I shot from the morning I woke up at like 4 45 until midnight when I went to bed. It was a long day. It was a long ass day. Uh, and then I pieced it all together with like nice transitions, some music.

Mark Roberts 4:42

Okay, cap cut. We got it.

Rod Rinks 4:44

We understand.

Mark Roberts 4:46

Okay, let's get into the show here. Let's go back to Davey.

Rod Rinks 4:49

Davey knows that world.

Mark Roberts 4:54

Sorry, man, but come on, we gotta move it along. All right, listen, we gotta get to the question. We gotta get to the questions that matter, okay? People need answers for their movies and what they're doing. All right, Clay, we're gonna get into it right away, okay?

Speaker 5:09

And despite that, I'm here.

Mark Roberts 5:10

Yeah, here you I you know what? I respect you for coming because you know you're gonna get roasted. Film distribution.

Speaker 5:17

Nice, real nice host we got here. Let me get the show. Bring me to the valley. You know how long it took for me to get out of the valley?

Mark Roberts 5:24

My life's work. But now you got to come back here. They keep pulling you back to the valley.

Speaker 5:28

He keeps pulling me back to the valley. Now he's gonna abuse you to abuse me. No, I'm not gonna be able to. I was abused in the valley all through teenage years.

Mark Roberts 5:35

I'm not gonna abuse you, but the thing is is that everything, every everything that's happening in the business, verticals, television, uh syndication being canceled, all the things that are happening, cable being you know, going away, streamers taking over, like the world is watching in different ways still. Are they or are they not? Like, what is happening with how people are picking up movies? And is independent film really still alive at all? Come on, man. Oh, is that my turn?

Speaker 6:09

Well, not all of it just statements, some of it was a question.

Mark Roberts 6:11

No, a lot of it was statements. I'm just saying, is independent film worth making these days, in your opinion? You don't have to, we you don't have to knock it all out of the water, but is it worth someone raising $2 million, a million dollars to make a movie these days?

Speaker 6:25

I think the I think the industry and filmmaking has always been a world of exceptions, no matter what we try and make it. And again, I'm an independent filmmaker. I'm not a studio, I don't I've never worked for a studio better or for worse, right? I just don't have that ex I never had that experience working for a studio.

Mark Roberts 6:43

But you're a very well respected, you're very well respected and liked distributor. I appreciate that. A lot of the people that I know know you, a lot of the people, uh directors, producers that I work with know you and have worked with you.

Speaker 6:54

Um I've I've spent my whole career in the independent space. And it can overlap with studios. I've worked with studios, but I've never worked for or at a studio where you have a corporate structure that's financed and you're controlling distribution and you control the marketing spend and you have TV output deals, right? And you can do a profit and loss analysis based on those deals that the studios put together. I've always been in the independent space where it's uh almost everything's made on spec, right? You don't know what's gonna happen until you make it. Yes, there's some pre-sales and you can have some distribution in place prior, but for the most part, we're all writing scripts on spec, we're making films on spec, and we're in a world of exceptions. You know, I had a film professor, I went to Cal State Northridge film program, highly recommend it.

Mark Roberts 7:46

Yeah, a lot of great people came out of Cal State Northridge.

Speaker 7:50

Help start a scholarship there in memory of my mom, which I want to talk about because it's for students that don't have all the means to get a film made. That's very close to my heart. Um but the point is, uh, this professor said one percent, one percent screenwriter, one percent talent actor, one percent filmmaker, one percent is gonna find success. Wow. Um and that always stuck with me. I, you know, positive or negative, it always stuck with me, right? Knowing how hard it is. Uh and as I got further into my career and where I am now, my perspectives have changed. You know, I don't let things get get me so anxious or upset or stressed. I try and deal with situations a bit more calmly, a bit more uh rationally, you know, because it can get quite emotional and stressful at times. Um, but I think I I thought about that 1% differently. Uh and film mode's celebrating 10 years. Oh, congratulations. That's great. I head to Canon a week. We're doing it. There's a party. Oh, you weren't invited?

Mark Roberts 8:57

How much money are you spending on that?

Speaker 8:59

As a matter of fact, very little because of the situation. We're actually uh we're doing it. It'd be nice, it'll be nice, you know.

