Garrett Patten talks working with Matt Damon and his latest film with Adrian Grenier SELF CUSTODY

THE Film Hustlers, sit down with actor, entrepreneur, and filmmaker Garrett Patton (TBK Productions) to talk about the reality of independent filmmaking. From a 15-year career in private equity to navigating union negotiations, tax credits, and the chaotic world of indie budgets, Garrett shares what it really takes to push the boulder up the hill.

We dive into his upcoming projects, with Matt Damon on Start Without Me, producing alongside top talent like Lucy Hale and Josh Duhamel, and his latest venture with Adrian Grenier (Self Custody and the new docuseries Beyond the Break). Plus, we break down the changing landscape of global distribution, why Christmas movies remain bulletproof, the rise of vertical storytelling, and how filmmakers can adapt to survive in a rapidly evolving media ecosystem.

Key Takeaways & Discussion Points:

• From Private Equity to Film: How business acumen translates to the chaotic world of entertainment startups and high-stakes negotiations.
• The Matt Damon Collaboration: Behind-the-scenes look at producing Start Without Me and navigating a four-year post-production and distribution journey.
• Mastering Tax Incentives: Why shooting in places like Buffalo, New Mexico, and international hubs like Spain can make or break a lower-budget indie film.
• The Evolution of Content: The shift toward vertical platforms, global streaming numbers, and why creator authenticity is winning over audiences.
• Adrian Grenier’s Next Chapter: Exploring Bitcoin, nature rehabilitation, and turning life changes into compelling new media.

Transcript

Mark Roberts 0:00

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Film Hustlers. All the people in the world, uh, film hustlers of the n of of uh the universe. There's a lot of them. There's a lot of them. There's a lot of you guys out there, and thank you for listening. Just remember, uh, there's uh uh over 175 shows, lawyers, um, writers, people, writers, famous people, Caroline Kevin, Tommy Harper. Tell your friends, uh subscribe, uh, sign up. Well plus, you can make sign up, sign up! Going online on the all right, subscribe and like. There we go.

Rod Rinks 0:36

Subscribe and like welcome to 2026.

Mark Roberts 0:38

Well, please check out uh tell your friends about the other shows. Check out the other shows. Lots of people still downloading shows from two, three years ago, which is amazing. We did a whole show about how raising how to raise over $200,000 at a tardeada for your uh for your um documentary. Did we? Yeah, we did a whole show about it. We talked exactly about how to raise that money. This guy spoke it again. What do you mean?

Rod Rinks 1:06

I mean, we raised money on the show.

Mark Roberts 1:08

We raised money, we raised over $60,000 on the show to do a short called Beautiful Dark Directed, written by this guy, shot on 35mm award-winning. Award winning. Hey, that sounds good in over 10 festivals, semi-finalists, semi-finalists three or four nominated one.

Rod Rinks 1:29

I mean, come on. You know what, Davy? How do I drop this mic?

Mark Roberts 1:32

Uh we're we're recording here at the library, uh, which is a private cigar lounge that you if you try to find, you won't be able to. Uh, but we're we're we love it here. It's a great place to shoot, so check them out. Um, but we could hook you up. We can hook you up.

Rod Rinks 1:47

Actually, yeah, slide into his DMs and slide in the film hustler DM or my or or you know what, just follow them on IG, the library. Oh, there you go. Cigar lounge.

Mark Roberts 1:55

There you go.

Rod Rinks 1:55

Check them out. They're all private club. They're still looking for only a handful of members they want, uh, which is pretty cool. Yeah, I think Vic, the owner, great guy. Um, they're looking for like 40 or 50 more members, and then they're closing the books, like the mob. Books are closed.

Mark Roberts 2:09

Can't come in anymore.

Rod Rinks 2:10

That's it.

Mark Roberts 2:10

Well, we got a really cool uh executive uh and businessman and entrepreneur, filmmaker, kind of does it all. Garrett Patton is here with us today. Hey, finally, he's from TBK Productions. Been you've been exec producing and making movies for about 11 years.

Garrett Patten 2:28

Yeah, first off, let me just say I like the name film hustle, hustlers, because every project I've been a part of is a hundred percent a hustle. That's it. And it's like pushing a boulder up a hill. Yeah, yeah. And you gotta have the passion to get it done, otherwise, it's never gonna get done.

Rod Rinks 2:43

We used to call it let's get into it, but it was kind of like eh, because it's true, we'd get into it. You know, we do get into it. We do get into it, but then it was kind of like there's there's so many let's get into it things. But like film hustler, there's no debating what that is. In a film, you're hustling, it doesn't matter at what level.

Garrett Patten 2:57

Like no other business in the world. Like, you know, I I came from the private equity world.

Rod Rinks 3:01

Yeah.

Garrett Patten 3:01

Where you know, there's a lot going on, but it's things are more stable, and you got your executive teams and you got these operations. When you get into films, it's like you're setting up these mini businesses for three months, and it's and it's a full hustle. And if you don't have the passion and the determination to see it through, it just it won't happen.

Rod Rinks 3:18

Because your odds are so stacked against you, you're selling a dream, you're selling the sizzle, right? You're like, this movie's gonna be amazing. We got these great people, and the executives who are listening to you are going, How am I gonna recoup my money? That sounds great and all, and I get it. That's a great idea, but how am I gonna get my money?

Garrett Patten 3:35

When you look at the financial side, it just takes people with a similar passion, which is a very small select people with money that actually would have the passion to want to be involved. Yeah, you know, it's but you know, and it's I I always say it's like VC odds, you know. With the right team, I think you get up there to maybe like five or six out of ten.

