#5 - "Middle Life" with Director Pavan Moondi

On this episode, the boys sit down to speak with writer/director Pavan Moondi (@pavanmoomdi) to discuss his new movie "Middle Life" (@middlelifefilm) starring Peter Dremanis (@peter_dreams) and Leah Fay Goldstein (@leah_fay) of 'July Talk', what it means to make a 'Canadian film', making movies in Los Angeles, the lost art of entertainment for entertainment's sake, and lots LOTS more. The boys really get into the weeds of filmmaking on this one, plus Jonah had the pleasure of working on "Middle Life" with Pavan, so this is a must-listen!

Listeners in Canada and Los Angeles can buy tickets to see "Middle Life" now! There are screenings across Canada one night only via @cineplexmovies on JUNE 10TH. Toronto screenings JUNE 5TH to JUNE 11th at Cineplex Yonge-Dundas. Los Angeles screenings via @laemmletheatres with Q&As @laemmlenoho on JULY 29th, @laemmle_royal on JULY 30th and then screenings all week at @laemmleglendale JULY 31st to AUGUST 5th!

Visit https://middlelifefilm.com/ for tickets.

Hosts: Jonah Blaser and Leandro Amorim-Downie

Guest: Pavan Moondi (@pavanmoondi, @middlelifefilm) 

Theme music composed and recorded by: Dr. Nick 

Social Links: 

Intsagram: @jonahandleandropod, @jonah_blaser, @leandroishere

TikTok: @jonahandleandropod

Letterboxd: @LeandroWatches, @jblaser03

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

Hello, and welcome to the Jonah and Leandro Movie Podcast.

SPEAKER_03 0:05

With Leandro and Jonah.

SPEAKER_05 0:06

I'm Jonah.

SPEAKER_03 0:07

And I'm Leandro, and this is our podcast.

unknown 0:10

Oh.

SPEAKER_05 0:19

On today's episode, we have another special guest, director Pavin Moundy. He's a friend of mine. I worked with him on his newest movie, Middle Life. And yeah, we're gonna talk to him about filmmaking and the new movie and living in LA. It's always exciting when we have a guest on, so yeah, we're excited. Well, we've only had two guests, I guess, at this point, but it's still exciting to think about. We hope you like the episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Oh good to see you guys. Thanks for having me. Is this the first one you guys have done uh virtually? Yes. Yeah. All right.

SPEAKER_05 1:06

But uh, but yeah, thanks so much for doing it. It's so exciting. Yeah, I'm psyched. We're sitting down with Canadian-born director, writer, and editor Pavin Moundy to talk about filmmaking and his new movie, Middle Life, which is your fourth feature film. Is that correct? Yeah, that you've directed.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

It's a little debatable. Okay. But I think technically you could say fourth. What what's the debate? Uh, it's the first movie that I made, it was supposed to be a web series when we shot it. Uh-huh. And so uh, like when it was made, we thought we were making a web series, and I had like I had it in the back of my head that like maybe we could cut it into a feature. And so I convinced the production company who was making it to let me have like a let me edit a feature version of it. And that was the one I was like more interested in because it just like it was a pretty rough around the edges movie, and I wanted to cut a lot of stuff out and like cut it down to like a tight 90. And so it ended up uh being a movie, and the web series version never came out. Oh, interesting. But it wasn't like written to be a film, right? Which movie was that? Uh that one was called Every Day is like Sunday. It was like a really we made it for $16,000 in like 2012. And I I yeah, it was like I was interning at a company in Toronto, uh, and it was like my first film job as like an unpaid intern in the office of this company, and they they were like a web series production company, and I remember just sitting at this like work computer, and I was supposed to be digitizing tapes, old tapes of the film critic Richard Krauss. I know, yeah. Richard Krauss. Yeah, and so I had to like go through his entire library of tapes and just be digitizing them all day. And while they would be digitizing, I'd be like reading the company email and reading all the pitch documents and all the stuff they were trying to make. And so I knew like they wanted to try to do something lower budget, and so I pitched them this thing that I had written uh and got them to give us $16,000 to make it, and it was kind of a disaster. But the movie was on Netflix for like four years, and like Mongirl Media put it out, it had a theatrical run. Like it was pretty insane. Uh, like how far it went from its with its meager budget.

SPEAKER_03 3:44

Yeah, that's so cool. And and you brought some of the actors from that one into future movies, right? Am I am I mistaken?

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Um, there was a couple, yeah, like Nick Thorburn, the uh musician from uh Islands and Unicorns, he acted in that movie, and then he acted again in Sundowners. Um, and also Adam Gerfinkel uh was like one of the leads of that movie, and he showed up in uh Diamond Tongues. He had like a small part in Diamond Tongues. I think that was oh, and Nick Flanagan was also uh Toronto comedian Nick Flanagan was in uh I think my yeah, my first three movies. Uh and he has like a Blink or You Miss It cameo in Middle Life, so we technically kept the streak alive.

SPEAKER_03 4:33

Nice, nice. Yeah, I noticed that you've built a bit of like an indie musician repertory company for yourself throughout all of your movies, you know, with uh with Leah and Luke, um, especially with them coming together for for middle life. Um, is there something about musicians or even like comedians? Because I know you've worked with Tim Heidecker. Um, is there something about those type of performers as actors when it comes to extracting their performance that is different from traditional actors?

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Um, it is different, and I think like the initial MO of why I started out working with comedians and musicians was like a lot more practical in the sense that uh like the first couple films that I made, the first one like I said, cost sixteen thousand dollars, and the next one cost like thirty-two thousand dollars to shoot. Uh, that was Diamond Tongues, and it was just a practical function of like there's no way we can work with Actra with the budget that we have, like it has to be a non-union thing. And so you go down this rabbit hole of trying to find non-union actors, and so many of them are so bad and so like uncomfortable in front of a camera. And I remember, especially on Diamond Tongues, going through like so many uh casting calls and tapes and trying to find people and like not even finding even like anyone who is remotely close to being right for the role. And with a musician, you at the very least, and a comedian, know you're gonna get someone who's like comfortable performing in some capacity, and who's like comfortable in front of uh like a crowd, but also like a crew. And I had like a nightmare experience once where I I made a short and I cast this, it was like a really no-budget short just to like teach myself how to edit. And I cast this guy just based off of like a photo and maybe like a demo reel. Like I there was no like audition, vibes, and just not vibes always, just like pure vibes, and I was just like trying to make a short as fast as possible. Uh, and then he showed up and he had like a nervous tick that was being activated in front of when he was like had the lights on him, and I had to shoot around the tick because his face was doing like these wild uh like it was ticking, uh, and it just ruined the movie. It was like impossible to to edit around it, uh, and it was just a disaster. And so uh, and because he was so nervous and he was sweating, and really it was like Albert Brooks and broadcast news, like it was just like a very uh unfortunate situation, and so I think like that uh that pushed me towards like let's at least get somebody who's like comfortable in front of a crowd who isn't gonna lock up when they have all eyes on them. And comedians especially are good at improvising or tend to be good at improvising. And I at that time I was really had was like in the zone of like, oh, the script we there's a full script, but the script doesn't matter, like all that matters is like this is the point of the scene, let's just hit these three bullet points, and then it'll be great. And I think that was in vogue at the time, and uh both from like a mumble core point of view, but also like a Judd Apatow point of view of like, oh, it's so much more funny if it's like alive and like happens spontaneously, and so I think I was chasing that, and that was great in terms of like working with Tim Heideker because he was I think he told me right off the bat he had like a one huge scene that was like I don't know, seven pages long, and he was like, Okay, I read it, but I'm not gonna remember any of it. And I was like, Okay, that's fine. And so we shot like a 20-minute take where he was just riffing for 20 minutes, and it was amazing. Uh, and if you watch that scene, the camera is shaking a lot because it was shot handheld, and the camera operators couldn't not laugh, and so their bodies were just shaking, and it's such a shaky scene for a shot of a guy sitting at a desk. Oh no, um, for that reason.

