9DCU0116HD_Directors_Cut_Studio_Transcript

You've got twatch everybody.  Watch everybody.  All right, okay You ready? We're going to throw a Frisbee and kick the ball.  It made all the sense in the world.  You. . .  I lost my job.  He lost his job.  And I'm working now.  And we just felt that we wanted to supplement things enrich our life, really.  And so, we turned to Onitrac.  It seemed like a very good opportunity.  They provide everything, really.  I mean, we have a massive amount of tapes that we listen to 24/7, 365, absolutely.  And we also have books.  Our favorite, of course, is the Bible.  We read that religiously.  Religiously.  If I can say that.  But also, one of our new favorites, "The 10 Commandments of Onitrac Success. 

" It's amazingly simple and sensible.  And then, three days ago, we got this new book.  It's a good one.  "How Would Jesus Sell?" If I can't sell how Christ would sell. . .  Then why sell? Then I'm not interested in selling.  Hi, and welcome to Director's Cut.  I'm your host, Charles Monroe-Kane.  Here at Director's Cut, we're dedicated to bringing you the best in independent films and filmmakers.  Our film this week is a mockumentary called "Going Great White. " Like all great mockumentaries, it's a satire.  Going Great White's victim is the pyramid scheme.  Think "Best in Show" meets Amway.  "Going Great White" was directed by Frank Caruso and Frank Sommers.  Frank Caruso couldn't join us today, but Frank Sommers is here with us in the studio.  Welcome.  Thank you.  A mockumentary.  I love the genre of the mockumentary.  Why did you choose such an awesome form? First off, the genesis of this movie came from Christopher Guest's movies. 

 I was talking to a friend about Christopher Guest might tackle after community theater, and other different things he's done.  And we said pyramid schemes.  And once it came out of my mouth, I thought that's a really good idea.  And the other thing that attracted us to it was the idea that it was something we thought we could actually pull off.  We had a very low budget.  But we thought that we could actually pull off a mockumentary that maybe is funny, and maybe even production-value-wise, hold up to other mockumentaries.  It's almost funny you say that, because I was thinking that a mockumentary with a high budget-- Forget about actors for a minute, I understand that Christopher Guest has to pay them.  But if you have too high of a budget for a mockumentary, it's almost like it should be an independent film.  Because it would kind of ruin it.  It has to have that feel.  Yes, in fact, there have been some mockumentaries that have been done, I think, with a big budget.  And it feels fake.  It feels too contrived.  And I think the best-- The humor comes out of the idea that we really believe this is happening.  It was one of our mantras, too.  We always said, real first, funny second.  Real first, funny second.  For you guys who are going to make a mockumentary, real first, funny second.  In the film, we wanted to make sure it felt like this is real, this is being filmed real.  The actors are doing it as real.  And we have our actors do some pretty crazy, outrageous things. 

 But we always said do it as if it's a real thing.  That's interesting.  Real first, I love that.  Do you think you could pull off real if you had more money? Or do you think that for you, right now-- In a sense, you wanted to make thilm, because you wanted to learn how to make films.  Is that true? I wouldn't say because I wanted to learn how to make a film.  I wanted to make a film.  I wanted a film that when it was done, you would say this is entertaining.  This is funny.  This is good.  And you know, I had pretty high hopes and a high benchmark for it.  When Frank and I really committed to it, we said let's make something that's every bit as funny, and every bit as good as anything you would put into your DVD player.  So the goal was not to learn, although we did learn.  Of course.  We said we spent the summer filming it, laughing and learning.  That was really what we were doing.  Are you disciples of Mr.  Guest? No, though I'm a big fan of what he's done.  And I think his films, "Waiting for Guffman" and "Best in Show" are as funny as you know, very funny movies.  I think again, just trying to find a target that we thought could be pulled off.  We didn't want to tackle something that when it was done, someone said, okay that's good, but it doesn't look right, or it's not up to snuff.  Right, or how endearing, that's nice for their first film. 