Speaker 3:54

Yeah.

Garrett Patten 3:54

With just throwing a dart at the at the board and picking a project, you're probably three out of ten, you know, in the independent film space.

Mark Roberts 4:00

Yeah.

Garrett Patten 4:01

But if you get the right team and the right people, I think you increase those odds dramatically.

Mark Roberts 4:04

Well, you worked with some huge people. I think the last time we talked, you were working with Matt Damon.

Garrett Patten 4:09

Yeah, yeah. We we produced a project together called uh Start Without Me. Yeah, which uh should be out just before Thanksgiving this year. Oh, that's great. Congratulations. But again, it's like you look at that project. We filmed uh four years ago, yeah. And then you know, when you get into even post-production, all the things that you run into and the issues and and then distribution, you you know, so many different deals being thrown at you with different things that for one reason you don't want to do them or another, and yeah, here you are four years later.

Mark Roberts 4:39

What made you want to get because you were you you weren't in show business as your initial hustle?

Garrett Patten 4:45

I I so first off, I've had 13 family members go to USC. And in high school Legacy, legacy, every summer I'd come out for film programs, and that that was from a little kid. I remember when I was in uh junior high, I was like one of the first guys to have an Adobe editing board, you know, like the back then the boards were this big, and you slid them into your computer, and you could only edit two minutes at a time, and you know, it was a it was a whole process. Um, and so then I started doing a a lot of film programs at USC. I attended USC, but I graduated in business. Smart. Went into the private equity world for about 15 years, and then exited, had a big big exit out of the private equity world, and for the last 11 years, I have been fully committed to making films.

Mark Roberts 5:29

And what what was the very first thing you did after uh after spending so much time in the private equity world?

Garrett Patten 5:34

Yeah, so the first project that I became involved with, well, the first script that I read was actually Start Without Me, believe it or not. And then that went on kind of hold. That's the the Matt Damon project. Yeah, and that went on hold for several years. In the meantime, while that was on hold, I did another project called Barrago with Lucy Hale, which I executive produced, but ended up more producing the two alongside with Damiano Tucci. I don't know if you know Damiano, he's done a bunch of big projects. Um, and then I went in and I did uh The Bandit with Josh Damal and Mel Gibson, which you know we had a lot of success with that project. And then that just that's led to four or five other projects that I EP'd. And then obviously at that point is when Start Without Me really started to take off. And I was with Matt, uh the producer for that. And so that's when I really started to learn all the business side of making films, you know, from doing the contracts, the union negotiations, uh, you know, all the the talent agreements to setting up the LLCs, insurance, your payroll systems, you know, everything like you're setting up a small business.

Mark Roberts 6:41

People have the wherewithal in business to move into entertainment. I don't think it's that different, right? Like when you went from private equity and all the negotiations you did there uh to show business, it's just really a new set of people, a new set of contracts. But right, I mean, it's all there's regulations on this side, there's regulations on that side.

Garrett Patten 7:00

Yeah, I think that the big difference is you know, each of these projects, it's yeah, you're bringing some good people along, but you're getting a lot of new people in for every project. Well, like when I when I was running a business in Chicago, I had the same executive team for for many years, and we knew we knew what we were all doing together, where we're headed. And so then you look like the filmmakers that I aspire to, like I actually helped out with Horizon with with Kevin Coster. So I got to see behind the scenes of that for a long time. And you know, Kevin's got even though I know they didn't have a lot of financial success on Horizon, he has the same team that he's been working with for a long time, and he brings most of them along to every project. And I think when you can actually get to that point, when you have that kind of crew, the people that you you know, and you're each one of these is not like a new startup, that's when you can really start to have the success. Because otherwise it's uh it's pretty chaotic in pre-production when you you've got a hundred people on your crew and 60 of them are people you haven't met before.

Mark Roberts 8:01

Yeah, but it's well it's called the first date. The first date. The first date, you know. It's it's it and it's tough, you know. Like I think I think when you when you make a movie with a studio, sometimes that happens, you know, where you're a new producer, you sell a project, you go to make that project, and the studio says, Oh, yeah, we're gonna shoot this here, you're gonna shoot this in Toronto, uh, and then you realize, oh, I can't translate all of my American crew to Canadian crew because you have to be Canadian to get the tax credit, all that kind of stuff. And we talked about that on a recent show. Like you can't really make a movie without a tax credit anymore.

Garrett Patten 8:37

It's a very, very big part of the that's why you end up hiring local crews and getting new people.

Mark Roberts 8:40

Yeah, so you end up on a first date with a lot of people unless you're Costner, unless you're someone big, or unless you're making Christmas movies, which we do a lot of, and you know, we get to take all the all the people that we normally work with, or a lot of them, you know, the our keys, you know. They then we kind of crew up with with uh everyone else because you're filming in LA. Well, no, we film in Buffalo, we've shot in uh uh Mexico, Mexico, New Mexico. We shot in Tennessee. Yeah, we shot in a lot of different places in Chicago.

Garrett Patten 9:08

So how are you getting around the the tax incentive to that?