SPEAKER_05 9:02

I I um I have such a hard time doing like comedy stuff because I can I laugh so easily, like yeah, it's yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

I've luckily like by the time we were shooting something, I'm I've usually seen it so many times and I'm so desensitized that it's not a problem. But with Heidegger, it was so spontaneous and he was so funny that it was hard. Like everybody was like trying so hard not to laugh at the monitor.

SPEAKER_04 9:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Um, but yeah, like I think that's sort of what uh brought me to working towards musicians and comedians, and then on this movie it was interesting because uh I didn't want to improvise on this one. I felt like I wanted to try something like that adhered more to a script. Um and so when I was casting Luke and Peter and Leia, it was more it felt more like I was casting actors because they had all acted before and I had worked with them all before that I kind of forgot that they're musicians, or I'm not thinking like, oh, I need to direct them as if they're musicians, and they don't do this normally. I was like directing them like they were actors.

SPEAKER_03 10:16

Yeah, and and Peter Drumenez shot sundowners and diamond tongues. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Yeah, he shot Diamond Tongues and then Sundowners. Uh, we had a different DP. Like, I'd say 30% of the movie takes place in Canada and then 70% takes place in Colombia and was shot in Colombia, and he shot the Canada portion. So there was like he had some sort of July talk commitment where he couldn't leave the country. He like had to be in town to like finish a record or something. And so uh we had Scott McClellan, who was a great DP that was friends with Peter, and they sort of worked together to set the look before uh they went off and shot it. But we also wanted those two sequences to be shot like slightly differently and have sort of a different look to them so that the film would have this sort of separation and there's like an aspect ratio change between the Columbia stuff and the Canada stuff.

SPEAKER_05 11:15

Cool.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

So it kind of like works with the different DPs then. Yeah, it's it definitely like I don't think we could have done that if it was a movie that was all set in Canada and don't have like a reason for the look to be different. Um, but for that one, it it definitely made sense.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

You're you're a movie guy, right? You like movies?

SPEAKER_00 11:36

Uh you know what? Take I could take them or leave them. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_03 11:42

You'd be surprised, the number of directors that I've talked to that have been like, uh, you know, I don't really watch them.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

I was like, I don't I mean, I I get it. There's definitely when you're working on a movie, it's almost like the last thing that you want to see is another movie. Uh and I encounter that a lot with filmmaker friends. It just causes you to think about your own work or whatever you're cutting.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

And uh it can get in your head in a way that isn't productive, especially if you just like are watching stuff to have a break from where if you're editing for 14 hours and then you just want to turn your brain off, it's not a good idea to like then watch a movie. It's a good idea to like watch bad reality TV.

SPEAKER_05 12:23

Yeah, I was gonna ask, like, what would you watch?

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Bad reality TV for sure.

SPEAKER_05 12:28

Below deck, Survivor, all that shit. Um so when you when you do go see a movie, what is your go-to movie snacks or drinks?

SPEAKER_03 12:41

You're walking into an AMC, there's no budget, yeah, you just go for it.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

I have a boring answer. Uh I don't usually eat.

unknown 12:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Don't usually eat at the theater. I won't even eat popcorn. Wow, okay. And yeah, because I find when I do, if I do like order food, um I'll eat it during the previews. Yeah. And I'll feel like this pressure because I I get really annoyed by like loud eating during a movie. Yeah, so I feel like it's like a courtesy to finish it before the movie starts. Uh, and so I'll be like eating it quickly and then I'll set it down. But then it's like, what am I even doing? Like I'm buying all this food to watch a car commercial, and like I'm really like it's just I don't there's no ritual there enough. Fair enough. And so yeah, I I usually like sneak in a drink or something. I'll sneak a drink in with a tote bag, nice, uh, or like a bottle of water or something.

SPEAKER_05 13:41

Nice. I I like that answer, actually.

SPEAKER_03 13:44

Yeah, I I get that. You know, like if I do like a nachos, I'm not gonna eat it during the movie. Yeah, what's the point?

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Yeah, you're not gonna do it during the movie. What's even the point? I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 13:55

You gotta paste it too. At that point, somehow that's so much more sad. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

You know.

SPEAKER_03 14:04

What were the movies that made you want to make movies growing up?

SPEAKER_00 14:08

It's interesting because I I always grew up watching like like I've uh in the last year I've started collecting VHS tapes, and I've probably bought like 130 tapes in the last year. And it's mostly movies that I like grew up watching and have seen a bunch of times. I love Groundhog Day and uh a lot of John Hughes. I always like I've seen Ferris Feeler like a hundred times. Uh Big Daddy, I think, is underrated as I think the best Adam Sandler movie. Wow, it's good. Um that's a hot take. Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah. Um but my collection is like almost entirely comedy, almost entirely. There's like a couple outliers, but uh it's all like 80s and 90s comedy, and I feel like that's those were the movies that I loved, and uh they definitely had like an influence on uh middle life. Yeah, so it was weird. Like I grew up watching a lot of movies on VHS over and over again, and for me it was almost like a home video experience. Like, I feel like I didn't go to the theater as much as watch things over and over on tapes uh growing up and just loving that experience. And so I almost have more affinity for that, for like being at home and watching a movie on a CRT and being dialed in uh than I do like the ro like how people romanticize like going to the theater. Like I do like going, uh, but I like like I was saying with the food thing, I also get annoyed at the theater by the other people that are there. Yeah. Uh, and so it's rarely this like beautiful romantic experience, uh, the way a lot of people idealize it. Right. Like it sometimes it drives me nuts in a comedy where like this might be like my filmmaker brain, but like people are dying laughing at stuff I don't think is funny. I do it all the time. And yeah, so like, yeah, to get back to your question, I feel like I was into like watching a lot of like Hollywood movies from ages like five through 10 or 11, and then I really got into TV for a while and was like obsessed with TV and wanting to work in TV and write. Uh I remember being in high school and like writing a pilot with my friends in the cafeteria, and like we dreamed of like having our own TV show, and then it was when I was in college, I kind of pivoted back to film a little bit and started watching a lot of like really like I I went to college for business and economics, and uh the first couple years it were fine because you can take like electives, and so I was just like picking up like media courses and like finding ways to keep it interesting, and then in my third year it became like intensely math focused and all about economics, and I'm horrible at math, and I remember like having this moment where I looked around, I was in a lecture hall with like 300 people, and the professor was like in the middle of this like extremely complicated lecture, and looking around at everyone in the room, like taking notes and realizing that I was the dumbest person in the room, that I knew the least about what was going on in that room out of everyone in there, and thinking like, oh shit, like I need to have some sort of a backup plan. And around that time, I had been going and renting movies from like the indie video store, and I remember there was like a mumble core movie, I think it was a Joe Swanberg movie that was made for like I don't know, I would guess like $500, and it was like there available for rent on DVD, and it kind of blew my mind that like a film that was shot on like a camcorder was getting distributed on DVD, and that this was even possible. And so I got a camera, and while I was in college for economics, I just started making short films. And I had gone down like the like mumble core rabbit hole of like Andrew Bujolski and the DuPlace brothers, and like this was probably like I don't know, 2005 or 2006. Oh, yeah. And just like watching all of these movies and realizing that you didn't need to go to film school to be able to make movies and get them distributed. And so I sort of just started my own film school, like making the short with that guy with the facial twitch, and uh teaching myself how to edit. And so for me, I think the light bulb moment was like seeing those low budget films and realizing that that was a way that you could make films that like an audience would be interested in, uh, and that you didn't have to like live in Toronto, which at the time felt foreign or like wasn't gonna be happening, or uh yeah, it just made it all feel more attainable. Cool, I would say. Where where was the college that you went to? I mean, it wasn't far, it was uh it was uh Laurier and Waterloo. Where did you grow up? Did you grow up there or I grew up in Kitchener, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 19:35

So I was like pretty close to home. Before you went to college for business, did you already like filmmaking or think that you wanted to do it? Or were you just like into movies and then you found that you wanted to do filmmaking later on?

