Focal Point
Conversations with artists across all industries, taking a deep dive into the nuances, techniques, and philosophies of society's talent.
Focal Point
The Experimentalist #57 w/ Director Max Kaplan
Director Max Kaplan joins us to reflect on how a childhood spent devouring DVD special features shaped his unique filmmaking voice. Growing up in Ohio’s festival scene taught him the value of community, long-term collaborators, and building stories with visual precision rather than easy explanations. As he developed Looker and Death of a Bible Salesman, Max learned to trust pre-production, lean into bold stylistic choices, and let the audience complete the puzzle.
Max also opens up about the moment that tested him the most: directing a grueling shoot while navigating a personal emotional crisis. From freezing temperatures to no power on location, he discovered that honesty with his team and reliance on trusted department heads didn’t weaken him—it made the work stronger.
Welcome to the Focal Point Podcast. I'm your host, Tony Riggs. Here I take a deep dive into my personal interests of the hidden craftsmanship, philosophies, and passions behind society's talent. If you're intrigued by artistic nuance, please subscribe and follow on my YouTube channel, Spotify, and BuzzSprout. With that being said, let me introduce you to today's guests. Unlike most of my other guests, actually, I sort of already know you, but like we haven't seen each other in the longest of time. I mean, I've seen you know, you've been pretty busy, as far as I can tell, the last few years. Even like being able to set this this you know episode up with you was like it was like five months in advance. It was nice.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I hate I hate that that that's how my life is, but I it did take that long.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, go ahead and just introduce yourself, what you do, and how you got started.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. Um, my name's Max Kaplan, uh, independent uh writer, director, and producer from Dayton, Ohio, currently residing in Columbus. Um, I got started filming when I was eight. Um, my dad started a small aviation-themed film festival. And I got to, as a kid, kind of grow up around uh once a year, you know, being around the green rooms where these filmmakers are kind of staying before they go out after their film is played and introduce it or do a QA and whatever. And that was like the first time I thought, of course, I was a movie fan, I think every kid loves movies, but I was like, oh, this is like a job people have that you can do and make a living off of. Like you can just play in the sandbox for the rest of your life. And that was when I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker. Um, and I never looked back. Uh my dad, once I got interested in it, started watching like special features on DVDs with me and got me um George Lucas's biography. Um, one of the early ones called Skywalking, I think. I forget who wrote it. But that was like that was my start, watching special features and reading George Lucas's biography.
SPEAKER_01:On the DVDs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep, that's the only place you could find those back in the day, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Now that everything's on streaming, I mean, there's some. I think maybe Disney and HBO have some special features options, but they're so limited. Um, I wish there was a streaming service just for special features and commentaries, honestly.
SPEAKER_01:There's probably like one YouTube channel that's dedicated just to listing all the behind the scenes of everything.
SPEAKER_00:I've heard that there is a podcast that is attempting to publish and like archive every DVD commentary they can get their hands on. Um but that's that seems like a massive undertaking that'll take like decades.
SPEAKER_01:And then you have a podcast on top of that. Like that is that is tile a dialogue and talking squared. You know, I don't know if that's a great recipe. That might not be the best way to go about doing it.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know if it's a podcast, it might just be a website archive, but um, I've been moving to look into it and find it because uh I don't know. I think I think special features are some of the coolest parts of filming, and it's why they're part of DVDs. It's like one half of your experience with a movie is watching it and taking it in and being able to re-watch it, but the other half, if you really like it, is like being able to get to know it and who made it and what went on behind the scenes. Like, anymore because of streaming, I go like immediately to Wikipedia and start reading about the production and stuff of a film if I really like it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the b the two big DVDs that I only that I owned that were basically the only resources that I had to actually see and somewhat learn about the filmmaking process were all of the Star Wars DVDs and the Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings, that there's a whole nother movie series, just basically, I think, somewhere embedded in the special features, just about the making of the movie. That's probably longer than the extended editions, honestly.
SPEAKER_00:For sure. I I was thinking about those special features the other day. That sounds so nerdy of me to say, but I was literally like thinking, I was like, damn, like imagine filming the behind the scenes for the Lord of the Rings. Like that was a whole production saga in itself, probably. But that yeah, the the Lord of the Rings behind the scenes uh features are incredible. And another one that's kind of similar to that, and I wish they'd do this with the Lord of the Rings special features, but there's a whole documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now called Hearts of Darkness, and that's pretty incredible because that production took like three years, and Charlie Sheen had a heart attack, and they went the American Zootrip went broke. I mean, it's a whole song. They literally went to war, you know, in East Asia to make this movie.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, and that's just an incredible like issues with the military and everything because they were trying to use actual, you know, military equipment on land and sea just to be able to do these things practically as much as possible, and that caused a ton of other headaches on a governmental level.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and they were building like their own small towns or buying like property to blow up and destroy, like you know, crazy. And thousands of people were working on the movie as well. And this is before internet or texting or cell phones. Like, imagine coordinating all that.
SPEAKER_01:I I couldn't imagine. I would not be want to be the arbiter of that. When um so last I saw you was at the in-person was the Catalano Film Festival. I just happened to run into you there. Um and I was the only reason I was there was because Johnny had invited me. I didn't I was uncompletely unaware of the you know what he was doing. And you know, for those who don't know, Johnny Catalano is the one who's heading up the film festival, I think. In is it technically Dayton? It's probably Dayton for all intents and purposes, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, Middletown, Dayton, something like or Miami's bird, actually.
SPEAKER_01:Right, yeah. And and I only knew about that because he mentioned it to me when I had him on my podcast. And so I saw this film festival that's happening, I was doing this research, and then you know, Johnny comes on, he talks about it, about you know, the behind the scenes as well as like you know what he's trying to do personally for his career. And uh it was it wasn't until about a year ago that I realized Cincinnati is actually growing. Cincinnati, between Cincinnati and Columbus, the art scene is growing exponentially, as far as I can tell. And there's a lot more people that are aware of other people.
unknown:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01:What has been your experienced uh experience when it comes to networking in this particular area and as well as outside of your local community?
SPEAKER_00:Uh well, I I've really enjoyed starting my career and growing up in Ohio. Uh feels like home to me. I want to kind of set down roots in the Midwest. I'm not a coastal guy, don't like huge cities.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, you look like one though. I mean, let's be real.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, I may I may have a surfer dude vibe, and I do belong on a beach, but like I've never I haven't found a place other than Ohio that I'd love to live, I guess is what I'm saying. And I love to work here, I love to make films here because of the people in the community. I mean, there's people that I was friends with in middle school that I still make movies with, and then there's people I just met a couple years ago on a film set, and now we come over to each other's houses every year for like Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas and stuff like that. And so I don't know. I I just really love the community here of filmmakers and artisans. Um, I've got a little kind of kind of a company, I guess. It's it's loose, loosely company, it's not like an LLC or anything, it's just a group of people that I like to work with over and over again. You can say home, it's fine. Yeah. And they're all better at their you know specific things than I am, and all together is what makes like a great film. It's not what I do on my own, it's not what they do on their own, but us together creating an opportunity to make something like really cool.
SPEAKER_01:The who is it that also does that? They have their own special group. Um, Tom and Gelletti, I believe that's his name. He he has his own specific group that they just work with each other to be able to actually accomplish everything that they want because they're trying to all the short films that they make are in are experiments to try to work on for this feature that he's wanting to do. And oh yeah, and I think that's a really great idea way of going about it, as opposed to okay, we're gonna start a new thing, and then we've got to find new people, and you gotta restart the whole process all over again for him. It's like he's in for all intents, intents, and purposes, one big production. Yeah, you know.