Mark Roberts 9:11

We no well some like for instance, Buffalo allows you to bring uh above the line, they allow you to bring your heads of department, and you just have to book everyone else there. Um there's you know, there's some there's some uh things that you have to the rules that you have to follow. Um, but for the most part, I could bring my DP, I could bring my uh wardrobe um uh person, I could bring my um line producer. So most of the department heads are bringing. All of the department heads you can bring, and they qualify. Buffalo's got a very competitive tax credit. It's a very good one. Uh Illinois has one too. It's good, not as great. Yeah, we shot Start Without Me in Chicago. Yeah, so you get a little bit, right? You get a little taste. Uh, I think uh New Mexico was pretty darn good, and um and Tennessee was was pretty good too. But all of Buffalo's the that's what we get. Buffalo's the best. Yeah, Buffalo's the best. New York has a very, very aggressive tax credit. They will let you they will let you get a lot of that money back. And you know, I mean, look, when you're doing a uh when you have a three million dollar budget and you can see almost a million dollars in ret in in in tax ret in tax credit, that's that's I I found with Illinois it was difficult to get the tax incentive back.

Garrett Patten 10:31

It took a couple years, and yeah, most small productions you need that for post.

Mark Roberts 10:34

We did about 13, 14 months, yeah.

Garrett Patten 10:36

Yeah, but I I I know because I've talked to some local politicians and I know that they they're working on fixing that, but it's everyone wants to fix it.

Mark Roberts 10:44

It's just you know, and now they're they're talking about a federal uh tax incentive that you get from the government, another five percent. So if you get 30 and then another five from that'd be amazing from the government, yeah, it'd be it'd be amazing. I mean it's really it look it's not gonna change anything for LA though. Canada's doing it, Canada's doing it very successful and has for a long time.

Rod Rinks 11:03

But did you see they're trying to hit people with the with like a tariff? Yeah, well, like a back pay. What is that? Yeah, like because the difference in pay that they're getting less, so now they're wanting produ uh producers and production companies to pay like to pay a fee on back pay on productions that had shot there because they feel it's not fair that the basically like it's almost like saying, Hey, come come to my store, I'm gonna give you a deal, and then you get there and you're like, Okay, you ate that. Oh well, it's really gonna be five more bucks. Like really they want you to start paying if you shot a movie there, Christmas movie. Yeah, I shot a Christmas movie. They want their money, they want their money.

Garrett Patten 11:36

Huh, they want their money back there. Well, I think a lot of this is why people go are looking a lot more at Europe and you know, I I have buddies looking at Colombia. Um we shot Ireland, we shot Barrago in uh in Spain. Oh, yeah, we there it was a 7.2 million dollar uh California budget that we shot in Spain for 3.6. Wow, and I would say that the quality was pretty comparable.

Mark Roberts 11:59

But not but was there a tax credit there or just like a yeah, it no it didn't matter.

Garrett Patten 12:04

It didn't matter. I mean it's I think what you just really save is like an all the like the transportation costs and all that. Yeah, like Chicago when you when you film there, you know, the the cost of just having the trailers and the transportation to set and all that is yeah five, six X what it would be in other countries that's true. Yeah, I mean we try to keep trailers.

Mark Roberts 12:22

We try to get we try to keep that to a minimum on Lopez movies, you know. We try to stay away from having to transport a bunch of. Yeah, it becomes a third of your budget, and you're like, what just happened? And it's not necessary, you know. I was talking to someone about it the other day. We had I don't know, we had we had a block of trailers on Meet Me Next Christmas, and no one went to them. None of the actors went to them. They all wanted to stay on set and hang out. And Mario likes sit in the car talking about Mario Lopez. He likes to come to the set and just stay there. Like he hasn't there's no room necessary, you know. He's like, I don't need a room, like why do I want to go to why don't I want to walk down the street to a room when I can just stay, you know, sit in a chair on the set.

Garrett Patten 13:00

I think unless it's harsh conditions, like yeah, like when I when I we'll get into it when I shot the iron door, we were out in the desert for uh for 21 days, yeah. And it's it was super hot, super cold. There was hailing, you know, what whatever was was going on. I mean, the if you didn't have the trailers, I think we would have been in a lot of trouble.

Rod Rinks 13:18

Yeah, I mean in some cases you gotta have it. Yeah, and iron door, you didn't ep that though, or you did ep, but you also directed it, right?

Garrett Patten 13:24

Uh yeah, no, I directed it, and I yeah, I I put I put some finances in it as well. Yeah, yeah.

Mark Roberts 13:31

So you finance, you produce, you direct, you kind of do it all. And and he acted that's amazing. And you've act you what what what have you acted in?

Garrett Patten 13:38

Well uh I have a film out on uh Amazon right now called Self Custody. Oh, that's amazing. Adrian Grenade.

Mark Roberts 13:44

Adrian Granny, yeah. I just saw him on uh Vince. No, uh yeah, on um Doubleware's Prada. Yeah, he was great in that. The guy's a great actor, he should you know be doing more, but apparently he is. I didn't know that.

Garrett Patten 13:55

Yeah, I mean he took a little hiatus. I think he just wanted to get away from it all. You know, he's if if you see him in Texas right now, he he's a farmer.

Mark Roberts 14:02

That's amazing.

Garrett Patten 14:03

He's farming. That's but and I think that this project, self-custody, and he would tell you this is it's a Bitcoin movie. It got him re-energized to get back into TV and we're turning it into a show and also you're turning into a series.

Mark Roberts 14:17

Yeah, oh that's cool. Well, good luck with good luck with uh with selling that. Sounds like I mean, he's a he's a great actor. I mean, he was on Entourage, he was been on a lot of great movies, so I'm sure you'll have some success with that.

Garrett Patten 14:27

Yeah, he you know, on set, I mean he's just he was a pro.