SPEAKER_00 19:50

I went to college for business and economics more so like in high school, I was like shooting stuff with my friends, and we like I remember writing a pilot and then we shot it, and like we I think we shot it on mini DV, so we were like having to digitize it and like learning the basics of I think it was it might have been premiere at that point. Like I I definitely knew I had an interest in that, and that's what I was spending like my spare time doing, and all of my friends were interested in that too. Um, I think it just felt really it felt like a distant pipe dream uh to actually pursue that because I felt uh I definitely felt like a little pressured to pursue something more practical. Uh and I think that I I got into economics because my high school, in high school, my highest grade was an economics class. I had like a 96 in economics. And so I thought, oh, I guess economics is easy. I guess I like I'll just do economics. But I what I hadn't considered was that my teacher was this guy who would just like he had a like a standing desk, and he would stand at the front of the classroom, like with his arms on the desk, and he would just talk about like sports and what he watched on TV last night. There was like very little to do with economics, and then he would like give us these quizzes that were just really easy and like I think dumbed down, and so everybody was getting like a 90 in economics. Like I wasn't the only one that was doing that, it was just like a really easy course, and so I think that led me astray because I didn't understand how intensely math focused economics was, and uh so when I decided like I need to come up with a backup plan, I need to do something, filmmaking was something that was already. In the back of my head, and ironically, like I feel like a lot of people go to school for film and then start to freak out and realize, like, what am I gonna do? I need to have a backup plan, and it's something more practical. And mine was the inverse of that, where film was like my backup plan was like, Oh, I gotta do something that like I'm not gonna like I did horribly in school, especially those two years where I was like making short films uh and still in university studying economics. I was just like bombing exams left and right. Did you finish? Did you graduate? I I finished and my grades were so low that they uh took away my economics designation for me.

SPEAKER_03 22:48

That's great.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

So it's just like, yeah, my degree is just like general general arts. Uh oh my god. Like it just looks like I went to college and just like never specialized in anything. Like Van Wilder, just like taking his yeah.

SPEAKER_05 23:04

Well, it's a good example of yeah, not uh needing to go to film school because we both went to film school and uh I mean we like like I had a good time for the most part, but I obviously like I definitely learned, and like most people learned, like you don't need to go to film school to work in film, and like since I've graduated, I have not once used my diploma or anything to do with school to get a job. It hasn't like and so it's like yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

The thing that I always hear people say, and maybe you can tell me if it's true or not, because I I wouldn't know, but people always say that the most important thing you get out of film school is just the people that you meet while you're there.

SPEAKER_05 23:50

That's exactly the biggest thing is the networking. Those people are the people you know most recently. They're gonna go hopefully work on stuff, and then they're gonna need to hire people, they're gonna hire the people they know, which is you know, the people from school, and then it kind of snowballs from there, then you meet other people on set, and so like it it is useful in certain ways, but you'd I would definitely like not tell someone like you need to go to film school, like yeah, especially now where so much of the like education, like I even now I still spend hours watching like YouTube tutorials about like cameras and DaVinci Resolve and all this stuff stuff is online, all that technical stuff.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Yeah, I remember when I did it. I like I I think I ordered a like 20 DVD set with like a package of like here's a list of like shot lists, and this is what like storyboards look like, and this like really weird like DVD set made in like the 90s about the basics of filmmaking, and it wasn't that helpful.

SPEAKER_03 25:04

I was gonna say it worked for you.

SPEAKER_05 25:07

The best way to learn is you just have to do it, it's the only way you have to make a lot of bad stuff before you can make anything good. Absolutely, and even just like as a technician, too, like learning sound is like I failed so many times, and that's how I learned. And like in my biggest failure in school, we were doing our like final films in like fourth year thesis, as we call it, and I did I think I recorded sound on like half the films, and all of them except for one, I screwed it up. I like was using a record I recorded something, but I was using a recorder that was a little newer to me that like the school just got. And like when I'm recording audio, you record what's called like ISO tracks, so that's like each individual microphone. So like you have like the lavs and the boom on all separate tracks. So then in editing and like in the sound editing, you can pick which ones you want, and then you also have the mix, which is like an old school, like comes from an old school thing of back in the day when you were recording onto like two-track stereotape, it was like the sound mixer was actually mixing and um the mixes that they did on set is what was used, like they would have like all the track, like all the tracks, like in the inputs of the mics, but they would only be outputting like two tracks or whatever, and so like the mix is what was used, and so audio recorders still have a mix track, but it's more used for just like editing or like temp or for the dailies or or whatever. And so for all the films except for one, I only had the mix track armed. Oh no, I didn't have any of the ISO tracks armed, and I didn't and I didn't know until one of them called me and was like, Hey, like we're starting to edit the audio, and like we like where are all the tracks? Like, and then I was like, uh, I'm so like, and then I kind of realized like I knew exactly what and then so then the last one that we did that I did, I I had I figured out what I messed up, and they still somehow made it like work a little bit, probably had to do some ADR, but it was definitely a little like devastating for me because it's like your stomach, like your heart stomach sinks, and you're just like at least your last one you figured it out, so there was like growth there. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 27:38

You mentioned you have a beefy physical media collection. Do you have uh any crown jewels? You know, have you walked into Videots and found something incredible?

SPEAKER_00 27:48

Um, well, I got this isn't a movie. This is uh I bought a VHS Blu-ray combo two days ago. That's a crazy combo. Yes, it's like an unheard of combo. It's extremely rare. Uh, it's on eBay for like $500, and I found one on Facebook Marketplace and like immediately like hunted it down and went to go get it. Uh, and it's crazy. There's just like so few few of them. There was like one model that was made at the tail end of VHS and the and the beginning of Blu-ray. Whoa. And so I I need to break that in, but it's pretty crazy to have one machine that can play VHS DVD in Blu-ray.

SPEAKER_05 28:37

Oh, it's a machine. Oh, I thought it was like I was so confused. Oh, I thought it was like a movie. I thought it was like uh a VHD. No, no, no, no. It's a machine.

SPEAKER_04 28:46

Oh, it's a machine that can play them all together. Okay. Oh, I'm even more impressed. Yeah, wow.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

Yeah, it's crazy. Like nobody knows that this ever existed. Like nobody remembers that ever being made.

SPEAKER_05 28:58

That's so cool. Well, we're the dumbest ones in the room for that one. Sorry, it should have been more explicit. No, it's okay. I should have said player comments. I see the like TV behind you. Is that like a VHS?

SPEAKER_03 29:10

Uh when you came up um in Toronto, you know, you I feel like you have kept a very close circle of collaborators throughout your years. Um, how important is it for you to have done that as a director?