SPEAKER_00:That I mean, that's kind of how Hollywood is. Like they say there's no loyalty it in Hollywood and all that.
SPEAKER_01:No, that's completely yeah, it's completely not because there's like there's there's a huge community out there.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, like the like the ocean is vast in terms of of creative professionals, and every single new project, yeah, there's people that get recommended, but like somebody saying or you being friends with somebody and having a good time with somebody out there. I've heard this at least. I've never done an LA production. I've worked on split productions kind of out here, uh, where half the crew's like coming from LA, half the crew's local. Um, and it seems like yeah, you you've really got to like build your reputation. Um uh word of mouth isn't everything, but uh also neither is like nepotism. Like you've there's just too many people out there, then then one person can do the same thing over and over again. So I think it's good that everybody's got their little groups that they work with because that means that people are consistently making things together, for sure, uh and nobody's getting kind of left behind. I think I think that's what's really cool about what's been going on from maybe the last 10 years in Ohio, um, is like there's been so many people that popped up that are like, oh, I can organize things, I can get a script together and a project together and find time on the weekends or days off uh to make stuff with my friends. And then there's been enough people willing to do those kind of smaller jobs, like doing the sound or production design or costume or makeup or whatever. And there's tons of these little groups around. And I've been like running into them at film festivals or just knowing them through the community, and it's been really cool to kind of grow alongside, even though I've never worked with a lot of these people, I still consider them like friends and part of the community, and I love seeing them every year at the some of the same film festivals. Um, but I I I f I find myself very at home in Ohio with the people working here. I'd like to continue to make feature films here sustainably. Um, so I don't have to bring in like outside crews or I don't have to go elsewhere unless it's a location film and we have to travel for it. But um also the the community is small globally, I've found. I've just kind of started. Like I was in LA last month for AFM, and I was not, I mean, I've just freshly graduated film school last year. Um, in the grand scheme of things, like my professional career hasn't been that that long, even though I've been doing film as like a whole thing for many, many years. But I was out there and uh two two different people recognized me that I had no I had no idea who they were, but um they knew me either from online or film festival, or I mean, one person had seen my film at the Catalano, I think, or some other Ohio festival. And it was as I was leaving to go get my car from the ballet, somebody goes, Are you from Ohio? And I'm like, Yeah, and they're like, Is your name Max Kaplan? And I was like, What?
SPEAKER_01:For those of you listening that are not in Ohio, this is a very surreal experience for us people in Ohio. For yeah, we're from Ohio, and they're like, Oh, yeah, I know that place, and because right now, for the last several years, we've just been the meme of the internet for no apparent reason. And you know, it was completely random the way it happened, too. So, like, there's no explanation. We do we Ohioans do not have an explanation for Ohio or the meme. We are not responsible, do not sue us.
SPEAKER_00:It's a very strange place, it's such a random thing to be the center of attention for so much stuff. Like, we've had the most presidents come from here, we've had the most people go to space from here.
SPEAKER_01:Um entertainers, inventors, yeah. It's a weird place.
SPEAKER_00:Um, yeah, we're a meme. Uh, and also we're the number one football team in the world, uh college football team, but still. Yep.
SPEAKER_01:Um, how long? So, how old are you now? And how long have you been writing and directing?
SPEAKER_00:I just turned 25 um last month, and I've been writing and directing my own short films since I was 11. Um, that wasn't really written what the one I made when I was 11. It was the iPod 3 had just come out with its uh uh video camera, and me and my friends had a snow day, and we just decided to make something. And so we kind of rolled around the fly, shot on the fly as a little silent um black and white movie. And after that, I was hooked. I was like, yeah, this is what I'm supposed to do.
SPEAKER_01:Which film did you make that you you you feel like you are safe enough to declare that, hey, this is where my um professional career started?
SPEAKER_00:That's a good question because I always made short films because like I they were just something I wanted to see on screen. And I thought of my professional career as what I got hired to do. So when I was 15, I got hired for my first commercial work and some music videos. Uh, and I was really excited to get my first paycheck, like$50 as a PA. Oh my god, that was that was great. Uh but that's when I considered my professional career to start. I don't think I really thought I could pull off a solid quality movie that could sell in theaters until I was a senior in high school. And I did a short film called Good Kids, again with all my high school friends. We shot it on a weekend over. We shot it over like three months, and then it it just went gangbusters on film festivals. And I'd never really been to film festivals before, I'd done competitions like 48s and and stuff like that. But um that that that's when I first learned, oh, I can do this, like I can pull this off and be a good director and probably scale this to feature films. And that film opened up so many doors for me. I mean, A, it just it was a continued or the start of many, many collaborations with a lot of people on that movie I still work with and love to this day. Um, but that film is what got me like a full ride to film school. Um, I which I didn't even know they had.
SPEAKER_01:And I don't full ride to film school based off.
SPEAKER_00:Basically, it's tuition paid, so almost full ride, but it was through a program called HTC Honors Tutorial College, which I did not know was a thing. Um, but the dean of the film school saw my application, I guess watched good kids, and put my application into the HTC pile. And so what HTC was was really, really cool. So it's tuition paid, they which is is helpful to like kids, but it's I think it's more symbolic that they're like, we want you here and we want you to you know develop your skills here, make films here, learn here, uh, you know, because we want to be a part of your success. And so another really cool thing, honestly, the best thing about it was that I got to, as an undergrad, study in the graduate program. So instead of having like 30 classmates, I had six, and they were from all over the world and had already had careers in different departments or even different fields. Um, one of my classmates was a German actress uh who, you know, wanted to learn the behind the camera stuff. Another was an American actor who was actually had like a 10, 12-year career and wanted to learn how to direct. So he went back to school. Um, had a couple filmmakers from Iran um that were really, really cool people. Uh, one from China, one from Texas. And I think that I think that was it. Yeah. Um, and we all, you know. Yeah, I can tell you a lot of stories about us too. But um we we traveled in our summers sometimes, you know, to work on productions, which was really cool. Uh, we've all helped get each other hired on on some stuff. Um, it was a really cool, unique, tight-knit experience. And then also I got so much more one-on-one time with my professors, which is the best. And like they're kind of at a higher level in the graduate program, you know, they're they're not really going through the basics, they're really grilling you, making sure that you're intentional, thoughtful, um, you know, and truly artistic about your work. And that that that wasn't always easy, you know. I feel like sometimes they press you because that's their job. Um I remember telling one time I was in this meeting, it was going terribly. It was for Death of a Bible salesman. And I was just, I kept, I had this very specific vision for it. And my professor did not understand, like, whatsoever. Like, no, no understanding. And so he's telling me all these problems with it. I'm like, I don't think these are your problems, like, I don't see this the way you see it. And I said to him, and I think he was he he he doesn't like me for or he didn't like me for a long time because of this. But I said, you know, I think sometimes people just have an opinion to have an opinion. He got so mad at that. I don't, I mean, I don't really think that's true, but I just you know, I didn't know what to say. I was like, look, the script is the way it is, I don't know how to back it up other than the ways that I've just explained.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so was it the film that he watched that you know gave he gave his criticisms to, or was it the script before you had made it?