Mark Roberts 9:07

Well, uh congratulations. Congratulations on 10 years. It feels like it was just the other day. But answer the question I'm getting to it.

Speaker 9:13

Is I'm trying to stop is independent film worth making? Well, I'm getting to that at a point. It's a buildup. After 10 years, the company, you figure about a hundred films, and does that ring true in terms of success? You know, my own experience of 1%. Um and it comes pretty close. Not that all the films I've had didn't work or didn't have distribution or didn't have varying degrees of return. Um but over about a hundred films, you know. There was one film that ended up selling everywhere that wasn't a worldwide deal, but independent distributors all over the world acquired that film. And now I'm gonna answer the question that you asked. Can you tell me what the movie is? One minute, one minute. Okay. I'm gonna answer your question again. It's film specific. It's all about the execution of the film, which comes back to what everyone said at the beginning of the time story, talent, skill, luck. Right? So, should someone get into independent film if they're really talented and they have the means to get into it and the freedom to go see and try and put finance together for a film, and they really have talent and they're collaborative and they have good talent around them and they're really good at what they do, then they may chances are find success, they may be part of that 1%. But varying degrees of mediocre talent, degrees of mediocrity, maybe not. So 99% of films made are not gonna just not be an independent space, films made on spec, relying on an independent marketplace to acquire the film, put marketing together, films not made in a corporate environment that's controlling the distribution, but you know, in the space made in space we're making films on spec.

Mark Roberts 11:15

So it's still a hard business. If you're looking if you're out there and you want to make movies, it's impossible to know if you have talent or not, though.

Speaker 11:22

I mean, you everyone I think I'm a pretty good judgment of talent.

Mark Roberts 11:25

Well, you're a good judge of talent, but I'm saying like people that are out, like if you put 10 people to get 10 filmmakers in line, they're all gonna say they have talent. Or they're gonna say, like, oh, I know how to do it.

Speaker 11:35

I really don't think it matters what I think or you think, or Sergio Tacchini over here thinks. Hey, hey. I think it's the audience will be make that determination.

Rod Rinks 11:47

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 11:48

And uh they make it pretty quickly now, right? Because of how quickly the reviews and the IMDB rating and the Rotten Tomato uh stars, etc., the rating and the stars, um that's so immediate, yeah, that that's good news, bad news. Something that truly is good and that's that's striking and hitting and popping with an audience in a marketplace, the word can get out very quickly. But the flip side of that, if a film is not resonating with an audience and not working, and the audience is determined that that is not a talented piece of film, uh film making, then the word gets out also very quickly.

Mark Roberts 12:26

Yeah, I mean, look, it's it's hard. I I was at LACMA over the weekend with my wife, and we were looking at all this art, and it was interesting because my wife turned to me and said, like, hey, how do you know if you're a good artist? Like, how do you know if it's a good piece of work? And I was like, Well, there's the people that paint, and if those painters don't continue to promote themselves and what they do and their superpower, whatever that is, um, then they will go off into a you know into nothingness. No one will ever see their work, no one will ever see their art. But if they hustle, just like everyone out there has to hustle to do whatever they're doing, uh, if they hustle, if they continue to show, if they continue to try things that don't work, uh then eventually, if you are talented, people know people start to notice you and you start to sell more, and you get into a groove like there's uh like Carlos Almaraz, who I did the documentary about, he had he had he had uh a series of successful paintings, you know, uh about Echo Park, about car crashes, all having to do with his childhood. You know, he was a voyeur at Echo Park, he was afraid of the freeways when he showed up here as an immigrant. Uh those became very successful. There's a lot of stuff he did that didn't weren't weren't as successful. So that's what filmmakers have to do.

Rod Rinks 13:51

But even if you go to like Van Gogh, right? You know the story about him, it was a failure.

Mark Roberts 13:54

You know, you're gonna tell me the one story where he was a failure, but he succeeded.

Rod Rinks 13:59

Huh? Go ahead. Well, do you do you know the story? I know this, I know the story. How did he become successful? How did he become successful? He died. He died, he died, and then how did he how did his no his paintings did not sell when he was alive? Right, it was a complete failure. He died, and then he became successful. And after his death, how did he become successful?

Mark Roberts 14:20

People bought his art.