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Um, I don't know. I don't I feel like I don't think of it in that way. Uh like I made um I made three films in quick succession. Uh, like Everyday's Like Sunday was in 2012, and then I think it came out in 2013, and then Diamond Tongues came out in 2015, and Sundowners came out in 2017. And I think the first couple movies were made with such low budgets that I just had to work with my friends. That was really the only way to make it, uh, and to have people who are doing favors for you and who believe in what you're doing and want to support you. And so I feel like I just worked with my friends aside from like I met Pete and Leia through Diamond Tongues. Like we cast Leia after a July Talk concert, but we became friends instantly and stayed friends. Uh, and so when I she's also in Sundowners, and so when I cast her in Sundowners, it was like uh because we were friends, uh like she was top of mind because we were probably hanging out while I was trying to cast this role. And yeah, it's just like I think I've stayed friends with the people that I've worked with, and so like making middle life, I think one of the things that motivated that film, both for me and for Peter, was that when Peter went and shot Sinners, his big like takeaway from it was that he realized he thought it would be this big Hollywood machine, and then when he got to know everyone on set, he realized that they had all like known each other since film school. Like everybody that was working on the movie were just friends with each other and wanted to make a movie together, and this was like an opportunity to do that, and I think he came back thinking, well, I want to make a movie with my friends, and I was kind of in a similar mode where I had been living in LA for like a handful of years and had been trying to make like a bigger film, and a couple of them, and a couple of them got very close and then would fall apart for like these extraneous reasons where like the executive who's championing the film gets laid off out of nowhere, and I don't even know anyone else at the company that's like supposedly producing it, uh, or like the uh I think COVID fucked one up, and then like the actor's strike like had an option, caused an option to run out, and so I just felt this like lack of control. Like I was at the whims of like what was going to be happening externally, and it was the total opposite of how I started filmmaking, which was you do it for a tiny budget because you get so much control over it that you can like hire whoever you want and you can create the kind of atmosphere that you want. And so I was really hungry for that. And so Peter and I were both kind of in that same mode of like, I want to just make a film where we don't have to wait two years to get all of the money to come through from five different funding sources, like we should just start shooting it in two months, and we should not have to answer to anyone and be able to like just make it the best film that we can make it and not be trying to placate like investors or funding bodies or blah blah blah. Uh yeah, so it was like a function of just like trying to make something with your friends, basically. And so I guess I just stayed friends with these people over time versus it being like I need to cultivate a creative community that sticks around each other and continues working together. It's not like a collective in that way, and there's no like commitment that we'll ever work together again, who uh, but I think we probably will on something. Uh and so it's it's just it's more informal than that. Like, even if we never work together again, we're gonna stay friends and be in touch and see each other every time we're in the same city.

SPEAKER_03 33:35

Yeah, and how did that collaborative relationship with Peter change with him being your male lead in middle life versus a DOP on your previous projects?

SPEAKER_00 33:46

Um, it was it was different, but also the same. Yeah, it's interesting. Like as an actor, it felt his approach to acting, I think, is very well, I guess, traditional. Like he wants to think about the character, what's the character's motivation? He wants to know what the scene is about and what the movie is trying to say and what his character is supposed to feel. And I think the thing that was interesting was he was the same way as a DP and would want to know, like, I think a lot of DPs they wouldn't be invited to even offer that opinion on like a bigger production, but I think when we brought him on to Diamond Tongues, the understanding was like we're collaborating on like this art project together, regardless of what everyone's role is, and so I feel like the conversations kind of stayed the same. It's like we were having those conversations on Diamond Tongues, even though he was just the DP on that film, and we were having the same kinds of conversations uh on this film. I think the difference just was like there was more vulnerability required on his part because he couldn't stay behind the camera. And uh so I think for him it was probably a different experience, but for me it felt very much the same. Also also because he was a producer on this film that is like not a producer in name only. Like he's uh like probably the lead producer. I think he's the first credited producer, like he's all over every aspect of the production, and even on set, he was uh doing all kinds of things.

SPEAKER_05 35:32

He was like helping do lighting and setting up stuff like he was doing all he boomed for me once.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

Yeah, yeah, it's true. There's like a scene, there's like a pickup scene that we shot where uh Jared, the DP, wasn't available. He was like, he had to do like a Nirvana the Band pickup shoot or something, and it's like a scene of Peter on the phone having a phone call, and he had to light and shoot that himself, and he's on camera. Oh my god, with like no crew, which is pretty unheard of.

SPEAKER_05 36:08

Is that the one where he's on the balcony of yes, yeah. Wow, I was gonna say you like going back about kind of like working with your friends and stuff. I worked on the movie with you. I did like half of half of the Toronto shoot, and then Aiden Brody did the other half. I mean, it was my first time working with all of you and meeting all of you, and I thought it was really cool and really nice like working with all of you for the first time. Everyone was so nice and like welcomed me into the group, so I kind of felt that kind of really cool collaborative, kind of nice friendship thing, and I thought that was nice.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Cool. I was worried there was gonna be a butt coming, but no, we were glad to have you. I mean, uh, yeah, it was like part of it with like making a film like that is the people who you bring into that ecosystem have to really be on board with the kind of like vibe you're trying to cultivate. And if somebody doesn't get it or isn't on board for that, it can really be like a one bad apple spoils the bunch thing. And I think we were really lucky with like the new people that we brought in, uh really helped keep that like familial atmosphere. I mean, you probably have a better sense of like because you're on you've I'm sure been on a million more sets than I've been on. You've probably seen the polar opposite of it. Whereas when I'm on a set, I'm usually have a hand in trying to curate uh what the vibe is gonna be. So what like was are people mean to you on other sets? Like, how is it different?

SPEAKER_05 37:51

Well, well, sometimes people can be mean. Um I guess more like distant is maybe the word I would use, where like uh or like when you're on the big like union set, there's just so many people, so it's like not always as collaborative, you're just kind of like doing a job, I guess, you know, and it's just kind of like uh this factory kind of thing in a way, and like everyone's just not like some people don't want to be there sometimes, and you know, or you get like cranky people or whatever. Um so it's like on a smaller indie thing, it's all it's a lot. Yeah, it's it's I find it's always more um yeah, it's always nicer, I feel like. But yeah, I mean yours was definitely even more so, I would say, like just because you guys all know each other and like because I've been on some other indie stuff where y you're meeting people for the first time, so it's not as like like you're friendly, obviously, but it's not as like comfortable all the time, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

And yeah, I guess with a bigger thing too, it's like once the crew is so much bigger, uh you can't like certainly the director and even the producer to a degree can't like cultivate the vibe in the same way because you have so much less control over who you bring on and how many people are there. Like, I worked on a TV show uh for CBC that had like a pretty huge crew, and like there's tons of people who you're not even meeting, and you don't even know what their job is, and like you have to go and introduce yourself to them. And I remember doing that, and it was like somebody who was like much older than me, like calling me sir, and it seemed like was scared of me, and it just being like so weird, where it's like, What have you been put through like on your other jobs?

SPEAKER_05 39:50

But they're not all like that. Like, I'm kind of generalizing a little bit, I guess. There's definitely some bigger things I've been on where the producers and the director do a really good job of like having a good like five onset, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

It's so important, it really makes a difference, I think, in the final product. Yeah, absolutely it does, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:10

And how many days did it take to shoot middle life?

