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What's Wrong with Hollywood?

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In the What's Wrong with Hollywood podcast, a Hollywood Nobody asks professionals from TV, Film and the Creator Economy one single question while we try to repair an ailing industry and build a new kind of entertainment studio. hownot.substack.com

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episode What's Wrong with Hollywood Ep. 5: Regina Hoyles artwork

What's Wrong with Hollywood Ep. 5: Regina Hoyles

In the fifth episode of What's Wrong with Hollywood, I speak to actress, writer, director and web series creator Regina Hoyles, who recently launched the YouTube series, Gina Gina [https://www.youtube.com/@ReginaHoyles/videos], the web series Naps, and the award-winning short film Adullam and was a writer on Disney’s Hey, AJ. As a performer, she has appeared on The Chi, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and 9-1-1: Lonestar. In our full conversation, we cover: 🩹 Comedy as healing and necessity - Regina views comedy as both a callous and balm during difficult times, describing it as "just as necessary as breathing" and her way of being a healer in the world 🗣️ The "talk back culture" advantage - Drawing from Black church tradition, Regina embraces real-time audience feedback on YouTube instead of waiting for traditional ratings, incorporating viewer suggestions directly into her next episodes 💖 Spirit over resume mentality - When choosing collaborators, Regina prioritizes "where's your heart at?" over credentials, saying she'll "prioritize your spirit far more than I ever will your resume" 🎯 Surrender while doing the work - Her best advice combines action with letting go: "plan but surrender" and "don't try to babysit the blessings" because most opportunities came through word-of-mouth, not resumes 🏗️ Mini-studios and niche networks prediction - Regina forecasts the entertainment landscape will fragment into specialized, community-driven networks serving specific audiences, with creators who adapt to change determining their own success Full Transcript Below: Jon Stahl Hi everyone. Thanks for joining another episode of What's Wrong with Hollywood. I'm your host, Jon Stahl, and today I'm joined by Regina Hoyles, an award-winning writer, actor, and filmmaker who embodies exactly what we talk about on this show, taking creative control and making things happen. Regina created the web series Naps and the award-winning short film Adullam. Recently launched the YouTube series, Gina, Gina, and wrote for Disney's Hey, AJ. She successfully navigated both traditional Hollywood and the new creator economy, and I cannot wait to talk to her about the future of independent storytelling. Regina, welcome. Regina Hoyles Hey, thanks so much for having me, Jon. Great to be here. Jon Stahl Yeah, I really excited to jump in. There's a lot of interesting stuff that we're going to cover in this one. And like me, you're in the space of just like going out and making stuff. So let's get started from like the history books. So you started in entertainment at nine years old. Tell us about that experience. What was that like? What's that all about? Regina Hoyles Yes, well, I am one of those people who knew what I wanted to do since I was an embryo. It was very clear to me upfront, like literally if you see all of my Barbie fill in the blank books growing up, I would say like, I'm literally going to do this. Like, don't think it's a pipe dream. Actually, this is what's going to happen. And so this conviction stayed with me long enough for my parents at an early age, thank God to be like, you know what? I think she's really serious about this. So we need to find ways to pour into her. And so I started to take classes out in Chicago and also just contact other people that were doing the thing from our network, the people we did know. Because Chicago has a little bit of a smaller market out here in the film and TV space. And I got an agent after some one of those big like conventions that a bunch of kids who say they want to do the thing go to, and I have had representation like since I was nine, I've really never been without representation my whole life. And so it started out with me doing a lot of the commercial gigs out here in Chicago. There's a huge commercial market in Illinois. And then also booking my first speaking role in a studio feature film called The Express. That was the film that got me my SAG card at age 12. And so I also spent a summer during pilot season in Los Angeles. And what is so crazy is that same apartment building that I stayed in became the apartment that I first moved into once I graduated from college. And I didn't realize it and put two and two together until I recognized like from photos I'm like. This is the same place. It's just totally renovated. And so it was very like full circle. And so acting is what I've been doing the longest. Professionally though, I have been writing since I, again, was an embryo and making a lot of like comedy sketches and skits was where I first was getting my hand at that, and also making like these little storybooks that I would write and illustrate. I would just see things super clearly and know how I needed them to be executed. So whether that was me making a sketch and writing it and filming it, and then editing on Windows movie maker. Hey, throwback. And then putting that together, like that was always a part of my story, but I've always been creating in some capacity. And it's one of those things that feels like breathing to me. I feel like if you've seen Pixar's Soul when they're in the zone, like that's me. Like when they're floating. And so yeah, it's something that brings me great joy and others joy I find. So it's something that's always been a part of who I am. Jon Stahl Yeah. Can I ask you what drew you to comedy? Regina Hoyles I listen, I'm a funny girl and I love making people laugh. I think it just brings such a level of fulfillment for me to know that I can make people feel relief, to feel ease in their spirit. I know for myself, I know I'm a healer and I know that that is one of the main ways that I do that. And growing up it was just something that came so easily for me and I was always finding ways to make my friends laugh. My mom will, she will tell you, she's always been like, Regina, why you got to be the entertainment? Why you always got to be entertaining somebody. She said it just like that. And I would just be like, girl, this is who I am. But it was something that came supernaturally. It was instinctive and just even the craft of comedy. I just started watching the history of the sitcom recently it's a docuseries and I was having a spiritual experience watching this. Just seeing the ways comedy has evolved throughout the years and how much it's served as such a callous and also a balm, like during crazy times. Hello, good morning. And it's just like this is one of those things that will forever be needed. People will always need to laugh. Like it's a very serious time in a serious world and Apocalypse Now, all of that. Yes. And, but like, it's necessary, just as necessary as breathing. To me, just feeling that in your soul is something that I will always connect with. But comedy, yeah, it's it. That's it for me, for sure. Probably got a little too deep, but Jon Stahl Yeah, no, I feel the same way. I mean, like, this is something that I've talked about before and I feel it's a super important genre to like, help people get through their day and Regina Hoyles Yeah. Yes. Literally. Jon Stahl Yeah, exactly. And so at what point did you decide that you wanted to make your own content rather than solely focusing on traditional film and TV? Tell your own stories. Regina Hoyles Also since I was an embryo, made that decision. I knew that for me, whenever I have, I always say like, the fact that you were given a vision for is more than enough reason for it to exist. And so for me it's always been about simply finding a way to do the thing. Like just do the thing and anything that feels like it's gatekeeping or acting as an obstacle or trying to imply that you need permission, you know, I itch with that. It makes me itchy. I think not because I have, since I've had this drive to create from such an early age, for me, it feels so real. So why not go ahead and make it real? And I think that has stayed with me from every phase of my life. Whether again, I was creating, when I was really young or going to college and graduating a semester early and allowing what would've been my last semester to be an opportunity for me to create an entire web series where I'm writing and also like acting in it, and also looking around at my community like, you're really good at this. Let me bring you in here to this. You're great at that. And just finding ways to get people activated because I do feel like I have a gift of being able to discern like talents and abilities and just being able to see and encourage people in their giftings and like wanting to just get that together. I'm like, we got to do something with this. Like, we're not just supposed to sit here just for ourselves. And so I think that's just something that has always stuck with me. And while I have worked in Hollywood and it's been an incredible experience, especially when I think about the community that I've been able to build within this world, I've still always kind of seen it as a means to an end, which is like creating at the end of the day for a living. And that that is just the most paramount thing to me. That, and serving the audience that's meant to be served with the work that I create. And so it's just been about saying yes to myself repeatedly has been my motto, saying yes to the ideas that I'm given and just going forward with that. Jon Stahl Well, let's dive into one of those projects that you're working on. And dive into Gina. How are you thinking about building an audience on YouTube on this platform? After coming from more mainstream places like TV, Regina Hoyles Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I think one thing that I have found is I've been saying, I've been like this data kind of acquisition period where I'm just creating and I'm just for whatever feels right to me and then taking in information, feedback that I'm receiving. But I've found that anytime I lean into where my energy is naturally going. It is often well received, even when I'm not thinking about that as far as like audience. Because yes, at the end of the day, I'm here to make people laugh and I want to entertain, but it's first beginning with me. Like if I'm making a sketch and I'm not laughing while I'm writing it or even making it, I'm like, eh, don't know if this one is going to hit. And so I think just from that, the belief that building an audience stands upon like a genuine connection. Wherever you are feeling a connection to the work and the material and the things you're saying, like it will likely also translate into a similar connection with other people. And so I'm really just thinking about what I'm relating to, and then seeing how other people are relating to it and building from there. I am someone who believes in talk back culture, as a black, I am used to the talk back, we're used to it in church. It was like, go on baby. Like, they'll give you feedback in real time while you're sitting on the views and all of that. And so I think it should be somewhat of a dialogue where you're listening as the audience is telling you what they want. Sometimes it's not so much them telling you as much as they're, you're just seeing them respond in real time and you're just like adjusting to that, which I think in the case of Gina, Gina. That's one of the most appealing things about YouTube is you're not waiting for a bunch of ratings or notes. Like in real time, people are commenting saying, LOL, this time Mark, when she did this, so funny. Or people are saying, oh, this needs to be a recurring character, like within the series, which I have already gotten four things. And so taking that feedback and being able to incorporate it into my next episodes and next iterations of how I'm thinking about it, that's one way of how I'm thinking in terms of audiences listening, just listening to what they're responding well to. And ultimately I am just naturally a big, I'm a big community person. Like I believe in community. And while it's great to have an audience, some of the funnest experiences I've had like in this creator journey thus far is literally like talking with people in the comments. It just feels like I'm chatting it up with cousins who are like, girl, this is my mom too, or whatever. I'm like, yeah, no, to send her some help. Like it's just so fun to be able to engage with people and that's like what we're here for. One of my biggest inspirations is Cecily Tyson, who I believe in her autobiography, there's a quote that says, we are here to see and hear one another. And so like being able to connect with people in that way brings me some of the deepest fulfillment that I have no words to fully express. It's like, it's like a whole family reunion in some ways. Jon Stahl Yeah. And on that subject of connection and community, how do you find and work with collaborators? Like who are the partners that you bring into this journey to work with and what's that process like? Regina Hoyles Yeah, I mean, first, people I like, let's start there. I really just mesh with certain people, and I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of the people I'm closest to are also very funny, very funny people without even trying. And that just brings me so much joy. But I feel like I'm very discerning about people and the spirit, even behind a person, I'm big on. Joy and people not being so like egotistical or those that are like just mean or like slander others, like those are who are genuinely so sincere in their character are very important to me. Like, I'll prioritize your spirit far more than I ever will, your resume. And if for me, the spirit's feeling off, I'm out. Like, I can't, I can't do that. That's a non-negotiable for me, at least when we're thinking about people. I want to be in consistent collaboration with like that is super, super and in collaboration, mind you, it can evolve like with what it looks like. For like a bare minimum, I need to know like, where's your heart at? What's the, what's that doing? I need to know what that is doing at the end of the day. And that's one of the biggest deciding factors for me when it comes to collaborators is assessing that out. But otherwise, I very blessed that I feel super surrounded by people who are brilliant and like more brilliant than me. I think it's really important to not be the smartest person in the room. I consider myself a forever student. I am constantly observing and learning from leaders around me and movers and shakers around me. And so that's also been important. Like who am I in community with that is also encouraging my growth because of the bar that they're holding themselves to. And so that's, those are some of the markers, the guardrails, if you will, that I'm looking at when it comes to collaborators for sure. Jon Stahl Great. And on the topic of growth and learning lessons, you've done some mentorship in the past. I've received a ton of advice in my career. A lot of good advice and a lot of bad advice. Talk about the best and worst advice that you've been given, and how do you think about giving advice to others? Regina Hoyles Hmm, best. I've been giving a lot of good advice. Let see, best advice that I've been given, I probably would say is to not plan so much. I think that as I've gotten older, the value of surrender has increased greatly. A lot of times I think that the best opportunities have arisen, is that a word? Best opportunities have come up for me anytime. I'm like, you know what? Throwing my hands up on a rollercoaster. Let's see what happens. And also to just be found faithful in doing the work. Like I'll be doing the work and then doors open when I say there's so many job opportunities that I have had that never came from me submitting a resume, but came because someone thought of me, they remembered how I show up in a room. And them thinking of me like, oh, Regina would be great for this. Like, I'm pretty sure almost all of the things I've done in my life thus far have been off word of mouth or referral, at least a majority of them. And so just being able to let go of my planning and just surrender while doing the work has been a big piece for me. Is that, that in, just showing up, like just showing up and people telling me straight up sometimes Regina for you, like that's just, that's enough. Like that's not to say again, do the work, but showing up also and the advice that I would be. to give kind of echoes that is, plan but surrender. You want to make room for opportunity, but don't try to babysit the blessings. Don't try to control it. And be open to the journey. That's one of the biggest keys as well, because I have definitely struggled as someone who can have perfectionist tendencies to want to get things done right, right away. But for me, especially in the case of making Gina, Gina, it's reinforced the belief that the small steps along the way, embracing the process is just far more valuable. Like we said, there's data I'm taking in that is helping to inform me as an artist in other ways. And so I would just encourage folks to embrace the journey and. Let go release the grip on what you may feel it has to look like, because it might surprise you in way better ways than you could ever imagine. Jon Stahl I love that. On kind of on that topic, I want to talk about the future. I want to get some predictions on the books because I love doing that. And then won't, I won't hold you to any of this stuff. But if, considering the kind of like traditional media and creator economy collision course, I guess if you had to predict what the media and entertainment landscape looks like in two to three years and then maybe out to like five or 10 years, if you're feeling adventurous, what kind of trends are you betting on? Regina Hoyles Oh. Yeah, so one thing I believe, I believe we're going to see kind of a lot of like mini studios and networks popping up all over the country. I think that we're going to begin to see a lot of people lean more heavily into their own network and creating the networks that are also maybe super niche and serve specific audiences. And that's going to be in high demand. People are going to, we're always going to need stories and people are always going to crave the stories that serve them. And so I just see a lot of specializations, if you will, developing in the film and TV space and more acceptance of the fact that we're in a new wave of what we consider to be entertainment. One of the latest newsletters from How to Not Be a TV writer, come on, Jon, was really insightful to me. It was probably one of my favorite newsletters where you pointed out the literal cycles of history and how once upon a time people were like poo-pooing at film. And then they were doing the same to TV and some were doing the same to social. And so I just see more people embracing that model, although some might be getting on the wave too late because of their inability to let go of the old. And I think literally right now is a big determining factor of the future for many creatives. Like how you are embracing change and new ways to adapt your stories, I feel will be very indicative of how successful you'll be as a storyteller in the future, whatever success looks like to you. For me, it means like reaching the audiences you're meant to reach and connecting at a genuine level. But yes, I just see a lot of innovative storytelling. A lot of new platforms may be popping up a lot of people thinking about creativity more from a sustainability standpoint, at least I know that's where I've been sitting in for months on now, and a big reason as to why it's so important for me to have my own IP and things like that. But yes, I see ultimately a lot of change and we're standing in the shift right now. And so yeah, embracing that change will be really telling for what the future holds. Jon Stahl So I guess off of that, what is, what's next for you? Where are you spending your time? What are you excited about? What's coming up? Regina Hoyles What is next for me? Getting my thoughts together every day trying to ensure that I'm prioritizing what I need to prioritize, still working on Gina. Gina, I will say it is one of, it's my creativity for creativity's sake projects, while also I'm ultimately building a body of work. I'm building a library of what I believe to be super defining of like who I am, especially specifically in the realm of comedy. So continuing that series and growing that is something that's important for me. I do have a Substack newsletter called The Whole World, a whole word, not me getting my own newsletter wrong, A whole word, which is it's pretty much me being myself and sharing a lot of my. Revelations as it intersects with like, faith, humor, creativity, and just sharing my gems with the world. Whatever I feel I'm being given. And my hope is ultimately that this newsletter would expand into a community of some sort, whether that's more of the digital space or also in person. I don't know why, but I've been really feeling led to think about what events may look like. That's kind of tied into that. I feel like we're going to, as far as the future, really see a demand in. In person connection and gathering amongst each other. Again, being able to literally see and hear one another in real time. And so I see that community expanding, but again, I'm doing my best to not put the cart before the horse and take it day by day. I want to just make sure I'm building consistently and authentically, and that might not be doing a post like every single day or something like that, but when I say consistent, being consistently myself. And just seeing how that shows up in my work and how it resonates with people. So those things are definitely what are top of my mind. And yeah, as far as the traditional space, I'm open, but it's not the end all, be all for me, I am. Like many people kind of watching a lot of things unfold and figuring out how I was mentioning to you earlier, I'm wanting to position certain projects, whether that be more independently or having a more traditional lean. So yeah, I'm doing the things and figuring it out as I go, like many people. Yeah, that's big for me, for sure. Jon Stahl Great. Well, I would love for you to tell everyone where they can find out more about you and all the things that you're working on and creating. Regina Hoyles Yes, yes, for sure. Well, the first place, the Megatron, is definitely my website. It's like a me hub, which is. www-dot (if you still put that there) reginahoyles.com [https://support.anthropic.com/en/articles/8525154-claude-is-providing-incorrect-or-misleading-responses-what-s-going-on]. I also have my production company, RLH Productions, which specializes in amplifying black and black voices and marginalized storytellers. And that is at rlhprod.com [https://support.anthropic.com/en/articles/8525154-claude-is-providing-incorrect-or-misleading-responses-what-s-going-on]. I'm on Instagram, same @reginahoyles. I am on the Tok the Clock app. YouTube @reginahoyles. Substack again, my newsletter is called A Whole Word. I release it monthly. And so those are the platforms you can find me on now. And if you see me on the street, say What's up? Don't get crazy, but say what's up and stuff. So yeah, that's me in a nutshell. Or where you can find me. Jon Stahl Terrific. Well, Regina, this has been so much fun. I really appreciate you coming on the show and we'll say so long. Everyone, thank you again for watching and or listening to another episode of what's Wrong with Hollywood. We'll see you all later. Regina Hoyles Bye. Thanks, Jon. Get full access to How Not to be a TV Writer at hownot.substack.com/subscribe [https://hownot.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