Rod Rinks 14:23

Fucking genius over here. But why how did they buy why did they buy his art? You want to know why they weren't making it anymore? Because he started, he was writing letters. There was it's essentially like today, what's kind of happening with the social space, like BTS. Everybody wants to know about building your brand before it goes to market, right? Building your audience before you actually go into production, pre-production, getting the feel for it, building all that. Van Gogh had written letters to his brother talking about his life as a failure and all the stuff, right? His wife, when he died, they were she was broke, she needed some. She took those letters and created a book. And the book became a huge success.

Mark Roberts 15:04

And then everyone wanted his art.

Rod Rinks 15:06

Everybody wanted his art.

Mark Roberts 15:07

Okay.

Rod Rinks 15:08

So it's subjective, right? Because his art before his death sucked.

Mark Roberts 15:13

It's not subjective.

Rod Rinks 15:14

But then why would why would the same guy who said that's a piece of shit five years later when he's when he's dead, go, Oh my god, I'll spend because that's marketing.

Mark Roberts 15:23

Because that's marketing. But that's the whole point, is that if Van Gogh, while he was alive, had hustled and found ways to market himself, he might have been successful before he died. Um, and I I think But isn't the painting, the painting? No, it's not, it's not the painting. No, there's a lot of very, very great painters. I'm talking about great painters, amazing painters that are never gonna get past their garage. They're out there painting an amazing piece of work, right? And no one's ever gonna see it, and no one's ever gonna buy it, and it's never gonna become anything. And you know why? It has nothing to do with whether or not he has talent or not. It has more to do with are you out there working it? Are you out there marketing yourself? Are you are you trying and failing and failing and trying? And are people finding you or not finding you? Someone has to see you, you know. I think at the end of the day, you make a great point. People that are filmmakers that are not trying constantly to make movies and uh and to work within the system are never going to see the light of day.

Rod Rinks 16:26

So that brings me to this point, Clay. Have you heard about this self-dribute distribution stuff that they're doing? Like uh, you know, Iron Lung that he's a gamer, Mark, I forget what his name is.

Mark Roberts 16:37

That was a great one. We talked about that a couple of weeks ago, yeah.

Rod Rinks 16:40

Yeah, he he never made a film, had a huge following.

Speaker 16:43

Huge following.

Rod Rinks 16:44

40 million people. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 16:46

So that's why it worked, because he was able to leverage his followers. And if you're getting a bit uh an important part, is that it was based on IP. Oh, Iron Long was the video game.

Rod Rinks 16:57

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 16:58

So you had he had a built-in audience from the video game. Yeah, and he had a built-in audience from his social media followers, that he followers that he could then leverage to go see the film, and he was uh this is too his merit. This is not that he was uh financially stable enough to take that risk himself, but not not lose his life if it didn't work. Right. And we're hearing about this one because it worked, right? And there's reasons why it worked, but it worked.

Rod Rinks 17:28

There's been a few though, because that now more and more are coming out. Like I was watching this guy the other day, he made a movie for like half a million dollars, and he he put $25,000 into ad marketing on social, so TikTok, IG, YouTube, and they asked him what was the return, and he said a million dollars. And they said, Hold on a second, you made the movie for half a million or less for somewhere right around there. So you spent $25,000 in marketing yourself, and he said yes, and you made a million dollars off of it, like a million dollars off your film, and he said yes. And I kind of believe him because I did a caldera campaign, skincare, and I was just doing it because you know they paid me a little bit of money, and I'm that's the field I'm in. And that ad was they just bombarded the market with that ad, social media, Instagram stuff. And I would get people who go, Hey, you're the caldera guy. And I was like, Oh, okay. And Lopez was like, Hey, dude, that's a lot. So I know it works because it happened, right? Like, I was like, wow, it's a lot of people, and and the success of Caldera exploded. Like it's a big, it's a great product. I'm not pitching it, I'm just saying it's a great product. And um, they just dumped a bunch of money into the ads, you know. Is that a new what do you think about that form of distribution?

Speaker 18:46

I still think it's film specific. Iron Lung worked because that particular film and the situation he had IP and he had followers to drive traffic. Yeah, the other one you're referring to, I'm not I don't know what film that is. Yeah, I don't know the situation. I don't know if he had to go pay for theaters. Because when you self-distribute, cinemas don't did he release it in the theater, self-distribute? Yeah, it was a theater at the end. Yeah, right. So you have to if the cinemas don't book it, yeah, then you have to you have to almost rent the screen to play your film, and then you collect uh ticket sales. Let me see if I can find out.