SPEAKER_00 40:13

Uh, we shot uh 10 days in Toronto, and then we had uh a five-day shoot in LA, and then there was like a couple pickup days in Toronto that were like really short, like a three-hour day or something. I'd say 16 days if I had to put a number on it. So that's uh not that many days. No. It's yeah, it's not many days at all. I was gonna say it's the longest, but it's the second longest shoot I've had. Okay. Like Diamond Tongues was like nine days. Wow, wow. It's like outrageously fast.

SPEAKER_03 40:52

And I mean, you've mentioned in the past that middle life was defined, or the production of middle life was defined by a sense of urgency, and you sort of led on to that earlier. How you know a series of projects fell through, and then you felt like an urgency to just make something. Um, but are there any other ways you know, you said this is one of your longest productions as a director. Um how did that sense of urgency um show up in the production of this movie?

SPEAKER_00 41:21

It's it's interesting. I think that like this is the fourth film that I've made, and like I'm still working on it to a degree. I'm working on like the marketing side of it because I have to wear so many hats on it. But I haven't like we've been picture locked for like I don't know, eight months or long, maybe longer than that, 10 months. And usually by this time in the process, you're kind of either sick of the movie or you when you see it, all you see are the things that you wish you could go back in and change. And I think on this one, I haven't had that feeling. Like when I watch it, I'm like really pleased with how it came out, and it feels I I feel like there isn't really anything that I would change or do differently. Yeah, and I think part of that is because of that urgency, because when you're making something like I I pitched the film to Pete and Leah. I had like a two-sentence idea of what the movie would be in July, and then uh I wrote the movie and had it like in a pretty good shape by early September, so it was like probably six weeks, and then we were shooting on December 1st, which is like the fastest I've ever like uh raised money to shoot something and or go from idea to production. It was insanely fast. Now, the thing that can be scary about that is you're moving so quickly that you could uh like overlook like huge holes in the script or things that don't make sense or things that need more time to bake. And so I don't think every film should be made like that. But I think it was good for us because we were just like operating instinctually and just like following our instincts of like, no, this is good, this is bad, let's do that. And we weren't really overthinking it or over-correcting it. And I think sometimes when you do things the opposite way, which is the way that is the norm in Canada, is like you'll have an idea for a movie and then you'll write a script, and if you're lucky, you'll find a producer, and then the producer's gonna give you notes, and then you take the producer's notes, and then the producer wants to apply for development money with telefilm. And so then you have to take those notes, and then you have to do another draft, and then maybe you apply for development money again, and then you have to apply for production money, and so you get more notes from like a different team for that, and then you need to bring on more producers, and then they have their own set of notes. So then you'd I think you go through this cycle that takes years, like. From and then you have to deal with like the production logistics of like oh well we can't afford this many actors, so we have to cut down the cast. So then you do another pass for like the logistics, and from the day like you have the idea to the day you're shooting the movie is like three years if you're lucky. Like I know people who've waited seven years uh to like shoot the film. And I think what can hurt you is like doing it that way, you might not even be in the same headspace you were when that idea was interesting to you. And so you're kind of past the movie and you're trying to make it exciting for you again, and so you're making these changes and trying to put in new things uh to make it appeal to whatever your sensibility is in that moment, uh, or you're directing something where you feel like you've moved past it. Uh and I think that's what can result in that feeling when the movie's done and having this laundry list of things that you wish you could have done differently, but you're trying to like along the way, there was no chance to do that. You had like you kept having a new set of notes and a new thing to do, and it just became kind of stale. And I think the thing that was exciting about this movie is it still feels fresh to me. Um uh like I hasn't gotten stale for me yet. Inevitably, that will be the case. I'm sure in like two years, I'll be like, oh god, I can't even watch that. Uh, because I think that's just the natural way that that like at least my brain works. Like, I haven't seen my old older movies in forever. Uh, and I don't know that I would want to sit down and watch them. We really benefited from that urgency of just like you have like a creative spark and you just follow that spark, and that's all you're doing. Uh, and it was just really nice not to feel like we had to bog it down and have it feel slow and stale. And I hope that benefited like the energy of the film. Like it's supposed to be a pretty high-energy, quick-paced movie. Uh, and sometimes when you're doing 20 sets of notes trying to like address 20 things that could come up from 20 different people, it slows the movie down and it slows the pace down. Uh, and then you're stuck in editing trying to fix that and cutting around that, and it can be unfixable sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 46:31

I hadn't said this yet, but I really enjoyed middle life. Um, I feel like I should have led with that. But, you know, I grew up in Toronto. I have a CM Tower tattooed on my body. Oh, nice. Um, but I, you know, coming up, I was a really I am a really big fan of July Talk and of the Born Ruffians. So by nature, even without the connection to this film that I have through through Jonah and you, the the cast of it is so exciting. Just as like somebody who loves indie music in Canada. Um But uh that out of the way, I mean there's a real sense of emotional discomfort in middle life, and it's the type of emotional discomfort that seems a bit more like aged up than in some of your previous works. You know, it's still a story about self-identity, but at a much different stage in life, is what I gathered from it. And I know that you are 40. Um how did coming up on 40 as you were making this movie uh influence how you wanted to tell this story? I I mean, I don't think that calling it middle life is uh is too far from where you are, right?

SPEAKER_00 47:45

Yeah, I mean it's like a hundred percent it's a result of that. Like I couldn't have written this film ten years ago. And I think it's like it's a combination of things. Like I was saying before, like I made three films in quick succession, and then when I moved to LA and was trying to get uh these other films going, the moment that made me decide, like, oh, I need to make a movie with my friends was realizing how long it had been since I had made a movie because I had completely lost track of that. Because when you're in it, it's like, oh, we got good news, like this executive's interested, like they're gonna give it to this other producer, and you get good news like every three weeks, and so you're losing sense of time of how little progress you're making because you are making progress, and so it's easy to kind of rest on your laurels, and I think I had lost the like macro view of it of like, oh, like if I didn't make middle life, I'd probably still be doing the same thing, right? I'd be like, oh, it's gonna be close, there's this executive interested, blah blah blah. And I think I what I found jarring about that was how fast time was moving, and that's the thing that I think kind of led me down this rabbit hole of wanting to make a movie about this. Was I guess it's like true that the older you get every unit of time is like a shorter amount, so it moves quicker, or whatever the the math behind that is, but I found it really uh destabilizing of just like time was flying by, and uh I'm old now. I've become an old man, and so I was not prepared for that. Uh, and I remember like maybe five or six years ago, like I was in a very like lucky situation where I don't think I knew anyone directly that had died, aside from like a grandparent or something, and then all of a sudden, in a short amount of time, it felt like people who were like my peers or friends or friends of friends, people were just dying left and right, and it was not like it was uh horrible and awful, but it wasn't like insane that it had happened. Like if somebody was 25 and they dropped dead, it would be like, what? What could have possibly happened? Like that is not natural, but it's like, oh yeah, this person's 46 years old and had a heart attack or whatever. And so it just became like, oh shit, like I am getting old, time is flying by, and there's this looming mortality uh that I was thinking about. And so I wanted to kind of work that into the film. Uh, but at the same time, I wanted the movie to be to not be this like depressing meditation on getting old and death uh and mortality. And so I hope that that that some people pick up on that being like an underlying theme of the movie and part of what the tension between the two uh characters is that Peter has had this or Ryan has had this like near-death experience and is like way more aware of his mortality and trying to uh do little things to uh make the most of every day. Meanwhile, Leia or Andy on one hand is like not only getting older, but also I think when you have a kid, you're at the beginning of something. It's this like new beginning where you are imagining yourself being around for at least the next 30 years. Uh, and so there's this tension where Peter's kind of thinking about mortality and she's not, but also is her engaging with Peter is making her realize how dissatisfied she is in the day-to-day aspects of her life. So, like that was sort of the MO behind it and what motivated it, and then it being a rom-com and it being like these two characters going back and forth. I think that was my way of trying to deal with those themes in a way that's like uh more subtle and not heavy-handed. I'm sure there's the majority of the people that watch this movie probably won't pick up on any of that stuff. But I think some people have. Like I've talked to people after screenings of people who have gotten that, and I don't think it's an incorrect reading of the movie to not pick up on that at all, because it is at the same time, we're trying to do this thing of making like a digestible, fun, romantic comedy because I feel like films have be films, especially at around our budget level that are like indie films, are rarely intending to be digestible and fun. Yeah, yeah, they're trying to be very important, and uh that bothers me sometimes. I think that that's great that they exist, but we're getting very little of things that are just trying to entertain people, yeah. And I think the challenge you run into when you make a film like that is that it can feel less worthwhile because it feels disposable. And so I think that's the difference between like a Hallmark rom com and hopefully what we made is like it's sure it's a rom-com, it's hitting all the classic beats that a rom-com hits, but I'm hoping that people pick up on, like for us, we were really focused on the characters and their interiority and what they're dealing with and having it be relatable to people so that it doesn't feel disposable. Uh, and I think it's uh that's for other people to say whether we succeeded at that or not, but it was definitely the MO of like trying to walk this tightrope of making a film that can be fun and easy to watch and comfort viewing, but that can also hopefully be still be interesting and thought-provoking in some way without being like devastating.