19 de ago de 2025 - 24 min
episode What's Wrong with Hollywood Ep. 4: Todd A. Jackson artwork

What's Wrong with Hollywood Ep. 4: Todd A. Jackson

In the fourth episode of What's Wrong with Hollywood, I speak to multi-hyphenate filmmaker Todd A. Jackson, who co-founded QuickFlick TV [https://quickflicktv.com] and is producing / editing / starring in a new web series Unrequited, which can be found on the Penjot Media Group YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@PenjotMedia] page. In our full conversation, we cover: 🎭 Hollywood's creative brain drain - Why the industry is no longer run by creatives but by tech bros and money people, leading to a content wheel that prioritizes speed and generic output over artistic vision 🤖 Fighting AI with authenticity - How creators must lean into their "weirdness" and unique voice because that's the one thing AI can never replicate—your lived experience and personal rhythms 📺 The QuickFlick revolution - Building a streaming platform where audiences decide what gets renewed through a "produce or not produce" button, giving power back to viewers instead of algorithm-driven executives ✂️ Post-production as storytelling superpower - How documentary editing skills create "different beasts" who can splice together cohesive narratives from chaos and rewrite stories three times over 🚀 The Tyler Perry blueprint - Why independent filmmakers need to become their own studios and stop chasing perfection, because audiences want to see the trajectory, mistakes, and growth journey of authentic creators Full Transcript Below: Todd A. Jackson Trying to bridge that gap from taking a show you created and pitching it and getting it picked up, it's not realistic anymore. It's become a content wheel. It's what can we get out as quick as possible, as generic as possible, and just make money, because consistently you have people hating the stuff that's being put out, but showing up to watch it. Hollywood has created perfection. There is no room for mistakes. There is no room for lines being fumbled. Everything is so polished, and that's the thing that I feel like people are going to want to see more of as AI takes over, they want to see the nuances. They want to see the mistakes. They want to see some of the low budget, they want to see oh, hey, they have a budget now. The writing's gotten better. They want to see that trajectory. There is no place for us in this old Hollywood. And I think we can definitely take what's working, combine it with what we're doing, and that's going to be the future of where this industry goes. Jon Stahl Hi everyone. Welcome back to What's Wrong with Hollywood. Today we have joining us on the show, Todd A. Jackson who is a multihyphenate filmmaker who embodies the new generation of independent creators. After graduating from SDSU with a Bachelor's in film and screenwriting, he founded his own video production company and built a YouTube following with Todd Foolery Productions. As co-founder and chief content officer of QuickFlick TV, Todd is working to democratize film distribution. His latest project, Unrequited showcases his range as a writer, director, producer, and star with expertise spanning post-production, podcasting, and music. I would call Todd the perfect embodiment of the Greenlight Yourself movement. Thank you so much for joining us today, Todd, it's a real pleasure to have you here. Todd A. Jackson Thanks Jon. This is great. This is awesome. Jon Stahl Yeah. So I mean, I'll often start the episode with just a general question, like, what's wrong with Hollywood? But I would add to that, like what's, where are we now in Hollywood's trajectory and where do you see things going and how can it be improved? Todd A. Jackson Yeah. The one thing I keep coming back down to with what's wrong with Hollywood right now is that it's not run by the people that keep it running. Hollywood used to be run by the creatives. It used to be run by the people who wanted to produce art. I just feel like over the last 20 years, it was during the tech boom, I feel like people realized you could patent it, you could package it, and you could push out content, and I think that's what's happened with Hollywood right now is it's become a content wheel. It's what can we get out as quick as possible, as generic as possible, and just make money, because consistently you have people hating the stuff that's being put out, but showing up to watch it. So Hollywood has no reason to stop because we continue to perpetuate the cycle. And honestly, what I really do feel like where the industry is going, and I truly do believe this, I believe Hollywood is going to separate into two different versions. You have the content, which is very similar to social media right now. You have content and you have art. And I really feel like eventually what's going to happen with Hollywood, they're going to get rid of all of the creatives. They're going to go to AI and they're just going to produce content, just mass produce content. And not to say there's not going to be people who aren't AI working in that cycle. You're going to have people who are going to be working in that cycle, but you're also going to have a new Hollywood that's going to be born from the creatives who take it back from this industry, who build a new version, and that's where we're at right now. We're in this gray area where nobody knows what's going to happen. Everyone's throwing things at the wall trying to make it stick. But the one thing that I think unifies us is we all, all the creatives, especially the artists, hate what's happening right now. There's not a single person I've met that is an artist and a creative that says Hollywood is great. It's the best it's ever been. The only people I know that are saying that are the studio heads, the execs, and the people behind the streaming money. Like that's the only thing. And so I really do feel like we are now creatives are now seeing how much power we have. And we're going to start just creating our own Hollywood. And I think that's what we got to start doing right now, is creating this community within ourselves, stop competing with each other and team up and take down the real problem, which is the studios at the moment. And I really feel like that's the route we're going. And maybe I'm optimistic, but that's where I feel like we're going. Jon Stahl In a world where like AI is so prevalent. I guess this the near future that we're describing, which some would describe as dystopian, how do you stand out as a human being? Like what do you do to set yourself apart? Todd A. Jackson Yeah. I think, and this is what I feel like we all have as creatives. All the best creatives, the people that rise to the top the fastest do. And I think what AI is forcing most of us to do, at least for me, is I have to figure out who I am, like hardcore because that's the one thing that AI cannot replicate. It cannot replicate my lived experience. It cannot replicate the rhythms in my voice the way that I speak. And what that's really forcing me to do is just be as weird, as unique, and as Todd as I can. Because that's really what's going to set me apart, because I've written a lot of things and I've gone back and written some of my work, and it's just like, where's the voice? Where is the Toddness of this? Where is the weirdness, the uniqueness of how I speak, the way that I see the world, and I think I'm using this moment right now with AI to really figure out who I am as an artist and create work that truly represents who I am. And I think that's what we have to do in this landscape right now because it's getting scary. Like I've been trying to stay in AI so I know how to read through it and spot it, but it's getting harder and harder and it's only been six months. It's very wild to see how quickly it's just evolving. Jon Stahl Yeah, so speaking of the Toddness of it all. I'm jumping around a little bit in our question list, but like, tell me a little bit about Unrequited. Tell me about what you love about it. Tell me about the experience. Tell me about what's hard about it. Anything that you want to share. This is like a therapy session. Todd A. Jackson Yeah, well, so Unrequited is the new show that I just released on YouTube. I've been trying to work in the studio system for nearly a decade now. And not to say I haven't been successful, made great connections and worked with some amazing people, but trying to bridge that gap from taking a show you created and pitching it and getting it picked up, it's not realistic anymore. And so when I got cast on this project, I actually was brought on as an actor initially. Which is odd because it was a non-paid role at the time. I refused to do any more non-paid roles, but apparently I submitted somehow and so I got latched onto it, and from the moment I met the director, I knew that this was a project I wanted to be a part of. Because when you meet people and you talk about projects, a lot of people don't have, they don't see the bigger picture. They see just the pilot and then that's it. They don't know where they're going from there. This director, the creator, he had a full on business plan for a year, and I was like, what? And so immediately after that meeting was over, I asked, hey, how would you feel if I was attached as a producer before we even filmed anything? Like I believed in it that much. As I started working with it a little bit more, it is a black queer dramedy and so it was something I've never seen before and when I was cast into the role, he really gave me a lot of creative freedom with the character. And I was able to make it my own. I was able to make it not a stereotype. I was able to make it me, I was able to just show up and be me, and he really embraced that. And so after that I really fell in love with it. And when we got the rough cut of the first episode, I realized that I was going to need to step in and take a shot at it. So I pitched that I would come on as a video editor because I do have that experience. I cut it together in about a week and we sat back and watched it and realized it was bigger than anything else. And so we started working on it. We started putting it together, and then eventually we just decided we wanted to. We sent it to places, we talked to people. We did the whole route of creating a pitch deck. He works at a huge talent agency. That got us nothing. People there watched it, everyone loved it, but then it was, well that's great. So do you have anything else? And it was just like, oh, okay. Or it was, where's the rest of the season? And it was just like, okay. So we decided to just publicly release it. We put it on YouTube. We had a full on marketing strategy. We went out, put up posters, handed out business cards with QR codes, talked it up. Reached out to festivals, reached out to interviews, podcasts, all that stuff. And we ended up getting 50K views in 30 days. And that truly was wild. And so when we realized that and we got the feedback from the viewers, from the audience talking about wanting to see more, wanting to do it, we realized we built what we needed right there. If we needed to have proof that this is something that more people wanted to see, we decided to fully embrace that. And we decided to start pushing out the rest of the season. And so, mind you, we're doing this with zero money. So we haven't crowdfunded, we haven't been financed in any way. It truly is whatever we have, whatever we can do, however we can put it together. Whoever can help us, I am producer slash script supervisor slash actor slash video editor. Whatever roles I can comfortably do, same thing with my producing partner, finding people. And things that can come on and not just do, we had, for example, we had someone come on who said was a PA and he ended up being sound and our AD and he was like, the first thing he said is, I've never AD'd before. And I was like, well, today's your first day you're going to do it and there's no pressure. So I would say the biggest challenge has really just been, honestly, I think it's emotionally being able to consistently show up and put this together when there is no money we're getting back from it. There is no money we're putting into it. It truly is a labor of love. We have no idea what's going to happen, but believing in it so much and showing up every weekend or every day, honestly, because I'm creating clips, marketing it, reaching out to people, cold emailing people, continuously showing up for that. And I think what was best for me was to find one project I was very passionate about and putting my everything into that. And so that's what I'm doing right now where I still have everything else. I have a freelance production company, so I'm doing that to make ends meet. I have the streaming platform I'm building as that's going. And with this, it really is, I really want people to know who I am. That's the best way to get myself out there and to get the money that I'm looking for. And if I can showcase who I am to this market of people who like the content I'm making and maximize that market, it's going to be a lot easier to take it mainstream. And so that's really what I'm trying to do now is like really make this goal a lot smaller so that way I can expand it as I go. Jon Stahl That's great. You come from the world of post-production. You have some post-production experience. You mentioned that, and I'd love to hear about how that experience has helped you in producing this. Like, feel free to get as technical as you want in the vision of the project and the storytelling mechanisms. Like how has being in post-production helped you see this vision come to life? Todd A. Jackson Yeah, I actually, I'm glad you asked that, just because I feel like it's a, so I come from marketing and I come from the documentary world when it comes to video editing. I actually didn't edit anything narrative until about, like four years ago, because I was so scared of doing it because it's a completely different beast. So I come from, literally before influencers and mass creating content got cool, I was doing that. So we would, the first production company I worked for was called Hail Productions in San Diego. And what we did is we found influencers and we gave them 30 days of content in one day. So we would do photos, outfit changes, videos, all of that stuff. And then from there it cycled into doing documentary work. So taking two, three hours of footage and then trying to create a 10 minute story that's cohesive. And what I noticed when I mastered that and I got really good at that, transitioning from the post-production, from that into narrative work made me a completely different beast because I'm able to see things a lot differently when you create. When you have six hours of footage and you're told to review all of it and make a cohesive story, it changes your brain chemistry, like the way that I see things and the way that I pull things where I can, like for example, if I was editing this podcast, I would take half of a sentence that I said in the beginning, half of a sentence I said at the end, splice it together, drop a couple ands and buts randomly, and make it a cohesive sentence and make it its own story. And there's truly something that I like about that, where it's creating a story out of something that wasn't there. And on top of that, this first production company I worked for, he was chaotic and insane in the best way. Like we would do stuff one day, and he was like, oh, it's due tomorrow, by the way, so I need you to take this hour of footage and turn it into a one minute sizzle reel tomorrow. And so it really, it was insane in the beginning, but after doing that for a year, I can look at something and say this needs to go here, this goes here, this does this, this does that. And so when it came down to editing this project, the reason why I think we're so successful is because I come in with that mentality. I don't work at a 50% rate. When I look at something, I work at a hundred percent, like the first episode is about 15 minutes. It took me about a week to put together a rough cut and another three days to picture lock it. So it's like my rough cuts in my head are not rough cuts. My rough cut is a version that I would be comfortable putting out. And then once I get that done, picture lock is just fine tuning it and it's because of that experience where I was forced to edit things together as quick as possible. When I come into something like this, it's completely different, but also it allows me to shift the story. So I do have the post-production background, but I do come from a directing standpoint. I come from a writing background. And so when I went into editing this, not only was I looking at it from a video editor standpoint, but I was redirecting it. I was like, does this beat make more sense here or should we shift it over here? Should we bring it over here? How about I take this sentence and have it be a voiceover for this? And it's like those thoughts, because of the documentary work and having such a non-linear, linear editing style and mentality, it created something new when I went into creating this narrative work. So it's just like they do say, a project is written or redone three times it's written, then it's in post and then in post-production. And I think what makes a good video editor is being able to rewrite something if it's