 You wanted, like I want my first film to be good.  Yes, with very minimal resources, minimal money.  I want to show another clip from the film.  Sure.  This clip absolutely cracks me up.  This is a clip from Gabe at the restaurant.  Can you set it up for us, just for a second, so we know who Gabe is? Sure, Gabe Tinkler is the guy.  He's actually a couple levels up on the pyramid scheme.  And he's delusional enough to have risen up, but also delusional enough to actually just not really be successful.  He sort of makes his way through life pilfering.  If he goes to the grocery store, he's drinking stuff off the shelves.  He's finding little ways to make the world work for him, with minimal cost.  Let's see Gabe at the restaurant.  I come to busy places, such as a restaurant, and I approach people when they're hungry.  Easy.  Easy sale.  Easiest sale in my life.  People, when they're hungry, they'll order and say yes to anything.  So I come in here quick, make the sales pitch.  If they haven't gotten their food, or if they're in the middle of having their food, they'll say, "Sure, whatever. " They use that phrase, "whatever. 

" So they sign up with me and I get 'em on track.  They say yes most of the time, because they want to get going and they want to eat.  We love to eat.  Except for this, I'll tell ya.  They order these huge meals, like this.  A huge meal, they don't-- Look, these are warm.  This company, you don't pay anything.  You make money.  Now, may I say something? Sausage is not good for you, unless you're working out.  And it doesn't look like you're working out.  Now, as you can see, I'm working out all the time.  So I can afford to-- Whee! I'm going to take this off your plate for you.  I'm taking it off for you.  Listen, wait a minute.  Who eats with their hands? That's my-- You just ate off her plate! People that eat with their hands are passionate.  People that eat with their hands are passionate.  So you know, one of the things, to me, there's a couple signs of a good mockumentary.  Like I said, I'm a fan of them.  And one of them is the one liner, the zinger.  And I think people leave the movie theater, and they quote it to their friends.  And that's one of them. 

 What was your favorite one-liner from the film? First, I want to say that character Gabe is played by Frank Caruso, my co-director, as well.  So he was one of the performers, though he had never acted before we started writing this.  He's absolutely brilliant.  He's a brilliant character.  My favorite lines are the ones-- You know, when you edit this, you watch the footage over and over, and over.  And the things that start cracking you up, and making you laugh, are stuff you didn't notice at all.  So they're the small ones.  There's a scene where Gabe and his sort of the person he's mentoring are in the grocery store.  It's just a little off-handed line, where he's stolen this glue stick.  And he's gluing his package back together.  And he just says, "Ah, it's always a problem," as he's, you know, committing small acts of larceny.  And it's not that funny of a line, but for weeks on end after that, I would just go, "Ah, it's always a problem. " And actually, just today, you know, it's a bad snowstorm in Madison today.  Just today, as we were getting ready, my wife used that line as we were getting ready.  Ah, it's always a problem.  Another favorite moment for me in the film, it's not really a one-liner, but I've said it to my wife already twice, which is fat Debbie.  Can you tell me about fat Debbie? Because, not only was it funny, but you had to do a lot to make it happen.  Sure, Big Debbie.  Oh, Big Debbie.  You know, we satirized a lot of different things.  And one of them, we have a character who collects vintage Hostess snacks and vintage Twinkies. 

 Those people exist! They probably do.  And even there, we thought, okay, let's make them collect something.  You sort of bounce around and find something that seems outrageous enough.  You know, way outrageous, and then just realistic enough that you think maybe somebody does.  So he had the original packaging of the Little Debbie brand.  But in our version, Little Debbie started off as Big Debbie.  We had to mock up a package, just like even in the clip we showed with the books, we had to mock up "How Would Jesus Sell" as a book.  It was a lot of little graphic design we had to weave in through the whole movie.  And it's a picture of Little Debbie, but she's chubby and she's Big Debbie.  And they're basically like, hey, in the health conscious times, it was changed into Little Debbie.  That's funny, though.  And he says, "Call me a chubby chaser, but I prefer Big Debbie. " I think I might use that line, "Call me a chubby chaser, but I prefer Big Debbie. " I might use that today, try to squeeze that in.  Okay, good.  Another sign of a mockumentary, in my opinion a good sign, is making your audience feel embarrassed and uncomfortable about the characters.  Not by the writing, but by the characters.  There were many times where I just felt uncomfortable for these people.  Not just for their audacity, but for their gullibility.  Just being uncomfortable, just like the "Brady Bunch Christmas Special. " Sure. 