SPEAKER_00:It was the script before I had made it, and and we this was like after months and months of back and forth. Um and and just like I couldn't do anything right, you know, it was that feeling. And so I just said, you know, fuck it, it's gonna stay the way it is. I'm gonna go make it. And uh he still didn't like it, but I just released it on Halloween and it's done really, really well. I mean, it's got the most views of any of my film, it has like almost a hundred comments now, and everybody's been super, super kind about it and have have noticed it's noticed so many things that I forgot I even put in it. You know, it's it's really cool because you're so involved in the making of a film and the drama and you know, back behind the scenes stuff that you kind of forget you're making it for an audience and you're making it to like enjoy and like um distract and you know be a little getaway in a dark room or dark theater. And so it was really, really good to release it on Halloween last month and and just get so many good reviews and uh you know notes back because it was really hard to make at school. I mean, like, like I said, my professor just really did not like the concept.
SPEAKER_01:Was this more like a like a one-off case, or is this the sort of do criticisms toward that you have heard about your work tend to centralize around a particular theme, or do you think that they're really just random and people are having you know opinions to have opinions? What's what would you say is the most I'm not trying to pick on you, but like what is the most valid thing that you've heard that you you uh in your process of growing as a filmmaker that uh you took to heart and adopted or you know thought about and considered?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. To be to be fair, I don't have I don't think everybody has an opinion to have an opinion. I just had something out for this professor, which I felt had something out for me. But um the most valid criticism was this one bastard that just didn't like me.
SPEAKER_01:Literally, that's kind of how I started growing a beard and then it just you know, it wasn't fully grown in yet, and it's just it looked like I was trying too hard, and so he just kind of married that with the script and he was uh Um No, yeah, really really it's just his criticism that I've presented and not really appreciated, but um
SPEAKER_00:Um it's because I I I did not think they were genuine. It wasn't helping me, you know. It it was just like, oh, you're more experienced than me and you need to tell me something to fix this.
SPEAKER_01:But it wasn't like uh he was linking a certain like group of ideas and building an architecture of of criticism was just like, no, I don't like it. Like, do this.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, it and it felt like whatever I did to kind of cater to his notes or fix it wasn't gonna make him happy. And also, you know, he's a film professor, he's dealing with so many different kids' projects. Like I knew he wasn't there devoting all of his mental energy and time and attention to the stuff. Which is understandable. Yes, and so I said, look, this isn't helping me, so I'm just gonna ignore it. But the the I mean, he does have some good criticisms, and and this is just natural with where I'm at in my career. Like, there's some things I don't have enough experience in. Um, and and it's mostly in writing. I mean, I don't cons I never considered myself a writer. I learned to write because I wanted to direct, and nobody was just gonna hand me a script as a kid and say, Oh, we'll direct. So I had to like, you know, come up with my own stories and write them.
SPEAKER_01:But dialogue yourself would consider yourself more of a director than a writer.
SPEAKER_00:I would, I would like to, but you know, I've I've become a writer and producer as well, just because of what I've had to learn to be able to get myself to direct. But um, yeah, I think I'm I still struggle with dialogue. I'm not great at thinking about different people's voices and characters and personalities uh as you know, completely separate as people are. You know, everybody's one of a kind and unique, and that's pretty incredible, but it's hard. I mean, you gotta have like a novelist skill to keep track of like a lot of characters. So I I like to write with co-writers that are really good at dialogue and and understanding character because I think more on a story aesthetic visual level. And I do see how the performances are uh in my head, in my mind's eye, but I think putting it on the page to share with others, like the idea, it's that it's that human aspect that I think I struggle with. And that's it's it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just I struggle writing like a realistic conversation that sounds natural, but my work is very seldom natural, if that makes sense. Like a lot of my work has abstract and surreal quality.
SPEAKER_01:You like to experiment, you're not ashamed about it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm fine with things being a little weird and not realistic, um, because that's often not what I'm going for.
SPEAKER_01:I I got a a little bit of a synopsis, like, because all of your films, they all stand out on by themselves on their own, they all have a very unique identity. Um, you know, there are some commonalities that you know I personally have noticed. It's like, okay, there's this we're we're gonna take this idea. The idea itself is a little bit weird, and then we're going to introduce characters to see how they re-react or live out this weird idea. Does that sound fair?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, it does.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Uh, and then um I finished watching, just to refresh myself, the Death of the Bible Salesman uh this morning. And um, you know, I saw Looker at the you know the film festival where you I think did you premiere it at the film festival, or is it just another festival you run into?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, Death of a Bible Salesman and Looker both premiered at the Catalano to appear.
SPEAKER_01:I I um tell me what you think about this. From my perspective, you make the sort of films that beg a question, but prefer that the audience be the ones that gives the answer. How does how does that sound?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I I mean those are the type of movies that I really enjoy the most. It's the movies that give you a bunch of pieces of the puzzle, but don't put them in order for you. And they can be put together, you know, a few different ways. So especially with Looker, I feel like maybe some of my earlier films were like I had more of a straight idea that I was trying to hammer over the head of the audience. But as I kind of grew and matured as a filmmaker, um I realized, oh, I just like putting things out there and letting people take what they get from them. Um, kind of like a film rush rack test, or however you pronounce that. You know, it's kind of like something in front of a person, see what it evokes. Obviously, you're going for something as a filmmaker, but once you present it, actually, once it's finished editing, you kind of don't have control over how people receive it. It's just in their hands now. And that that's what's beautiful about film and art is that artist audience relationship. And so, yeah, what what I when I get gratification out of a film, it's because I've had to do work as a viewer, and not everything's been laid out for me cleanly. And then when I get the most satisfaction as a filmmaker, it's from hearing from the audience what they thought of the movie. And some people will ask me, you know, if their assumption or or opinion is correct. And you know, it's like, who am I to say?
SPEAKER_01:Right. So you so you're you're not afraid to engage in in any type of subjective and and uh subjective sense of relativism when it comes to the viewership.
SPEAKER_00:I welcome it.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So yeah, essentially it seems like you use your film to you, you are you're starting a conversation or a piece of dialogue with society. What have you found to be the answers or the responses to your part of the conversation being the films that you've made?
SPEAKER_00:I have learned that people um some people are afraid of darkness. I believe it's because not everybody has done a lot of inner work to fully discover themselves. And there are people that enjoy darkness, um, because a lot of my films are dark and they have like a lot of elements of like evil or ideas like that. And uh I think that the difference is that some people prefer life to be perfect, dandy, comfortable, um, you know, expected. And then there are people that have just either by through their personality or through their life experiences have gone through so much shit that they realize that nothing is what it seems, nothing is easy, life is suffering, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's kind of like the Tao Teaching. It's like it is what it is, yeah. Uh it's neither here nor there. And what I find really gratifying is when people that seem to see things a little bit more black and white, that like to just see the light side of things and be comfortable. Uh, I love when my movies push somebody out of their comfort zone and they learn that they enjoy it. And I'm like, yes, you know, because like when I watched disturbing films as a kid, I just didn't like them. I remember the first the first R-rated movie I ever watched was Mad Max.
SPEAKER_01:Mad Max.
SPEAKER_00:I had nightmares for two weeks after I first saw this movie. The ending is super I was 12 or 13.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Uh yeah. Yeah, I snuck into my parents' basement and got my dad's DVD copy of it and watched it at night. There was a reason they wouldn't let me watch it, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Um but did you learn your lesson? No. Now now it's now it's your now it's your drug.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um but you stuck your hand too far into the cookie jar, man. Yeah, it wasn't the cookies, it was the movies, the movie job.
SPEAKER_01:And the cookies were laced with darkness, that's what they were.