Mark Roberts 14:30

Would love to see him back. I mean, I think he's you know, I think he's got some talent. I mean, like I'm telling you, I was watching Double Ware's Prada, going like, man, this guy's great. That's the first one or the second one? Uh the first one. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I didn't I don't think he was in the second.

Garrett Patten 14:42

Yeah, he said his character wasn't likeable enough to get into the second. But that's funny. He's like, they need to make a spin-off on that.

Mark Roberts 14:48

He was great, though, man. He was great. That movie was great. I was like look watching it going, like, man, they don't make movies like this anymore. Even the second Devil Wears Prada, in my opinion, don't you know, don't get all crazy. It was just okay, you know. It had like you could tell like development people got involved with it. It's not like before, you know, like when you could you you can make a movie 20 years ago, 15 years ago, and you could see there's less uh noise, there's less people giving advice or suggesting this character do that, or you know, uh or or a storyline in the second act, all of a sudden you see like some cohesive storytelling back in the day, yeah. Less of that now.

Rod Rinks 15:23

Yeah, because everybody has their two cents.

Mark Roberts 15:25

Everyone's getting their yeah, so they have to.

Garrett Patten 15:27

So Adrian and I have a another cool project coming out. Um, it's called Beyond the Break.

Speaker 4 15:32

Yeah.

Garrett Patten 15:32

And it's all these processes that so when he wanted to make a life change and he wanted to get out of Hollywood, he went through a couple years of um, I don't want to call it a therapy process because it's more like a nature process. But we so we've been filming, we have four of the six episodes done now. Like, for instance, for one of the episodes, we went with a couple other people and we lived in a canyon for seven nights with no tents, no, you know, you're you're getting your own food. It's like a survival thing, but you also go through this uh rehabilitation of of like your soul. And so we were in a Utah canyon for seven nights. No there's no phones. I mean, there's no reception, there's nothing. We didn't have tents, you're just sleeping under the stars. One night it was snowing, the next night it was raining. And we've been going through these processes and filming it, and we're we're gonna put the show out there. But wait a minute, is that a reality show? It's I don't know if a docuseries, yeah. I'd call it more of a docuseries. It's it's Adrian bringing other people through a process that he went through that that changed him and changed changed.

Mark Roberts 16:37

Ayahuasca?

Garrett Patten 16:38

Well, ayahuasca's not in it, but what one of the one of the episodes um it's called a sacred hunt, and we do go into a sweat lodge, and there are some uh psychedelics involved, and you know, some some other things.

Rod Rinks 16:51

But were you did you produce that? Did you direct that, or were you in that? Because I can I don't know. You got you're all in it. Yeah, you're in it. Okay, good. I mean, you got the looks of a movie star, by the way. You know what I mean?

Garrett Patten 17:03

Um, we have a couple other we have one of the cast members from Vikings, the show, she's in it. Yeah. Um, so we got some interesting people that for one reason or another, we we have a uh a war veteran in it that was going through a lot of trauma. People that Adrian had connected with that he wanted to try to help. That's cool. That's that is cool.

Mark Roberts 17:21

Well, yeah, man. Good luck with that too. I mean, you're you're kind I think you you're doing what everyone should be doing, which is exploring all the different types of media, getting it out there, seeing what works. It's hard, it's hard to know what's gonna work these days. It's not like the old days, you know, where you could just put it on Thursday night and have a hit.

Rod Rinks 17:40

But you know what I've heard? Maybe I'm wrong. I'm I'm hearing the screen. Oh my god, says the guy. Sign up to our website. Www.ht-l. So I mean, and there is something to be said about like too much screens, you know what I mean? And we live in screens, like our joint life.

Mark Roberts 18:00

Yeah, I can't, I can't I can't sign up for that. Screens are the future, screens are everywhere. I'll tell you, I'll tell you everywhere.

Garrett Patten 18:08

Because my kids, you know, they do get 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the night of their iPad. Yeah, and when they will not turn on the TV, they'd rather sit there on YouTube and just swipe videos and watch any movie on TV right now. And so that's you know, like the conversation we had earlier about verticals, yeah. That is where, and I have a 12-year-old, 10 and 8, that's where they are fully headed towards. Yeah.

Mark Roberts 18:33

Well, let me ask you this since you're heading into that and you're you seem to be working in all sorts of different uh areas of entertainment. What do you find business-wise? What do you find attractive about verticals? Like why get into a financial standpoint? Yeah, why get into it? Uh if you're out there and you're a filmmaker, you know, why get into it?

Garrett Patten 18:53

I I did my first vertical a few months back because I wanted to fully understand how to first off shoot a vertical, but because uh the observations I had with my children. So I sat there and I said, Okay, look, here are these uh almost teenagers, and this is all they watch. Yeah, I mean, when a a new Disney film or something comes out, well, you know, we'll we'll go watch it. But they are it's not like when I was a kid when you know on the weekend we're putting on different DVDs or we're looking at HBO or whatever, whatever. We were look I was looking for movies. They're not looking for movies, they are scrolling through YouTube videos, and so I said, look, that I do believe that there's a huge market for this for the future. And then I I mean you look at the drama box numbers, and I think they're they're doing financially really, really well.

Mark Roberts 19:39

Yeah, well they keep they keep the numbers keep going up, man.