 It makes you feel uncomfortable.  How do you achieve that as a director, to do that without being condescending? Because you don't want to make fun of people.  Sure, let me say a few things.  First off, when we started writing this, you know, it's tricky writing comedy as a partnership.  It was like, how do we say what's funny.  What's funny to you might not be funny to me.  So we tried to come up with a language.  And we actually sort of cribbed from a different show, "Seinfeld. " We sort of said, okay, we had three brands of comedy that we're trying to write to.  One was Seinfeldian, which was sort of looking at something that society does.  One was Costanza-like, which was this cringeful, awful, sort of ugly moment.  And one was Krameresque, and that was like the outrageous physical comedy.  So we tried to give each of our characters enough moments that were-- That had enough Seinfeld, enough Kramer and enough Costanza in them.  That's a good idea.  So in any single character, we might say, "We don't have enough Costanza" for him.  We've got to add something where it really gets it like, awkward, cringeful.  So, we would just try to write scenes that were really, unpleasant or uncomfortable.  Then our characters would do it, and it had to be real.  Keep it real.  Keep it real.  That's important. 

 Well, we have a good Costanza moment clip.  It's the Pez dispenser moment.  Can you set it up for us? Sure, that's where we're introducing our character Crystal.  She has a much more, even Costanza-like moments, where we go, "Oh!" like the family reunion scene.  But this actually sort of gives you some character development, and shows that she's somebody who needs a lot of medication to get through her life.  Well, let's watch another clip from "Going Great White. " Mom, I'm hanging up now.  What?! What are you doing here? I'm trying. . .  Are you listening to my conversation. . .  To help me out, because I've got so many medications I've got Prozac, and Zoloft, and Valium, Propecia, Wellbutrin.  It's depressing seeing all those bottles.  Just liked up, looking at me.  So I put everything in little Pez dispensers.  I've got Darth Vader.  He's for the Prozac.  And Batman.  Batman is for the valium. 

 Boba Fett.  And Boba Fett, I don't know what Bob Fett's for.  It makes me happier just to see them looking at me.  It makes it a little more cheerful.  It makes my medication taking brighter.  That's a great clip.  I hope you patented that idea, because I think it's going to start happening.  I feel like putting aspirin in the Pez dispenser.  Sure, I want to remark on one thing there.  We always had our characters get things wrong.  So there she says, "This is Boba Fett," but it's a storm trooper.  It's a storm trooper.  And there are several moments in that, that we know, that people go, no, that's this.  But yeah, we think yeah, because people get things wrong.  That's the thing, right.  Because if it's a documentary, okay, then people, whatever they say, they say.  And so in a mockumentary, they have to say what they say.  And if they're wrong, that's cool, because that's people.  I like that.  That's keeping it real.  And there were times on set. 

 You know, we had a character who was talking about the Pledge of Allegiance in the home schooling scene.  And in ours, we say the Pledge of Allegiance, but we keep in the "in God we trust. " We did several takes.  And one of our production assistants said it's actually under God.  And we're like, yeah, we know.  But that's funny, too.  Very funny.  One thing about this.  You had mentioned earlier about the grocery store scene.  I was thinking about this.  You're an independent filmmaker.  All the scenes, from being in someone's house, to being in a grocery store, to a gas station, those are real.  It's not like you had to hire a location or build a set.  How cooperative are people when you show up with cameras and say, "Hey, my name's Frank, I'm making a movie.  Can I film here?" They were extremely cooperative.  In fact, a big thank you to both the city of Oregon as well as the city of Madison.  A shout out to Oregon! And all the locations really, very quickly, would open their doors to us.  We'd go, you know, weeks in advance, and set things up.  But we had no money.  So there's no money for paying anything.  But the other thing I think was very important. 