not working. Because you never know if it's going to show up the same way. And so I truly do think because I've had that experience, and having that post-production background, it has significantly helped me when it comes down to pumping out this content, which needs to be quality, which needs to have style, but also because we live in a world where studios can push out content and drop an entire season of something in one day, that's what people are used to. So being able to do that and show up quickly, but also be able to pump out clips and make editing and editing quickly that way too, that really helps us stand out with what we're doing at the moment. Jon Stahl Yeah. And I would love to hear about if there were any challenges involved in having, like being all of the things right? Any problems in distance? Like if you're on camera and you see yourself and you're also the director and you're also the editor, like who gets to make which decision at what point. Todd A. Jackson Yeah. There's a lot of checks and balances we have in this process. And especially with this project, the one thing that I did make a conscious choice, because I almost fell into this trap, is I didn't want to direct it. And there was part of me that was wanting to direct and wanting to say things on set. And I had to consciously pull myself back and say, you are here as the actor in this moment right now. You are here as the actor. If it doesn't relate to acting, don't say it. Or if it's very important, you need to figure out if it's something that needs to be said. So that was the biggest thing for me, especially going into something where I was multihyphenate, because I am the producer. I am partially a writer. I am the actor. And I am definitely the head video editor. And especially when it comes down to editing yourself, you can be very biased. So it was very much my intention where I sat down with just my producing partner and we made it very clear what our roles and responsibilities were. Because there was a period of time where we started writing the rest of the season and I read episode two and my immediate thing was change this, do this, do that, do. And it was just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. First off, I'm not the writer. This isn't my story, and I need to set boundaries around that. And so that's when we had a discussion and I was like, I don't want to be involved with the writing. I don't even want to read the script until we have to go onto set and I have to perform it. I didn't want to have my mind going into that. Because like you said, it's easy to fall into those pitfalls and those traps of wanting to focus on only worrying about yourself in those situations or wanting it to only be your voice. And I think that was a big thing that I wanted to make sure that it was felt fully collaborative, but also having that space and that boundary that allowed me to only show up as one person. Like even when I'm editing and I see myself performing, to me that is not the same person, that is the actual character and what's working best with this character. And I will choose it. And I'll tell you one of the hardest things, and maybe you know this because you have had to edit some of your stuff. One of the hardest things is to know that you made a weird face but it's the best take and you have to put it in there anyway. And you hated the way you said it, but it works and it's the best thing that you have to do. But it takes that separation to be able to say what is best for the story and what's best for the audience at this point. Jon Stahl I edit this podcast. That's exactly what I do. Todd A. Jackson Oh, it's like, why did one of my eyes blink? One of my eyes blinked, but the other one didn't. Jon Stahl Both eyes blink please. You're also co-founder and chief content officer of QuickFlick TV. Talk to me about where you see content development headed, development and distribution headed in five years, and where does Quick Flick fit into that? Todd A. Jackson Yeah, yeah. So what QuickFlick TV is, is it's a new streaming platform that will be launching this fall that targets a very niche market in filmmaking and gives them a home. So it's targeted towards independent web series creators. And honestly where that concept kind of came from was Issa Rae and Insecure, and the Awkward Black Girl. And so truly what that was, the reason, part of why it was so successful was because she was able to build an audience. She put it together, she had a space for it. And that's what HBO saw. They saw that built in audience, they saw that money right there. The amount of people that watched the show that were fans that could be transferred into to HBO. And so essentially there's a market. If you look at independent web series online, there are tons, there are hundreds all over the place that are just popping up across the US. Canada has some really great ones. South Africa has some really great ones. There's some in the UK, Australia has a ton, and it's like these series live online but don't have an actual home. They're dispersed on Vimeo or YouTube, or you can find some of them on Amazon Prime, but there's not an actual home for them. And so what QuickFlick TV is making a home for these web series creators where they can put these web series on there and they can actually stream it. Viewers can come there expecting it and wanting to see it. And what the best part is because when it comes down to it, when you look at Netflix, you look at HBO, I use this as an example. When I was talking about HBO and Issa Rae, an awkward black girl is: When it comes down to it, the viewers kind of dictate what they want to see. That's what we put out. That's what we should be putting out. And that's why it's become a meme where Netflix will cancel something that is performing well with the audience because the audience loves it. But if it doesn't have those numbers, then in their head there is no reason, there is no investment anymore. A lot of these shows that are hits now became hits after three seasons in, and it's like if you're not given that chance to do that, then these shows aren't given the proper chance. And so you cancel them when there's an audience that's ready and willing to see more. And so that's one of the big things that QuickFlick TV is built on, it founded on is that these web series that live on the platform, it's the audience that gets to choose what they see more of. So if there's a web series that has six episodes but it's the top viewed web series on the platform. And similar to like YouTube's like and dislike QuickFlick TV will have a produce or not produce. And so if you select produce and it hits a viewership threshold and it has a bunch of fan base behind it and more people want to see it, then we will find the funding to produce more of that show. And I think realistically, that's where the industry is going to go. I think we have streaming services right now, and then we have social media platforms. And both of them, when they first started, everyone thought they were stupid. And now look at where we are right now. We've literally swung back to cable. People socialize more on social media than they do in real life. And so what the key was to fuse those together. So fuse the streaming platform, fuse the social media platform and allow people to build a community on there, but also find where they can get content. So really putting that together and give the power of what the people see to the viewers. Because they're the ones that are going to be dictating in any way. And I truly feel like going forward we're going to see a lot more of this independent filmmakers becoming their own production companies as I think it should be. Because when it comes down to IP and your original content and things like that, I think that's where we're heading. You saw, you see it with Ryan Coogler and Sinners. That was one of the things. Issa Rae doesn't necessarily have the rights to insecure. She had to sell that IP. And it's things like that. The IP is power and you have so many independent filmmakers that, I'm not going to say any names, but we have some independent filmmakers who do not make good content. They do not, I'm sorry. In a traditional sense, there's no storytelling. Visually it's not good, it's low budget, but they are making a living yearly. They are making enough money to survive just by making feature films per year because they have a fan base. And I think that's what the missed opportunity is, where sometimes independent filmmakers get too attached to perfection, and I think that's we have to get over that because that's what the Hollywood is doing. Hollywood has created perfection. Hollywood is curated superhero movies curated to the summer blockbuster curated holiday movies, but it's all perfect. There is no room for mistakes. There is no room for lines being fumbled. Everything is so polished, and that's the thing that I feel like people are going to want to see more of as AI takes over, they want to see the nuances. They want to see the mistakes. They want to see some of the low budget, they want to see the increase from low budget to, oh, hey, they have a budget now. The writing's gotten better. Oh, the acting has gotten better. They want to see that trajectory. They want to be part of that community. They want to see that growth. And because Hollywood has gatekept that so much, you can't see anything other than what they want to allow you to see. And we live in a world right now where authenticity is a buzz word is being your true, authentic self, being honest, communicating with your community, being open with them, having open dialogue, having live interactions and streams with them, and you can't do that and be polished and perfect at the same time. And I really do think as indie filmmakers, what we have to do is get away from everything being perfect because that's not what our audiences want see, they want to see, they want to be entertained, they want to have a connection to the work, and they want to be part of the development process. And I think that's what I learned from being a YouTuber is that I could create as much content as I wanted, but if there was no one there to watch it and I wasn't interacting with them, that's when my channel started taking off. When I started asking questions, interacting with them, and things like that. That's how you build your true fans, and I think that's where the industry is heading. I think we as independent filmmakers, we have to start thinking as these studios. We have to be our own little studios, and those are the most successful filmmakers you see right now. For example, like Tyler Perry. I will say, like, I don't watch his content. I know there's an audience for it, but one of the things I have to respect is Tyler Perry proved to the world that if he puts something somewhere, people will flock to it. A couple years ago when Tyler Perry had a contract with Netflix and started putting out a lot of original content. You would think the Netflix subscriptions were down at that time. They actually skyrocketed because he started creating content for Netflix, which is crazy that he has that much power. He just proved to the world that if he started his own streaming platform. He could take people from Netflix, from Hulu, from Amazon, and they would go to his platform. He just proved that, and I think that's the mentality we all need to go into the industry as, because you're not going to get discovered at a bank anymore. That I think that's how Charlize Theron was discovered. She was discovered because she was mad at a bank and someone said, you are a star. That doesn't happen anymore. Even if you do get discovered, you get drained out of your followers and then tossed back out. And that just doesn't, you don't get discovered anymore. You have to discover yourself essentially. Jon Stahl That's terrific. I don't think there could be a better lesson to come out of this. I'd love to just wrap up by kind of asking where people can find the web series, learn more about quick flick, and hear about the kind of stuff that you're making. Todd A. Jackson Yeah, definitely. Right now, like I said, the platform will be launching this fall. So to see what we're doing and how we're making it, quickflicktv.com [http://quickflicktv.com] is the one place to go just to get some basic information on it. Right now, we're really going into finding investments, trying to find funding. It's all a really good idea, everyone loves it. The indie community loves it. The producers love it, the people we're pitching it to right now, it's just all about, again, like I said, people, it's funny, people don't invest in anything until you do all the work nowadays. So it's like we have to launch it, we got to put it out there and show them the actual audience and the analytics. So QuickFlick TV is the best place to go there for that. We have a YouTube and Instagram right now. Unrequited the web series I was mentioning that's on YouTube. So we just premiered episode two, currently editing episode three right now. We're slated to have that launch next month, and like I said, we're also blitzing out the rest of the season next month with hopes of releasing those fairly quickly. So getting a huge quick turnaround time on those. And so that'll be on YouTube if you search for Pen Jot, which is P-E-N-J-O-T, Pen Jot Media Group. We're on YouTube. You can find it there. We also have another documentary called Into Sectional Lens. So we're really just trying to put out content. We're going to create a talk show to put on there. Really like embracing, honestly, like going into it, looking at it like, this is our channel. If this was a channel on cable, what would we produce? What would we put out? And it's like that, going into it with that mentality has really changed a lot of things and put a different spin on a lot of things. And so you can find us there on YouTube, and then you can find me on Instagram at todd.alex. And stay up to date on all the stuff I'm doing there. Releasing things about QuickFlick TV, about Unrequited the series, and then going into like post services and stuff like that. Because I do genuinely feel, and this may be a little bit of a tangent I'm going off on, but right now, I think because you have so many independent artists, and nothing wrong with being self-taught and learning that yourself because I did go to film school, but I will confidently say I learned more outside of film school than I did in film school, because they definitely did teach me the old Hollywood way of doing things. But I also, a big thing for me is like working with the community and like I said earlier, is I really think the only way we're going to succeed and take Hollywood back from the studio heads, from the tech bros, from the money people is by uniting and building our own different Hollywood. And so something that's going to been really big for me is I've just been studying how to create an effective web series, because it's very different from creating a TV show. It's very different from creating content. And so it's a certain writing style. It's a certain way that you have to tell the story, because a lot of the independent web series that are out right now, they lack a beginning, middle, and end. They lack conflict in each scene. They lack what is the purpose of telling the story? What is the like? They lack a lot of those fundamental things that I think there is a happy fusion between what Hollywood is doing right and what indie creators are doing right. And I think we shouldn't turn our backs on the studio just because they've blocked us out. There are some good fundamentals that they have there, and our key is that we got to take that, combine it with what we are doing and that's working, and then build from that. And I think that's what I really am focused on doing now, is communicating networking. I've talked to so many independent web creators in the last six months. They're all over the place and it's just like we're all scattered. And I think if we can unite and come together and just really focus on building something new with Hollywood level, quality storytelling, Hollywood level, like quality acting and things like that, we would dominate it. And so that's really what I'm focusing on is like connecting and networking with people. And even if it's a conversation, I mean, that's how me and you connected is I saw what you were doing and I was like. He knows what he knows where we're going. We got to team up and see how we can all... Jon Stahl I hope so. I hope so. Todd A. Jackson Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, I think that's the biggest thing for me is just like all of us collectively coming together and just let's create our new Hollywood. There is no place for us in this old Hollywood. And I think we can definitely take what's working, combine it with what we're doing, and that's going to be the future of where this industry goes. Jon Stahl Terrific. Well, thank you so much, Todd, for taking the time and sitting down with me. And thank you everyone out there for listening to another episode. We will catch you on the next one. Thanks so much. Bye-bye. Todd A. Jackson Thank you. Thank you. Get full access to How Not to be a TV Writer at hownot.substack.com/subscribe [https://hownot.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