Garrett Patten 19:42

Keep going up. So I but I I didn't have any interest in making a drama vertical because I'm I'm not gonna spend even six weeks of my life putting something like that together. So I I try to do it more theatrical vertical, um and but it hasn't taken to the way that the drama vertical and I could see it on social media of exactly when people log off. Yeah, and it's every time there's a little lull in it, they swipe. Yeah, it's gone. So it's I mean, it's so different than traditional filmmaking. Um, look, to me, a lot of it's about time. Like I look at the projects that I have coming up in the future, and anything that's gonna take me, like a feature film, it's gonna take nine months of my life away, which I love. I love every second of it. But if I'm gonna take nine months and dedicate my soul or a project and be away from my children, I better love it. Yeah. Not to say that I'm not I I think if I do more verticals, which I I will, I want to take true stories, maybe like you know, lesser known athletes that have something really interesting that have happened to them and reenact those in a vertical, and I think there could be a bigger market for that. It's tough. That's interesting.

Rod Rinks 20:54

You're saying 50% of Hollywood, including actor or writers and producers of known, are working on verticals because they uh but they're using aliases because they need to get no one's working, they're not a lot of work, so they're taking the game.

Mark Roberts 21:09

Are they really not working? Who did you get that from? Producer Patrick?

Rod Rinks 21:12

How do you know producer Patrick? No, I didn't get that from producer Patrick.

Mark Roberts 21:17

He went on and it was honest with everyone today. Did you hear that? I want to be honest with everyone, just be all personal. It was all soft spoken and stuff. He hates producer Patrick.

Rod Rinks 21:24

Because the check cleared.

Mark Roberts 21:25

Because the check that's right. Producer Patrick, bring one of your canceled checks.

Garrett Patten 21:30

What I'm saying is people are working in that space because people need to work, right? Well, I think the people see the the new generations coming up, and that there's gonna be a huge market for it. And I think the feature film market is changing, yeah. Whether we like it or not. Well, the Odyssey.

Rod Rinks 21:45

The Odyssey, did you see I sent you this thing? There's um sold out within five minutes at IMAX. And what is it, 70 millimeter?

Mark Roberts 21:51

What's what's Odyssey? What is that? The Christopher Nolan. Yeah. Oh, it's a Christopher Christopher Nolan movie? Yes, okay, sorry.

Rod Rinks 21:57

Yeah, um, sold out in five minutes. And they're selling tickets, um, they're selling tickets online for like 200 bucks. I mean, the tickets are fifty-five bucks, which is a lot, but they're selling them for 200 bucks.

Garrett Patten 22:08

A lot of people are saying they they will and they made that with almost like 80% practical recreating like the the Trojan horror. All these exactly so uh people are saying it could be like the last generation of films shot like that. Wow, with everything that's coming. Wow with the Odyssey.

Mark Roberts 22:26

No, he's shaking his head no.

Rod Rinks 22:28

Oh my okay, all right.

Garrett Patten 22:30

Well, I don't know. I mean, some of the some of the AI tools are starting to really scare me.

Mark Roberts 22:34

Here's the issue, right?

Rod Rinks 22:35

Is that uh we can even talk about obsession or back room, but go ahead.

Mark Roberts 22:39

Well, there you're right. There's a lot of indie films doing extremely well right now in theaters, right? Huge, yeah, huge, huge.

Rod Rinks 22:45

750 to what is it, 200 million?

Mark Roberts 22:47

Huge business, and then you go on a lull for a long time where nothing does anything, and then we're back to oh, this one's doing really good. But I think Blair Witch. I think it's important to point out, yeah. Well, good point. I think it's important to point out that it's a cyclical business now. People are like enjoying movies for a little bit, and then they're enjoying verticals for a little bit, and then they're enjoying something else. I mean, it's not it's not like you know what's always persistent? What Christmas, Christmas movies. Well, look, I do Christmas movies, and I'll tell you why it's a superb business because it's kind of like it's kind of it's like Christmas itself. When descent when November, October, November, December shows up, you have you have no choice. I command you to buy Christmas gifts for people, and you will. Why? Because that's what you do during that time.

Garrett Patten 23:35

You're gonna watch all the you watch all the same ones, you look for new ones over and over again.

Rod Rinks 23:41

Family man, oh, it's wonderful live.

Mark Roberts 23:44

Great movies, man. You cry like you cry all crazy about it's a wonderful Christmas story stuff and showed it.

Garrett Patten 23:51

And they don't even want to see it. Well, and the unique thing about it is most people have a couple, maybe 10 days off of work, or you know, there's a lot of at home time with the family. Yeah, yeah.

Mark Roberts 24:00

So I think I think what we can all agree with is that there's no way to predict what's happening, but you can predict that audiences want authenticity, they want uh something with a fan base, they want a creator that has a point of view that's very specific, they want to follow that creator more so than they ever have wanted to ever in the history of film and TV and vertical, whatever you want to call it. Really, it's about content now. So it's you've got to you're we're looking at it very differently. And we were talking about this before we started, and this is true, this has to be true. I'm I'm gonna I'm I want to believe this. The world is becoming smaller. The way people watch a movie now is very large numbers, right? And you're talking about a global business. We can get to global on anything as long as people want to watch it. And and I've given this example before. Yeah, I'll go make a Christmas movie for whatever cable network I want, and it'll be watched by three million people. I did Meet Me Next Christmas, it was watched by 52 million people all over the world. It was top 10 in 80 countries.

Rod Rinks 25:16

Where'd you get this?

Mark Roberts 25:18

I tell you what, I'll put up these numbers on the show as I'm talking about. No, I will. I'll put I'll put up huge because I just found I just found the numbers. Yeah, no, they're huge, they're huge numbers, but the point is that it's possible. Like Netflix doesn't care about those numbers because they have subscribers. Those subscribers are gonna pay every month anyway. So they put out the movie. Oh oh 52 million people watched it. Great. What does that mean to their bottom line?

unknown 25:46

No.