 I've seen in low-budget movies where they create a location.  And it always feels fake.  Because they don't have enough money to do it right.  Yeah.  And to us, we always thought let's go where it's real.  You know, we needed a house that was really high end for the people at the top of the pyramid scheme.  And so, we went to really nice neighborhoods and found a house where they would let us use it.  From stores, to nursing homes, to wherever we needed to go, we said let's find the real thing and ask if we can use it.  We only had one place, which we knew, once you got into sort of a corporate chain, it gets harder to get approvals the way we needed to.  There's a certain audacity to independent filmmaking that I've noticed from doing this show, which is showing up and saying, hey, we're going to film.  I'm not going to pay you.  It's going to be a hassle.  And I'm going to film in your grocery store.  Yeah.  When you're open.  Yeah.  And people will say yes.  Is that because people want to be in a film, because they're excited about what filmmaking is? I think part of it.  Two-thirds of the film was shot in our home towns, so people know us.  I think they were excited.  And I also think they were just willing to help us out. 

 And you know, also, especially in our movie, it looks-- A lot of times, we have characters sort of ambushing people and trying to sell to them.  And it looks like that person didn't know about the film crew.  But those are all people who agreed to be in our film and act.  We said just pretend that you're just shopping and somebody ces up to you.  It must be interesting reactions from the people in the store.  There was.  You know, occasionally, you'll see someone cross in the background.  We'd have to hunt them down and get a release.  But for the most part, it was like we would have people there as extras.  We had over 200 people on screen at some point in the movie.  And you didn't pay them? No one's paid.  See, that's good! I would love to pay everybody.  But we just have no.  Next time.  Yeah, these movies are made for very little money.  But again, I think they'd hold up against any movie you'd go to.  It's interesting, do you think that-- There's many people that in a sense, you're parodying.  You're parodying the pyramid scheme, but you're parodying home schooling.  There's a bunch of different types of people.  Do you feel like, on occasion, somebody would watch this who is one of those people and feel like you're making fun of them? Do you feel like you're making fun of anybody in this film? I think we're making fun of everybody.  I think the best mockumentaries have a great deal of affection for their characters. 

 We had a great deal of affection for our characters.  And I think the best mockumentaries invite everybody to go, oh, that's me there.  And our thesis really wasn't about Amway, even though that's the mirror.  It really was that people are flawed and funny.  And hopefully, everyone watches this and laughs at everybody on screen.  But in doing so, says, wow, people really are flawed and funny, as am I.  And I think there's things in some of our characters, there's definitely some parts of me in some characters.  There's a home schooling guy who's home schooling his five kids.  And at the time, I was home schooling five kids.  He home schools them very differently than I was doing.  But still, there was definitely a wink to laughing at my own life in that way.  That's smart.  Why not include that, right? Those things you know about, or you know of other home schoolers doing it.  He home schools very-- He's trying to take the model of the school and bring it to his home in very extreme ways.  He gets up every morning, drives up in a van that says "school bus" on the side, just to drive them around the block once, so they're not cheated of the experience of being bused.  But I would like to say, again, we really did like our characters.  And I think the thesis, somewhat from the Christopher Guest mockumentaries, is looking at people who have oversized dreams.  And all these characters, I think, through this pyramid scheme, think they're going to be rich tomorrow.  And very few of them, if any of them, have the skills to actually begin to achieve that.  Interesting to watch.  Let's see another clip from the film. 

 I think this one completely speaks for itself.  I want you to put it on channel 2.  You're a 2, then.  Now, I take the bigger one.  I've done this quite a while, so I know what to do.  And this is how I get my workout.  I don't bother with the dumbbells.  I mean, look at the name, dumbbells.  Who lifts them? Dummies.  When I started out, I was with you.  Now stop pumping here a minute, okay.  I started out on channel 5.  I've worked up to like 37.  So you go up, channel 1.  See, and I can change it.  I flip it around.  I'm watching TV all the time when I'm doing this.  Channel 2, channel 10, channel 15.  And I do the reps accordingly.  Now, if you ever get cable, you really better be in good shape, buddy, because you're talking 120 channels.  And you know 120 channels means up and down 120 times. 

