Dave C: On today's episode, we'll talk about the value of being fearless, what you can learn from shooting news, the boondock saints, heroes, and of course, the benefit of receiving a nice rejection letter. Just a little bit of business before we start, there may be a curse word here or there in this episode, so please listen responsibly. As always, our website theop.io is up and chock full of tips, tricks, and gooey operator goodness. Make sure to check out the breakdown where the best operators in the biz explain shots they have done, the musings where we discuss everything from quick tips to larger concepts of storytelling, the blocking, the answers, the images, and so much more. If you're enjoying this podcast, please follow us, write a review, share us with your parents, and talk us up around the water cooler with your friends. So grab a beverage, sit back, and enjoy the op. Thanks for listening. Lock it up, nice and quiet, and let's roll. Victor 30 Echo Tech Team. Hey Mark. Camera set. Background in action. Hello and welcome back to the OP Podcast, the podcast where we talk about operating and the art of visual storytelling. I'm Dave Kamades, your host, and coming to you over the internet today to North Vancouver, British Columbia, with a guy who is a longtime friend, a longtime collaborator. ⁓ we used to be roommates. ⁓ we used to have really big Parties together. We actually went to NYU together, although I don't really think we knew each other back then, but we'll find out. ⁓ a producer, a director, a cinematographer, ⁓ Mr. Adam Kane. ⁓ Adam has an amazingly large IMDB ⁓ list of things that he's done, but just ⁓ a couple as a director, Billy the Kid, American Gods, Hannibal, Daredevil, Pushing Daisies, Being Human, Heroes, ⁓ really cool feature ⁓ Formosa portrayed. ⁓ as a DP. Heroes Grey's Anatomy, The Boondock Saints, West Wing, and of course everybody's favorite movies ⁓ that I worked on with him, which did some amazing work. I think some of the best work in my career on these movies: Skateboard Kid 2, Saku Cop Returns, The Double O Kid, and of course the Chill Deal Boys Make Your Body Move music video, which we all know and love. ⁓ he's been up for ⁓ a number of awards, eight nominations, seven wins, just a couple of them, 2007 ASC. Nominee for Heroes and the Directors Guild of Canada nominated for ⁓ directing in 2015, 2018, 2019, 2020, 25, and I'm sure more to come, ⁓ for High Moon, American Gods, Deadly Class, Billy the Kid, and a ton of nominations and wins for ⁓ the short film that sort of got him directing the fix, ⁓ which I want to talk to him about. as I said, a good friend of mine and very, very glad to finally get you on the podcast, Adam. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's a long time coming. No, I keep every every time we talk, I'm like, hey, I should get you on the podcast. You're like, yeah, we should do that. And finally I was just like, yeah, yeah, we should probably do that. And then four months later, we're like, what location you are? Where are you? Exactly. Exactly. So tell me, how'd you get into the business? Was this like always your thing or what's the deal? It was not. ⁓ I started becoming interested in visuals in high school. ⁓ I took pictures for the yearbook. I ⁓ videotaped in the nineteen eighties with ⁓ old decks and backpacks and you know, single tubes panasonic cameras, ⁓ school trips, ⁓ just because I was interested. I started working at a grassroots television station in Aspen, Colorado, doing playback, basically a tape op. and I was also very much into music. Music has always been a big part of my life. Both my parents were in the music industry. And I really wanted to go to Berkeley School of Music. And my mother absolutely s forbade it. There was no way that was happening. Why? And she said she said to me, she said, Why don't you try film instead? It's more stable. ⁓ there you go. Well, so basically was it Okay. But was was it we're both in the film and ⁓ the music industry and it's just horrible and there's no way you're going into it? Was that the idea? Horrible. Terrible. Don't we we we will not allow you to ruin your life. So go into the film business, then you'll have a chance of success. And and ma and many ways, she was right with what happened with Napster and the collapse of, you know, record sales and and all that. She was actually right. But I ended up going to NYU. ⁓ which was my sort of my consolation choice if you can believe that. and I started doing everything I could ⁓ to study anything that was music or sound related. So I took classical music and I took post production sound because I thought that was kind of cool engineering. and then I I I started off doing student films as a sound recordist. And I was on a student film in my second year at NYU. when I saw a a a cinematographer working, a very talented guy named Rob Lascalzo at NYU and I was just completely mesmerized by his talent with lighting and composition. And I immediately switched over and started picking up a camera and began what became a forty year ⁓ plus love affair with cinematography. ⁓ And that's how I got involved. So I was not an early bloomer. What what year were you what year was this? This is probably nineteen eighty seven or eight. Okay. So that's what so that was that your like s junior year, sophomore year? What years were you there? That would have been ⁓ I was there eighty six to ninety at NYU. Okay. So I was there eighty seven to ninety because I dropped out. But so did we ever actually have we talked I know we've talked about that. Do we ever actually meet at NYU? I don't think so, right? No. We were there at the same time, but we never knew each other there. We only met, I did we meet at Corey Garyak's wedding? No, we didn't meet at Corey Garyak's wedding. We met in your front door when I brought you my my first reel, which we'll get to. When I when I was trying okay, cool. That doesn't but we'll get to that story. That'll jump ahead. But wait a minute, what is where did you live at NYU? Did you live in one of the dorms? Yeah, I lived in ⁓ Hayden Hall in my freshman year on the park, on Washington Square Park. And then ⁓ and then I moved over across the park on the other side to ⁓ I think it was called Stern, which was another dorm. Yep. Just ⁓ a kid caddy corner from the library. And I lived there junior year and then I lived off campus for the last two years. I was in I was in the Brittany and I found out on this podcast actually that David Emmerich lived on the same hall as me and had a steady cam that he would run up and down the hall. And not only did we never meet, but I never I never knew there was a guy with a steady cam in the dorm. It was insane How is that possible? That's unbelievable. I have zero idea. It's really unbelievable. Yeah, well it's also like you would think if someone was running up and down the hall with a steady cam, like everybody would be talking about it. So I have no I I'm I don't know. It maybe it said something about me. But anyway, so so basically you just decided that was like cinematography was it that point? I decided that was it. I had a band that I was ⁓ with in New York at the same time. We were playing at little clubs around the village and so on and so forth. And we even re recorded an album at Woodstock a year later at nineteen eighty eight and nineteen eighty nine, which I participated in. But I didn't have enough time to do cinematography and the band, so I dropped out of the band. I I was that in love with with imagery that I just thought, you know, this is what I want to do with my life. And I just don't I I knew I wasn't a good enough guitar player. I knew I wasn't a good enough musician to really get into, you know, session work. So I thought, you know what, I'm gonna chase the cinematography, see where that leads me. Thankfully for all of us. ⁓ so ⁓ so you left NYU, you finished off NYU. I mean, do you d do you think you got a good education there? Was it good program? No. that's why I asked. I left too. ⁓ no, I mean I I you know, here's what I'll say about NYU. NYU was great in the sense that they put a camera in your hands the first week you're there and they basically let you loose on the streets of New York and they say go shoot stuff. And that was very liberating. Whereas programs like USC, they don't do that. It's very structured. And you don't pick up you you can go your entire four years in the undergrad program and never shoot a movie. Never direct a movie. You can actually go through the entire program and have an undergraduate degree ⁓ in the fine arts and never actually be ⁓ the a department head. I don't know how they do it, but NYU, one of the benefits for me was just being able to learn by doing. ⁓ the one of the things about NYU that ⁓ taught me the most. was not the curriculum that in the undergraduate program, but it was one summer course that I took in my junior year that was part of the grad program that was all about cinematography. And it was open to undergrad. It was taught by a guy named Beta Bodka, who's a Hungarian camera operator. Beta Bodka. Beta Bodka. He he He's probably still there for you. You know, ⁓ sadly he has left the earth ⁓ he's not with us anymore. But he ⁓ he was a camera operator on the best little whorehouse in Texas in the 70s. ⁓ so you know, some finer cinema. But he was so practically pragmatic with what he taught that the things that he ⁓ the things that he embedded I still think about today. For example, he had and he had a very thick Hungarian accent, so you'll have to forgive me. This is my best like Laszlo Kovacs that'll do. But he he ended up saying, Suppose you have black cat on the white snow. Black kitty? White snow. How do you expose? And he would pose this question to the class. And the answer, of course, was in the middle. You know, it was like an eight eleven split or something like that. But you know, the imagery that he presented I still think about. And that was some of the best education I got at NYU. It wasn't from the regular curriculum. It was really from those moments. And when I went on to AFI after NYU, I had a lot more of that because AFI is a conservatory with working cinematographers and working directors. And you know, you don't have the majority of the faculty that is staffed by people who didn't really have much of a career. So so did you did you leave, by the way Beta Bodka's name has come up so many times. That guy influenced so many people. It's incredible. What? Are you kidding me? Yeah. Well, just because anybody who went through NYU, I never had him, but ⁓ but I knew who he was. ⁓ there's so many people who mention his name, it's amazing. Legend. ⁓ yeah, yeah. And so so you left it you did you left there and was the idea to come out here to come out to LA and and go to AFI or No. No, the the plan was to stay in New York. ⁓ 'cause I love New York. And ⁓ what happened was ⁓ I was working some very, very scattered odd jobs that were non union because none of us who were in MYU were union, except maybe Dave Emmerich's. ⁓ I was working at a place called Broadcast Arts, which ⁓ did a lot of ⁓ animation for stuff like MTV, those little ten second bumpers that they made where clay would form into ⁓ T V music television. ⁓ cool. Wow. I I was an I was a basically we were work working on a on a Mitchell. ⁓ and I was the assistant and the animation guys would, you know, move the little clay figures around all day and we'd shoot thirty feet, maybe. and I was bored out of my skull, you know, 'cause it was like frame by frame and the the the the Mitchell was just sitting on a tripod, you know, that kind of thing. And they were paying me like I don't know, sixty bucks a day or or something, 'cause it was all non union. ⁓ And at the time, the unions in New York could not come to an agreement with the producers. And so a lot of work was leaving New York and going to Toronto or Montreal to shoot for New York. And after graduating, ⁓ my student loans were coming up and I didn't know how I was gonna pay them back. So I thought if I go to grad school, I can kick that can down the road. Because smart. I ⁓ I already I already owed, I think, more than a hundred thousand or near almost a hundred thousand from the NYU experience. And so I thought, you know, what's another forty or fifty? I mean, I might as well have been ten million dollars. So I I ⁓ much to my mother's chagrin, ⁓ because she wanted me to go to grad school since I was in elementary school. She wanted me to have a backup career in case this whole filmmaking thing didn't work out and she wanted me to ⁓ grad school and something else you mean I I got you in in anything she just wanted me to be able to teach you know ⁓ if I needed to and and so I applied the AFI was the only program that I thought was worth going to ⁓ because of its conserv it its conservatory atmosphere really yeah and I got in and so that's what got me from LA to New York I delayed my student loans for another two years while I went through AFI. And my only goal in going to grad school was to start working. So I wasn't at AFI a lot. ⁓ 'cause I was out hustling. Okay. Gotcha. ⁓ I see. So that was just a means to an end. Was did did you I mean was AFI a good a good experience? Did you get a good education? Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. They would bring in 'cause they'd bring in working DPs like Taylor Vondesant came in. ⁓ on one occasion and he had a laser disc of a movie he shot. Yes, a laser disc of Miracle Mile. ⁓ wow and like he would play a scene, the finale of the movie, which was ⁓ at the corner of Wilshire and La Brea in Los Angeles, which he had to shoot the entire sequence at the intersection of that boulevard night for day. ⁓ And this is like in you know, the late eighties when Yeah. When you did stuff like that, you had to have Musco lights and hundred by two hundred ⁓ grip silks and things of that nature. So being able to go through practical pragmatic problems with working DPs was invaluable. It wasn't theory. That's great. You know, it was incredible. ⁓ and one funny story I'll tell about ⁓ AFI is we had a a very old cameraman there ⁓ named Harry Wolfe. And Harry had been the DP on Beretta. In the seventies. Yes. And we'd be putting, you know, we I we did a lot of our assignments in ⁓ at that point in sixteen millimeter in the first year or betacam, and we'd put cameras on tripods, and Harry would come around and say to me, God damn it, take the camera off the tripod, you'll get better shots. And he would he was right. Like I I realized, wow, I'm just being lazy. Like so e ever since then, even now to this day, even though I've got a messed up knee and kind of a messed up shoulder, like I'll be crawling around on the floor or standing on tables looking at angles. And it's all because of that little voice in the back of my head from Harry Walls. That's great. You said you were out hustling to get work. What I mean, would you just go into production off offices and give your resume or I mean wh how do you how do you do that? Right. So at that time the Hollywood Reporter and they may still have this, on every Thursday they had a production listing that came out. Yeah, I remember that. I don't know if they have it anymore, but yeah, yeah. And so every Thursday I would dutifully ⁓ send out my resume, which was incredibly thin, ⁓ to production companies that said they were in prep. And I did that probably every day for three years, every ⁓ week for three years. Wow. What I what I didn't understand at the time is that because there was no low budget contracts with the IATSI, that a lot of those companies would put up the listings when they had already finished shooting in order to throw off the unions. ⁓ That's why I never got calls back. Exactly. ⁓ wow. That's ⁓ that's that's a game changer right there. Okay. So you didn't get much out of that, I'm assuming. I got nothing out of that. I'll tell you what I got out of it and I still have it to this day is and it taught me it taught me to be fearless. That if you don't ask in this industry, you do not get. No one's gonna come and hand it to you. No one's gonna come and say, Hey Adam, I just noticed that you're incredibly talented. Would you like to shoot a thirty million dollar film? It's like, no, that doesn't happen. You have to you have to lobby for everything and you have to be a good salesperson. So One of the one of the productions that I sent a resume for was to a little movie called Mr. Jones that was directed by Mike Figus with Richard Gere. Now Richard Gere was not listed in the ⁓ report, and I didn't know who Mike Figus was, so I thought, well, I'll send a resume. Now, as you might imagine, you know, my resume at that point was a bunch of student films and maybe some camera assisting credits. I think, if I went back and looked. But I still have a rejection letter from Mike Figus' secretary on Paramount Fantastic U United Kingdom ⁓ stationary. And I'm I'm really touched even now by that because they didn't have to take the time to do that. But you know, it was it was very cool. It was very kind to to be able to send an incur like a a a an enthusiastic young cinematographer. A letter that basically said keep swinging. That's great. ⁓ that's really cool. That's very cool. Wait, you still have that? ⁓ yeah. Send me a copy of it. I'll put it on the webpage for this ⁓ I will. It's so awesome. That's great. But but out of that just came like, Okay, you know, this is it's like the lotto. If you don't play, you can't win. But yeah, and you just gotta keep you just gotta keep putting it putting it down on a number on roulette and eventually something will come up, maybe. ⁓ right. And the industry is very much like that. So I th it's it's it's something that I tell people that I ⁓ I mentor all the time, which is that you have to get out there. This is a business of relationships. If you don't actually know people or know people that can vouch for you, it's gonna be hard to get fired. If very few jobs come along with people that you have no connection to. They they do come, but it's rare. Well and and the other part of it is is it's also just getting your name out there because you may not be like Mike Figgus You're not ready for that. But a couple of years from now, you are maybe ready and something comes across his desk and he sees the name and recognizes it on some level and goes, ⁓ wait a minute, I think we I think I've seen this name before. And so and suddenly you're you're half a step closer to the job than you were before, right? That's so true. Name recognition is a big part of it. That's why I still to this day I will take general meetings with pretty much anybody. Because if your name's not in the conversation, then you can't be hired. You can't even be considered. Yeah. Because you're you're not a a legitimate idea to anyone. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's got that's great advice. That that's fantastic. So did so so what were you while you were at AFI, what were you shooting? I mean, were you shooting anything? Anything. I shot ⁓ weddings, bar mitzvahs, I shot depositions for the courts, which you can't imagine how boring those are. Yeah, yeah. I got paid to shoot. ⁓ slight slightly worse than Weddings and Bur mitzvahs. ⁓ actually a lot worse because you you're sitting in a static room for hours as someone's giving testimony. ⁓ my god, I didn't know that. I shot spec music videos ⁓ when that was a thing that people did. I shot spec commercials. I shot anything that people would have me do. A lot of student films, a lot of short films. Yeah. And one of the One of the most fortunate experiences that I had during that time when I was trying to get my career to have some sort of consistency is that I I got hired to shoot news for Associated Press for a number of years. And at the time there was a th what has now become normal, there was an experimental idea about ⁓ having ⁓ East Coast, Central and West Coast news crew. ⁓ in the US that would have a cameraman and a reporter and they would do stories from each of those regions that had no on air reporter so that it could be packaged as news from North America and sold to Europe and and Asia. and they didn't have a lot of money for this program, although for me it was a lot of money at the time. ⁓ but I would get hired to run around with a betacam and shoot news. I shot El Nino Storms in the early 90s in Los Angeles. I shot the O.J. Simpson trial. ⁓ we'd run down to ⁓ the criminal courts building to try and get a sound bite from Efflee Bailey or Robert Shapiro or, you know, whomever. And then the rest of the day we chase around jurors that had been kicked off and try to get interviews and things like that. ⁓ I also I also got pulled into the Oklahoma City bombing in nineteen ninety five. I do remember that actually, yeah, yeah. And that was a life changing ⁓ experience. I had been had been always very, very ⁓ in awe of ⁓ international broadcast ⁓ reporters, broadcasters and camera people because I think it's a really important job. to be reporting in war zones. And I had been flirting with the idea at that point ⁓ of maybe becoming a full time ⁓ correspondent, not an on-air person, but a camera person. And after Oklahoma City, I just realized I didn't have the constitution for it. Just photographing d dead bodies come out of a out of a ⁓ terrorist event was incredibly upsetting, moving, angering. ⁓ And you know, in news, you don't really know what the story is. And you're putting together the story with images based on your intuition and your knowledge at the time. And it became an incredible training ground for television and film. Because when you have to think quickly on the spot and think, what is the story? What images do I need to capture in order to tell the story that's going to be most effective for the audience? ⁓ It taught me how to think on my feet and make split second decisions to not second guess myself because when the news is unfolding, you don't have time to think about things. You just have to point the camera and shoot. And and then send it off to editorial and hope that they can cobble something together based on the images that you present. ⁓ and that's and that's still a skill set that affects me now when I direct television. Is all those sort of news gathering experiences that I had. Huh. Interesting. ⁓ by the way, for anybody who doesn't recognize what Adam's talking about, this was the federal building in Oklahoma City that Timothy McVeigh blew up that I believe, Adam, there was a there was a child care center at the bottom of it, right? There was. Am I right? Yeah. Yeah. So so ⁓ so the reason I I mentioned that so anybody'll ⁓ really understands what you're talking about. So you get there and you're shooting this stuff and How do you how do you push out your emotions in that moment to be able to to do your job you know well and not just walk away? Well, let me back it up before then because just getting into the ⁓ into the bomb site was problematic. So as you as o so, you know, I I the morning that I was called to go to Oklahoma City, I was scheduled to do a fashion shoot for e Television. It's a little different. So I'm I'm at the camera rental facility picking up the gear. And I get a call on my nineties cell phone, which is about the size of a of a