Mark Roberts 25:47

Well, then and they look at the retention rate, they look at retention. I have all those numbers. I should share all of those.

Rod Rinks 25:51

So then you could do part two. If there's retention and they see that, they go, hey, this was a hit.

Mark Roberts 25:56

70, I think 74% of the people that started Meet Me Next Christmas finished it. That was that was the number that I received. That's really good. What's up with part two? No, they're not making part two. But come on, but it's really important to to what you want to focus on, I think, is don't be don't be square. No, I'm kidding. Honestly, don't be square, man. Hey, don't be a square man. Um like 1950s, but no, don't like really embrace the future because the future is gonna be, you know, you don't know what it's gonna be. Like, yeah, I I was talking to my wife the other day. Yeah, I would watch a move a film for five months at the Garmar Theater, which was in East Los Angeles. There was one theater, there wasn't a twoplex or threeplex, it was one theater, and I watched Greece for four months with a double feature. The only thing that changed was the feature, the double feature. Whatever played after Greece, that changed, but Greece never changed. But the future is going to be more about like what's what are people retaining? What do people want to see? And and and the more you talk about it, which you you're you cover it a lot, you cover it on the show really well. All of the back of my hand. All of well, yeah, but the the the uh the fact that you're watching what people are doing, like iron long, name the other, name the other questions.

Rod Rinks 27:14

Backdoor, but those guys, those guys, so I went down but back, you like it? Well, not backdoor, back room, back room. That's not the room. What's up? But those guys, I went and started looking at their feed, their IG feeds, and they they have a niche, like they're good at so, like the guy who did um Curry Barker, right? Is that his name? Curry Barker, who did Obsession? He's really good at suspense, like he would do these little uh scenes, you know, where him and his buddy would do stuff, and the way he lit it, the way he cut it, the dialogue, it was really clever, you know what I mean? And so with obsession, which I haven't seen, I've only seen little bits and pieces, it's all about the tone, right? And of course, like the premise and that whole thing, it it resonates with a younger audience, like an obsessed girl or this guy, like it they and there's like uh it's not so much a horror movie, I haven't seen it, Davy did, but it's more of like um like a suspense, you know what I mean? Um, and even like back rooms with uh what's the parson, I think his last name is. When you go down his when you go down his thing and you even watch the um you know, he did uh he did this video on YouTube and an agent's assistant saw it, and that's how he got discovered. Didn't have a lot of views, only a few, but he saw it and it was him going through these back rooms, right? But it's all about it's all about um angles, structures, angles, and lighting.

Mark Roberts 28:40

But what do you what do you are you attributing its success to its originality, to its point of view? Like what do you think?

Rod Rinks 28:47

Okay, because these guys had a point of view early on, and they just turned that point of view into a feature, and they had a following.

Mark Roberts 28:53

All right, let me the following more importantly, they had a following. They had a YouTube following. They had a YouTube following, exactly. And huge, and it makes sense. Iron Long, the same thing.

Rod Rinks 29:01

That guy had a huge following, so he came out and he made that. It was an IP, and it and his following followed, right?

Mark Roberts 29:07

That's Clay. Clay Epstein I'll tell you.

Rod Rinks 29:10

They would like to hear that one.

Mark Roberts 29:11

He doesn't want to hear about that because he's like, cut it out.

Rod Rinks 29:13

You need talent. Well, you could self-distribute them. That's the thing. That's where it can be.

Garrett Patten 29:17

If you have a following, you can self-distribute. Well, and Blair Witch felt so real. You know, I I think I personally gravitate towards movies that have, you know, everything I got coming out, I think about it, is based off of true stories or a biopic.

Rod Rinks 29:30

Yeah. Think about how many times you've watched something and you're like, wait a minute, and you get on your phone, you start looking. This is true, you start looking up right as you're watching it. Because you're like, wow, that really happened. I want to know the real story. Yep. So if you jump into true stories, which costs a little bit more money, but I like true stories, um, and like the like like I said, the horror genre, the action uh genre, you're gonna do well. Yeah, you're gonna do okay depending on what your budget is.

Garrett Patten 29:57

Not to not to plug one I have coming, but I have a project that is about the Grateful Dead, yeah, but it's through the eyes of one of the children that was raised on the road with the Grateful Dead. So you gotta think like almost famous crosses with like walk the line with the 60s grittiness of is it a documentary or a biopic. Oh, biopic, it sounds amazing. Yeah, it's we we have a script done.

Mark Roberts 30:21

It's um being Well, by the way, that's huge because they have such a following.

Garrett Patten 30:26

Oh, it's huge. I I'll tell you if you read this script, I I've never been more excited about it. Range is packaging, yeah, uh, the project. It's um I it's it's so it's basically 25 of these insane stories of a child that was raised, but you see the the the band. I mean, you there's a lot of Jerry Garcia in there, there's a lot of Bob Weir in the movie, yeah. But it's it tells the whole story until Jerry's death of what the what this child went through.

Mark Roberts 30:55

That sounds like a winner, man.

Rod Rinks 30:56

And that's a huge the IP, but the following the deadhead's kids are gonna turn out. Very big the deadhead's kids are probably gonna turn out.

Mark Roberts 31:03

Well, as long as they could smoke before they go in.