 And that's a good pump.  You'll start to build up.  And all of a sudden, you're going to notice, I'm pumped.  I'm making sales.  I'm making sales because I'm pumping.  I'm doing my workout.  Up and down, up and down.  How does that feel? Pretty good.  Try channel 3.  Go ahead.  Take a risk and do it.  Because if you don't take a risk, you're not going to be anything.  Up, let's go.  One, two.  One, two.  We're going to go down together.  Okay, you're using those legs.  Legs you probably haven't used in a long time.  Let's go.  Down.  With me, baby. 

 There you go.  Doesn't that feel good? Come on up, then.  Whoa.  Felt good? I felt that.  Come on down.  You haven't done that in a long time, have you? No, uh-unh.  I see you're shaking.  Once those legs get in shape, they won't shake like that.  It's called a spasm.  You've probably had a few of those in your life.  Yeah, charley horse, too.  Yeah, whoever that is.  Whoever that is, Charley Horse.  You know, when I think about some of the stuff that happened there, and the way he's talking.  How much of this is scripted and how much do you let the actors go for it? Because some of that looks like it's got to be ad lib.  There's a lot of ad libbing going on.  When we were writing this, we didn't write it as a traditional script.  We'd have a scene.  And we would just have blocks of text for our characters to say.  It wasn't necessarily this one says this, this one says this now.  It was like, this is all the stuff you're going to say in the scene. 

 This is all the stuff the other person is going to say.  And somehow, here are the main beats.  They have to get them all in there.  A shout out again to my co-writer and co-director, Frank Caruso.  When he first working on this project, he had these ideas.  I remember him coming in and saying, I have a character who lifts TVs for his fitness routine.  I just thought, what kind of insane ideas are these.  But again, they turned out to be very funny ideas.  America has people-- I was watching this film and thinking about America.  I wasn't thinking about Wisconsin.  I was just thinking about America, and my family.  I have some weird people in my family.  There are people that are like that.  Yeah.  There just are.  Yeah.  They're intense, though.  They want success, and they really are intense.  And I can see them with a camera in front of them, and being just like that.  It's kind of bizarre.  That character, he's one of our most delusional. 

 Actually, those TVs, he has a whole bunch of different TVs.  And to him, that's better than watching this big screen stuff.  You just watch four TVs.  And he calls it a loft.  It's a little house above an attic.  He wears the helmet because he bangs his head.  Of course, that makes sense.  Just when I think about it, you were talking earlier about this being a low budget film.  I'm curious, if you don't mind, how low was your budget for the whole film? Somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000.  Wow.  Very little money.  This is a full length film.  And we had so many different locations.  We felt we were definitely creating the whole universe.  We filmed all throughout, both Madison and Oregon, over 200 people in it.  Most of the cost went for just buying tape stock.  And food was another big thing.  We had to feed our actors.  Hungry actors.  But really, we kept it really, really low budget.  And not because we wanted to, we had no choice. 

 Again, we had very high goals for this, but we thought we have to find a way to do it.  One of the things that gives away independent films, in the ones that are not as good, it's not about budget, and something that could kill a mockumentary, is bad acting.  Sure.  Over acting, contrived acting.  Or not having the ability to re-take because you don't have enough tape.  But this is your first film.  You've got between $1,000 and $2,000.  But the acting is really good in this.  And people aren't getting paid.  How do you get that quality of actor and actress to do this? And why do they do it? Well, let me first say we had an ensemble cast of about ten people, and they were so good.  They really were.  You can see from the clips.  They're just really strong improvisational actors, and just good actors.  When we auditioned them, we made them audition the way we were going to work with them.  They had to come in and be able to act and improv, and make it real and funny at the same time.  And you know, Frank and I said very early on that we didn't want to cast anybody unless we thought they were A+.  If we had a million dollars, we wouldn't have gotten better actors.  We had a cast of actors we felt like these are as good a cast as you're going to get in any movie.  And so there was our main ensemble actors.  Then we had a lot of people who were both secondary, and very small roles, too.  I think it helped a lot to say to them, just be real. 