29 de jul de 2025 - 36 min
episode What's Wrong with Hollywood Ep. 3: Ellis J. Sutton artwork

What's Wrong with Hollywood Ep. 3: Ellis J. Sutton

In Episode 3 of What's Wrong with Hollywood, I sit down with filmmaker and creative development professional Ellis Jamal Sutton, who also writes the Substack newsletter Notes from the Studio. In our full conversation, we cover: 🎬 The Hollywood innovation crisis - Why the current system isn't built to foster creativity and new voices, keeping the same writers, directors, and IP projects on repeat 📝 The secret script standards - Why your entry-level writing needs to be way better than what you see on screen, and how to write "calling card" scripts that get passed around the industry 🎯 Building audiences before festivals - How Ellis learned that putting your film's fate in programmers' hands is a mistake, and why creators need to build direct audience relationships from day one 🏷️ The film label experiment - Ellis and Taylor Lewis's innovative approach to creating collective branding and marketing for movies that don't exist yet, targeting the Letterboxd/A24 crowd ⚖️ Writing for yourself vs. the market - The delicate balance between unfiltered creativity and understanding your audience, plus why filmmakers now need to think like distribution and marketing executives Full Transcript Below: Jon Stahl Hi everyone. Welcome back to the What's Wrong with Hollywood Podcast. I'm here with Ellis Jamal Sutton, who is a filmmaker and creative professional. He's worked in feature development at Warner Brothers, Netflix, and now works at Heartbeat, which is Kevin Hart's production shingle. Ellis is also the founder of All of a Sutton Productions, where he has produced and directed a number of short films and music videos. He recently wrote and directed a short relationship drama called Game Night about a budding young couple whose relationship gets put to the test during a game night with close friends. It is out now. On top of all that, Ellis writes the popular Substack Notes from the Studio, which I am really enjoying. Ellis, welcome to the show. Ellis Jamal Sutton Thank you for having me, Jon. It's a pleasure to be here. Jon Stahl Yeah. So we were just chatting a second ago about Substack and about the stuff that you're working on. But right from the top, I want to get into the big question, which is the name of the podcast. What's wrong with Hollywood? I know we talked about this. So what is wrong with Hollywood? What can you fill us in on there? Ellis Jamal Sutton What am I allowed to talk about? And then also, where do I begin? Jon Stahl Anything you want, you could start wherever you want. I mean, this is like an airing, you could use this as an airing of grievances, if that's what you want it to be. Ellis Jamal Sutton Well there's a lot of problems. But I think the biggest problem overall is that the system is not currently built to foster innovation and creativity. So we don't have people in positions of power who feel like they have the ability or strong incentive structure to champion new talent, new voices. And ultimately when you foster new talent, new voices, you lead to more creative things. And when you're not incentivized to do that, whether you're working with the same writers over and over, or going back to the same directors or greenlighting the same types of IP projects, you're going to ultimately lead yourself down a path that is going to be creatively bankrupt. And it's no surprise that when people watch overall Hollywood movies, they feel like it's the same stuff. So I think that's the biggest problem is that we haven't figured out how can we make a way to champion creative voices without people feeling like their jobs are on the line. Or feeling like there's not a great path forward to get something innovative seen in front of a wide group of people. Jon Stahl Yeah. Well, I mean, you've been on both sides of that equation, right? You've been in the development role and you've been in the writer director role. From the development role, what are some ways to incentivize people, new voices to be brought into this ecosystem? Ellis Jamal Sutton Yeah, man. I mean, everything I'm about to say is going to be easier said than done. Right. You're dealing with big institutions at the forefront. But I will say that if you are a budding writer and maybe you have any aspirations to work in the Hollywood system, I think similar to trying to come up in social media or YouTube, you have to first show that you can sort of assimilate before you're allowed to innovate. So your scripts have to feel like they're Hollywood writer scripts. That's the first bare entry. And you have to have a few of them, right? My old boss used to always say, my old boss used to be an agent, and he didn't just go after a writer who just wrote one great script. You usually had to have two or three really great ones. And usually you're probably not going to sell any of those, but those are your scripts that are your calling cards. So I'd say the very first step is trying to get your things to be similar to the things that are already accepted. And honestly, if you're watching movies or TV shows and you're saying, oh, that's crap, I can write something similar. I'm going to tell you this right now. The scripts that end up getting writers' careers are way, way better than anything you'll see on television or on a feature screen. So just know that your entry point is not the television or what you see in the movies. It is the scripts that are getting passed around the industry that people are like, wow, that was super incredible. You got to read this. That's what I would say on the development side. Jon Stahl That's some great insight. You are also a creative and you literally just this morning, I know this is going to air a little bit later than today, but this morning I saw that you posted on Substack about the most recent short that you wrote and directed. Tell everyone about that. Where did it come from? What excited you about the concept and how did you get it made? Ellis Jamal Sutton Yeah, man. So Game Night is a short that I finished last year, and I was starting to write it almost three years ago now with my old roommate, one of my good friends from college. We had just worked on a movie together. And I said, yo, let's step it up. Let's get you a bigger role in the movie. And so because we're roommates, we were just sort of spitballing at night trying to crack the script. And so we had come upon this idea of like, hey, what's a scenario where we can talk about this issue? I don't want to spoil the movie, but how can we talk about what it is a modern couple sort of goes through and what is a modern friend group look like. And the movie is basically about this couple who's having a little bit of a critical point in their relationship. And when a girl is invited to a game night amongst this guy and his close friends, she realizes that their relationship is taking a turn that she didn't quite anticipate and now she has a new layer of something that she's going to have to deal with. We were just sort of spitballing of like, what is the way we want to talk about these things? What's a setting that's fun? And we always talked about game night as being a cool, fun way to do some really fun things. And so it took a while to write it. We worked really hard to write the draft and then because when we initially started writing the draft, I had just got my new job in career development at Warner Bros. And so we had to put it on pause, but then I was like, so I had to learn how to do my job and then once we started ramping up again, I was like, I think I got to handle this. Let's start writing again. I end up leaving my job at Warner Bros to my job at Netflix. And I had about a month's period of time in between Warner's to Netflix and I told my producers, I said, look, if we're going to shoot the movie, we have to shoot it within this window because I'm not going to be able to shoot it after that window. And so we shot it right between my time, and then I just spent a bunch of time in my first year at Netflix editing the movie and then ultimately screening it there about a year later after shooting. Jon Stahl Yeah, that's really cool. Feel free to just say no or nothing, but was there anything that you learned from working in creative development at Warner Brothers and at Netflix that you brought to the either production or post-production of this short? Ellis Jamal Sutton I would say yes, I think the main thing was the professionalism. Which I wanted to carry into the production, so in my meetings and how I was dealing with cast and crew. I'm witnessing meetings a lot amongst executives and we're doing a lot of lingo and so I just sort of get wired a certain way about how you should be going about the process. And I just tried to bring that to the process. Every single time we had every meeting, every approach that I had into the movie. The other thing too is the creative development job, especially if you work at a studio, is a lot of times the executives are supposed to be representing the audience. Whenever they're giving creative notes and creative discussions, they're representing who, what is the viewer actually going to be seeing? So if an executive is confused, right, that in a way that's sort of saying an audience member might be confused at certain points. And so I think learning, being in creative development really has started to wire my brain into thinking more like an audience member. So when we were cutting the movie together, I think I had a better ability than others to be able to take a step back and be like, oh, this is what the viewer would be seeing. Now again, even if you do it enough times, you sort of get lost in the shuffle anyway. But I think on top of that, it also allowed me to realize how important feedback was. How critical it is. And so I took feedback very seriously during that process and I had to learn how to interpret notes in ways that like, hey, someone may have given me a note that I may not actually be able to execute, but is there another way I can serve that note in the editing of the movie? Because sometimes people give me notes like I just don't have the footage to be able to execute that note. So I had to figure out other ways to do it with what we had. And so I think my time in career development really helped sculpt that skillset that I wanted to hone in on. Jon Stahl I loved your post, switching gears a little bit, I loved your post about writing for, about designing your career like an architect. How do you think about people writing for audience or sale versus writing for themselves. Where do you draw that line? Ellis Jamal Sutton Yeah, I mean, I think you start from you, right? You start from like, what are your passions? What are your goals? What interests you? We want your first layer of creativity to be completely unfiltered, right? Then once you have that thing, then you can sort of, then you need to put on another hat, which we all need to start doing more. We need to put on another hat and we need to say, okay, this thing that I want, what is the right medium in which the amount of people who I want to be able to see it can go and see it. So your big passion piece at the end of the day might only have five people interested in it, right? At that point, you have a choice, right? Do you want to still go about trying to fight tooth and nail to get that thing off the ground so that the five people can go watch it? Or do you want to figure out a new medium to tell that story that'll actually get that five people to go see it and or is there a way to tell the story that can have a much more massive appeal. I think that in general, Hollywood executives, that's all they're really trying to do is when they see someone's really passion product, they're really just trying to answer the question, like, how can we write this? Or circumvent in a way that is more that has a bigger, has a broader appeal. But I think why people don't really like Hollywood a lot is because they don't like the choices that get made in lieu of trying to make the mass appeal. And I think that I would say, coming up, if you're a writer coming up, you do have to because, because if the new way of doing it is you have to figure out ways to control audiences. You have to figure out ways to get things directly to your audience, then that means you're now taking the role of distribution executives and marketing executives that a big conglomerate would typically have. And so you have to know how to think like them because there's a reason why they have the money and the resource to be able to do these things. And we just sort of have to do mini versions of that. And so it would behoove you to think about your audience if you're trying to grow your platform in a way that can lead to success. Jon Stahl Great. I have a question about this new film label you're starting with Taylor Lewis. What is a film label? How does it work? What's it going to look like? I'm really excited to hear more about this. Ellis Jamal Sutton Yeah, man. Well, look, I'll start with where me and Taylor sort of came down with it. She had been one of, she had been a fan of my writing and we seem to be doing this thing where like we were writing about similar things at the same time without even telling each other about it. And so I was like, I wrote a post. She wrote a post about it and boom, boom, boom, boom. And then at some point I was just like, Taylor, we need to just hop on a Zoom call together and we need to talk. Then we end up talking and we talked about where our goals are and what we want to do. And she sort of is at a transition point in her life, in her career. And I'm also at a transition point where I'm trying to figure out what do I want to do? What do I want to get out the bigger picture of all of it. And so we were just like, you know what, let's try to figure out how to create something that is a mainstay. And so what we, where we first started getting excited about the movies that we were interested in telling, and the things that we wanted to do and how to make those individual movies. We started getting back to like, okay, but what's step zero? Right? And for us, step zero is how can you create branding and marketing for movies that don't exist? That was sort of the thought process behind it, right? And so if you can figure out ways to build audiences based on, for lack of better way to put it, assets like a teaser. Like a really quality teaser or like a poster, a mockup poster or something, something computer generated or whatever it is. If you can figure out ways to collectively build excitement towards those types of things, right. And you can get genuine interest in it, that can potentially convert people to go see your movie. Right. I think there are a lot of innovation to be made in there, but that was sort of our thought process. And so we said, okay, well, okay, that's, those are cool marketing ideas for an individual movie, but then what does it all tie back to? So then like what is step negative 0.5? And for us, we said let's build a collective brand around these movies to be under an umbrella where if you're thinking about it from streetwear, you're thinking about it from community events. You're thinking about it from content such as newsletters, such as YouTube videos where we're featuring people, we're spotlighting writers and filmmakers, and we're creating opportunities for people to get together and show curation. Before anyone would ever give us money to make a movie, then we can then hopefully activate people to come in and have ourselves be the audience that we want to see in the new cinema community. So the other way to think about it's like, how can we get the people who have Letterboxd subscriptions, A24 memberships and MCA list memberships. How can we get those collective group of people together to buy into the types of movies that we want to make and the types of voices that we want to champion. Because as it's going to need to be getting cheaper to make movies. And as those particular big voices in the indie space get bigger and bigger, there's going to be room for who are, who is the Ryan Coogler that is making Fruitvale Station tomorrow? Right? Who is the Chloe? Who are the directors who got their first thing made? Who's making their first thing now? Right? Who's making Cord Jefferson's movie? How can we sort of be that, be that new voice is sort of the goal of the label ultimately. And we're going to start by building a brand through our writing and through our video content and through our community events and our merch. Jon Stahl And do you have any kind of upcoming events or launch dates or, I mean, whatever you can share about this is going to, I think people will be interested in when are the first things dropping? Where can they learn more about this? Ellis Jamal Sutton Yeah. I mean, depending on when this thing airs, we're going to have our first newsletter is available Friday, June 6th. Our first newsletter is going to be available Friday, June 6th. And going forward, we're going to be having weekly newsletters from there every pretty much every week. And the newsletters are going to include a bit of education about what the new, about what the new independent field space will look like. We call it NonDē. Ted Hope sort of coined that term NonDē. What does that look like? How do you build audiences in this day and age? What does a new marketing wave look like. So we want, so part of it is educating readers on what, on how to get invigorated about a new way of doing it. And then on top of that, we also want to be, we're going to be going forward in a few future newsletters. We're going to start featuring people who we feel are trying, who are already innovating in the space, and people who we feel are going to continue to be innovating in space. So we're going to have interviews from YouTubers, we're going to have interviews from filmmakers, we're going to have interviews from business owners, we're going to have interviews from people who are thought leaders in the space. And so we want to sort of build an audience via that. And then we're going to do an in-person events later on in the summer as a way to invigorate some local activation. And we're going to convert some of those into YouTube videos. We're going to post some YouTube videos later on in the summer as well. So you'll see some writing from us in the coming weeks. And then eventually you'll see that writing convert into videos and some in-person events later on in the summer and into the fall. Jon Stahl Fantastic. And I mean, what other kind of projects do you have just creatively, shorts, scripts you're working on? Anything else? Do you have anything else in the pipeline personally for in that world? Ellis Jamal Sutton Yeah. Yeah, man. I'm always trying to develop things on my own. I read scripts a lot from my friends and some of my colleagues in the industry. I'm working on a few things, trying to get off the ground as a producer. Things that honestly don't immediately fit the label's brand, but are like, we definitely should cover them in a way. I still want to try to get those movies made. I'm also starting to write two shorts right now, and one of them I hope to shoot this summer. Another one I'm going to be shooting sometime later this year or next year. As a way to experiment with all these cool AI tools that are sort of out there. And at least in pre-production, I'm not, I don't really want to make an AI movie, but I just came back from this conference and I kind of got really inspired by all the things that are out there for filmmakers to be able to utilize and make and maybe unlock creativity more. And so I definitely want to be able to see if there's a way that I can use storyboard tools, use creative development tools, use budgeting tools and figure out ways to streamline the production process to be able to make some really cool movies in the future. So I'm working on a few more things in that space and I hope I'll be able to share my learnings and everything from there. Jon Stahl Could you go more into detail about the types of lessons that you learned while making the short film that you just released? Ellis Jamal Sutton Yeah, yeah. For sure. I learned a lot of lessons. I think maybe I'll just say a good chunk and you can figure out which ones are more important. In development, I realize how important I care about planning. I'm a big planner, me and my friend talk, we just had a bunch of conversations about the different story avenues that the story could go in before we actually even started writing on the page. And at times my buddy was a little antsy because I really was trying to hone in on, hey, like, the script, we were asking character, what will this character do in this situation? And then if they're going to do this, then how will we make this happen? And you'll see in the movie, the movie unravels in a particular way that when ultimately gets revealed. You can then watch back the movie and see how all the different things were sort of layered in there in a really intentional way. And so that was probably one lesson I learned in development is being more planned. So that's why I'm curious to see what other development tools are out there that I can be even better planned for another go around. And then on top of that, I also realized that at the end of the day, no matter how much planning you do, you're still going to change your mind when you're shooting and things are going to change when you're editing the movie. So at some point you got to put the planning down, you got to get to just actually making the movie. And so that was the biggest thing I learned in regards to making the movie itself. And then in hindsight, I think I mentioned this, but the movie was too expensive, I think, in that, and I can't look back and be like, hey, here's how we could have cut costs. Because you'll see the movie. The movie does look well produced. I don't regret any of that, but in regards to sustainable filmmaking, I definitely feel like that's a movie that I put up a good chunk of my own personal finance to do, we raised money, but also you still have to sort of do your own thing. And I just can't make movies like that routinely. Now, I don't think really any filmmaker can make movies like that routinely, as much as we want to make high quality stuff all the time. I think that learning more sustainable production workflows is super important. And then the other thing too is the movie really taught me what I feel like I should have leaned into earlier in my career. Is that at the end of the day, if you have something that is good and quality, the next step is trying to right size it for, or trying to get it to the right audience. And I think that typically how you do short films is you make the short film and then you go down the festival circuit. And while that is fine and most people do it, I found I didn't find a lot of success in the festival circuit. Even though we screen the movie in front of people, they love it. People will tell me, oh my God, this is a great movie. People in the industry are like, yeah, this is really well made. Can't get a programmer at a small festival to put this movie in front of people. And so really what that mainly taught me though is like, hey, if you make good stuff, it's not a question about whether or not it should be getting laurels. It's like, no, you need to figure out how to create ways to get in front of your audiences, of the people who are going to be enjoying that movie. And so going forward, obviously I'm still going to do the film festival thing, but I'm also going to be more intentional like, okay, well, how can I do more event type screenings? How can I do more audience building from the ground up when I'm making any individual movie? And I think I should have been doing that from the jump. I think that this movie really taught me like, hey, don't put the fate of your film career in the hands of a screener. Put it in the hands of yourself. Jon Stahl Yeah. I love that. Finally, tell us where people can learn more about your Substack, the film brand that you're building, and the short that you just released. Ellis Jamal Sutton So my Substack, written by ellis.substack.com [http://ellis.substack.com]. And that's where you could pretty much find my notes and my posts from my newsletter, Notes from the Studio. I mainly talk about things on there that are either backwards facing, but now trying to be more forward facing in regards to the industry, mainly in the independent cinema space because I realize not a lot of people care about the Hollywood stuff. But how can I make movies? So I said, let me lean into writing more things in the independent cinema space. And we're going to be releasing the newsletter soon, the label, and you'll be able to check that out by the time this airs. Jon will have a link for it in the description and the short, you can find on YouTube right now. I'll send Jon a link to it as well. And you could check it out and if you can find me on any of those platforms, please subscribe and let me know what you think. Put it in the comment section of your thoughts on the movie. I'd be curious to hear what everyone thinks. Jon Stahl Well this has been fantastic, Ellis. Let's definitely do this again. Thank you everyone for joining and have a great day. I'll see you guys on the next one. Ellis Jamal Sutton Cool. Thanks for having me, Jon. I appreciate it. Jon Stahl Take care, Ellis. Get full access to How Not to be a TV Writer at hownot.substack.com/subscribe [https://hownot.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

15 de jul de 2025 - 27 min
episode What's Wrong with Hollywood Ep. 2: Sam Widdoes artwork