SPEAKER_00:But the the at the end of the film, Max basically is hunting down the spiker gang that has killed uh his wife and son. And he's on the last one, and he crashes, and that the car is like leaking, gas everywhere, and the driver is like kind of stuck under it or stuck near it. And Max handcuffs him to some piece of the car, sets up a rig for like uh with his lighter, so that like when the gas finally leaks over to the lighter in a couple minutes, it's gonna all blow up. And he gives the dude a hacksaw, and he goes, Those um, those handcuffs are industrial grade steel, take you about 10 minutes to cut through those with that hacksaw. You cut through your foot in about two minutes, and he just leaves. And then the last shot of the movie is him driving down the road, and the guy and you hear the dude's voice, you know, he's screaming, ah, you can't do this, you can't leave me here. And uh, and Max is just driving down the road, you know, in the background, boom, the explosion. And that just like broke my mind as a kid. I was like, How can he do this? He's the main character, he's the hero. Oh my god, it's so so it just disturbed the hell out of me. But I thought about it for years and years and years, and then I find I rewatched it, and you know, and probably later in my teen years, and I watched all of them. And I just there Mad Max is my favorite series, like it's one of my the original Mad Max is one of my probably top ten movies.
SPEAKER_01:Was that like the first series, adult series that you were introduced to as a kid, curiously? Um I don't of that caliber.
SPEAKER_00:If you don't consider like the Lord of the Rings like an adult series, then yeah, probably. Um I think Alien was probably another one that I really dug, but I can't remember. I probably saw Matt all the Mad Max's before I saw the aliens.
SPEAKER_01:I see. So what was the was Mad Max your first impression of adult cinema?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, I think so. Okay, it was probably that and like Jaws, which I probably saw around the same time, even though Jaws is PG, it was kind of a lot for me at the time that I watched.
SPEAKER_01:I was probably it's a suffocating PG, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's like the RPG. Um, but the movies were just like that back then, and and I don't know, yeah. So I learned to enjoy those kinds of things. It was like I got a little bit of a taste of it, and I was scared of it for a while. And then horror movies are the same way. I didn't I wasn't always into horror, I wasn't even allowed to watch horror until my late teens, like high school. And then I didn't come to it until maybe late in high school when I was on my own. Like, look, I know so much about all the history of movies, I just know nothing about horror. So I decided to dive into it, where you know, watched all the classics, and then started to get really into like cult stuff and um more indie things.
SPEAKER_01:Is this when you were introduced to Quentin Tarantino by chance?
SPEAKER_00:Maybe Quentin Tarantino was a little bit before I got into horror. I think I probably discovered Quentin Tarantino in middle school or like freshman year of high school.
SPEAKER_01:Several long-winded rants about Quentin Tarantino from Max when we used to hang out back in the day.
SPEAKER_00:I'm interested in the what? What did I rant about?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, it's Quentin Tarantino. I think well you uh you uh not just Quentin Tarantino, but as a filmmaker, but particularly things in his films. You weren't you weren't talking about Quentin Tarantino per se, but you were talking about things in Quentin Tarantino's films, ergo Quentin Tarantino. So you're like, oh yeah, and then this thing, and then he did something different, and then this thing. And so like you were, you know, we I watched you like string a lot of things together and build this architecture that essentially was Quentin Tarantino at that time. That's that's sort of what it was.
SPEAKER_00:I mean that makes sense. I I was really into him in high school, you know. I I still am, I think he's a great filmmaker, but um the things he's been saying recently, I definitely do not agree with.
SPEAKER_01:Like what? Okay, I'm I'm not I'm I'm so I'm more of a writer than I am a director. Like I direct because I have to, but like I love writing. So being a writer, I try not to be on the internet too much. So enlighten me because I am completely in the dark right here.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, fair enough. So a few things. A um people have been posting. Well, okay, I'll start with what happened recently. So he he was has been doing all these unhinged interviews. I don't know why. Um, and he just recently said that Paul Dano is the reason that um There Will Be Blood did not win Best Picture over No Country, and the reason is like Paul Dano's the worst actor in SAG, which is a crazy thing to say because SAG is full of mostly wannabe actors, like very few of the top caliber, let alone Paul Dano. And people have come out on the internet to defend him.
SPEAKER_01:Like nobody know how you would say that though, because like Paul Dano, like I haven't seen um There Will Be Blood, but I have seen Prisoners, yeah. He's great at that. And you know, he plays this like basically um like really mentally slow kid that they uh the dad thinks is actually the one who has kidnapped his daughter. And his portrayal, it's it's I would say it's on the same caliber of uh like uh early Leonardo DiCaprio's role in um uh what's eating something grape.
SPEAKER_02:I think grape, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's same caliber, maybe better. I don't know. But I don't like I don't know why you would say that. Granted, yeah in the dark, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe you know more than me, but this is like I don't I don't really know where it came from. It was shocking, and he's been vilified online for it. Everybody's coming to defend Paul Dano. And then also, so so then this has people like targeting Quentin Tarantino, and so this interview, I think, from um like Coast to Coast Radio uh just kind of got reposted that I saw where he's defending Roman Polanski having sex with a 13-year-old, which is like why Roman Polanski lives in France and isn't welcome back in the States right now or anymore.
SPEAKER_01:Um he was the one that made uh made uh Rosemary's baby, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And his wife, Sharon Payne, is killed by you know the Manson cult. Um and after after that, yeah, he married, you know, a 13-year-old or whatever. Uh and so yeah, I'll just it's just like Quentorantino's under a lot of heat right now.
SPEAKER_01:Noted. And this is why I'm not on the internet. This is why I like my little hobbit hole in my little rotten in my yeah, just like mine.
SPEAKER_00:Would you but anyway, back to the what were we talking about?
SPEAKER_01:I I don't know. It's uh you know, it was a side tangent, but you know, if you don't go on at least one side tangent per podcast, it's not really a podcast, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I love tangents on podcasts and in conversations. What else would you talk about?
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. Um, would would you describe yourself as more of a cinematographer's director or an actor's director?
SPEAKER_00:Ooh, that's a good question. I would love to say I'm an actor's director, but yeah, I think I'm a cinematographer's director. My closest collaboration on every film is with my cinematographer. Uh, for a long time, that was um Luke uh Holiday, who you've worked with. Um and then there now Luke lives in New York, um, and I haven't I haven't worked with them in a while. I'd love to again, but I've had some other collaborators. For Death of a Bible salesman, it was my classmate Jordan, um, who's a filmmaker from Texas, uh very talented. He's actually a professor at OUNAU. Uh and then my thesis looker was shot by a guy named Sam Stevenson, who I actually met at the Catalano Film Festival two or three years ago. Um, and he had he had a film there um that he had shot for a guy named Ahmad Ganem, who is just an incredible filmmaker. Um and I love the film so much that I like had to, you know, that's what's great about film festivals. If you see something you like, chances are very high that whoever made it's you know, sitting around you. So afterwards I made a point to go find Ahmad and meet him. And then he was with Sam, and I was like, oh my gosh, great job, Sam. And we ended up having a meeting maybe a couple weeks later just to talk shop. And he was like, if you have anything coming up, you know, I'd love to, we'd love to work together. And so uh a couple months later, I think I had a draft, my first draft of my thesis on Looker, and I sent it to him. And uh he did a great job. We'd we did probably three months of pre-production on Looker, which is a lot, like that's like a features amount of prep. But keep in mind that I'm a student, he's a professional, we live on opposite ends of the state, and so it was kind of like right three months of prepping. But it I mean, it all ended up on the on the screen, and the the shoot went swimmingly, like because of the amount of prep work we did. So I really, really enjoy working uh with cinematographers and having a close relationship with them.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. When what what was the most difficult film for you to do from that perspective, trying to accomplish um what you wanted visually collaborating with the cinematographer? Because I can imagine, like, you know, uh uh you seem to me to be like the sort of guy that um has got a lot of ideas, and so I would imagine you know, the cinematographer's just like you know, shooting the ideas out of the sky for you and being a bummer.