SPEAKER_03 54:00

Yeah, because the the I'm gonna let you I just want to speak to the this one moment that I did notice what you were doing with the depth of the movie under this like glossier rom-com shell, is that you know you start the movie very intensely with uh a car accident. There's a moment between Peter and his father where it's a bit of a reveal to the audience what Peter is going uh or Andy is sorry, Ryan is dealing with um in his personal life. And I think that was a very nice, subtle way to sort of talk about why he's so uh why he's always the life of the party, you know, because behind closed doors he he's dealing with such a a tragic loss. Um yeah, I I just I thought that really connected with me. I just wanted to let you know that.

SPEAKER_00 54:51

Thanks, man. Yeah, like that was I think an important scene, and you're right, it was definitely like intended to be kind of a root a reveal about that character, because I think without that scene, um before it happens, I'm sure people are thinking that that like, oh, this character is gonna be like really one-dimensional. And I think it's sort of we play into that a little bit where the first time you see him after the accident, he's like uh having this feast at a seafood restaurant that is very like cartoony and comical, and so I think we're trying to play into that a little bit and then hopefully have that moment that you're talking about be like a little bit of uh rug pull.

SPEAKER_05 55:34

I was gonna say, um, well, at first I really love the movie a lot. Um not just from working on it. Glad you were a part of it. Well, thanks for having me. And uh not just because I worked on it, like I even if I didn't work on it, I I would still love the movie for I think all the reasons that you were talking about. And like for me, it was like, oh, finally, like a movie that's not so serious and trying to like be like the best movie in the world, or like, you know, like yeah, just that super serious, like important movie. Like it's just a nice, funny, like simple, like digestible movie, but still interesting and has like good depth and and characters, and and you know, it's not just like a Hallmark movie or whatever, like it's actually like a good movie. Yeah, I really liked it for for that. Thanks, buddy.

SPEAKER_03 56:31

I mean, there's a really strong second breath that you get in middle life um that you injected into it by taking part of the second half to Los Angeles. Um and I'm you're you know, you were from Canada, you moved to LA. Um, it feels very appropriate that you would split this movie in half with those two parts of yourself. When it comes to your move to LA um and you wanting to work out there, what motivated that move? What was what was the driving force there?

SPEAKER_00 57:01

I mean, I think that I was feeling a little trapped in Canada where I felt uh like I look, I was still like at I very much like at the beginning of my career. It's not like I had broken through or hit the ceiling or something.

SPEAKER_03 57:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:22

I think I just felt like especially working in comedy, I think in Canada is really hard because for whatever reason, like Canada produces a lot of great comedians, but at least in like the film space, uh, there are not a lot of comedies made in film in Canada, uh, or they adhere to like very specific regional like niche comedy, uh, like East Coast, like a East Coast PEI movie that appeals to a predominantly East Coast audience. And uh yeah, I just like found that to be a struggle. I think that like it's harder to pitch a comedy because everybody has a different sense of humor, and very few people have taste. And nobody thinks they don't have taste. Everybody thinks they have good taste, and that everybody else is wrong. And so I just found it to be a struggle because you're pitching things to people who don't understand at all what you're trying to make, or who have a totally different idea for uh from you of what is funny, and I think what I saw in LA was just like through sheer numbers, there's so many more people who find interesting the kind of thing that I find interesting, or the kind of thing that I may want to make or want to work on. And so I think that was part of it. I think that same with like in TV, it's you see what it takes to like get a show sold in Canada, and it's usually like 15 years of being a like writer on various other CBC shows before you get your shot to like have your own show, and I felt like I didn't really want to do that. Uh and yeah, I felt like I just needed to like self-generate my own stuff and have a little bit more agency, and it felt like it made more sense to me to be in a place where more of the things that I watch are getting made, uh, because I watch a lot of Canadian movies because I work in Canadian film or have made Canadian films, but I don't know that I would watch any of those movies if I didn't. And I don't the people that I know who don't work in film haven't heard of any of these movies, which is uh including mine, uh, unless I tell them about it. Yeah. And so it's kind of frustrating because it is the same amount of work to make a film in Canada as it is to make a film here, but there's this hurdle of getting it. I don't know if taken seriously is the right word, but getting finding its audience. Like there are there are some big Canadian films now that are like huge and killing it in Canada that are cultural sensations. And they've even, I'd say some of them have broken through here, but even with that, I still run into people who have no clue what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:33

Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about, and it's yeah, it's the same. If you you run into circles, I I was in LA a couple weeks ago, and the first thing somebody asked me about was like, What do you think about Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie? And I was just like, I I love it, but I'm so surprised that you, somebody who's like from LA, never set foot in Canada, knows anything about it, and they're like little niche pockets.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:55

But I think it's still I think it's even though like you know the goal would be to reach farther than Canada, even some things in Canada are still so niche, so it is still cool when it becomes a big movie within Canada. It's still like I'm sure a good feeling.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:13

Oh, I mean, yeah, I mean, all respect to any and all Canadian films. I think that's uh great. Uh, but I do think there there's room for like movies that are a little broader is a dirty word because I think broad has negative connotations. And I think part of it is that there have been broad, broadly targeted Canadian movies that have been made, but they get like a big budget, and then they're horrible. And like Little Italy or whatever, they become like a joke uh for being so bad. Yeah. And I think my quest is like to prove that you can make a broadly targeted movie and not have it be like lowest common denominator, lowbrow crap.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:08

Um and like hopefully, like I think this movie it's one of the things that's been interesting taking it around uh Canada, especially the screenings outside of Toronto, is how uh like diverse the age range has been of people going to see the movie. And I don't know if that's partly because of like July Talks fan base has a wide age range, but there's like we were at a screening in London where it felt like there was everyone there from like a 12-year-old to an 80-year-old, and a lot of each of like people all over those ages.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:48

There's broad, isn't it? That's broad, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:50

Yeah, I think that's broad. So I think like our challenge and our uh my life for like the last three months and probably the next three months is finding those people and getting the movie in front of them uh because they do seem to like it, uh, but it's really hard to like target an audience that is not extremely online because all of marketing now, film marketing now is extremely online. Yeah, yeah. And we yeah, we can't afford like a news. I guess we could afford a newspaper ad. Maybe we should take a new newspaper ad.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:24