What's Wrong with Hollywood Ep. 2: Sam Widdoes

In Episode 2 of What's Wrong with Hollywood, I sit down with Entertainment Attorney and Emmy Award-winning Producer Sam Widdoes, who also writes the Substack newsletter Widdoespeak. In our full conversation, we cover: ⚖️ The rap lyrics as evidence crisis - How prosecutors use artists' creative work against them in criminal trials, and why this represents a massive intersection of art, law, and racial bias 🎬 From 8-year development hell to Emmy nomination - The incredible journey of getting "As We Speak" made, including false starts, patient IP owners, and a brutal 8-month production timeline 💰 The doom and gloom vs. booming business paradox - Why Sundance film panels were all about industry collapse while creator/brand panels celebrated explosive growth 🎯 Building audience before you build the film - Why starting a TikTok for your character or creating a podcast around your story can be more valuable than a perfect script 📺 The direct-to-audience revelation - How filmmakers are discovering that self-distribution provides not just money, but invaluable audience relationships and creative satisfaction 🤝 The creator-filmmaker bridge - Exploring how traditional filmmakers can learn from creators' audience-building expertise without abandoning their storytelling craft Full Transcript Below: Sam Widdoes The panels that were film and financing and distribution related, were almost all doom and gloom. The industry is in the dumps. We're not getting any money, we're not getting any distribution. I went to a couple creator and brand panels and they're like, business is booming. I know these guys will not want to associate themselves with creators with the word content, and the creators, they really don't know how to make films, nor do many of them want to. Jon Stahl Hi everyone. Welcome back today. I'm joined by Sam Widdoes, an entertainment attorney and producer who specializes in helping creators navigate the intersection of creative strategy, financing and distribution. Sam writes the Substack Widdoes Peak, and was producer on the Emmy nominated documentary series As We Speak. He's here to discuss how the legal and business frameworks are evolving as creators increasingly bypass traditional Hollywood gatekeepers and tell us a little bit about his own creative journey on the stuff that he's working on. Sam, welcome. Thank you so much for joining. I really appreciate you taking the time. Sam Widdoes Thanks, Jon. It's awesome to be with you. I know we're fairly newcomers to the Substack universe, but have been enjoying just connecting with all the folks, especially who are coming from more of a traditional entertainment world and trying to really explore and understand where the creator world can help grow what we're making. Jon Stahl Yeah, I'm really excited to talk to you because you have a unique perspective on this space and how it's growing and evolving, coming from the legal representation side of things, but you're at a really interesting intersection of legal and creative. I think that very often, people who come from that legal background are really good storytellers just because that's how you have to think. Can you talk a little bit about what that intersection looks like for you and your career? Sam Widdoes Yeah, so right now the majority of my time is spent with my legal clients. I work with mostly independent filmmakers. A lot of, probably more documentary than narrative, but altogether it's filmmakers, production companies who are raising money and then getting into production and then finding distribution, going to film festivals. So I get to work with filmmakers along that whole journey and look at how they want to build, not just the story they're telling, but how does that fit into a larger strategy. I think as we've seen over the last several years, the mindset of, I'm going to make a great film, get it into a top tier film festival and get a global rights deal. That may have been a more feasible path five years ago, but it's really not these days. It's fun to be able to advise clients as early as possible and to work with them as more of a strategic partner, and creative partner and legal partner, along that journey so that they can start thinking and encouraging them to start thinking about the different opportunities they might have along with a streaming deal. But then also the different opportunities that are starting to arise in terms of different ways to exploit their story even before it becomes a feature, and understanding what other elements might attract audiences and maybe even ways to release bits and pieces of it before and start trying to build and find that audience on different platforms. I sort of encourage my clients to do that. But at the same time, communities like the one on Substack and then also just the different events and different film festivals, really trying to understand what are the use cases, what are the success cases of other films that have been able to go direct to audience, build relationships with brand partners, independent distributors, just all the various ways that more entrepreneurial producers and filmmakers are starting to think about the way that they tell stories. Jon Stahl That's great. Can you, I have a friend who I spoke with yesterday who's producing, self financing and producing a horror feature film. And I have been thinking a lot since talking with this person about the kind of distribution pipeline and having a market in mind and an audience in mind. Can you give some advice to someone who's never really gone through that process of distribution for a feature before and strategies to implement as soon as possible. Sam Widdoes Yeah, so I'll say at the top, I've never worked in horror. The genre space as they say, but I kind of wish I had, because it seems to be the one space that always has an audience. You can make the film, it's the Blumhouse model, right? He was making films for nothing and they were getting enormous returns because people love that genre. So that specific audience, I'm not familiar with it, but I know it exists and so I would just encourage him first to say get to know what that audience looks like, understand how the most successful horror films have performed, where they performed. And some of the, let's just look at the marketing and distribution tactics that those films have used. The other things have been little tidbits I've picked up from different conversations, whether it's Evan Shapiro, a couple filmmakers who independently worked with the Fian group to independently distribute their narrative film theatrically and the way that they just cold called a bunch of brands and said, hey, we have this movie about, it's a romantic comedy, but it takes place in Mexico. Whether it was sex forward brands or hotels, funny companies that wanted to partner and when it came time for distribution, they were giving, they were partnering for free giveaways to get audiences in seats. Anyway, that's one funny example. But the one other example I would say about understanding your story and maybe getting it out early was the notion of creating an online presence for your character or for your story before it exists in feature length form, right? If you have a film about a character, start a TikTok for that character. And have, if you have an actor, if you're the writer, whatever, just like start putting that story out there and seeing how audiences respond. Build on that and see if you can generate enough interest and say, you like this character, I've got a screenplay. Eventually say I've got a screenplay ready to go and start crowdfunding and start understanding if it's about an issue or it's about a particular genre. Maybe there again, are brands or production companies that specialize, or studios that specialize in that sort of sector. But I think the notion of getting your story out there, even in little bits, it doesn't give away the whole film. It just starts giving a taste to the world of what storytelling might be to come. Jon Stahl Awesome. I think that's very valuable, even if you don't have that experience in the horror world. I think it's universal and applicable across genres. So you were a producer on As We Speak, an Emmy nominated feature film. This is relatively recent development. This Emmy nomination happened mere weeks ago. Can you talk about your role in the feature and what that experience was like? Both producing it and receiving the Emmy nomination? Sam Widdoes Yeah. It's been, I mean, it's a process that started eight years ago now in 2016 was when I first read about the issue that became the book that became the documentary. And the documentary concerns the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials. Which on its face is sort of a, and specifically how it's used is someone's on trial for a crime, the course of their investigation finds that that person put out a song on YouTube or Instagram or had some rhymes written in a notebook that may or may not have anything to do with the crime in question. But is still entered into evidence, either as a confession. See, this guy rapped about selling drugs and he's on trial for selling drugs. Therefore, he must have sold drugs, or as character evidence, right? To establish motive or intent. This person raps about selling drugs, therefore, and he's on trial for selling drugs, therefore he had the motive to sell the drugs. In either instance, it's not just absurd that art is used as evidence, but it also is wrapped up in just flagrant racism, stereotypes, underlying implicit biases. And prosecutors know this, and they've used it in hundreds of cases over the years. And so when I first read about the issue, I realized there is a theatrical element and it's the reason why legal dramas do so well over and over and over again because there's just inherent drama when someone is on trial for their life. And 12 strangers are just hearing a story. And the best trial attorneys are really good actors. They know their, they know the law, but they also know how to convey a message, they know how to perform in a way that's really persuasive. I knew there was that drama, but before that, I knew I, being a hip hop fan. And as someone who grew up in the LA suburbs, like my interaction with the black community was almost entirely through hip hop. I learned so much. Not literally, but figuratively, right? Through the music, I was exposed to an experience, a broad experience, and never took any of the words literally. So to think that those words were being used and presented literally in a court of law was not just an outrage, but I was like, oh, this is an opportunity to talk about what is hip hop? What is the black experience in America? What is the interaction between the LAPD and the communities of South Central, Los Angeles, like, all of these things were within the scope of what this, what became a book called Rap on Trial. And it was, so you could just tell this wide ranging story in the context of this sort of dramatic legal microcosm. And because there were 700 known cases of this taking place, I was like, oh, we're going to have a wealth of storytelling possibilities here. And yeah, there's, we went through a series of versions of what the story might be. We thought of adapting it as a scripted, limited series, where you sort of take one season and dive into a case and maybe the case is actually an amalgam of five to 10 different cases and the facts of different artists who've been on trial over the years. That got pitched, I've started a series on my Substack that is sort of going year by year, all the process of developing and pitching this project, and all the different ways that you think, okay, this is going to work. We got a really good pitch with Kerry Washington's company and she's in tears hearing the pitch and says she wants to do it. And then six months later, her team was like, we're just too busy. We can't do this now. And then you're back to square one. Like, okay, what's next? And we're, oh, we have this active trial in Los Angeles and we're in with the defense attorney and the experts and all these people, and you're there the day that he gets out of jail. And then he says, I don't want to do it unless I'm getting paid 25 grand. And you're like, oh, okay. Well we're not doing that either, so we're going back to square one. Right. And you're, it's this process of like at what point do you give up on a project? At what point do you say, no, we're making this no matter what. Jon Stahl I've been following the series that you've been writing on your Substack and it's been really entertaining and interesting, and you talk about all the fits and starts, what it was like to go back to the owners of the IP and say like, just give us a little bit more time to hold on to option this IP. At what point, I'm sure that you started to feel like you were trying their patience with it. At what point do you say like, this is enough, or, no, this is a story worth telling and stubbornly stay ahead or do you kind of analyze things and determine, okay, maybe this is a sign. Sam Widdoes The universe had some masochistic plan for us where just as we were about to give it all up, something would happen. Right? Just enough to keep you hooked where you said, no, this is going to happen. Whether it was just as one of the shopping periods for the rights was going to expire, like we have some really great meeting where some production company or studio or some part of the story starts to come alive and you realize like, oh my gosh, like this is the thing that's going to make it sell. And again, like there were just enough of those at just the right time that allowed. And granted, I'll say like there's a dozen times during the course of that seven years that certainly my then fiance and now wife would've been like, give this up and move on to the next project. And somehow it just, it kept happening that we moved it forward, inch by inch, came back and then moved it forward a foot and then the director says yes. And it's a guy who's literally the perfect person to tell the story. And then six months later, and that'll be what I'll write about next, because it's like when that happened, you're just like, oh my gosh, this is the person who has the vision, the clarity of storytelling to both tell a musical story, to tell a historical story, to tell a criminal