Mark Roberts 19:21

He's talking about stuff that we don't know.

Rod Rinks 19:23

Iron Lung, he had his community, if you call it. Right.

Speaker 19:28

They actually reached, they were reaching out saying, Yeah, Iron Lung worked, it was very I think that's very it was a very specific situation.

Rod Rinks 19:35

And there's an IP behind it. It was, you know, he's a gamer, it came in that space.

Speaker 19:39

You can't just have made a movie and say, I'm gonna go do what Iron Lung do did, and just expect to go make the that same amount of money. There were specific reasons that we can point to that it worked and was successful because he made tens of millions off that, yeah.

Rod Rinks 19:52

But he also spent money, he had the ability to spend money, and even like uh Theo Vaughn and uh David Spade, they just made that movie Bus Boys for three million, five million. And um, you know, I think they self-distributed, right? But they have a David's platform.

Speaker 20:06

David, but David Spade's uh a celebrity, yeah, with the following of the. You know, he's got a big thing. So there's a reason, right? Yeah, so you can point to the reasons or the strengths of those films that led to their success. Yeah, yeah. Against odds, yeah, right?

Rod Rinks 20:23

Yeah.

Speaker 20:24

Um, to just say if someone makes a film for 500,000, should they go spend 500,000 and release it at the theaters? Not necessarily. And I think I think there should be a litmus test. If you go to all the distributors in the, we're talking about the US, I guess, I suppose.

Rod Rinks 20:41

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 20:41

If you go to all the distributors in the US, yeah, and they all pass on your film, yeah, at least the the distribution landscape in a traditional sense is saying, you know what, we don't think there's enough value there. Yeah, we're not gonna put our machine behind it. Whether it's acquiring it from you or releasing it on a self-distribution um, sorry, uh straight distribution where they don't pay you up front, but they give you a revenue share, but they put their machine behind it, right? Yeah. Um there are films that no distributor feels is worth putting in the effort to go release. They don't feel there's enough audience. Yeah. And there can be legitimacy to that. Nothing, there's nothing uh written in stone or or any formal book or any, you know, anything written in the sky that says if you make a movie, there is an audience for it.

Rod Rinks 21:30

Yeah.

Speaker 21:31

Or if you make a movie, it will be successful, even though everyone says it won't be. Or because I think I'm talented, I am talented. There's a narrative that we love to talk about, and film schools love to lecture about. And everyone on a QA panel, uh, and everyone being interviewed on a talk show loves to reinforce that narrative. If you believe in yourself and you believe in your work and you believe in your story, it's gonna happen. It's bullshit. I'm sorry. It's bullshit.

Mark Roberts 21:57

And the bank is the bank is reporting. Possessing your house next week. It's not true. So do that.

Speaker 22:02

And it's irresponsible for someone to not look at the realities and balance the realities with what their dreams are. Yeah. No one owes you to make your dream come true. No. And a lot of it has to do with luck or creating your own luck and putting yourself in the right place where luck can happen. But that luck still has to have talent behind it. Yeah. And you're going to be able to do it.

Mark Roberts 22:27

So let me give you guys some, just so you guys know what more or less what we're talking about. Recently, the box office results for opening weekend of Bus Boys were revealed showing it grossed $1.65 million in their 800 theater run on a $3 million budget. The Burt Kresher movie, The Machine, grossed $5 million in $2,409 theaters, and it had a $20 million budget.

Rod Rinks 22:54

Oh 20, so he's self- I know that guy.

Mark Roberts 22:59

Yeah, so they're not going to make their money back. But $20 million is a lot of money to spend on it.

Rod Rinks 23:03

That's a lot of money, too.

Mark Roberts 23:04

But I think, look, reality check, you're right. You know, I mean, I think, I think I can't completely sign up for the idea that that even if you don't succeed at what you're trying to do as a filmmaker, it doesn't necessarily mean you don't have talent.

Speaker 23:22

No, I didn't say that.