SPEAKER_00:Uh yeah, I mean my relationship with Sam certainly was kind of like a creator-editor kind of relationship. Like I would bounce so many things off him, and he would either bounce back to me options from his perspective that could kind of fit what I was going for, or just say, yes, we can do that, no, we can't do that. Um, but it was really his like his editing eye that helped us. I mean, we determined so many really, really cool things that um because it's only been in film festivals and hasn't been widely seen online yet, not a lot of people have noticed yet. But I think when it goes out to a wider audience, people are gonna notice a lot of cool details we put in there. I'll give a couple examples. So in Death of a Bible Salesman, there's like kind of there's not three different acts per se, but there's three different worlds that the film takes place in. Um, the motel room in real life, uh hell, and then uh the main character's past, which they kind of like visit like Grandfather Christmas or whatever. Um, and those are all delineated by color palette and uh aspect ratio, which gets animated to fit whatever world we're in. Um, and then in Looker, we have not necessarily three different worlds, but we certainly have two separate acts and three different kinds of emotional modes that our main character Anna goes through. So at first, it's kind of the fun and games part. She's with her friends celebrating a birthday, they're having fun, going out to the bars, going to parties, and that's got its own sense of fun and vibe to it, especially in the soundtrack. But like the colors are kind of like green to yellow, um, transitioning through the middle of the movie, um, which is a kind of like party colors. So, like those were the colors of the party lights a little bit, um, but also they kind of evoke this like sick, sickly kind of vain vanity. Um, you know, we wanted it to be kind of like a fun color that can corrupt into kind of grossness, and then it just goes full red for the second half of the movie, and that's kind of when she starts seeing red, if you will. Um, and so though you know, the color palette of the progression of the movie was was basically Sam came up with that. Um and then also originally, I like my shot lists, they are just like my scripts, they're just way too long. And uh and so I I have trouble, you know, editing my ideas. But when I first sent him my shot ideas, he was like, yo, let's simplify this. And I realized that a lot of my films are pretty jumpy, have a lot of different shots because I have a lot of visual ideas. But it's not necessarily necessary to tell the story or make the movie that way. So, you know, I I was talking to myself and I was like, I've never done a lot of long takes. I've never done a lot of just sitting there in one shot.
SPEAKER_01:I'm wondering if you bring up that one shot that really long one-shot take.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So that and that shot was actually even longer. I cut maybe a minute, minute and a half out of it for time. But um, so every single shot and look or every single scene, there was one shot that covered the entire thing that I knew I could always use. And honestly, every other cut was um just to save me in case that one shot didn't work. Because you'd think one shots go quicker on a production, you know, it makes you faster, but they take so much longer to get right.
SPEAKER_01:You got a lot more space to fill up with extra drops, lighting, etc.
SPEAKER_00:A lot more margin for error, too, just because the amount of time and you know the actors can flood the line, and then you gotta reset everything. So Looker was planned with very with way less shot, maybe a third of the shots I'd normally like. Like I think maybe Death of a Bible Salesman was 120, 130 shots, uh, or setups, and Looker was maybe 50 or 60. I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_01:That might be totally accurate, but there were the Death of the Bible Salesman where um you had like early Russian um cinema influence where that type of um storytelling of using you know particular cuts to communicate what's going on in a person's mind, you know, before that started making its way into French and then you know American cinema.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, Eisenstein, like I you know, they force you to like read Eisenstein's books and like watch his movies and in film school, particularly editing classes where I learned a lot of those um you know Russian montage theories. Um so thanks for noticing that. Honestly, I don't even think they were that intentional. I think it's just what was in my mind at the time of making the film, it just kind of came naturally.
SPEAKER_01:Um plus one for college brainwashing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I kind of miss it now because now I have to think about these things and in order to keep them in my projects. But um, with Looker, another thing that Sam helped develop along with these one-shots was like, okay, if we're just gonna be in one shot, uh, but we need to move around and we can't do coverage, then let's move the camera. So we had to come up with an I came up with this idea uh with him of having no light stands on set. And this way we could max, we only had a few locations, and so we could maximize our time at each location if it was preset, decorated, lit in a way where we could show up with the actors and a camera, not spend any time setting up, just you know, get the camera ready to go. Actors rehearse, let's film, and nothing would ever be in our way, whatever direction we wanted to point. Maybe we'd have to do some lighting adjustments, but we didn't have to move a stand. We didn't have to like move a bunch of stuff. Every set was hot, the whole shoot. So um, that really helped us with time, and we could afford to spend time doing three or four of these long takes because we knew that we weren't gonna have to go spend an hour resetting the whole place for the next shot. Right, we could just move it, and so that that the kind of plan me and Sam came up with ended up not only affecting the look of the film, obviously, it's got these like kind of really cool long shots that are either static or moving. Um, but you know, also on set the scheduling, like it there was not a lot of stress on the shoot, which is great. Normally it shoots like really stressful and you're always behind.
SPEAKER_01:Was this the least stressful shoot that you had for Looker?
SPEAKER_00:Sorry.
SPEAKER_01:Was this the least stressful shoot that you had? Looker.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, and the the only one that's been on time.
SPEAKER_01:That's a rarity, especially in film. Yeah, it is. I mean, if you can, you know, maybe, maybe not. Maybe professional shoots don't always go over budget, but you know, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:I I guess I was just unit production manager on a Christmas movie, and I was able to bring us in under budget. Um, and the AD helped bring us in on time. So both of those things on one project was great. And I never movie or something. Uh-huh. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. What what what was what did you do to be able to um bring it under budget for you know your particular role?
SPEAKER_00:Um well as UPM, this was my first time being unit UPM, unit production manager. I had one on Looker, but I'd never actually done the role myself. And so I had there was one other producer on the project, so we were both both kind of taking care of all the logistics. And you know, I was helping coordinate um flights and lodging and travel schedules. And so being able to like take a PA and say, hey, can you drive and pick this person up from the airport rather than paying for that person to get like driven in a cab or an Uber? Um also drive making a long drive down to Sam the near Sam's Club in Columbus. We were filming in Cleveland. Um the other place I could have gone was Canada, which was closer, but I didn't have my passport. So I made a big long haul to Sam's Club, and probably I probably only used like 25% of our crafty budget because of like making a big haul from Sam's Club.
SPEAKER_01:That's what you want to do.
SPEAKER_00:No, they were there, we had a lot of snacks. It was just like not shopping at a normal grocery store that ended up saving us so much.
SPEAKER_01:You went to Sam's Club, right? Right. You got to plug a culture.
SPEAKER_00:It was three weeks, maybe 30 people, 40 people at most with extras. So there was a lot of you know going into feeding the crew, and then with catering, um, I was not sure I had the like lowest catering budget for amount of days and people that I'd ever worked with as a producer or not. And I was like, dang, like, how am I gonna make this work? And I came in, I probably only used about 75 or 80 percent of the catering budget. And between those two things, along with uh our production design saving some money by using by borrowing uh decor, uh, we ended up saving a ton of money.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, what was the producer's reaction to your saviness?