brick. And they say, change of plans, you're going to Oklahoma City. There's been a terrorist ⁓ event there. And of course it hasn't hit the it hasn't hit the the news yet. Yeah. The news cycle. So I pack up, I go to the airport, they tell me, Okay, your ⁓ your reporter will meet you there. She's coming from DC. It takes me all day to get there from Los Angeles because every flight is booked. Right. So I I left out on like an eleven AM flight. I get in at midnight after going through two different airports waiting. I have a full Airy light kit, which for those that remember the nineties will remember the four one case in a light kit. I have a beta cam. The big gray case, right? The big gray case. Yeah. I have a full size beta cam. ⁓ w ⁓ with an onboard deck. I've got batteries. I have microphones. Like and it and it's me. So I get somehow I get to like the last hotel room in Oklahoma City that's kind of in a dodgy part of town. And I get at about one in the morning and I don't I don't have any calls from Associated Press. So I turn out the light and I go to bed. And ten minutes later the phone rings and they say, you've got to come down here. The crew's been on the calm side for over thirty hours. They need to take a break. I say, okay. ⁓ I see now at this point I don't have any press credentials. So I gather the camera and a microphone and batteries, and I had one of those little photographer vests that we all made fun of in the nineties. Stuffed it all in there. And I went down and there's about 70 million government agencies all over the place. FBI, ATF. Wow. ⁓ The CIA is there. Like everybody's there because this is like ⁓ this is a major. It's a crime scene. Yeah. It's a huge crime scene. And they're checking deep they're they're not letting anybody in. And I get out of the cab and I'm like and I see them in the distance about a block away, checking cr press credentials. I'm like shit. I see a camera crew walking up and they've got press credentials. I just saddle up on the outside of them and say, Hey, hey man and I and I snuck in. To the bomb zone. N now, you know, across the street from the from the site, ⁓ there were about two hundred and fifty satellite trucks in a parking lot where they were keeping all the news crews c crew out because they didn't want people just roaming around the rubble. First of all, it was an active crime scene. Second of all, there were people that were still buried alive, they were trying to get out. Third of all, the building was unstable. They were afraid it could collapse. ⁓ yeah, right. So they had police surrounding the scene and I would I just started shooting, you know, anything that I could. And I and there was no reporter. And about every hour or so the the fire chief would come out and give an update on the number of bodies and this you know, the condition of the building. And so I I realized like I need sound bites because AP's gonna expect to have information. So I hooked up the microphone and I had, you know, the beta cam on my right shoulder. the microphone on my left shoulder and I would just pass it back and forth between me asking questions. Fire Chief Hansen, what's the body count at this hour? And I'd shove it over to him as I was shooting and I'd get a clip. Because that's what I had to do. Right? Yeah. And that went on for about another 32 hours. ⁓ the reporter got stuck in, you know, she got stuck on a flight, never showed up. And I and, you know, They and I got a call on my brick cell phone from the nineties, which was from Radio Shack. It was awesome. And they were said, Okay, so knock on the door of WJSTY, whatever it was, ⁓ they're gonna do the upload for you. And so I you know, five in the morning I start knocking on doors and like I can't find the truck. So I just knock on a random door and the and the I said, Listen, I'm with AP, I need to upload some stuff to to Washington. They'll pay for it. Can you guys upload it for me? They said, Yeah, sure, come on in. So, like, I mean, th th this was like low budget filmmaking. It's like you make it work you make it work because you have to, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it it it there's no doubt that it was a good fit for my personality, but at the same time, it just reinforced this idea that you you don't allow obstacles to stop you. You make happen what you need to make happen. And again, like there are times when I'm shooting nowadays where That comes into play. ⁓ and that's a part of our industry as well. And so, like, there were so many things that I did that taught me lessons that were not in the medium that I landed in that gave me invaluable advice. So, one of the things I tell people is go, go shoot anything, shoot everything, because you never know who you're gonna meet that's gonna become somebody that you might know down the road. Or what the lesson might be that will absolutely apply to your career at some point. Yeah, there's no question about that. I mean, and and I I think you and I can both go go and look back on our on our ⁓ careers, and it's like I met this person there, and I met this person there, and I met this person at this person's party, you know, et cetera, et cetera. ⁓ totally. That's completely how it happens. There's no question. And I think that's that's I don't I don't know where I got your name from, but that's kind of how. You and I met. Now were you at AFI when you and I met? yes. So I was in my second year at AFI and I was doing my hustling thing. I I you know I found out about this company, ⁓ you know, Crystal Sky Communications. Crystal Sky, I forgot about them. Steven Paul. What a horrible company. Terrible people, awful. And they were basically hiring non-union crews to shoot movies at for a nickel. and so I got I I I met a director, they didn't hire me, but I started storyboarding with him and they wouldn't hire me and they would not hire me. They didn't hire anybody, but I I basically made myself invaluable to the director by storyboarding with him for three months. ⁓ three months. Wow. And at one point I called up my friend Tim Bogart. Who I went to NYU with. Tim Bogart, yeah. And ⁓ and I said, I don't know what to do, man. Like I I I feel like I'm just wasting my time. He said, You have to stick with it. This is the best shot you have. And he was right. I stuck with it. They ⁓ hired me to do the movie. ⁓ and in the interview, ⁓ who by the way, Eric Bryman interviewed me, which you'll find amusing. I'm getting I'm getting hives listening to this. So y you know, I I basically I put together a reel that was all my student work from NYU because I didn't have anything else. And you know, because we didn't have the internet and we didn't have IMDB and we didn't have studio system, they couldn't check anything, right? So I just said, ⁓ these are all small independent films I shot on the East Coast. It was sort of a partial lie. And I late I later found out That they knew I was lying, but they liked that I had so much confidence that they decided that I could do the job. So I I got hired to do the opus, otherwise known as the double O kid with Corbin. Well, I think that was called it something something else. No, no, no, it wasn't. I'm I'm joking. It's it was called the Opus, ⁓ okay. Yes, which I'm sure everybody listening is has has ⁓ seen because I don't think it's streaming anywhere. ⁓ yeah. So and and you know. Like it was a million dollar movie on paper and they were paying me to shoot thirty five millimeter film for a hundred dollars a day. And I was ecstatic. And I hired one of my friends from NYU, Cory Garyak, to be the gaffer. ⁓ Corey went on to become Wally Fister's gaffer, ⁓ who did ⁓ Inception and the Batman movies. And and is now a great D P in his own right. And is now an insanely talented DP. But so I think Corey I think Corey called me up because Corey and I Corey and I used to shoot these we used to shoot ⁓ karaoke videos. Do you remember those? Of course. Those horrible videos that are on in the background when people are singing like Love Will Keep Us Together. They were terrible. Corey and I used to shoot them. But I think I think Corey gave me your name and said, Hey, this guy This guy, I know from NYU has a feature. You should get him your real. So that's when I think we met. I'm pretty sure that's when we met. Yeah. And I was still in AFI. I was in my second year at AFI. Okay, so so do you remember when I came when I came to your apartment with my with with the VHS? Yes. Do you want to tell people what it was? So Dave comes and he says and he starts being apologetic. Right from the get-go, saying, you know, I'm really sorry. I just I shot with my roommate in the backyard. And what it was was three sixties of his roommate playing guitar. No, it was actually it was it was ⁓ no, it was Augie and Matt, and they were back to back and and they were lip syncing to to ⁓ Jack and Diane, I think. That's horrible. And he was doing three sixties and the horizons were perfect. And I was like that. I was like, ⁓ you can operate. You're hired. So so my version of this was I remember coming to your you were like in Burbank or something like that in some Yeah, I was in a studio apartment, yeah, in Burbank. Yeah, and I remember knocking on the door and I was like, ⁓ god, this guy's a DP and whatever. And I think I was like, Listen, I a lot of other projects, but I haven't been able to get any of this stuff and I didn't know what to show you. So I shot this thing and I handed you the tape. Thinking, I'm gonna hand you the tape and leave. And you were like, Well, let's sit down and watch it. And I'm like, ⁓ my god. I remember I came in and sat on the couch and you put it in, and I was just like, You gotta be kidding me, this is horrible. And ⁓ and then you you basically were like, Yeah, so you know, if you could do the job, let's do it. You were so you were so apologetic, it was hilarious. That's hilarious. Now wait, did we so but did we do the Chill Deal Boys music video before that? Or was that after? It was after that. ⁓ okay. Yeah, because Double O Kid was the first thing we worked on together. Okay. All right. So there you go. So and I guess I must have day played on that, right? I wasn't on the whole movie, was I? I don't think so. I think you day played. Yeah. And so were you operating them? Yeah. Yeah. So I ⁓ so you know, like in in those days with the non union stuff, they didn't have money for camera operators in the budget. So if you were a non union DP, you also operated. So All of the first I would say probably twelve or fifteen movies that I shot as a DP, I was also my own operator. That's right. Yeah, yeah. And actually, as I remember, it wasn't even that. On those movies, you generally didn't have a video tap. And the days that I came out were the days that they got a video tap, I think. Correct. But the other part of that, by the way, that you may not know is the way that I shot that, it was down in Laguna Beach. The way that I shot that was I went to Circuit City. And I got a VHS camcorder. I used it and then I returned it because they had that 30 day return policy. No way. That's so awesome. I didn't know that. ⁓ my God. That's so terrible. But that's what you had to do. I mean, like you said, you don't you just go, I don't know how to do this. I'm just gonna figure I'm gonna do whatever I have to do to make this happen. That's right. Like there's no option. So so did you did you know what you did did you feel like you knew what you were doing, or were you like, I'm just gonna, I'm I'm just gonna push through this? No, you just pushed through. I mean, you know, it at at the time this is so funny because and you may remember this, Dave, but