Garrett Patten 31:06

Well, all the deadhead kids are are part of it. So, like Trixie Garcia and Chloe Weir and Graham Lesh and Justin Kreutzman.

Mark Roberts 31:12

They're I know people who literally got married and said, like, uh I'm getting married, I just want you to know that if the Grateful Dead are playing, I'm taking that weekend, you're not coming, I'm going by myself. I'm gonna go do it. I know I know like three or four people that just go spend the week. Yeah, they're called deadheads.

Garrett Patten 31:32

There's no band in the world that has created a whole culture around it. So, you know, I did a documentary with uh Luke Wilson where we we went to a bunch of the Dead and Company shows. Is he a deadhead? Huge deadhead. Luke Wilson? Go on YouTube, you can go watch it, it's under my TBK YouTube account. But we went to all these um dead shows and we were interviewing just the the fans that had still been on tour. Some of the guys we interviewed had been 45, 50 years you know, touring around with this band. Yeah, see, and he's huge. They don't have a bank account. You say, Well, where do you keep your money? And the guy's like, Am I socket?

Mark Roberts 32:05

That's funny.

Garrett Patten 32:06

No bank accounts. They had that that's a whole society that's been created. Now, you I bet you can't name another band that's done that. No, created a whole culture. No, that's big. And then you take a kid that was from three months. So the the main story of it is Justin Kreutzman, who was raised on the road. But there's a picture of him at Woodstock at three months old being held up on stage by Jerry Garcia, you know, through and then through his whole life just touring around with the the band. How does he know? Uh Justin's 50.

Rod Rinks 32:35

So that's been his whole life on the road?

Mark Roberts 32:37

How do you deal with music on something like that?

Garrett Patten 32:40

Well, yeah, so we because Justin's father is still an active living member with the band and is gonna be an executive producer.

Mark Roberts 32:49

Does he own some of the music?

Garrett Patten 32:50

Yeah, and we obviously we're working with that group now, but we're uh you know, hopefully we're gonna have a decent deal based off of the percentage of the total budget to get the rights of the songs.

Mark Roberts 33:01

It's rough, man. It's rough. But I think as an indie, you'll have more luck, you know.

Garrett Patten 33:06

Well, and we're gonna have uh Graham Lesh um do some covers of some of the songs as well because he's kind of carrying the torch right now for what I would say for now that um Bob Weir passed away, and you know, the Dead and Company, which was the John Mayer thing. Yeah, I don't think that's gonna continue. Graham Lesh's band is the one that's kind of carrying the torch.

Mark Roberts 33:26

So so he would uh so you'd only pay for the uh for the one side of it. Yeah, that's good. I mean, look, it's uh I think that that sounds like a winner.

Garrett Patten 33:33

You look like almost famous, that's a great movie, but that's more of like a bubblegum type movie. I mean, this is gonna be the hippie hippie movement and all that, but I don't think people many people even knew that was supposed to be Leonard Skinner. Yeah, you know, but it was just a great movie.

Rod Rinks 33:47

Yeah, oh, that was modeled after Leonard Skinner. Oh, that makes sense. Okay, I didn't realize that. Yeah, yeah. If you can't get the music for um that, have you ever considered um Extreme Music?

Mark Roberts 34:01

I love that. Well, you that's a great segue, wasn't it? It is a great segue. It's like New York. No, it is a great segue. Extreme Music would be great, except for they're not gonna have dead music. There's not gonna it's not gonna happen like that. It'll sound like it, though you can get a public domain. Yeah, you can get a sound like no, it's not. It's a company called extreme music.com. They're our sponsor and have been for six years. Yes, they're our partner, our sponsor, they've supported our show, but they also support all our projects. They uh or a music library from all over the world. If you're a composer, um, you can put your music on Extreme Music. Uh, I think they do they they are selective. I've seen they are selective. You can't just it's not like YouTube where you can show up and just put your stuff on there. They do select all of the composers that are on there. There's tons of music. Like if you want to do a score or you want something to sound like Hans Zimmer, or you want something to sound a partner in the company, yeah. Or you want them to sound like the Grateful Dead. If you want them to sound like the Grateful Dead, uh, you just punch that into their you know search bar and they and it gives you similar music, you know, something that sounds like it, or or a composer that has um was inspired by their kind of music.

Garrett Patten 35:10

No, because that's funny because the last few projects uh that I've worked on, I always send to the composer, I send, hey, you know, I think it should kind of be like this, or it should be like this. And I take little clips out of other movies.

Rod Rinks 35:21

Yeah.

Garrett Patten 35:22

Pretty sure they probably use a tool like that once they get extremely nail it. They absolutely nail it. I'll be like, you know, I'll take like a Trent Reznor thing or something like that. I'm like, that'd be perfect for this scene.

Rod Rinks 35:32

Yeah.

Garrett Patten 35:32

And then they create something that's not that, but it's kind of the same genre. Well, compose put it in and it works so well.

Rod Rinks 35:39

And when you hear it, you're like, wait a minute, that is, but it's not. So you're good.