justice story. And the artistic capability to do something that even having thought about this for five years at that point, like my mind couldn't have even comprehended. And so that's where I realized like my skill, my job as a producer, like I'm not that artist. I know I can sort of put the pieces together of a story. I can work my tail off to find the sources and sort of structure it the right way, but once you get a director who's got a vision and the talent to like bring it to life, I still get chills when I sit behind a monitor. I'm like, oh my gosh, it looks so much cooler than I ever thought it could. Jon Stahl Can I ask about financing? Can I ask about how you raised the money to do the things you needed to do to get this produced? Sam Widdoes For several years it was just, we were only pitching to the entities or the production companies that sold to streaming entities. Right? Like we were sort of in that ecosystem of the agencies that were like, this is how you do it. Independent financing was not really my skillset and also wasn't on my radar. We were sort of get it to big name producer who sells to Netflix or Amazon or whatever. And we took all those meetings. They were generally positive, but it didn't result in a yes. About the time that finished and other things lined up where it was like, we finished our first documentary for Quibi. And the series premiered right after the launch of Quibi and was drowned out by the soon demise of Quibi and the fact that it was the middle of a pandemic and all these things, but like, had that not happened, the reviews we got for that series were spectacular. And so it's like everything that was planned on using that premier as the launch for this next project was squandered. So it was one of those like, best laid plans in hindsight and in 2025, understanding like all the avenues that we really did have at our disposal that we weren't really thinking about, I would've started with a podcast, or I would've started with some short form interviews and getting some, just getting sort of the word out and owning the IP and trying to build the audience. And then also going to independent financiers, going to people in the world of criminal justice reform, of social justice of hip hop advocacy and saying, hey, will you put in this amount of money? That amount of money? This is where we're going. This is the plan. All that stuff. 2021 was when we really started to pursue independent financing, and we had one company that was interested and basically strung us along for about 11 months up until the point that our director signed on a studio came on and was like, we want, we're ready to take this to the next level. The studio then was the one that facilitated a pitch to Paramount Plus and Paramount ended up acquiring, commissioning the whole film. So it wasn't until literally went into production that we got any money in the door, but that money was the full budget to actually make the film. So had we gone for independent financing much earlier on, maybe it would've come in in chunks of 50 to a hundred thousand dollars along the way, and we would've been able to start making it. But it just so happened that we ultimately pitched it, and the buyer was the streamer that said, great, we'll pay for the whole thing. Here's your budget. Deliver this in 10 months. And then all of a sudden we're like, oh crap, we got to get this whole thing done like that. Jon Stahl And when you went to produce this thing and you knew you had this kind of clock on it, how did that impact the actual production of it? How did that impact your role and how did it impact the project as a whole? Sam Widdoes Yeah, production was so, the studio had an outrageously fast delivery date, delivery timeline. They greenlit it in February and said, delivered by October. And so I think actually because we had done six years of development at that point, like we knew exactly who we needed to interview, where they were located. The director and I had at that point been working on his version of what the film would be for a year and a half. So we had, the outline was more than just an outline. It was like, this is who we're interviewing in these places to go with this timeline and these are the cases that we're going to look at. And we had shoots in Atlanta, LA, Chicago, Houston, New York, and London. It was all, I think on like a two and a half month schedule, but post-production started like a month into production. So we had editors working while footage was coming in, and because the director, Jason Harper, who's just incredible, he was an editor, that was his background. So he was literally, he was shooting the film as he's cutting it in his head almost, right? He knows every scene that he needs. He knows all the coverage he needs, and was feeding that to his editors and saying, this is how I want to build this scene. This is how I want to build that scene. Getting all the coverage in each spot. So it was a really amazing, like precision production process. And I think because we had spent so much time developing it and really working through what ideas worked, what didn't work, what storylines paid off for the ultimate conclusion of the film, we were able to actually execute it on such an expedited timeline. Jon Stahl Wow. I mean, good on you. That is, that's really terrific to hear. And encouraging they were able to pull that off. Sam Widdoes It may be encouraging, but it was like, not for the faint of heart. I definitely will tell people like, don't do what I did. Jon Stahl I mean, sometimes you don't have the option. Sometimes it's just, it's foisted upon you. Sam Widdoes And you don't have the option. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I will say like, it wouldn't have been made had we not had so much different episodes in terms of redeveloping and reworking the story. It's an interesting thing to develop an idea like it's, it wasn't like the story of one trial case. It was like the issue of rap music on trial. Right? Rap lyrics used as evidence. How do you tell that story? You could do it in a really sort of academic way and just have, cause there's plenty of lawyers who spoke on it and there's plenty of lawyers who had written about it. You could do it in a purely musical way, just interview a bunch of rappers and you could. And Jason just had this amazing vision of weaving it together through the first person perspective of a rapper whose name is Kemba, a guy who had released a couple albums and had like some notoriety, but certainly wasn't famous. And also isn't, gang affiliated, has no criminal record. A criminal in any way, shape or form. But by virtue of being a black man in America, could at any point arrested and at any point during that process, his backlog of, his library of songs, some of which referenced drugs, some of which referenced guns, but all in the context of his own experience of growing up in the Bronx and understanding like he's telling stories of his surroundings and the people he grew up with. And so Jason had this brilliant idea of like, this whole thing is going to be Kemba's journey, going from city to city, talking to artists, talking to attorneys, and trying to figure out like, is this a thing that could ever impact me? I'm just an artist sharing stories about my experience in the world. This is an issue that clearly only affects other people. But wait a second. At some point could I get hit with something like this and have, and be faced with being in a defendant's seat where I can't speak for myself because my lawyer's going to tell me not to open my mouth, and I'm going to have to watch as a prosecutor and defense attorney interpret my words against me. That was the sort of meta approach and I was like, shit. That's the best version of anything we had come up with in development. Jon Stahl I love that and I love hearing about the journey and how this thing developed. Real quick before we wrap it up, tell everyone about your Substack, tell me what you are most interested in gaining from writing the Substack and what the experience has been like as a content creator in that space. Sam Widdoes Yeah, so I think the seed of the Substack probably started last year when we premiered As We Speak at Sundance, and the experience of, grateful for Paramount Plus and their financing of the film and releasing it. We turned in a project file, it went on the platform a month after Sundance. That was it. And I still to this day don't know who watched it. When they watched, where they are. There's no sort of feedback really from Paramount nor from an audience. And it was a project that I just knew would have an audience if it was marketed, if we were given an opportunity to engage with those people. I know Jason and Kemba were eager to do in-person events and just engage with the conversation about what we were talking about and how it would impact artists and filmmakers and writers and anyone in that space. So that was sort of the dissatisfaction with a lack of engagement or really understanding of who the audience was that started planted the seed of my desire to get that direct audience engagement. Next was last summer. I saw the director of a film, a documentary called Your Fat Friend. She and her producer did a presentation about their self distribution of their film and the ways in which their audience directly communicated with them after they had premiered Tribeca and didn't get a sale. Their audience was like, we want to watch the film. How can we do it? How much money can we spend? We want to give you our money. And they started using different platforms like gather and understanding like there's more value in the direct to audience connection than just the money that you'll receive. You'll get personal satisfaction and you'll also get a continuing relationship that you can leverage for your next project. And those filmmakers were like, I'm never going back. This is the way that I'm going to engage from now on. That's how I'm going to start thinking about my projects from the outset, from the development stage. How do I find, how do I connect directly with an audience early and just keep building that so that they feel like they are invested in me in this story. And then, I think last fall I was like. I was still sort of straddling this producer, legal world, and I was, the conversation I was having with clients, with executives, with financiers, with everyone, were all sort of swirling in my head with a bunch of different thoughts. And I thought, why don't I just start getting these out into the world? And Substack seemed to be a really great platform. And it has been, and it's been really rewarding to be involved in sort of the film stack world, as a non filmmaker, but like active participant in this conversation that's around where especially where's independent film and television going. I went to Sundance this year just as an observer, and went to a handful of different panels. The panels that were film and television film and financing and distribution related, were almost all doom and gloom. The industry is in the dumps. We're not getting any money, we're not getting any distribution. I went to a couple creator and brand panels and they're like, business is booming. We're getting all this audience data. We're getting brands that want to participate. We're expanding our reach, we're growing our studios. I'm like, okay. Something's happening over here that these guys can learn from. I know these guys will not want to associate themselves with creators with the word content, these guys, the creators, they really don't know how to make films, nor do many of them want to. Long form filmmaking is a different skillset. Long form television is a different skillset. Creators, the creator community is wide variety of types of creators, right? There's people who do unboxing videos, there's people who do game shows. There's people who do comedy. There's people who do whatever Jake Paul does. There's people who do video podcasts. It's a whole, but what is true of all of the creators is they have a direct relationship with their audience and they have a direct connection to the feedback that their audience gives them in terms of what is working, what is not. And over time, what that builds more than anything is trust. And a creator knows that if they continue to feed the things that the audience wants, they might be able to build the trust to go branch out and try new things. Anyway, it's just all these different things that I'm seeing, like, okay, how can the indie film world learn from the creator world and on the business side. Really start thinking about their stories as universes of storytelling, universes of content that can be broken up into different pieces. And if they don't, if the filmmakers don't want to make the podcast or the short form, or the merch or the live event, well, where are the partnerships that we can make? Right? Where are the people that want to get involved in that and be part of that storytelling world. So that's kind of what I'm writing about and putting ideas out there and getting to meet great writers and producers and people in all different walks that a lot of, I think my followers and the people that I've interacted with are kind of from the traditional film and television space that are engaging with Substack because they want to know more about the creator world and they want to know more about how can I really think about the way that I want to interact with my audience as I tell my story, tell the story, work with the collaborators that I want to work with and grow that brand. Jon Stahl To wrap it up, how can people find you and find your work and find both the feature and your Substack. Sam Widdoes Yeah, thanks. My Substack is Widdoes Peak. My last name, Widdoes Peak. And then the film is called As We Speak, Rap Music on Trial. It's on Paramount Plus. There's a handful of other clients that are also doing great work. I'd love to promote them too. It's cool to be able to work on both sides of these projects and be part of a lot of really interesting storytelling. Jon Stahl Amazing. Well, thank you, Sam, for joining. Everyone stay tuned for the next one and yeah, we'll catch you on the next one. Bye. Get full access to How Not to be a TV Writer at hownot.substack.com/subscribe [https://hownot.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