SPEAKER_00:Um, well, that's a funny story because when I first found all this cash that I could save with like my new catering plan or whatever, I rushed out to go tell him because I was just excited. You know, I'm a young earnest kid. And he's there with the executive producer, who I've met once or twice, but like he's literally putting up all the money for this. And I I'm like, Oh, he'll he'll want to hear this too. So I run up and I go, Hey guys, I just found like 15% of our you know, our catering money we can throw back into our overages and petty cash, whatever. And the producer looks at me like, What the fuck did you just say?
SPEAKER_01:And the executive producer looks at me because they've got a certain amount of money from this guy that they agreed upon saying this is what we need. And then suddenly you don't need most of it. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So the other producer is like, shut the fuck up. Like and so he he ended up smoothing it out. He's like, he's green, he's green, it's not extra money. We need the elsewhere, we're just shuffling things, there's no extra money.
SPEAKER_01:You think you're doing the best job in the world suddenly.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that is funny. If you do the best job in the world, just be careful who you tell.
SPEAKER_01:You're such an earnest guy, man. I'll tell you what.
SPEAKER_00:It's honestly to my detriment sometimes.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, that's funny. That was one of the funnier ones I've heard.
SPEAKER_00:It was very embarrassing. Like I felt like shit, like I had a pit in my stomach for the rest of the day. And then the next day I was talking to the producer. I was like, dude, I'm really sorry about that. I really feel like I fucked up. And he's like, it's okay, just don't do it again.
SPEAKER_01:You're like, we could have gave ourselves bonuses. What are you doing? Oh, that's funny. What would you say is the the film that if somebody doesn't know who Max Kaplan is, that you would tell them to go watch to introduce yourself?
SPEAKER_00:I would say um either my old it's not really that old, 2021. I made a coming of age like feature. It was like a 30 30 35-minute film um with Luke. Luke shot it. Um, and that was I made in between uh like high school and I took a gap year, and then I and I was a Catholic missionary in that gap year, and then I went to film school, and so in sometime in that gap year, um I think I want to say right after being a missionary. Yeah, maybe it was that summer, um, summer of 2020. Yes, it was summer of 2020 because we shot during COVID. That was crazy. We were one of the first productions to actually one of the first SAG productions to um uh work that summer. And we were we were scheduled to work at the beginning of summer, late spring, and we had to be delayed because we were waiting on SAG to give us the guidelines for production, you know, like they during those two years of COVID, they had zones. There was like zone A, and that was like where the actors were on set, and then there's zone B and that camera crew and director, and then there's zone C, and that's where like all the rest of the crew has to stay. Everybody needed to have PPE get tested every day, that type of shit. Um, so we actually had to wait for those guidelines to come out and then we could start. Um, and that film is like a it's a coming of age about like two high school sweethearts that have to separate because their adult lives, you know, take them separate ways. And very inspired by um like Richard Linklater, uh a little bit of Terrence Malik, who are two of my favorite filmmakers that I don't really like, I don't really make films like that anymore. I would like to. Uh, but yeah, so like I've I've kind of shifted into thriller horror territory recently. Um, but Hawaii, I think, has a lot of my personality, my aesthetic, my creativity in it, um, and a lot of my like just personality. It is a bit of a time capsule of me because it's based on my high school relationship. So it's loosely, um, but yeah, that's probably the most me. And then if you wanted like um maybe a bit more modern sense of who I am as a creative in a person, maybe death of a Bible salesman. I don't want you to think I'm some crazy psycho killer, but definitely had like a huge change of personality and life and everything after I was a missionary and had this like huge crisis of faith and falling out with the church. And I I made Death of a Bible Salesman to kind of process all those emotions and feelings. So that's a good representation of a bit more modern side of me, I guess.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. For you, how do you know an idea is worth pursuing?
SPEAKER_00:Uh what like David Lynch says getting ideas is like going fishing. Um, the deeper you fish, like the bigger fish there are. I that's because he's into transcendental meditation, and I don't know how to do that. But I think of ideas.
SPEAKER_01:That's basically it.
SPEAKER_00:But I um I do think of ideas as external to us, or I don't think our brains generate ideas. Um, or at least there's nothing that definitively proves that to me. Because I I mean, in some way, we're a bit like radio antennas. I actually have a theory that our consciousness actually isn't originate in our heads, but it is picked up by our brains that are antennas.
SPEAKER_01:But that's basically that we're remote piling these meat sacks that we got right now.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's for when I'm on Joe Rogan, so don't worry, I'm not gonna get into it. But tune in next week for I'll never go on Joe Rogan. But um I do think that there's like ideas that you are well primed as a person through your experiences and perspective um and sensitivities to certain things, um, and personality that like you just naturally pick up or intuit. Um, and sometimes those ideas come and go. There's been so many ideas that I've forgotten. Kind of I I think of those fearfully because I I know how much good ideas I've had that I just haven't written down in time to remember. And there's all these great David Lynch, there's a great David Lynch montage on YouTube where it's just him talking about how if he's forgotten an idea, he wants to kill himself. He's like so many times that there's like a couple of wings. Um and I've I I don't feel that precious about ideas because I do think if you're if there's an idea that you're supposed to make, like it'll grab you, it'll like hold in your brain, and you can't let go of it. And like as an artist, probably like if you're a painter or musician, you like create it, write it, put it out there to like exercise it out of you, to like get that out of your head, stop it from stop you from thinking about it on a loop. Um, and as a filmmaker, it's kind of like, yeah, I gotta I have to see this on the big screen in order to like move on to the next thing.
SPEAKER_01:I see.
SPEAKER_00:So in a certain way, I don't choose my ideas, my ideas choose me.
SPEAKER_01:Are you still working on pilgrimage? Uh I was I was stalking your Instagram uh page, and like you made something for winter film last year, which happened was it last year? Yeah, it was last year.
SPEAKER_00:I was making it for winter film and it fell apart.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and uh that uh that ironically that actually happened to be the first winter film that I uh attended. Oh, really? And so I guess I was supposed to see you there, but apparently not. Um are you still gonna finish that or like what's what's going on with that one?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I don't want to I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, but um the whole thing fell apart due to scheduling, and so I think I'm gonna have to go back to we've already shot a whole day. We shot all the action scenes on um most of the special no, none of it. Yeah, some of the special tech stuff. But anyways, it was a three-day shoot. We ended up getting delayed for scheduling to begin with, but we loved the script we've written for winter film so much, and we were like, we'll just make it, you know. And at the beginning of this year, uh a lot of me and my peers like weren't getting gigs uh, you know, on film right away. So we were like, let's just do something in our free time, keep frosty, you know, make something cool. And so we were gonna just make this winter film script outside of winter film because it was like April. Winter film happens in February, I think. Um so yeah, we did the first day, and then uh I don't know if she should edit this out or not, but my main actor calls me like the night before day two and is like, look, I don't think I can I don't think I can make it. Uh my wife just asked me for a divorce. I was like, fuck like Murphy's Law, right? And what's crazy is the last time I'd worked with him on Death of a Bible Salesman, the last day that we shot was the Hell scenes. And that day, um, or that earlier that morning before call, my ex-girlfriend called me and was like, Hey, I just want to let you know that I've been cheating on you. And so I was like so emotionally distraught that day. It was horrible. It was like a 17-hour day, super cold, no power.