 Right, it makes sense.  Don't act, be real.  If someone takes food off your plate, be real.  How would you be? We tried not to cast people too outside of their comfort zone of who they really were for the smaller roles.  The other thing is, we didn't have a lot of time for rehearsal.  But we could do a lot of takes.  We're shooting on tape.  It doesn't cost that much more to shoot more.  So we also didn't move on to another scene unless we really felt good about what we were getting.  So if I outline what I think you're saying here.  Say we're having a lecture here.  If I want to make an independent film, here's what I learned from you if I want to make a mockumentary.  Keep it real.  Real is more important than funny, even though you're making a comedy.  And your standards are high.  It doesn't matter if you have money or not.  I have a saying, if I can say it for people who are trying to make a film.  Get your standards high.  Get a benchmark that's really high.  And then, you know, make sure you get that.  I think it takes such an investment of time, such a commitment. 

 When it's done, you want to have something you think, yeah, that holds up.  Because you're making it.  This is a good film, but it's probably not going to get picked up and distributed, and make you a million dollars.  So, you made it.  You have a day job.  You made it for? For myself.  That's important.  I also think it's one of those things that's going to live longer than I will, really.  This is your legacy.  I don't know about that.  But you create something, you know, you hope you're creating something that's going to last.  And also, it really will live longer than me.  I'm not saying people don't have pride.  I think when you're starting off as an independent filmmaker or a small filmmaker, you think, oh, I'm just going to do this.  I would recommend saying I'm going to do this.  And even if you get, you know, two-thirds the way, it's beyond what you would've thought.  That's good.  What are you guys working on next? You and Frank are on another project, right? We are.  We're all done filming it.  We're in the middle of editing it.  Some of the same actors are back. 

 There is some comedic moments, but it's pretty much a drama, with some funny moments in it.  Frank's back as a character named Lake.  He's playing opposite Jim Stoffer, who played the home schooling dad in "Going Great White. " Jim plays Jimmy.  Julie, who played the girlfriend of Jeffrey in "Going Great White" is back.  She plays a woman named Martha.  They meet on a road trip.  Lake and Jimmy are two men in their 40's.  They were foster brothers when they were young.  And now they're reconnecting on this road trip, and kind of coming apart at the same time.  Again, it's very serious, actually some very serious moments to it.  And yet, there's a lot of comedy that people, who did like "Going Great White" will see some of that flavor.  You brought a clip for us.  An early trailer.  Let's see it.  It will be the world premiere.  Let's see a trailer from "Lake Jimmy. " Jimmy, I want you to listen carefully about what I'm going to tell you.  * Hi, Jim, your brother's here.  That's odd, because I don't have a brother.  Well, he says he's your brother. 

 What do you want Lake? I need dad's car.  You want to take my car to Philadelphia? You're not taking it anywhere.  What's so important? I want a chance to be your brother.  * When rules that * We live by * To govern * The good life. . .  Get out of the car.  Give me the keys! Out of the car! I'm not giving you the keys! Get out of the car! * * No sense of * Adventure. . .  You know what? I've asked for a brother for the last 30 years.  And now all of a sudden, you want a brother? * Your head's so level * You can't see * The end all * It's a different * Point of view. . .  How you going to get her over here? She's looking at you.  She's waiting for you, now.  She's throwing the pitch.  What are you going to do with it? I'm not going to do anything.  What did you do when we were kids? I threw you the pitch.  What did you do? Do the same thing.  Hit a home run. 

 I never hit a home run.  * That looks great.  I look forward to seeing it.  Thank you, Frank, very much for joining us.  Thank you.  And thank you all of you for watching Director's Cut.  For more information on today's film, or to learn more about Frank Sommers and Frank Caruso, and where to find out where you can pick up a copy of this film, please go to our Web site: wpt. org/directorscut.  While you're there, send us an email.  We would love to hear from you.  I'm your host, Charles Monroe-Kane.  For everyone here at Director's Cut, thank you very much for joining us.  Check the gate. ECHO is on.