Mark Roberts 23:23

No, but I'll sign up for the idea that you have to be honest with yourself. You have to be honest with yourself and you have to decide what's worth your time and energy because you know you could spend a lot of time and energy on making movies and have them.

Speaker 23:38

I don't think for the same reason you can't. And you got you got me all worked up on the last question. But I gotta be calmer. I don't get worked up, I like it. I I don't think it's right to point to one reason why someone's successful, or or say that film's successful because of that one reason, right? When something, when a film is successful, there's a lot of reasons. And a lot of reasons that the general audience and ourselves aren't even aware of. We don't know what happened behind the scenes or how all the financing and what happened in the editing room, why the programmer at a Sundance or Toronto decided to say yes to this. There's discussions that we'll never hear about that as well, the initiatives of a film festival. So many things that have to happen to get a film made, financed, made, and executed well, and then into the festival circuit by the top A-list festivals to give it the exposure that gives it a platform to then pop and become acquired by a neon or A24 or equivalent and then find its audience, right? So many things have to have happened, and a lot of it is luck and circumstance and strategy and relationships and talent, right? And collaborative working conditions, right? Payoffs. Right. Well, and I think in the same way, it's not right to say something didn't work for one particular reason, right? Because that also was not right, because something doesn't, some things that don't work, there's also a multitude of reasons why it probably did not work. You can go to the creative and the execution, but maybe the lack of collaborative filmmaking or the budget was wrong, it was pr was not produced well, the VFX weren't good. The message. The message, the script was, the script was broken from day one, right? Yeah. You go into making a film with the bad script, it's already set up to fail from from the first page.

Rod Rinks 25:39

Yeah.

Speaker 25:40

You know.

Rod Rinks 25:41

We went and met, remember we met with Millennium, and they, you know, we we were pitching them uh Beautiful Darkness as a thriller, and they actually they're really great. They said think more of like a mashup, like thriller meets sci-fi meets like horror. And I was like, wow, that's crazy. And then that movie came out with um begonia.

Mark Roberts 26:02

Oh, begonia, yeah.

Rod Rinks 26:04

And it has all those elements, dude. Like it's a great movie.

Mark Roberts 26:06

I watched it and and like uh three all at the same time.

Rod Rinks 26:09

Yeah, thriller, sci-fi, horror, like it was it was a mashup. That's one of the can't it was nominated, right?

Speaker 26:16

Or it wasn't because generally speaking, yeah, but who did it have in it? Right, right. Because if you have a film that has mixed genres in our space, it's suicide. Oh, really? Yeah, because when you go on a on a screening platform, yeah, what how are films organized? Yeah. No, I'm asking. Well, no, comedy, drama, family, yeah, all that, yeah. And usually someone says, I'm in the mood for an action, I like comedy, I like drama films, I like you know sci-fi movies. So when you when the film doesn't know what it is, yeah, it's really difficult in the distribution space to know how to release that film if the film doesn't really know what it is. There's always going to be exceptions, like begonia with Emma Stone. Emma Stone, so you have to. And the other guy was amazing. He was great. Yeah, so you have excellent execution, you have a huge Academy Award-winning star, you have, you know, you have all those reasons that that can director. Right, and that can that can uh be an exception to the rule. Right. But that exception to the rule is the best possible version that it could be to break that rule.

Mark Roberts 27:20

Okay, that's awesome. So streamusic.com, best music library in the business. I'm gonna be using them very soon on my Christmas movie in June. Today, yesterday, and tomorrow, it is absolutely the best place to find whatever it is that you're looking for for your for your movies, for any of your content. They are amazing. We want to thank them for their partnership and for their uh sponsorship and uh go check them out at gmusic.com. Also, don't forget about the library. Now that I have you all worked up, let's talk about this. Comment down. If you're if you're a young filmmaker the way we were at one point, think about yourself. So before you were before you were as tainted as you are now. Just go back, go back 30 years and think about your young filmmaker living today. Like, what is the most important sort of first step? Let's say you do go out and raise money from you know people that believe in you and you get yourself a hundred thousand dollars. What is what what what would you advise someone to do so that they can either find find their their superpower in that and also find like get eyes on it, be like, oh, that's interesting. That's you know, like get people to notice what you're doing. Like, is it a genre? Is it editing? Is it all of it?