SPEAKER_01:Why do women choose the worst times to do these things to men? Like I feel like guys are at least gentlemen enough to where to be like, all right, uh shoot. Like it women see this more as scummy, but like men will try to, if we know we're gonna break up with the person or do like, you know, or end things. You're not gonna do it.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know, but it honestly, I think it did help the film. Uh, I'm talking about Death of a Bible Salesman because I was in such emotional distress, and my actors knew that. Like, I had a little pow wow as soon as we started the day with my producer and my two actors, and I was like, look, I'm going through it. I am not gonna be on the ball today. I'm this far from crying any given moment. Please be kind to me. We'll get through the day. You know, I'm sorry for whatever happens. So they were all on my level and they were kind of sensitive to what I was going through. And a lot of their conversations are pretty emotional, you know, in hell. And and some of it directly has to do with infidelity. And so I think those scenes actually like sang because of the emotional state I was in, and that me and kind of the select group of people were in. Everybody was like very sensitive to that. It was very real to us what I was going through. Um, and then fast forward a couple years later, and the fucking same thing happens to sit.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I get it, man. I mean, it sucks, you know.
SPEAKER_00:It is the well, I you know, I was just going through a breakup, they're going through a divorce, and so that was what I did. There was a scummy part of me that when I got that phone call, I wanted to be that scummy director and be like, you still have to show up tomorrow. Use it, you know. Uh, but I did not do that.
SPEAKER_01:You weren't gonna be the director who's like uh telling Jim Carrey, you know, be like, don't ever heal yourself. You're beautiful the way you're messed up right now, you know.
SPEAKER_00:No, I wasn't I wasn't gonna I wasn't gonna put him through that. So yeah, it's on hold for now. I still really, really love the story and the scripts. One of the coolest scripts that I've helped make. Co-wrote it with my best friend Christian, who I used to make films with all the time back in high school. We grew up together basically making films. So it was really cool. We haven't seen each we haven't worked together in like maybe five years, um, just because of life and college and stuff. So being able to write with him again was super fun. Um, and the film will get made. It's just been a bit of a hassle life and schedule and crew wise. But I'm thinking about recasting it. Um, and maybe even we have such cool locations in Hawking Hills. Uh, so I really want to see.
SPEAKER_01:Hawking Hills is beautiful, it's so beautiful. It's Hobbiton, it's basically Hobbiton, you know?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because I'm gonna once, but um, me and all my friends, we uh at the time, I'm the only one with a motorcycle left, but at the time all my friends had motorcycles, and so we did this motorcycle trip, and we got like a cabin out in Hawking Hills during the summer where like the sky is just like so serene. You can actually see uh most of the stars that you can't see in the city. Um, and it's it's beautiful. Go ahead. Like I had to I had to reminisce about that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, shout out to Hawking Hills. We love Hawking Hills. I'd shoot everything there if I could, but yeah, we have such cool so because it's a medieval film, which I love doing period pieces, but they're like super hard because everything in the frame needs to sell the time period, otherwise, what's the point? So, but I think like one of the great powers of cinema is being able to transport you through time. I mean, we can time travel, you just have to watch the screen. Um, and so I've done the 80s, I've done the 70s. Or go left. Yeah, right. But I've never done like Like modern civilization. Um, so doing a medieval film, uh I was like, how do I sell this without having the budget be enormous for sets and everything? So I spent basically all the budget on costumes and props and special effects, and then everything else is set outside in the wilderness, and that's you know, make it black and white. It's 500 years ago. Um, so yeah, Hawking Hills was definitely like the most interesting place we could film here in Ohio because most of Ohio is pretty boring, but Hawking Hills isn't. Uh, we filmed our one day that we have filmed already in Yellow Springs, um, which has a park called Glen Helen, and they've got some really cool cliffs and stuff. So we utilized that for the first day, but we were gonna do the next two days in Hawking Hills in a cave, um, which I've never shot in a cave. That's pretty cool. Uh, but yeah, I mean I'm hoping to do it maybe around the same time we tried this year, next year. So maybe April 2026, we'll try and pull that off.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, sweet. Well, I mean, good luck. I I want to backtrack a little bit because I think you know, a lot of people when the directors they don't just have to direct the actors, they also have to direct the crew, but then they have to puppeteer and direct the director who is also themselves. You know? So yeah, going back to you know, your experience on Death of a Bible salesman, do you think that your level of openness and honesty with what you were dealing with in your personal life um made things easier in a certain way by providing the crew and the actors a level of understanding what was going on? That you know, since you're you're the lead man, you're taking this charge, but then uh I assume that you know you were open about things to be able to provide clarity so that way they didn't feel directionless, you know, about do you think that assisted their uh performances because they didn't have to think about like what's going on with Max or something like that? Or in hindsight, do you wish that you had you know kind of just were stoic and decided to maybe take a different approach? Like in hindsight, what what what do you think? What are your thoughts on how you took that a position that position and approach as a director when it came to managing your crew?
SPEAKER_00:Um I think it helped the performances a lot. Like I said, it kind of but maybe it didn't make it easier, it just helped make them better. I think we were all very uncomfortable that day, me the most so, but everybody else, yeah. I I I was really worried nobody was gonna work with me again because A, we went well past 12 hours, and that was because we weren't super on time. Uh, you know, I had an assistant director, but she can't make me move faster if I'm the one that's being slow uh to make decisions or whatever. Um so horribly overscheduled, no bathrooms, we're in the wilderness, um, no power, we're using mirrors for light. Um, about a ton, like probably 2,000, 3,000 pounds worth of gear that we had to hike a couple miles with. Um, and I'm emotionally distraught. Uh, not everybody knows what I'm going through. And so my main fear was like, shoot, do I look like somebody that doesn't know what they're doing, that is directionless, that like has completely dropped the ball on one of the hardest, most important days of filming. And I didn't have the clarity or maturity to know that people were there for me, and they were there because they believed in this movie. And the reason that day went off without a hitch was because the crew was still dedicated to like making it. Um, so even though we ended up there once the temperature dipped towards freezing and once it was pitch black when we weren't supposed to be, all our phones were dead because we didn't have power. We none of us had brought flashlights. It was a nightmare filming day. It was probably one of the worst filming days other than on your set when we were filming in like two degree weather.
SPEAKER_01:Talking about reach. No, but a lot of people nowadays know about reach, but that yeah, that I know what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_00:That was that was uh that was a tiny walk our hike to get to that location compared to the one for Death O'Bible Salesman.
SPEAKER_01:I see, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And we had, I mean, I don't know, like two or three times the gear. And it mirrors are heavy, like these mirrors that you have to put on C stands to like reflect the sun. I'd never used them before, but school had them, and they're thick and like super heavy, anyways. Um, so yeah, I I don't think I would have done it any different way. I'm really glad that I pulled myself together and still shot that day, um, because nothing's worse than rescheduling and getting everybody's, you know, uh availability lined up again. So the film legitimately I think would have been worse if I did not handle it the way that I did. It was still a horrible experience, and I am surprised that anybody from that crew will work with me again, but I'm glad that they all do.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's awesome. Um, what would be your advice to directors who aren't necessarily first-time directors, but they're in that weird intermediary spot where they they have a clear vision, they know what they're gonna do, but they lack the leadership skills to be able to communicate that decision, you know. It's all up here, but they they don't have that you know, that crew leader mentality of like, you know, I'm using my my own example. It's like, you know, when you're in construction, sometimes you gotta manage a group of people to be able to get the job done, and that's purely logistical. It's not even creative or anything like that. A lot of directors they have everything up here, they're capable that way, but they're not necessarily capable as capable as and know that they need to be to be able to communicate their vision. What would be your advice to them to kind of get them out of their own shell of their box?