1 de jul de 2025 - 31 min
episode What's Wrong with Hollywood Ep. 1 artwork

What's Wrong with Hollywood Ep. 1

In this inaugural episode of What's Wrong with Hollywood, I sit down with filmmaker Alex Rollins Berg, an award-winning writer-director, NYU Tisch professor, and writer of the Substack newsletter Underexposed. In our full conversation, we cover: 🎭 Why "humanize don't moralize" - How being preachy and didactic in storytelling alienates audiences who are already allergic to message-driven content 🌱 The biodiversity crisis in Hollywood - Why bringing back small and mid-tier budget movies is essential for a healthy entertainment ecosystem instead of the current monocrop model 💌 The art of indie outreach - Specific tactics for reaching talent and financiers, from providing comps and case studies to writing heartfelt letters that explain the "why" behind your project 🚢 Why traditional Hollywood feels like boarding a sinking ship - How the wrong people now control studios, running them like tech companies while shutting out original voices who aren't nepo-babies 📱 The Luke Barnett breakthrough model - How a filmmaker got rejected from every major festival, released his short online, gained millions of views, and now gets to make his movie 🎬 Building your own studio from scratch - Establishing a strong house style and brand identity, exploring hybrid crowdfunding models like Eli Roth's approach, and ditching antiquated marketing techniques Full Transcript Below: Jon Stahl: Hi everyone. Welcome to the inaugural episode of What's Wrong with Hollywood, where I talk to professionals from Hollywood and the Creator economy on how to improve the entertainment industry and seek their guidance on building a new type of entertainment studio. That's a mouthful. I'll work on that. The very first guest on our show is filmmaker Alex Rollins Berg. Alex is an award-winning writer and director based in New York City. He's the winner of the Blacklist and Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Fellowship for his writing. He has written, directed, and produced for brands like Vanity Fair, BBC America, and Proctor and Gamble, and teaches at NYU Tisch, focusing on screen acting, development, and production. He also publishes the popular Substack newsletter Underexposed where he dissects cinema culture, which I highly recommend to all four of my listeners. Alex, welcome. Alex Rollins Berg: Thank you, Jonathan. It's a pleasure to be here on this maiden voyage. Thank you for having me. Jon Stahl: We're gonna be learning in real time. It's all happening now, and we'll figure it out. Thank you again so much for joining. First things first, gotta start with the question at the top. What is wrong with Hollywood? Alex Rollins Berg: Well, that's a rich vein to tap into. I always reach for analogies and I think Hollywood used to be like a vineyard, where the focus was on cultivating quality over time. And I think what's happened in recent decades is that it's become more like an industrial monocrop farming situation where we're optimizing for yield but not necessarily taste. And how that came to be, I think in my estimation is that over time due to various factors such as deregulation and corporate consolidation, these larger conglomerates have come to take ownership over studios. And with that, I think the guiding principles of Hollywood have shifted away from quality storytelling and toward more quarter by quarter profit. I'm not the first to observe that, but I think that's at the heart of the issue. I think that coupled with the phenomenon of the blockbuster has been both great and terrible for Hollywood. Starting in about the mid seventies and extending into our current era, blockbusters have expanded the scope of what people think is possible in terms of profitability. And that's been true. That coupled with the emergence of new film going markets like China, it's amazing to consider that China in particular, back in 2005, their market was the size of Switzerland and now they're the largest movie going market in the world. That's an incredible growth. And I think that has affected the types of films that Hollywood wants to make and their incentives for making them. And now of course, that's in flux with the current trade war situation. So these kinds of influences for both good and bad ways have changed the nature of Hollywood over time. Another thing that's happened is that the people that run the studios have changed over from people that appreciate the art of making films along with the art of commerce, which are both legitimate. It is a business, it is show business, and they've gone over into strictly people that think in terms of business and people that want to protect their jobs in the short term and make money in the short term. So to reach back into an agricultural analogy, I would say it's a little bit like slash and burn agriculture where you're just making as much money quarter by quarter that you can perhaps at the expense of the long-term health of the industry and the field. So that's a long way of saying that's my personal armchair analysis of what's wrong with Hollywood at the moment. Jon Stahl: I love the farming analogy. Have you thought about ways to return to that more organic model, so to speak, or cultivate a new way of doing things? Alex Rollins Berg: Yeah, let me see if I can extend the analogy to the idea of biodiversity. You've got a situation where you have an ecosystem of movie makers, large and small, kind of like any kind of ecosystem. And what has happened is it's just become dominated by one large species. And the ecosystem then just ultimately inevitably suffers, dwindles and dies. When there's no smaller fish to eat, there's no medium fish to eat. All of these medium sized players that we might have grown up loving the movies that they made in the mid-market, mid-tier range have all been absorbed or collapsed in the face of these larger beings. And I think what needs to happen is the same thing that needs to happen in the case of those situations is that we need to encourage more biodiversity to come back and make the place more vibrant and diverse in terms of smaller budget movies and mid-tier movies. I mean, I think that's what's gonna resuscitate and revive the industry. How that happens is anyone's guess, but it's just untenable the way that we've been going. I think everybody is slowly starting to realize that and so it's pretty inevitable that something's gonna happen. We just don't know quite what. Jon Stahl: Yeah. That leads to the next question. You teach at NYU Tisch and you have students who have not yet been exposed to the industry. What about the experience of teaching these students has made you hopeful about the future of filmmaking? Alex Rollins Berg: Oh, it's made me hopeful about so many things. I have to tell you that one of the weirdest, strangest surprises of my life is how fulfilling and mutually beneficial teaching has been. I think everybody should know that, especially people in the creative industries. It's just amazing the kind of things you can learn from younger generations and the enthusiasm and energy, the creative energy you can absorb from them is amazing. I started teaching there in earnest around fall of 2021, and I came into the situation with all of the negative, cynical prejudices that you would expect of an elder millennial stepping into a nest of Zoomers. Like this is a bunch of iPad babies or whatever. And I couldn't be more wrong. We walk around with these glowing ideas of the greatest generation, right? And the reason why we think of the Greatest Generation as great is because they survived all this adversity. They survived the war. They started victory gardens. They made sacrifices, and through that they became stronger people. And we admire them. Well, who is surviving more adversity than the current generation of Zoomers? I mean, look at what they're up against. It's incredible. It's unprecedented. And I think we need to acknowledge, and I had to personally acknowledge seeing it firsthand. There were times when I was trying to make movies with these guys at the height of the pandemic, and we weren't even allowed to roll camera without masks on, without us leaving the room. I would have to roll the camera, leave the room, shoot one side of a scene with one actor, unmasked, come back in, shoot the reverse, all sorts of crazy shit like that was going on. And yet these students, not once did they really complain, they all just rolled with it. And so I think the thing that we're not really thinking about with them is how adaptable they really are. And how strong they must be becoming in the face of all this adversity. And we've gotta give them props for that and find ways to do what we can to give them the benefit of the privileges of how we were raised, both by exposing them to great movies and TV, showing them that there's a world outside of all the stuff that they've been fed through algorithms, because they're certainly capable of appreciating it, and they're certainly capable of generating really fresh and amazing creative work. Jon Stahl: So you mentioned the idea of algorithms feeding content to this generation. How would you say Gen Z Zoomers are leveraging the technology they have at their disposal to tell the kinds of stories that you'd like to see come back? Alex Rollins Berg: I wish I felt they were. I think that they have the capability of it. They might be doing it, and I'm just unaware, but I just think that there's this thing of a lot of bad incentives have been created through the nature of these new platforms. I think we're all dimly aware of it at the very least, and we're becoming more and more acutely aware of it day by day almost. To a point that I think we're reaching a breaking point, where people are tired of it and people are, especially of that generation who have been raised with it, are becoming kind of disillusioned with it. And they could speak to this obviously more accurately than I could, but I think they've become a little bit disenchanted with the cycle of content creation and all the ugly and narcissistic incentives they've been forced into, literally forced into. So I think we're at a point where maybe people a little older than them, if they're willing to listen to us, we could maybe provide a little bit of insight of what the world might look like based on what it used to look like. So once those two things come together, I think incredible things could happen. Jon Stahl: I love that. Now you and I have different views on the word content. I did read both you and Ted Hope have spoken about this in the past. Tell me why you think the word doesn't serve us well. Alex Rollins Berg: Good question. I think the word has its purpose. It's not that we shouldn't use the word at all. I think the word applies to the stuff that we encounter online, it's very useful. It's more marketing. It's about sharing ideas, wisdom, thoughts, all that stuff in various multimedia formats that is content. I think that where we run into trouble is when we start to apply the word to everything. Like if we apply the word content to fine arts and filmmaking, it's just a different animal. To me it has different goals than content does. Content is a lot in my mind about self-promotion and dissemination of information, tips, that kind of stuff. It's a different thing. It's perfectly fine, legitimate, useful to pursue a career in content, but what we get into trouble when we blur those lines. I think about the way that in the world of healthcare doctors have started to be called providers. And I think that there's a nefarious incentive underneath that. And it has to do with the people at the top, the people who are in the financial, capital markets trying to devalue the worth of a doctor by calling them a provider as a tool to drive down their value in the marketplace. And I'm worried about content applied to film and television work for that reason. Jon Stahl: I understand your perspective a bit more, hearing that. So you are not just a teacher, you're also a screenwriter and a director. Talk about your own writing. What type of writing are you drawn to and why? Alex Rollins Berg: Yeah, good. Thank you for asking. I'm a screenwriter. I'm really drawn to contemporary stories that aim to, this is my little mission statement, humanize not moralize. I'm really turned off by work that aims to sort of drive home a message or be didactic in some way. I think most people are pretty allergic to that at this point. We're all hip to it. But I don't think that means abandoning any kind of moral content. I think that work that aims to stir up a conversation or address these uncomfortable truths that aren't maybe addressed, but do so through the filter of genre or entertainment to make stories that are both meaningful and entertaining. That to me is the intersection where I want my work to live, and that's where I aim. It's not easy because to talk about the world these days is tricky. It's a tricky target to hit because the target keeps moving and for that reason, I think a lot of people, a lot of screenwriters, a lot of filmmakers fall the retreat into the comforts of nostalgia or