you I mean you won't remember what I'm about to say, but you'll remember the follow-up, which is that I w I was running around on day exteriors with a four byte bounce because I didn't know what an eight by a twelve by or a twenty byte was. Right? Because I didn't come up under another TP. So I was just like, Okay, I need to get some fill light in, I'll get a bounce card and run around with this. And so, you know, b ⁓ like you know, you get Corey or whoever the key grip was, or ⁓ actually ⁓ Crash was on that job too. Crash was on that job? Yeah. God bless him. Yeah, I didn't I didn't realize he was on that. I knew he was on bitter harvest with us, but he was on that. And so he was probably running around. He was probably running around. So then it wasn't until after the feature, probably a year later, when you and I were still living together on on Orange, and ⁓ you said, Hey, I'm gonna go visit Julio Makott on set. And we we went and visited Julio and he was shooting a feature. And I see a 20 by like on a street. And I'm like, it just clicks in my head. It's like, ⁓ that makes sense. That's hysterical. So it's like, yeah, man, it's like you learn by d d working with what you have, and then you learn as you go. And yes, I read American Cinematographer, and yes, I I idolize some of the greatest cinematographers that have ever lived, like we all did, Aron Reutschman and Gordon Willis and Haskell Wexler. But I didn't really have an understanding of the tools that people were using. So I just ⁓ use what I thought. you know, in in intuitively and then I learned the the really the more efficient way as I well. That's awesome. Well well also you don't know what you don't know, right? So like you're you go you you're like I'm doing this the best way I know how 'cause that's what I know and then you learn something better and you go, Okay, now now I'm better at it, you know, or or whatever. Well yeah, like you know, like this happened on Better Harvest where ⁓ which we also worked on together, ⁓ where I'm shooting like the finale of the of the ⁓ of the of the film. And I need a low angle and I don't have a Ronford head. I don't have a way to get down low. I need to do a dolly in. But I figured out if you flip a doorway dolly upside down and you put a sandbag on it or shot bag with a camera, you can get another three inches slower to the earth. There you go. So it's like that's what we did. Or if we needed to drag something along the floor, you put down a ⁓ a Fernie blanket or sound blanket and you just drag the camera on the floor if you need something floor level. And That's something I've used on episodic television as a director when I have eight million an episode to work with. Yep. Like I look, we just did that ⁓ well not a recently anymore, but I was just talking about it with someone. They wanted a shop pulling underneath a bed away from someone's feet there. And they were going they were doing this whole thing of like what do we you they were gonna build this whole rig and I was just like, Give me a Fernie pad, I will literally hold it and someone's gonna pull me underneath the bread and they're like, That's not gonna work. And I'm like, Yes, it is ⁓ yes, it will work fine because you know, because they're only gonna use it for ten seconds, right? It doesn't have to be like like rail, you know, whatever. But yeah, it's absolutely and I I I I think that like at the point on the things that we're working on now, if we didn't have those scrappy times, we wouldn't We wouldn't be half the filmmakers that we are, don't you agree? I completely agree. I I often joked in those days that I was like the MacGyver of low budget D Ps that I would do things with paper clips and chewing gum and you know, scraps of like cocktail napkins. Because that's what we had to work with. Like we didn't have great gear. We didn't have a seticam on run for the show. We didn't we couldn't afford it. We didn't have a B camera a lot of the time. When I was doing a lot of these cameras with a single camera. There were there was no such thing as a standard two camera package in the late 80s, early 90s when we were doing a lot of these shows. So yeah, you just you you just figure it out, man. And and it it was an amazing time. But you know what but what you learn is that it's not about the gear, right? It's about the time that it takes to use any gear because time is the most valuable commodity you have when you shoot. It's not about, ⁓ I need a hundred foot techno. Well, sometimes you do, depending on the shot. But a lot of the time what you need is the time to be able to figure something out that maybe you don't have the piece of gear for, or maybe is more perplexing as a story point that you're trying to get across to the audience. Simplicity is ⁓ is is is often ⁓ not only the mother of invention, but often the right storytelling choice. I did a shot on Billy the Kid where There was a whole sequence of the middle of the night, a knock on a door on the third floor. The innkeeper gets up, puts on his shoes, goes down the staircase, you know, this whole kind of montage. But I I didn't have time to shoot all that. So I shot one shot from outside the hotel as you see a light come on and you hear knocking at the door. And then you You go you you travel down on a crane outside the window as you see the light going down and then you find and reveal at the front door who is knocking. And then the person comes out. We did it in a wonder. And it took about an hour and a half. And it it was a very elegant way to tell that story. But like oftentimes that ends up being the better solution. That's fantastic. I love it. Yeah. Well, I I I I would say operating-wise, what I've come to realize is 90% of the time when I when I begin a shot as I as I go forward and I make it simpler, it becomes a better shot. Yeah, totally. It just because like you end up taking all the superfluous out and you just get to the storytelling and that's what it ends up being and it's better. ⁓ so it yeah, it's interesting that that does that. ⁓ out of curiosity, I I have to ask you this. Was I any good? You were excellent. Was I really? Because I remember th I remember not having any idea what I was doing on that and thinking I'm gonna get fired in any given moment. I mean, granted, I think the bar was set so low for all of us because we were just excited to be there, but I didn't think I had any idea what was going on and and ⁓ yeah ⁓ Well, first of all, the bar was sitting on the ground. So let's just it was it might have been it might have been underneath the ground. It wasn't even suspended. So you know it it didn't take a whole lot. Like I just needed people who are enthusiastic and had a monicum skill. You know, we were that and we were that, but you were natural, you were natural at the on the rig. You understood with somehow the connection between the rig and your body, which is not a a given, ⁓ with CityCam. ⁓ and You really understood about storytelling and composition. And that's still something that is the focus of how I d ⁓ with operators now is I always am trying to convey the emotional story objective with a shot. I'm trying to give the operator a context for how it might fit into the edit. So they understand like like you said with the with the rug pulling, like we need three seconds. Three seconds is what we require. So if the whole shot doesn't work from top to tail, it's okay. What we need is the middle three seconds to work. or this shot's gonna dovetail between two other shots we've already done. So understand that the entry point, ⁓ the beginning is gonna be crucial because one guy was looking left on the previous frame and the person needs to now look to the right. And you know, it's so I always try to put things in editorial and storytelling com ⁓ context ⁓ in addition to the emotional goal of a shot to help give people because I want to work with operators who are storytellers. If if I don't have a if I don't and this is something I'd often talk to producers like when they wouldn't want to pay for somebody good as a DP, I would say, look, if we're not going to get a storyteller, I'd rather just do it myself. Because otherwise it's a middleman who is I'm probably going to have it's probably going take longer on the set to achieve what we're after. I I totally concede that about you because you're not the type of person who will say, like, I need you to tilt up until you get to the light and then come over to the right. You'll explain this the the concept of the shot, tell them what you need, and then expect them to make it better, I'm assuming. Exactly. That's exactly but because you know, like as a DP, you sort of like go through this process when you're you're coming up. And as an operator too, even if you have to fight for assistance with the producers, like you want to hire somebody because of ⁓ how good they are, you want to hire a dollar grip because they think like an operator. Yeah. And yeah, absolutely. And maybe they cost another, you know, a couple hundred bucks a week or whatever, and you often get pushback. And you say, look, everybody on a crew in a cast is scrutinized for their hires. Like to the nth degree. And you get them there on set, the cast and a crew, and then you don't want them to bring their talents to the table. Like if I have to micromanage everybody, then what the fuck do I need everybody else for? I should just do it myself. Do people you work with just often not understand you? Because this is not how everybody everybody works, unfortunately. It's too it's too intelligent. Crew people crew people ⁓ understand exactly what I mean because they're on the floor. ⁓ filmmakers who have been on the floor, either as an actor or as a crew member, understand. But the vast majority of people, as you and I both know, that are in production manager roles or producer roles have not come from the floor. So they don't know. Directors as well. I I I mean, there's so many people that do not have the experience of coiling cable at four o'clock in the morning, ⁓ of of of having to load a truck after a full night shoot. They they don't know what it is to be a crew member. And that is the problem is so many of them have never gone through the ranks that they don't understand what it takes to make most of this stuff. So they're completely bewildered when we ask for something. And it's like, I'm not doing this because, you know, for my health, I'm doing it because this is gonna make the job better or it's gonna make it faster or what you know, whatever that happens to be. Well it's it's the common joke of like, you know, like what early in my career, ⁓ after ⁓ bitter harvest, I did another low budget movie when I was still non union. And there was it called for a sequence to be shot in the desert. ⁓ out by Palmdale, ⁓ at ⁓ what was it? What's that old that old diner called, Ed's Diner that was out there? Do you know that, Joy? ⁓ I know what you're talking I do, but I don't know what you I don't know what it is. I know what you're talking about. Like a thousand movies have been shot there. ⁓ ten million things have shot there. ⁓ they shot part of California there, the Brad Pitt movie. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ but we're shooting the it we we were gonna rent that location and ⁓ it was a movie where ⁓ the sequence took place at night out in the desert. And so of course I ordered condors and lights and drop jennies and things like that. And the production manager pulls me into his office and he says, Well, we can't really afford this stuff. It's expensive. And I said, Yeah, filmmaking's expensive. What did you think? And he said, Well, do you have any other ideas? And I said, Yeah. I said, We should rewrite it for day exterior. He said he said, You're joking. He's I said, I'm not. I'm I'm actually not. Because on film, if we don't have any ambient light out there, because there is no ambient light in the desert, you're not going to see anything. So we might as well go onto a sound stage with a bunch of sand and shoot against black drops. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Guess what happened? I got the lifts. Because at the end of the day, it's like it's like what clearly what was going on was ⁓ here's a guy who had never been on the floor, he had never worked on a lighting crew, he didn't really have an understanding. And He was probably used to leaning on g guys to just give up gear because people operate out of fear ⁓ in this industry. And I never really was like that much. So I just would push back and you know, it's amazing what you get when you push back. Where do you think is that inherent in your in your personality or did you learn that somewhere? Sadly, that comes from my father, I think. ⁓ my father was a very cantankerous ⁓ agitator. ⁓ he was he was a composer. ⁓ he wrote music for TV shows like Hotel, Matlock, Dynasty, ⁓ Loveboat, things like that. And he also did films as a as a conductor for ⁓ other composers at the time. And he once got in an argument with John Peters, the producer. John Peters took a swing at him. This is during the seventies. And my father who had had taken, you know, martial arts classes, basically punched him in the throat and dropped him. So it's like I I c I come by it honestly. ⁓ I've I've I've I've always had a short fuse. ⁓ I I deal with it very differently now in my old age. ⁓ But yeah, I think ⁓ you know, I I didn't learn that from anybody. If anything, the people that I did have the opportunity to watch as I got older, ⁓ more experienced rather in the business, were people like Steven Poster, ⁓ who through you and your generosity managed to get me on shooting second unit on a TV movie that Steven shot that you were operating on. Wait, was that was that the ⁓ the remake of Strangers on a Train? I have no idea. I can't remember what it was. But it must have been because you did like two or three days of second unit. You suggested me. Steven said okay. I was ecstatic because it's like Steven Poster, Blade Runner, ⁓ my God. You know, I was like fanboying out, right? And ⁓ and I don't know if you remember this, but at the time I was living out in Woodland Hills and I woke up late and I was more than an hour late to call. No, I don't remember this at all. So funny. So I called you and I said, should I just turn around? Should I not even bother coming in? That's right. And you told Stephen and he said, no, no, no. Steven says, you know, keep coming. Keep going. So I got there and I met Steven and he was really nice. And I'll never forget what he said to me. He said, ⁓ it's great to have you here. Thanks for coming. Don't fuck it up. It's exactly what he said. That's great. That's great. It was actually really ⁓ it was sobering for sure. And ⁓ it it was basically like, ⁓ look, we're gonna give you a pass on being late. ⁓ so this is an opportunity. take advantage of it. You know? Don't let it slip slide through your fingers. That's f I I had completely forgot about that. But that's what you did back then. You were constantly trying to get people you knew in there who like, you know, needed the break. And anytime any one of us got s onto something, we tried to bring as many people as we could with us. ⁓ because we were sort of all in it together. It's like when you were operating on Space Above and Beyond, the Fox show. I'll bet you didn't think I was gonna bring that up, did you? Well, I didn't. I I have no problem with Space Above and Beyond. I did Monday through Thursday and I got fired on Friday and they brought and did you come in and replace me? No, there was an A camera operator that got ⁓ something in her eye during an explosion and you called me and said, Can you be come down to Long Beach right now? ⁓ she's gonna be away for about a week or two. And I ended up staying for three months as the A camera operator. ⁓ I think that was Gina De Geralonimo. I forgot how to pronounce it, but ⁓ you are correct. It was Gina. Yes. ⁓ it was Tony Tony was Tony Palmieri was the Tony Palmieri, yeah. But I made it Monday through Friday. ⁓ that's right. And you ⁓ that was like the day after I got fired or something that you came in. So I think we overlapped. Well, we were shooting at some ⁓ industrial plant, ⁓ multicamera, yeah. And so I came down and I took over, and I thought, ⁓ I'll be here a week or two. And I was there for three months. You got fired at one point. I my so so I did the first four days of that as B camera and I I had no idea what I was doing and they let me go on Friday morning. I think that I think I showed up and there was another operator there actually, or something. I don't remember. It was like really abrupt. And I had a really rough weekend. And then I basically went home and decided I'm not gonna let this take me down. I'm gonna I'm gonna go in and learn as much as I can about operating. And I just peppered people with questions and stayed on set and watched people and Realize I had to take it much more seriously. And then the next series I ⁓ called for was ER. So I sort of that that firing was what kind of set me up for success on ER. Yeah. It's I I found But I found my career to be very much the same, which is you know, a door closes, something else opens, you can't see it in the moment. It feels devastating. But when you look back in the rear view, it's like, wow, but if if I if that had not happened, there are so many things that would not have happened. ⁓ there's no question about it. ⁓ speaking of doors closing and doors opening, I have to ask you about Boondoc Saints, because of all the things you've done, that probably is the most infamous, I think. Potentially. That's a good descriptor. How did you so w was that was that a Tim Bogart connection? No, no, actually, ⁓ Okay. That was a connection through a guy named Mark Bryan Smith, who went to NYU. Mark and I knew each other from NYU. He had made friends with Troy Duffy and was sort of part of the inner circle of ⁓ Troy's ⁓ group that hung out at Sloane's, which was a bar on Melrose, the same one that Harvey Weinstein ⁓ infamo infamously said he'd buy for Troy as part of the deal for the Boot Dog Saints. That's right. ⁓ but he never actually bought it for him? No, no, I thought I thought ⁓ okay. I remember I remember this happening and okay. All right. Yeah. And ⁓ and so when Boudac Saints ⁓ was ⁓ unceremoniously ⁓ shuffled out of ⁓ the Weinstein company, ⁓ Miri Miramax, I think it was called Miramax still. Yeah, ⁓ it got picked up by a ⁓ a company called Franchise Films, which was run by a guy named Ely Samaha, who ⁓ was making sort of mid mid-low budget films like seven to ten million kind of things. And ⁓ what I found out later is that ⁓ which was a very shrewd move on Harvey's part, is that he basically said, you can have this movie if I can have the first right of distribution, and you have to pay me back all of the development costs. So Harvey got the movie made in a way, didn't have to Shell out a dime in the end. Shell out anything, yeah. And he still had the first right to distribute it if it was any good, which was shrewd, you know. Amazing. But the movie dropped from a fifteen million dollar budget that was going to be shot by Bill Fraker originally. ⁓ no way. I didn't know that. Yeah, Bill Fraker had signed you know, of course, because you've got a first time filmmaker, Troy Duffy. You want to put him with an experienced DP. So they hired Bill Fraker to do the original Boondock Saints when it was part of Miramax. And then when it was put in turnaround and it was picked up by franchise, the budget got cut in half. It was gonna be a seven, seven and a half million dollar movie. So Bill Fraker at that point says, ⁓ I don't think I can make a movie that I don't think I know how to make that movie with that budget. So Mark Bryan Smith says to Troy, Hey, I've got this buddy named Adam Kane. You wanna meet him? Troy at that point, ⁓ you know, is Part of his package deal with ⁓ Harvey also had a band. And ⁓ part of the deal was that there be a recording contract with Atlantic Records with his band. And Troy wanted to do a music video, and Atlantic was not going to shell out any money. So Troy decided he was going to shell it out himself. So I got I went down to the bar and met Troy and the rest of the guys and and I shot the music video. And that's how I got in there. I Am I crazy? Because I think I worked on this with you. And was there like a night sequence that we shot by pulling all the cars up and turning the headlights on? Yes. Am I crazy? Okay. So that's that's what this was. Now this makes sense to me because I've sort of remembered all this. And I think what you did was you called us all up and was like, Look, there's no money, but I think if I can do the good job with this, I'm gonna get this movie. Right. And that was a hot script around town. So we were like, ⁓ yeah, and so we all showed up and I just I remember the cars and I remember the graveyard. It's a terrible music video, I think. It's terrible. But, you know, it was one of those freebies that I talked about that I did that basically ingratiated me into Troy's orbit and gained his trust. So, you know, we shot this music video. It was completely run and gun. ⁓ we shot it by Bronson Caves with the the group standing on the cliff singing. Got some some friend of a friend. This is a funny story because it it it it's about it's a it's largely about stupidity in our youth. But we ⁓ he had some friend of a friend who had a helicopter, a little two seater. So I got in a helicopter in the passenger seat with a camera and I'm shooting down at Bronson Caves. ⁓ handheld, of course. You know, we didn't have money for a Tyler mount or anything like that. This is like nineteen but you probably had some sort of a seat belt on, I'm sure. So it was I did it. It was completely safe. I had a seatbelt on. And and we're shooting down and you know the helicopter is ⁓ Is pitched so that I can shoot downward. ⁓ and I've got my foot on the skid and you know I've got my belted in just like a moron. And all of a sudden I'm looking through the viewfinder, and all of a sudden the camera starts to tip up and it's looking up at the sky. And I look over my shoulder, my left shoulder, and I see that the helicopter is ⁓ being pushed by wind into the cliff edge. ⁓ my god. I didn't know about this. The helicopter pilot's arms are shaking as he's holding the throttle and he pulled up and obviously, you know, we didn't crash. But it was like it was one of those things where I'm like, Maybe this was not the best idea. But those were I mean, I I did something called search and rescue, I think it was Robert Conrad. Yeah. ⁓ I w up in like Oregon or something. Yeah, and I was on the skids of the helicopter, like strapped to the side with a I don't know, a two C or something on my shoulder. ⁓ or not in my shoulder, you held it up to your head your eye, I think. ⁓ you know, flying off with them. It was that was the stupid stuff we did back then. I have photos of me handheld in a convertible in Romania as an actor is driving a cart about sixty miles an hour and the the direct no no seat belts, no harnesses, no safety gear. I have a two seat in my face and the director is sitting on the back part of the convertible holding my belt. And I have a picture of this. You know ⁓ It's just like Don't do this