SPEAKER_00:Sure. I mean, I've learned over the years that most of filmmaking in probably any area, any department, is in the preparation. Um, there's actually very little communicating you have to do if you're well prepared. Because if you have a plan on paper, people can follow a plan um much easier than try and decipher, you know, somebody's ramblings. Um, using myself as an example. Like if I'm just talking out loud, I'm not exactly helping the person asking me a question come to a decision. I might even be confusing them. But what I do like to do is communicate to the heads of all departments what my priorities are, what my vision is. I like to be in really close communication with them before the project even shoots. Um, so that's you know, having one-on-one conversations with the cinematographer, with the production designer. And most of these people I'm close friends with that I would, you know, bring onto these roles anyways. So we already kind of have a shorthand understanding of each other, how to speak with each other and work with each other. But the other half of that is then trusting that they respect all those things in your head, your plan, your idea, to be able to interpret it through their creative skills and mindset to be able to like make something good. And ultimately, you know, you can butt stops the director. Like, you can say yes or no to whatever they bring you. But I like to bring people in, share my idea, everything that I know about my idea with them, and then give them the freedom to go interpret it. And if I really hate something to come up with, I'll just say no, we're not doing that. But most of the time, everybody's got great ideas, and I think great ideas can come from anywhere. So I like trusting the people around me rather than just having it all up here and kind of like barking orders to each, every person, giving them specifics to do. Sometimes there are very specific things, like the eyeballs in Looker, they were they were whole eyeballs. And I remember Todd, our special effects guy, who's awesome. I mean, one of the best special effects guys in the business and just a great human being. But um, you know, we were done shooting it from the front, and I definitely wanted them to kind of bulge from the front. But then when we're shooting profile shots, I was like, I can't have them sticking out. It looks like eyeballs are on top of his eyeballs.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:And he goes, I'm afraid we're gonna shatter him. I only have two. And I was like, you know, I can either take that and work around it. Like, okay, maybe we don't shoot profile, maybe we shoot 75 degree angle off the face, and you know, we can maybe hide it that way, have him turn his head. I don't know. But I was like, I was like, I cannot have this go from horrific to goofy in two shots, right? You know, everybody, every audience reacts when they first see the face from up front, and you know, everybody in the theater goes, or holy shit, or whatever. And that's cool. But I would have ruined the effect if then we cut to the side and it just looks like two giant bulbs growing out of his face. So I told him, I was like, look, I don't care if you shatter him, just cut them in half. And he did. And they look fine, they look natural in this in the side angles. But that was like one time, that was like one time where I had to set my foot down and be like, no, this is direct order, no interpretation. So once he told me that, I made sure that we did everything we could before potentially destroying them, and then I was like, go ahead, take the chance of shattering them because we could always do it in post. Well, because we did have a VFX team working for us because all the melting stuff was VFX, and I knew that they could do eyeball replacement, and they actually did for one shot, I think. Um, but yeah, I just you know, I was like, I had a vision of how the eyes looked in the prosthetic, and they were not bulging uh from the side. So uh he did it and they didn't shatter. It worked.
SPEAKER_01:Sweet. For you, what would you say makes filmmaking worth all of the headaches and the heartbreaks?
SPEAKER_00:I think the ability to create every day. I mean, like I think the people that are best at this are people that need to do it. Um if I was thinking about this from an objective point of view, I don't know why anybody would do what I do or other filmmakers do. Like it's so much stress and time suck, energy suck. I mean, like we're filmmakers are gonna get gray hairs before anybody else, maybe not doctors, but pretty much anybody else. Because it's just a lot of work and there's so many problems. I mean, Murphy's law is most applicable to film. Film is also the most expensive art form, and money comes with all these other emotions and stresses and stuff. Um, so it's really there's nothing that makes it worth it other than if you need to create, it gives you that outlet. And what makes it worth it to do film and not just be home painting or sketching or whatever I might do creatively. I enjoy the collaboration with like a village of people. Like I love working with people I love and that I appreciate you know their talents and skills and perspective. Um, and I love spending time with them and and making something that we can all share, you know, the credit in. Um it's going back to like full circle to what we were talking about at the beginning. I think the community is what makes the heartache worth it and the ability to create with them.
SPEAKER_01:It's it's for the people.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would like to say it's for the audience. Like I love to see what the audience says, and like I do, but that's not why I do it. Like, I ultimately, when I think about where I find the most satisfaction in my work, it's being on set with my friends making stuff.
SPEAKER_01:No, I get that. Yeah. I've I've got that itch. Um I don't know if you saw it, but you remember that um that occasion for time, like full feature that I did.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. We ended up making it a short, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. I crunched it down to a short. Um, and you know, there is a chance that we might finish it, especially because, well, now we have the option of using AI, but we can train AI on the visual effects that we've done. So it's like that that integrity, you know, it's still there. Um, that's an option option that we're exploring. But um, you know, during that like five-year hiatus, I've just been doing nothing but writing. So you've been doing a lot of directing, and I had to figure out how to stop being a hermit and you know get back involved with the community, which is kind of what this podcast is also for and everything. And um when I came back to getting involved and meeting the other people, well, one I was surprised, but like by I don't want to say how small the filmmaking community is, but it looks really, really big online, you know. But then once you get you know involved with on the ground level with things and it felt like coming home again. You know, and so when I talk to like you know guys like you who's like been who've been uh you know, then they basically haven't stopped. You know, I get jealous of them, but then I you know I see your passion for things like that, and it and honestly it gets me going. And if anything, you know, what if people want to take away from this uh at least this episode and you know hopefully the podcast at large is that even if you're you know you're by yourself, there's there are going to be people that will want to do something with you, at least if you're a genuinely good human being. At least one time. Maybe you're maybe your work's crap and they never work for you again, but you do get that one shot. You do get that one shot.
SPEAKER_00:Um, I mean you you're totally right. I it's like I tell everybody to ask me for advice. I'm like, I you know, don't be afraid to ask anybody for help. The worst they're gonna say is no. And most people really enjoy. I mean, this comes from like way back from that book, like how to win friends and influence people. It's like if you ask somebody for a favor first, they are gonna like you more than if they had to ask you for a favor first. It's something, some weird thing about human psychology and the want to be needed or the need to be wanted, um is is is important to us. And so I've found so much success in just if I need something, um, I don't really struggle with how to get it, I ask for help. And if I don't have somebody in particular I think will know how to direct me to get that help, I'll just ask online. Like fate, like I hate Facebook, but I use it to get so much resources for my films. If I need old 80s cars, put it on Facebook, get 15 emails. Like that's how I found it to work, and that's what I tell everybody. You know, uh, hey, how do I how do I get a crew? How do I get some funding? How do um I finish my script? Ask for help. There's so many people out there that will want to help you.
SPEAKER_01:Well said. Well, Max, thanks for coming on the show. Do you have any final thoughts that you want to leave with the audience?
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for having me. Um go make your stuff. If you have a want to make something, you know, go do it. Um that's how I got into this, and anybody can do it. If you feel that like need to create inside, then then go find a way to do it. Um, it's it's worth it.
SPEAKER_01:Well, Max, thanks again for coming on. It was nice catching up with you.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks so much, Anthony.