So Canadian movie. I have no idea. That's Toronto Canadian.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:28

Toronto Star newspaper ad. My grandparents don't see it. They have the physical copy of the Toronto Star. There you go.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:36

Well, was there ever a conversation about putting a July Talk song in this movie? I mean, like, you have so many really talented musicians. Was there ever like a hey, can we because honestly, every time I listen to Life of the Party by July Talk now, all I can picture is your movie. And it's not like a one-for-one, but I'm like, this is because I I think you even said like he is his Peter's character is a bit of Life of the Party, and there's that song just fits this movie so well for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:04

Yeah, that's interesting. Maybe that could be like a future trailer song or something. Oh, that's that's a great song. I think that is one of my favorite, if not favorite, July Talk uh songs. Uh, there was a conversation about them helping with the score. That was like the early assumption when we were raising money for the film. It was like, well, they're gonna act in it and they're gonna be helping with the score uh or just doing the score. And we brought on uh this composer Ben Fox, who is also like a very close friend of all of ours who have known for a long time and they've known for way longer. Uh and he's just like it feels like he scores like three or four movies a year and is just like non-stop, and he can do anything. So whatever you throw at him, he can do. And once I like honed in on what the style of the movie was gonna be, which was gonna be this like throwback 70s or 80s style like romantic comedy, and had a sense of what I wanted the score to sound like, it just made no sense to have Peter and Leia doing it. Not because I don't think they could, but because any cachet of like July talk, July Talk is contributing to this score was gonna be lost by it, not whatever it was not sounding like July Talk. So me being like, hey Peter, play this saxophone for me. It technically would have allowed us to say, Oh yeah, with like a music by July Talk, but it's so different from what their bread and butter is, and they're already so involved in the film and every aspect of not only starring in the film, but they both helped produce it. They're still helping with like marketing material that they're Making on their own, and they're all over it that like the value add of them having music in the film just feels negligible. It's like they're already this is something they're so highly invested in that we would just be forcing it for the sake of forcing it and not for the sake of like what is right for the movie.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:20

Yeah. Yeah, I like that. I like that you kept what was good for the movie. That's pretty cool. And I love the music, it was awesome. I love I love that style, like that 70s thing, like you said, like the way the editing kind of was and like the music, obviously. That like cla what was it? What was the there was like the classic theme that kind of came a few times? Was it like the sack? Was it a saxophone? There's a saxophone, yeah. Nice, and then like the intro, like kind of classic movie intro with like the montage and the credits and stuff. It was good.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:55

Yeah, Jared also his cinematography has like a throwback. Yeah, he used like really old vintage lens, Canon FD vintage lenses. And uh yeah, we all tried to lean into that.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:07

Yeah, what was it like working with Jared? Have you worked with him before?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:12

Uh no, there might have been like trying to think, there might have been like a little music video thing that like we worked on together, just like helping a friend out. Uh, so I feel like I it wasn't that foreign. Like it if it's surprising to me that we hadn't worked together before because we're such good friends. Yeah. And we've known each other for a while and are like brothers, like we just uh are really tight. And this was the first opportunity to really work on like a real project together. And I mean it was great. I have no complaints. Like, he I think the way he works, he comes from like an environment that's really collaborative with Nirvana the band, where everybody kind of gets their say, and they like really hash things out and try to they try to like follow the mantra of like best idea wins, regardless of where it comes from. And I think that's how I'm used to working too. So it was just like sort of a natural fit for him to slide over and work with us. And Jared also he has gone on tour with July Talk multiple times as like their documentary uh documentarian, I guess. And so his comfort level shooting with them was really high, and also the way we were filming this movie, there were elements where I was seeing like the skills that Jared has picked up shooting covertly in places really benefited us, like shooting on Hollywood Boulevard, uh, which would cost so much money if we did it legitimately, yeah. And just like stripping down the camera, having no crew, it was like just me and him and Pete and Leia, and just walking into like a souvenir shop, and then Jared charming the woman behind the counter into letting us just go behind the counter and start shooting a scene, uh, and watching him do that. It's like uh it adds so much to the movie because it just makes we when we shot that scene, we were going there to scout the location, and we had the camera. Oh my goodness, and we were like, we should just shoot the scene. And so I just like put labs on the actors and we ended up shooting the scene, and then it freed up like four hours on the schedule because we just knocked it out during the scout. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:43

Yeah, when I was watching that scene, I was trying to figure out like because that is the the spot near the Chinese theater, right? Like it's that souvenir show directly in front of it, yeah. I was like, how did they do that? Because it feels like the camera does go behind the counter at times, and I was like, Oh, maybe this was running gun, maybe they were hiding it. And I was like, There's no way that's what that was. But it it turns out it was. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:05

Yeah, the one good thing, maybe the only good thing about like influencer culture is that it has normalized like having a camera out in public, and people think businesses think it's good for business right now, whereas 10 years ago they'd be like, you can't film here. Yeah, and so people I think are way more open because they think it's gonna advertise their business in some way, which it kind of does, like in in a way, like because you're talking about the souvenir shop right now.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:38

Yeah, exactly. So there you go. Exactly. But uh yeah, I noticed when we were filming he was using the like small Sony camera. I forget which model, but it's like kind of the FX3. Yeah, which like the quality of the of the image is is really good for such a small camera, but it kind of looks like a DSLR, which is kind of perfect for the running.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:01

Yeah, like you can you can build it up, and I think like for most of the shoot it was built up and like rigged out, but then if we knew we were shooting somewhere, like we also shot at Pearson Airport, yeah. Uh, and if we're shooting somewhere covertly like that, he would just completely strip it down to the bare essentials and not not have a focus puller and yeah, yeah, it's cool.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:22

You can kind of do that now. The cameras are so good now, they can be small, small but really good. Yeah, totally. And um, I was gonna ask more about LA, like what was it like filming there? Like, was it kind of cool to film like in LA where you live?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:42

Yeah, like uh it was cool because like I shooting in Toronto was great because I got to we like shot in uh the main house we shot in was uh the woman who plays Beth, Nora. That was her house. And uh like all our locations were like our friends' places, and so it was kind of a way for me to see all my friends while I was in town, and it was great because they like it made the film possible, but it was just a cool way to like go back and see people that I hadn't seen in a while, and then the LA version of that was cool because Peter and Leia were there and Jared came, and I think that was it from the crew, so it was just the three of them, but it was a way of it was like a mixing of my Canadian community and my LA community, cool, and so that was a really cool like full circle moment, just like using my place as the production office, and everybody just hanging out there all day and watching clips from movies. And I had had already started editing the movies, so we were like working on the edit, and Pete and Leia would like sit in and we would like make a list of like things we might need to pick up. We added a scene actually that we that wasn't originally in the script, and so we shot it in LA, but it takes place in Toronto, and I think that was really cool, like having a break between the two shoots. We had about a month off in between. Uh, so that was cool, and then just like yeah, shooting in LA, shooting the LA montage was like probably one of my favorite parts of the shoot because we just in that montage they go do like 15 LA touristy things that like people would be doing if they didn't know the city, and we just went and did all those things while Jared had a camera and drove around in a convertible uh to the beach, and that was fun. That was uh so that was really nice. I think the thing that was uh complicated was that the peak of the LA fires was like five days before we started shooting. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:03