Mark Roberts 35:42

Yeah, composers are great at that, at playing a song sideways or getting uh using the same instrumentation, but extreme music has a lot of original music. So, like, for instance, let's say you're looking for a specific song for a scene, and you just sit down with a beer one night and go through their library for hours, just punching in different variations of, you know, clearly they use AI. I love that. You punch in, oh, I'd like it to sound like this, or can you uh can it just be guitar or can it just be drums and guitar or whatever that is? And you listen and listen, and eventually you just run across that perfect song. What's great about Extreme Music too is that it's uh you know, you can license it for a fraction of the cost. It's not, yeah, you don't have to call and negotiate like you do with Sony. Yeah, they just have you go online, you say I like this song, they give you a price, and then and and it's non-exclusive. So uh, you know, there's there's a song I used in one of my documentaries that I loved, and now it's like on a lot of commercial, like a lot of commercials use it. I hear it all the time. I'm like, oh, there's a song from from Carlos Almada. Not because of me, not because of me, but but definitely you can if you if you hear something that sounds familiar to you, you can use it and you can get it at extreme music.com. Check them out for all your music needs, they are great. Look, a lot of people watch the show because they want to be inspired by people like yourself that are out there making movies, out there giving it a shot at documentaries, um uh verticals, all of it. Directing, producing, directing, producing, all of it. Talk about the acting. Where do they find you? Where what what are your what is your website? What's you know, what's your handle?

Garrett Patten 37:14

Yeah, obviously Garrett Patton on IMDB, but my Instagram is TBK Productions. Yeah, TBK Productions is probably where I tell people to go and you see all the different projects I've been a part of. Uh news about uh future projects. I have one about a global sports icon that's about to be announced in the next couple weeks. It's gonna be absolutely huge. So between that and the Grateful Dead project, I have another project called 48 Hours, which is a AI-driven survival story that we're in the middle of uh working with Range on packaging.

Mark Roberts 37:46

So you're excited, you're still excited about the future of film.

Garrett Patten 37:50

I just love every element of filmmaking. I mean, I I like sitting in the with the editor for three months. I love putting scenes that might be my favorite part. Like after you go through the rush of collecting all the footage, and then you're sitting there in the edit bay and you actually see your scenes come to life. Yeah, I love that. And so then I see these AI tools. Like I know Ben just sold uh Affleck, sold an AI tool to Netflix for 600 million. Oh, yeah. I saw that, yeah. The way I understand it is you put your footage in there, and all you know, most of the VFX and everything, the color correction, everything that you want done, you just type exactly how it's you want to add 10 people in the background, you want to add this, and it and it happens. And yeah, I you know, I I I'm still, I guess, a purist for I love because I haven't used AI in any of my projects yet. Um not to say that you're not gonna have to, because I think you're gonna have to figure out a way to make your crews be instead of 150 people, they're gonna have to be 75.

Mark Roberts 38:44

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think you are you probably are using them in in in in small doses. Like, you know, a lot of times you'll shoot in front of a theater and you'll want to put like a different theater sign up, or you'll want to put a different name of a building up, you know, those kinds of things we continue to use.

Garrett Patten 39:01

Yeah, obviously storyboards and you know, certain script ideas, yeah, like you know, kind of hit a block here. But AI, tell me what you think you would do, or something like that. But I I'm saying more from a creative standpoint, from a video generation, yeah. Because I I've played around with a lot of the tools, and I think when you when you put them in there, I just don't think that it's anywhere close to authentic yet.

Mark Roberts 39:23

No, it's gonna take a it's gonna take a long time, man. It's gonna take a long time, but it is a tool that is, you know, like they used matte paintings back in the day, you know. It's just gonna be a tool that you're gonna be using for a long time that we're all gonna be using.

Rod Rinks 39:37

It's Corsese, you know, he's using AI. I saw this whole thing, um, storyboard. It's pretty awesome. Yeah, yeah, where it's like you just tell it what to do, and it and and you know, he was talking about how back in um back in the day, like the Cecil B de Mill days, they used to oil paint the storyboards. How cool would that be to find something like that?

Garrett Patten 39:57

Or you you spend uh $15,000 on a storyboard. So I I just came from rehearsals at Will Melman's house, you know, the you know, the family of Discovery Land and uh Casamigos.

Speaker 40:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Garrett Patten 40:07

And we have a script called Desert Heat that we're we're working on that he created this comic book, and it's you know, it's gonna be a decent sized film. And he created an AI storyboard per scene, it's like 50 different shots, almost identical to what I had in my head of what this was gonna look like. I mean, I could I was absolutely blown away when you look at these pictures, like that's exactly the way I pictured this scene. Yeah, and I don't know how it's it's really blows your mind.

Rod Rinks 40:36

I mean, I get I yeah, like in For Scorsese, who's like a purist, a deficienado. Like he's uh for him to be using it, you're kind of like wow, okay.

Mark Roberts 40:48

Well, I mean, there's lots of tools, and I think you have to explore using them all. If uh if they make sense to what you're doing, you should make anything you can do to make your film better, you should do. If if that's AI, then you should be using it. I don't know. It just depends on what kind of filmmaker you are. But Garrett Patton is here and he's doing it, he's making it happen for himself, for a lot of other people. He's working with high-level uh super talent, and you're making a great documentary. Um, yeah, you're doing good stuff, man. Thanks for visiting with us. We appreciate that.

Rod Rinks 41:17

Are we taking pitches for our audience? Oh, yeah. Anyone anyone want to pitch? They reach out or no.

Mark Roberts 41:21

Yeah, TB, yeah, TBK Productions. There you go. Yeah, they collaborate with it. There's a there's another person to collaborate with, to pitch ideas to. Whatever you do, don't stop creating because this is a world that you just don't know uh what's next. And you know, uh, I think Clay Epstein said it best when he said, This is a world and a business of exceptions. So the more you do, the more possibilities you have of doing what is going to be the next best big thing. So keep up the good work. Don't be stopped. Yeah, don't be stopped. We'll see you next time on Film Hustlers. Boom. Thanks.