fantasy, which are fine, but for me are just not areas of interest. I really wanna do stuff. It's so hard to do. Everybody listening to this knows it's so hard to make movies and to make any kind of script come to life, to be produced. So my own personal taste and preferences aim at things that I feel like I can be proud of both as an object of entertainment and as something that I can say, I really said something that other people weren't saying, or that a million people haven't already said better than me. So that's a tough bar to clear, but it's what I aim for. Jon Stahl: I like that. And I also appreciate the idea of you can explore a theme and explore character's humanity without being preachy is what I took from that. Alex Rollins Berg: Mm-hmm. Jon Stahl: When we spoke last, you mentioned the idea of perfectionism getting in the way of actually doing the work. What tips do you have to move forward and make progress without letting perfectionism get in the way? Alex Rollins Berg: That's a really tough one. I think the best thing you can do is try to impose on yourself a schedule that emphasizes process over result. I think we live in a society culture that really lionizes results and really diminishes process. And that's more and more the case as we get closer and closer to AI. AI completely deletes process. And that's a danger because the thing that I have learned over time is that the victories that you get from results are fleeting and few and kind of hollow when compared to the joy that you experience when you get together with a bunch of friends or collaborators and make something. You realize, I think if you get the opportunity to do that, how much more fun and fulfilling making stuff is than the actual result. The actual result is actually kind of abstract when you reach it. It really is about the journey. It's cheesy but true. It really is about the people and the journey and that anyway is for me what I do this for, what I suffer through the life of a creative for is to just the chance to collaborate with people and be on set and goof around and make discoveries. That's what I live for. If you can realize that, you need to be making things now. You shouldn't just be sitting around planning or waiting for permission. You need to jump in and do something now with the tools that you have. A lot of us spend a lot of our days, myself included, on these devices, these smartphones, complaining about the death of our industry when you could just flip it over and notice that there are lenses on the back of this that are capable of shooting 4K video. How crazy is that? I mean, that was not true a very short period of time ago. And I think that the more of us that wake up to the fact that we just need to be picking up those devices and using them to create rather than to complain, myself included, the better off we're gonna be, and the sooner we're gonna be better off. Jon Stahl: I love that. Last time that we spoke, we also discussed pitching your project, putting your project out in the world. How do you think about getting something made if you're not already an established filmmaker with the backing of a major studio? Alex Rollins Berg: Yeah, I will confess something to you, Jon, that this is the area I think I struggle with to this day the most. And I will just share with you, not from my successes, but from my failures and shortcomings. Jon Stahl: Your challenges. Alex Rollins Berg: Yeah, my challenges. You have to embrace it. Because the fact is, you already have a no from everybody that you're not reaching out to. So you might as well just swallow your pride and try to reach out to people. But when you're reaching out to people, there are a couple little nuggets I've picked up along the way that I can share with the audience here. I think that there's a tendency, I'm speaking from experience, that artists and imaginative people, creative people assume that everybody has the same powers of imagination that they do. And when you're talking to the people with money, you have to come to them. You have to meet them where they are, and they don't spend their days daydreaming about creative projects, and as a result, they might not have the imaginative faculties that you might expect them to. So you need to be aware, first of all, that you really need to strengthen your message and speak their language. And what does that mean? That means embracing the ideas of providing comps, doing the research to provide case studies of projects that are similar to yours that have done well, and perhaps if you can, reaching out to line producers to make budgets for your short, for your films. Because that goes a long way in their eyes. That communicates that you're serious and that you understand that this is a business and this needs to be a real thing. And it just paints a clearer picture and speaks their language basically. So those are a couple things to think about when putting together your decks and learning to craft your message. Jon Stahl: How do you get others to trust your vision? Alex Rollins Berg: Same idea, really. But again, if we're screenwriters, right, we have to get in the practice of stepping into another person's mind and experience. So if you can think about it that way, both for the financiers and for possible talent, you have to think about it from their perspective fully and think about what's gonna make this feel special to them and where are they coming from. So I think one thing I would say to always remember is to reach out to them on a human level and with a deep knowledge of the work that they've done before. I think that goes a long way. I've seen a lot of people, and I think I've made this mistake myself in the past, of reaching out to people generically, kind of like spray and pray method. I think you really owe them a really heartfelt, thoughtful letter when you're submitting something for their consideration, that demonstrates a deep knowledge of who they are, where they've been, and why you think that this project is good for them. It sells the project on their terms. A deeper investigation of that, I think leads to better results typically when reaching out. Jon Stahl: Cool. I love that. So if you were building a studio from the ground up and you didn't have access to resources, apart from maybe a few connections, how would you approach that challenge? Alex Rollins Berg: It's a very good question. I'm creative, but I'm not a genius business mind, but I will contribute what I have. I did think about this because Ted Hope posed this question. How would you dream up a studio? So I did come up with some bullet points. I will share those with you now. Take them for what they're worth. I said to him, first of all, to establish a strong house style and development model. I think that's exciting. I think a lot of people step into the idea of making a studio just with whatever hits first, or I want to be all things to all people. I think as a creative, and I think as someone who wants to be an entrepreneur, that's probably not a winning strategy. So I would strive to create a strong brand identity, first of all. And then secondly, I would be curious about exploring the concepts that Eli Roth is exploring right now with his model. He's a horror director who's had a lot of success and he's just set up a new studio that combines crowdfunding with private investment and it allows people that are fans of the genre and of him and what he's trying to do to be stakeholders in the projects. And I think that there's a lot of excitement there that could yield some really interesting results in the next decade or so. So I don't know how realistic that is, but that's got me excited. Thirdly, I think we need to confront the fact that marketing is really antiquated and inefficient and expensive, and I think people that are gonna succeed in the future are gonna ditch certain, played out marketing techniques broadcast commercials and stuff and get more creative with it, especially if you're just starting out. I think having merchandise and unusual ways to get in front of people that could be interested in your movie are gonna be really important and also just to make it valuable again. I think streaming has had a lot of really great effects to make things more convenient and accessible. But I think at the expense of the specialness of film and even thinking back to the era of DVD and Blu-ray, I just remember how exciting it was to actually hold the object in your hand and see the artwork and delve into the bonus features and buy the soundtrack on vinyl or on CD or whatever. And I think to just restore some of that mystique, one way or another would go a long way to making it a worthwhile enterprise. Jon Stahl: Yeah. That really speaks to me. You clearly have a passion for, I mean if you've read Underexposed, which if you haven't, I highly suggest you do, you will definitely come to understand Alex's deep appreciation for cinema in all forms. It's a really exciting publication to read, and gets me excited about the future of film. Last question, how do you think about the distribution of creative talent? What gaps or inefficiencies do you see in the marketplace between creatives and buyers, and how can people get exposed to the people with the checkbooks? Alex Rollins Berg: Yeah, it's a good question and it kind of goes full circle, doesn't it? The first question is what's wrong with Hollywood, and how has it changed over the years? I think we're in a very, we're in a nadir. It's just a situation where the wrong people, in my opinion, have come into control and they're trying to run the business like a tech company, just another asset class. I just don't think that film and TV really works that way. I think audiences demand novelty, demand originality. Maybe not always, but I think in the long term you can expect them to want to see some changes. And I think we've been locked in this era where people that are financing film and TV are thinking like accountants and they're looking at the data that streamers accumulate and they're thinking, okay. This worked in the past. This is a safe bet. So more of that, more of that, more of that, and I think it's shut out a lot of original voices, a lot of voices of people that deserve a seat at the table, but aren't nepo babies or aren't intimately connected in the system. The good news for those people is that the way that things are right now, I believe, is untenable. That we are approaching a point when all of that is going to collapse or be forced to change. And I think that you can situate yourself best by, again, I'm gonna reiterate what I said before, producing what you can with what you've got now to demonstrate to those people that you're there, you're ready, your vision is clear and you can execute. 'Cause that's what holds them back. I think that's the friction between getting something made and getting something noticed and just getting ignored. I'll give you one little example. There's a filmmaker named Luke Barnett that some of you might be aware of. He's active on Twitter or whatever we're calling it these days, and he made a short film, 11 minute short film called The Crossover Express that got rejected from every single major festival. He released it online, it got millions of views. And now he gets to make the movie. And meanwhile, if you compare that to the experience of these people that are really lucky enough to get their film in these legacy film festivals or whatever, maybe they have prestige, whatever that's worth, which is a separate conversation. They're not really moving forward. They've successfully boarded what I see as a sinking ship. So you can just keep bashing your head up against that wall, or you can just do what you can with what you've got, which is more than any other generation has ever had in terms of technology, in terms of distribution, and really embrace this weird moment, inflection point. And I think you set yourself up for success much more. It's just gonna take one success and it's already starting to happen, like with Luke Barnett, it's just gonna take one success for all of those money people to suddenly jump over. I mean, you're seeing it right now with a level of investment in what's called new media and the creator economy. A lot of us in the film business, we're just having so much trouble raising money for our films, but if we were to move two inches to the left, all of a sudden there's this fire hose of investment happening. And just getting those two worlds to touch, whoever's sitting at the center of that Venn diagram, we don't know quite what that looks like yet, but if you try to sit there, I think that's where success is gonna come in the future. That's my instinct anyway. Jon Stahl: Well this has been great. Thank you so much, Alex, for joining. We will be back soon with another episode maybe if it doesn't crash and burn horribly. But thanks again, Alex. Stay tuned everyone. Alex Rollins Berg: Thank you, Jon. Jon Stahl: Take care. Get full access to How Not to be a TV Writer at hownot.substack.com/subscribe [https://hownot.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

17 de jun de 2025 - 28 min
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