Oh man.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:03

And yeah, and so the fires were still going, they but they were on their way out, uh, but the air quality was still pretty questionable. And so that was a challenge. And there was like location, like we were gonna shoot in a park, and we had scouted this park and plotted out how we were gonna shoot everything. And then like 10 minutes before we were gonna get into the car on the shoot day to go to the park, uh, we got like a notification that the park was being closed and evacuated. Um, and so we had to pivot to like some other park that we went to in Glendale and just had to totally re-find a new place to shoot, re-block the scene before we lose the light, because it's like on uh on the edge of sunset, and that was a challenge. And I think we just had less prep time in LA because uh because of the fires, Pete and Leia had to move their flights, and so they flew in on like a Sunday night at I think 10 o'clock at night, and on Monday morning we started shooting the next day. So there was no like rehearsal period. Whereas in Toronto we had like a week before to like rehearse all the scenes and like go visit locations and like figure out exactly what we're gonna do. Whereas uh the LA part was a lot more like how I had made like my first couple feature films, which was like no prep period, you have to figure it out in the moment. It's like way weirdly more intense, uh, which was ironic because we had been looking at the LA schedule and I had plotted out the five days, and the page count was so much lower than the Toronto page counts. The Toronto page counts were like 10 pages a day, and LA was like three pages, and we were like laughing. Like, three pages is gonna be a piece of cake. Like, what a dream that'll be. Uh, and then as soon as like we lost our rehearsal period, we lost all our prep time. Uh, locations were getting evacuated left and right. Uh, it just made those like three pages so much harder to get and so much more grueling than we had prepared for it to be. Uh, but it all worked. We were it was still cool to do, and like not still not a lot. They're trying to bring more production here, but it doesn't happen very often. And so I was definitely conscious of like how nice it was to shoot for a day and then be able to sleep in my own bed, yeah. How that might be really rare. Yeah, like I might never get a chance to do that again. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:50

Cool. Do you have any advice for filmmakers? Uh, whether it's filmmakers approaching their middle life or if it's filmmakers starting a new life, moving from Toronto to LA.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:03

I think if uh you're a filmmaker who is working in film in middle life, you're probably doing great. Uh, because you're still in the game, and staying in the game is half the battle. Uh and you just gotta wait for people to drop off. Uh, and they will, and they do all the time. Uh, so I think if you've made it this far, just stay in the game. Uh, if you're like 20 years old, get out of the game. I don't know. I don't know if it's the move. Uh I don't know. I think like you just if yeah, if you're just getting started, I think you just have to be making stuff and be making stuff with your friends. And actually, here's a piece of advice. I think if you're a if you want to be a director, I think you should learn how to edit directing when you know how to edit, even if like in film school, I know sometimes they don't let you edit your own work because it'll get divvied up with different people uh doing it. I would try to get my own footage and just do like an edit just for my own sake, because it changes the way you direct if you can stand there on set and know exactly how it's gonna cut together, and it makes it you work a lot faster uh and more efficiently. And I think like had I had if I had no experience editing, I don't think we could have shot this movie in 15 days because like you need to know when you can drop shots and when you have what you need and how you can cobble something together while you're there on the day, or you just lose so much time. Uh and so I think that's a really important part of it. And then uh oh, for you specifically, I think, or anyone else moving to LA, I think it's like you should I think moving for career reasons is probably a bad idea. I think it's like a city like any other city, and I think that uh you have to move there because you like like the day-to-day existence there and you like whatever your community is there. But I think if you go with this like mentality that like, oh, I'm here to like get my name out there and pick up work and I want to be LA based, and then maybe I'll go back to Canada and then I'll go back and forth. I think it's really hard to build like a real community when you're not like committed. And so I feel like I see or I know people who've like come to LA for six months and then they go back to Canada and they're like, LA is so like everyone is so obsessed with like uh who you know and like what you're doing, it's just like everyone's so superficial. Uh, and I think uh that's the experience that you get when you're not or when you're putting yourself in spaces that are like that, but the city is a huge city, only like one aspect of it is its like relationship to the film industry, and I think what I love about LA is that it takes like years for it to like reveal itself to you. You can't just like have a sense of what it is after six months of being here and being in this like extremely tight bubble that's like a film-centric bubble, or also like when I first moved here, I was like feel like I was hanging out with mostly other Canadians, yeah, who I had who I knew from Toronto, and that can be hard too, because it's hard to break out of that bubble and like build a new community of people. Uh, and I think when you do that, uh it's just like such a richer experience that uh it doesn't really matter like what uh whether you get hired on a TV show or whatever. Like it's you're not tying your enjoyment of LA to whether you got the job. And I think that's key. I think not placing like unrealistic expectations on it. Uh, but it's great, I love it. I've like put down roots here. I'm in the middle of getting my green card. I don't think I'm going anywhere. Cool. And so I think, yeah, just having the right mindset, I think, is is key. And get out of your bubble. That's the other key. Make sure you have a car uh or can rent a car, and go to all the weird neighborhoods that don't have uh a movie theater owned by Quentin Tarantino. Get out of the way. I love the new Bev, okay? The New Bev is great, yeah, and the Vista. But go to like uh Monrovia and uh Sierra Madre, and uh there's all these little discoveries that it's like one of my favorite things to do on weekends is just to like drive like 40 minutes outside of LA and go to thrift stores thrift stores and stuff. Cool, but it's great. How long have you been there? It's been eight years. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:16

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:17

Yeah, it doesn't feel like it's been that long, though. Well, COVID probably stopped, like paused things. It paused things and it messed with my perception of time.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:27

Yeah, yeah, for all of us, for sure. Is there anywhere where the audience can see middle life?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:34

Yes. So we've been screening uh all over Canada for the last couple months with one-off dates, and we're doing like sort of a final chance for people to see the movie in theaters through Cineplex. 12 major cities in Canada. Check our website to see if your city is listed, and then we're also gonna be in Toronto on June 5th. It's gonna open for a week at Young and Dundas Square. Uh, so yeah, that'll be from the 5th to the 11th, I believe. And then we're gonna be screening in LA on July 29th, July 30th, and then July 31st to August 6th at the Lemmley Glendale, which is a short walk from my place, which is great. Yeah, cool.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:29

That's fun. So it'll be on Cineplex uh theaters when it has the little the Canadian uh release.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:36

Yeah, it's like June 10th is like our night. It's like uh 12 cities at Cineplex. I think it's at 7 p.m. at every screening uh local time, and I'm sure we'll be promoting it heavily. Cool. Please come on out. We want Cineplex to be happy with us. They like threw us a bone this slot. That's awesome. So gotta follow through.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:00

Nice, yeah. Sweet. Well, we'll uh yeah, we'll go see it again. Oh, please do. Yeah, bring some friends.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:08

Congratulations, Pavin. The movie is great. Uh, thanks for taking some time to talk to us. We really appreciate you.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:15

No, it was great. Thanks for having me. It was great chatting with you guys.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:19

What's what's coming next for you?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:21

Uh, I'm working on getting a new movie going, and uh, we'll see what happens with that. It's like pretty fresh. I've just started sending it to people. Cool, but hopefully we'll get it going soon.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:33

Nice, sweet. We'll uh we'll hop on another podcast when that one's done.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:38

Sounds good. Um yeah, thanks so much. This was awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:41

Yeah, thanks, guys. It was a good chat. The time flew by. I can't believe how long we were on.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:45

Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much. Really? Okay, thanks, guys. Have a good rest of your day. Bye. Okay, bye. That was awesome. Well, thanks so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed the episode. If you liked listening, you can follow us on all the social media things. You can subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you at the movies.