at home, people. This is not what you do. But this is what we do in our twenties. It's like, well, we need the shot. Well, we don't have the gear. Well, we don't have a camera car. Okay. Well, and also it's worth pointing out, not that any of this was okay, but there weren't there was no such thing as cheaper mode heads back in than you know nowadays. You'd throw a Ronin on there or something like that. But I'll I'll tell you, I don't know about you, but I I kinda I kinda miss those days because it was just like I just ev I just remember it like everything was sort of exciting and around the corner it was like like you know, you say Troy Duffy, it's like he was gonna be the next Tarantino for a couple of minutes. And so we were like, ⁓ this is like we're in, you know? And of course that didn't work out and it's like what what's the next thing? But and I remember like even you know, we used to have those massive parties at our house that like a hundred people would show up to and I remember like You know, someone would be like, I think Brendan Fraser's here in the backyard or something like that. Right. And ⁓ there was just there was actually were you there when were you there at the party when 'cause I don't remember whether you still lived there or not, when the the helicopter came overhead and told everybody to go inside 'cause good yeah, told everybody to go inside 'cause there was there was a murder suspect in the area. Yeah. And I remember I remember we closed the door and I'm looking around and I'm like, I don't know eighty percent of these people. Any one of them any murder suspect. I know. Exactly. And then I just remember thinking, well, if I was a murder suspect in here, I'd probably play it cool. So we're probably okay. But yeah, anyway. But those I don't know. Those were good times. I remember them fondly. Me too. Me too. Like I I remember all of that with so much warmth. And the spirit of all those things that we did are still at the heart of how I make decisions now. Because the well, because the economy of how I ⁓ storytell is not necessarily dependent upon budget. ⁓ sometimes I have to tell story without tools that I would have on a larger budget that I don't have on a smaller budget. And because I come from camera, it's always been my opinion that there is no one right way to shoot a shot. It's it's ludicrous. It's stupid. It's like, you know, you sometimes I would work with these directors and say, This is the only shot that we can possibly have to be able to shoot. And it's like, really? Like to be able to get the story across, to be able to get the emotion across. So part of, you know, my ⁓ part of my journey as a storyteller has always been to ⁓ definitely fight for the story and the tools that are required to tell it in the best possible way. But to also ⁓ surrender to ⁓ time, budget, and resources. ⁓ we can still do great work if you don't have a ⁓ a camera car with an arm and you're shooting in the desert and you need to shoot horses galloping at high speed. on Billy the Kid, ⁓ which we did have decent budgets, but we had two, three pages of writing scenes with dialogue. And we developed something we call the cowboy cam where one of the ⁓ one of the stunt guys who was really good ⁓ at riding would carry a gimbal ⁓ motion controlled ⁓ mini alexa and yeah we would shoot all the coverage from the cowboy cam so and sometimes speeding up slowing down and it was so incredibly dynamic stuff that you actually couldn't do the same way with a camera car but you know it's like well If we're gonna be in with the cast, if we're gonna be in with the actors and we're gonna be with their characters' experiences, then we have to be with them in ways that we currently don't have the technology for. So we created something. That's so smart. I I ⁓ I love that. Well, but you know, and I I think one of the things for me is also, you know, you have this thing of like, Okay, this is how I wanna do it, but we can't do it that way. So what can we do and what's going to tell the story? And I think it's it's sometimes when you get caught up on being frustrated that you can't do it the way that you want to, you miss those you miss those things that you can do, you know? Totally sort of like close that door and just embrace, okay, how do we embrace this? And and also the thing that I constantly remind myself is nobody's ever gonna see the shot that you wanted to do and the shot that you did. ⁓ No, exactly. As I often say like nobody gets a pamphlet with the movie or the episode. That explains well, you know what we were going for. It's like nobody you don't receive that in the mail. So you don't get the benefit of being able to explain anything, right? You just have to show it. I love that. I I love the practicality of it. I will tell you on that note, one of my one of my my my well at the time I wasn't happy with, but one of my fondest memories of you is I don't know if you remember, but I used to go down to ⁓ my friend Augie used to work at Foot Cone and Belding. Which was like an ad agency. Yeah. And I used to go down there. And the big thing was they had three quarter editing machines, like jog and shuttle editing machines. And I would go down there to cut my reel. And I'd spend like all night, you know, down there, like, you know, nobody knew I was there. He'd let me in or whatever. And I hope this doesn't get Auggy in trouble. And I'd spend all night editing and I'd like, ⁓ my God, this is fantastic. I'm so happy this is gonna make my reel. And I'd bring it up to you. And you'd look at it and you would just be so brutally honest with me. And I remember, I remember very specifically, there was one cut, and I wish I had all these cuts still, but there was one cut. Actually, what I really wish I had was that opening, that first reel that I gave you, but I don't know what happened to that. But ⁓ there was a shot that we did on Bitter Harvest where ⁓ I the camera was up at the sky and it comes down through some trees and it sort of sees a river and it goes across and it I it probably took like fifty seconds, and it's so boring. And I started it with you and and you you you were watching the reel and you you you saw that shot and it ended and you paused and you go, get rid of that. And I was like, Why? And you were like, Because it's boring and it does nothing. I was like, but I have to walk I had to walk across the river to get that. He's like, Nobody sees that. Get rid of it. Yeah. And I I remember it was just crushing, but you were absolutely right. Yeah, I sorry about that. But no, I'm I'm happy because otherwise I would have started because the reality is, as you know, and now it's even more so, but this was back then, you know, your your reel, especially as an operator and probably even as a director or D P, like they've made their decision within thirty seconds. Yeah. So if your first opening shot is forty seconds long and is boring, they've made their decision. And listen, they they will remember the most mediocre shot on your reel. Yeah. Yeah. So you gotta take away the mediocre shots. Even if you had to walk through broken glass to get them, they don't know that, they don't care. what they're looking to be is captivated and entertained. And it yeah, it's it's the same thing when I when I I had the same attitude when I shot, I had the sa I have the same attitude when I direct. It's like we have to capture the audience. There are so many choices on TV today of things to watch. I mean, my cue list on Netflix is so long I can't get to half the stuff I want to see. So if people are thrown out of the storytelling because they're trying to figure out a piece of logic, because they're bored, because the performances are not dynamic or the camera work is sort of meh, then they'll watch something else because there's a lot of other choice. Yeah. ⁓ well, and ⁓ do you do you when you're directing now, do you any maybe it goes back to when you were DP, but I Maybe at that time it was hadn't taken over so much. Do you think about the fact that people are gonna be watching this on a phone? Or do you do you just put that out of your head? No, I put it out of my head. I don't even consider that. ⁓ I can't. Because like especially like on shows like Billy the Kid and I'm just about to go do the Magnificent Seven in Calgary. ⁓ cool. ⁓ and that's gonna be f ⁓ the same kind of dynamic atmosphere that Billy was, which is to say you're shooting a western. And so the landscape And the topography become as much a character as any of the cast that you're photographing. You can't you can't do that on a cell phone with the same kind of effectiveness in terms of the the format, the aspect ratio. So I don't even consider it. I I shoot everything as if I'm shooting ⁓ for ⁓ I don't I don't know, a big either a movie screen or an eighty inch television. Yeah. ⁓ it's it's a little bit different, but I remember and I've said this before here, ⁓ I remember episode three of the West Wing when it wasn't on the air yet. So we didn't know if was going to be a hit or not. And I remember doing this really long walk and talk with just the crazy dialogue and whatever. And Tommy and I were sitting, Tommy Shalami and I were sitting outside of the ⁓ the Oval Office. And I looked at him and I said, Are you an Aaron concerned that this is too smart for the public? And and he I remember he looked at me and he goes, It is. And I said, And that doesn't bother you and he said no. We just decided that we're gonna make what we think we should make and if people wanna go along for the ride, they're gonna have to step up. And I I I thought that was so great. It it just, you know, it's a correlates to what you're saying, which is, you know, no, I'm gonna make I'm gonna make the movie that I wanna make and hopefully people will will appreciate it. Yeah as opposed to pandering. I think yeah, i we can't afford to pander to people. I know there's this whole evolution of programming that's going on at some of the streamers right now where there's a ⁓ policy and a mandate to repeat information. I everyone's talking about this it's just like because ⁓ well people are on their phones and they're doing laundry and they're walking their dogs, so we need to repeat everything every five seconds. And my reaction to that is no. I I I mean I you know this is part of my stubborn personality, but I'd just rather not do those shows. Exactly I I understand there's a fear that's driving that, but it's unfounded. The the shows that get the most attention aren't not the shows that do that stuff. ⁓ they're the shows like The Last of Us or you know ⁓ I'm watching a show right now ⁓ called Widows Bay with ⁓ I've heard about this. It sounds amazing. It's fantastic. He's incredible. He's fantastic. He's amazing, right? And so and it's just it's ⁓ the the shows that fully commit to their storytelling. ideology and take the audience along for the ride without pandering, but also without making things too hard to follow, which I I know that sounds a little bit like a network note, but I do actually believe that there's an element of that that we have to, as filmmakers, obey. If people are mystery is excellent, but if mystery ends up leaving the audience completely confused, as I have been sometimes when watching other shows, I think of Sense8 by the Wachowski Brothers, for example. After forty five minutes of watching the pilot and Daryl Hannah I'm like, I don't care about anybody and I don't don't really know what's going on. And I just don't want to invest any more of my life because it's too short already. And well the other thing that it seems to me is like those things where they say you have to repeat it every you know ever three times or whatever because well then that means that your your people are not invested in the story and you've got a bigger problem than having to repeat it because if they're invested in the story you shouldn't have to because they want to they're watching eagerly going, what's gonna happen next or I want to figure this out or or whatever it is. Look at if they're right if you lose them if if the writing is solid and it's not lazy, then you sh you can in most circumstances, you should be able to tell the emotion or the mood of a scene without even hearing the dialogue. So wait, let me just back up. You're saying that something should start being well written before you go in to make it? All right, let me break this down for you, Dave. Go slowly. Maybe you'll repeat it through. I'm gonna start with the screen. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's ⁓ you know, and but you know what I've discovered over the years, and this may or may not be helpful to people, ⁓ especially because I did so much network television when I got into television as a DP and then eventually as a director. that the system of writers coming up through network television in particular is very much geared around the process of approving plot lines first. So when you get writers in a writer room, their first thing is to be able to sketch out the entire season what happens, not who the characters are. So what happens is that staff writers coming up under that system, they learn how to backwards engineer writer ⁓ characters into plot that they've already committed to. Now, good writers like Aaron Sorkin or David Milch or David Chase, ⁓ or you know, but take your pick, I'm just getting the low low-hanging fruit right now. they will figure out who the characters are first, what world that they're part of, and then they will figure out. what obstacles to put in their way so that they can create the plot. That takes a lot more work and it's actually not how most people learn how to write. They come up through staff rooms. So interesting. That's my that's been my observation as a as a director and a storyteller. I I did I won't name the show because, you know, again, like the lawsuits are just piling up. But ⁓ I was on a show ABC. I I can name the network because they do a lot of shows. And I was prepping an episode and at the end of my episode was written a scene with a new character that we had not seen before on the show. And we go we drift down the basement steps of a house that we have not been in before, and we see a little wartime diorama that's sitting on a table, and books on shelves, and you meet somebody who's creepy, and this person is gonna be set up to be a serial killer in the show. Mm-hmm. Okay. And I'm so I'm gonna do one scene that's gonna set up this character. So, rightfully, the art department is coming to me as the director, and they're saying, Who is this guy? Like, what's his background? We need to know how to dress the set, you know, not just put random stuff in there. So I go to the writer, because this is something I'm wondering too, and I say, Who is this guy? And the writer says to me, What do you mean? And I say, Well Did his father abuse him when he was a child? Yeah. Was his father military and was like Patton and just, you know, beat the shit out of him? ⁓ does he have emotional issues? Was he neglected by his mother? Does he have a drinking problem? Was he bullied in school? Like what's his background? And the writer just kind of looked at me blankly and said, Well, he's just crazy. ⁓ come on. And My problem with with with the answer of crazy, besides being a massive cop out and a deflection, is that it doesn't it doesn't actually describe anybody ⁓ in their behavior. Crazy can be sitting alone quietly in the corner rocking. And it could be somebody ripping down paintings off the wall and smashing furniture. ⁓ But but to your point, the bigger thing is this guy had never even considered any of this and like you said, not created a character, created just a a situation. A situation. So Like as a as a filmmaker, like as a as an operator, as a DP, as a director, you get into these situations ⁓ sometimes in feature films as well, where the writer actually hasn't considered who the character is in a full enough fashion for you to be able to get a handle on the storytelling. Because for me, camera work, whether I was operating or whether I was shooting, was never about well, what's the coolest shot we can do to represent this moment that's written on page forty nine of the script. It's more about, well, what's happening in the story and what are we trying to get across to the audience? And are we trying to make this mysterious? Do we want to make it sinister? Do we want to reveal something? It's all about the underpinnings of story and character. And it's always been about that for me. That's fantastic. Now ⁓ now I'm even more bummed that we don't work together enough. That's because you had to you had to move to Canada and cut us all out. ⁓ So so that said, it's a good segue into what do you w what what do you what what's what is your dream operator like? What what do you look for in an operator? At ⁓ as a as a director. I mean obviously as a DP as well, but since you're you're directing now, ⁓ what's what's your ideal? Well, if Dave Kamatis isn't available to operate with me. ⁓ you're very kind. ⁓ I would say ⁓ you know, ⁓ I I'm looking for operators that are storytellers first. I'm I'm looking for operators that are interested in the underlying emotional context and feeling of a shot ⁓ rather than just making something dynamic. ⁓ it's very interesting when you get on TV shows and you start working with ⁓ people that have been on the same sets maybe eight episodes, ten episodes, thirty episodes. And you can tell when they're getting bored because you you you you suggest a shot that's right for the scene, and the answer that you get back either from the operator or the DP is, ⁓ we did that in the last episode. We did that. And my response to that is, well, you guys have done four seasons. You've probably done this shot five times. It doesn't mean it's not right, but my response is pitch me something. Pitch me. Like But as opposed to saying, ⁓ we did that, but say ⁓ that's not an answer on that, but how about this? It's not an answer to say we did it because w what's happening in my episode has to work for the episode. Sure. I don't care if you're Well, that's a let me let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question though. Are you okay with ⁓ we did that in this episode in that last episode? Well, I want to let you know that we just did that in that last episode so you're aware of it. Is this is is this a possibility? Would this work? Absolutely. Or is it Yeah. I'm I'm fully about pitches because the the ideas as I learned in my D P career can come from anywhere. So sometimes I've had second ACs, loaders, that have said, Hey, you know it'd be kind of cool. Look over there. And something that as a D P I just didn't see. And so, you know, one has to have their ego far enough out of the way to be able to acknowledge like, Okay, that's not my idea, but it's the right idea and it's the best idea. So You know, that's that's what part of being a good leader is, whether you're an operator or DP or director or producer for that matter, is being able to utilize the talent that you have so carefully built around you. You want a dolly grip that is really an operator and grips clothing? Well, if they have an idea, maybe you should hear ⁓ out because it might be actually best for the shot. Fantastic. ⁓ you know, Tommy Shalami again always says to me. I don't care where the idea comes from because I will be the one up there getting the award. Exactly. I agree with Tani. I say that too. It's like, what do I care? My name's on my name says director photography. You know? It's like if you have the idea, that just means I'm really smart. Well, yeah, and all and also, but there is that thing of and and I do this as well with ACs and and Dolly Groups, of course. ⁓ you want to put together a good team because You don't always have the best idea. You and and sometimes, you know, I I don't know if I don't know if you've found this before, but as a director, well, T V is a little different 'cause it's quick, but if it was a movie, it's a longer. But even in T V, like you go in there and you get an idea in your head of how it's gonna work and how it's gonna look and how you're gonna shoot it. And granted, you're always ready to throw that out out the window if the actors come in and something different happens, but s you still have a preconceived notion, right? Of course. Whereas Whereas the operator's coming in with theoretically no pre preconceived notion of looking at it for the first time. Yeah. ⁓ so there's there's benefit to that, right? ⁓ what about what about ⁓ a B camera operator? ⁓ I am not a fan, I'll just say this, and I I may be unpopular by saying this, but I am not a fan of Hunt and Peck. ⁓ B camera operator. De define hunt and peck. Hunt and peck is ⁓ in my view, when you say to a B camera operator, ⁓ Could you just find something to shoot during this scene? ⁓ I first of all, I don't like giving anything to the editors that I don't intend to use. that's that's the key thing because they will. Like the producers will come in and they'll just cut to cut. They won't cut the they won't cut because it's warranted. They'll cut because they've got something else to cut too, and they're afraid that the audience is gonna fall asleep if they don't make a an edit. ⁓ I don't believe in that. I think that that's nonsense. But so I like to be intentional. Now, if someone comes to me and says, Hey, I've got a shot to show you and it's about the storytelling and it could be good in the cut, I'm all for it. But I don't you know, I I I have many, many times spent on shows as a guest director where I come in and the producing director will say to me, ⁓ and you've got this guy on B camera and he's really good at just finding stuff. And that's that what that tells me is that people aren't coming in with a plan, number one. And number two, that the operator's actually probably got good taste if they're liking what he's doing. So I just try to refnel that energy into intention. and you know, every show has its rhythm with how it works. And I just came off a show where the DP told me, ⁓ our B camera operator is really good at finding like interstitils and cutaways. And my response was, I'm all for that as long as we're not sacrificing the B camera when we need it. ⁓ but I generally don't like to provide junk. And and they and he said, no no, he has good taste. I said, okay, I trust you. And and it yeah. ⁓ it's funny that you were saying ⁓ the editors using everything because one of the things when I when I met our younger operators, I I have a list of things that I sort of give them that these like things I've learned over time. And one of them is if they go, you know, ⁓ just reset the Dolly, let's just go again. ⁓ I'll usually tilt down to the track or something like that. And they're like, Why? And I go, Because if you're framed in any way and you're moving backwards, they may use it and it's not a shot that you want to do. And they're like, Well, but I mean, well, it you know, isn't maybe that's useful to them and it's like, no, but I don't want that to be useful to them because otherwise I would frame it correctly and and who knows what's going on. ⁓ and unless the director wants that, we don't want to give that to them. So ⁓ yeah, and and I've seen crazier things happen as I'm sure have you. ⁓ Yeah, I mean all kinds of insane things. Like ⁓ like a director saying on a reset, okay, stop there in the middle and then just making up an improv without like that has nothing to do with what you just shot. Yeah, and and nobody's ready for it and then they're you know they're upset that it didn't work or whatever. It's like, well let's just set it up. So so what about what what ⁓ what's your feeling on on you're doing take three and just There, you know, it's one of those things as an operator where where you realize that something is happening and you just, you know, you you you cue the dolly and you slowly move in because there's a moment or something like that. Is that something that you're appreciative of or is that not not, you know, those those things that happen in the moment that you just can't can't plan? ⁓ I'm I'm all for ⁓ initiative from good operators that have tastes and There is time, even there are times in the storytelling, even when you've got somebody who you just feel like you're locked in step with, that something like that happens and it's actually not right for the scene. And it's okay to have a have a to disagree, right? It's like that's part of the process when you're dealing with creative people. So I've I've had that happen. It's not very often, because usually like when the push-in happens, it's like, ⁓ yeah, that was the right choice. I'm glad they did that. Yeah. But there are times when I say, hey, ⁓ I appreciate what you did, but let's let's do one where you don't push in because I'm not sure that I want to put the emphasis on that part of the scene. I want to save it. And you and you also don't want to repeat beats emotionally. ⁓ because oftentimes those will get cut out in the end of the room. Yeah. When when you go into these episodic things where you're just doing an episode or two episodes, are you relying on the camera operator's relationship with the actors? Like, do you use that? Absolutely. A hundred percent. I expect it. I expect that that first of all, I expect that the A camera operator is gonna run the set, which doesn't always happen. You know, sometimes you you get rate. ⁓ yeah. I I know you'll find this shocking. ⁓ but you get there and you're like ⁓ you you start doing the rehearsal and the boom's in the shot, there's flags in the shot, like nothing has been actually worked out. Seriously? ⁓ yeah. Wow. That's that's just depressing to me. Yeah. ⁓ you get you get an A camera operator that hasn't if you have a new if you have a newer B camera operator or somebody who's fresher, you get a camera operators that don't help them. And it's like, dude, you have to teach the people who don't have as much experience as you how to work on a set and how to take the initiative because sometimes people are are timid. They're like, ⁓ I don't want to bother the actor. I don't want to it's like they they're here to be bothered. They're relying on you. To help them by giving them parameters. So So so what when you when you come into a into a show where that's the norm, like they're two seasons in and that's the way it's doing, ⁓ I mean do you try do you try to to coax that or do you just go, I guess this is what's happening? 'Cause it's a little tough, right? It it's it always has to be addressed, is my first answer. It always has to be addressed when someone is sort of not doing the full job. Now I'm I'm in sometimes I'm in a unique position with having been a DP because it can be ⁓ it can be ill conceived for me to step in as a guest director on a show that's not my show as a producer and that I'm not the DP on and start giving notes to an operator. ⁓ so what I usually do is I take the DP aside and I s and I say, Listen, have you noticed that this is happening? And often they'll say, Yes, it's been a problem. And I'll try to direct that through the DP. Now I have had a I d I have had a show in the last three or four years where the B camera operator was not up to the skill level that they needed to be. And the DP tried, I tried. ⁓ And finally we, you know, had to talk to the line producer and over a holiday break they were replaced. And I always feel bad when I'm in this position. But I sadly, you know, my priority is not to protect people's jobs and make friends. My job is to get the work done. And sometimes people are put into positions ⁓ where they are not ready. And it's happened to me as a DP. It happened to me. Sure is. I think that's part of the rite of passage. Yeah. You know? No, there's no question. I've I've been fired off of shows as a ⁓ director producer. ⁓ because of politics and things that I learned along the way which I didn't know before. ⁓ so it it's it's it is a part of the industry. ⁓ but yeah, it's like ⁓ yeah, I I try not to intercede because you know, the first thing people do is they say, Who is this Adam Kane guy? And then they look me up on IMDb and Oftentimes it's like, ⁓ you shot the Boondoc Saints? ⁓ my God. That was a Is that the one that comes up? It's the one that comes up. It is absolutely the one that comes up. That's ⁓ that's Donnie Darko with me. I could do there's there's nothing I could ever do that people it's still be Donnie Darko. Donnie Darko was awesome. ⁓ it w it was, but Boondock Saints was awesome in its own way. Yeah, I guess. But it's you know, sometimes I'll get people that say they loved Hannibal or they loved Daredevil the first season. Which I did. You know, whatever. But it's like but Boondoc is sort of like it's it's sort of etched in peoples who are of a certain age. They're like they're coming of age. And so there's well but again, like I was special tied to it. Well, and we we all thought he we we all thought this was the next Tarantino. Like, I mean, 'cause it was it was not that not that he had proven it, but like the lore was growing and the whole thing with the bar and All that stuff. I remember all that so well. But he was on the cover of like magazines where they were c that was the title, that was the headline. The new happened to him. Well whatever happened to him. You know, Troy was not very good at managing egos of other people. Yeah. He was pretty rough and abrasive. And ⁓ after Boondock sort of fizzled in terms of the financials, He became unhireable and part of that was because of Harvey Weinstein and his ego being hurt by Troy's brashness. ⁓ Harvey ⁓ told other people not to work with him, not to pick up the film. ⁓ so it became untouchable. He became untouchable. Now he did do a sequel, ⁓ to Boondok, which I was not involved in. and he's, you know ⁓ tried to at one point Troy and I tried to resurrect ⁓ or to ⁓ ⁓ construct a a sort of a prequel T V series about how the how the boys came to America as immigrants in Boston and how they became the Buddha Saints ⁓ in the beginning, which I loved and I was gonna direct the pilot and be a producer director and Troy and I were gonna direct all the episodes and that didn't come to fruition. ⁓ you know, I mean school shootings have been a big part of why ⁓ Boondoc got ⁓ suppressed. I mean Columbine came out in between when we shot the movie and when we released the movie. ⁓ I didn't know that. Wow. And ⁓ I didn't realize that was the time frame. That was the time frame. And and that's one of the major reasons why people were a little gun shy, not to make a you know, ⁓ a joke about it at all. No pun. ⁓ very seriously, ⁓ but people were shy. And reserved about they didn't want to ⁓ put money behind something that was what could be viewed as is glorifying violence. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. ⁓ I didn't realize that that was part of that. ⁓ interesting. Well, that's you know. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. ⁓ and so is she still trying to direct and is she still trying to make things? I I I d I don't know. I haven't talked to Troy in a few years. ⁓ I think that I think he's still trying. and he's managed to sort of stay afloat financially. ⁓ through I think ⁓ a website that's dedicated to Boondoc Saints you know ⁓ merchandise and he's got a following. People still love it. Good. Yeah. More than most. ⁓ so let me ask quickly about the fix because ⁓ you know, you you basically you wanted to you wanted to direct and and you thought, okay, I need a calling card, I'm gonna make this short. And ⁓ just tell me a little bit about about that, because that's really what what catapulted you, wasn't it? Yes. ⁓ Yes. That and a lot of stubbornness on my part. so yeah, you know, I I'd certainly seen other direc ⁓ directors who ⁓ came from DP or editorial or ⁓ ADs or other places. And I had tried to get some of the producers that had hired me as a DP to bring me on as a director, unsu and it was unsuccessful. You know, the big thing was never about my ability to handle a crew and schedule and things like that. It was always about the cast. Could he direct actors? Could he talk to actors? So I thought, okay, I'll do a short film. I'll put my money where my mouth is. and I thought, you know what? I can't even honestly say that I'd like directing because I've never done it. So I'll make a short. And if I come out of the short and I hate it, then I could say that I tried and I can sleep at night. Yeah. If I come out saying that I loved it, then I can make the next step. So I ⁓ I had finished shooting a T V show for Touchstone television, which is part Disney, was part of Disney, called Line of Fire, with a director named Rod Lurie at the helm, who was the producer and creator of the show. And ⁓ I managed to get the crew at the end of the season to come and basically do this show for free. This ⁓ the show, my short film. ⁓ short, yeah. It was all my own money. ⁓ Nate Goodman shot it, who was my operator and now has become a very successful DP ⁓ of his own right and a member of the ASC. and ⁓ David Paymer ⁓ was one of the actors in ⁓ line of fire and I pulled him in. ⁓ I had done a number of films with Robert Patrick and I had pulled him in. So I I got actors that I I knew had ⁓ experience and ⁓ certain level of quality who were right for the job. And ⁓ I took I picked out ⁓ January just after Christmas as a time to shoot because I knew that most people were not yet employed on pilots if they weren't going back to shows and and ⁓ we shot the short. and then it took me about two and a half years to get an opportunity to direct something because ⁓ was that long I didn't realize Yeah. And ⁓ because everybody and their mother had a short at that point. This was not nineteen eighty eight, like, you know, sex license and video tape with Sodobird, where if you made a short film you could get an opportunity to do a feature. This was two thousand and ⁓ early two thousand five. And everybody could make a if you if you had a a cheap camera from good guys, you could make a a short film because you had Final Cut Pro and you know, you can just do it yourself. And that was the wave ⁓ That was sort of coming through festivals. So I, you know, I made this short on 16 millimeter for aesthetic reasons. I wanted the grain. I wanted it to feel like a 70s movie. ⁓ I showed it to a number of managers ⁓ who I happened to know. ⁓ no nobody would take me on, agents, managers. ⁓ I started sending it to festivals ⁓ to get exposure. I won the LA Shorts Festival for best. short, which made me eligible for the Academy Awards for Short Film. and then was disqualified from the Academy Awards for short film because it had appeared in an online festival for South by Southwest, ⁓ which is a whole nother story. ⁓ but Yeah because it's no longer it's no longer a good film if it's appeared somewhere specifically. It's no longer you know they were still trying to protect this idea of theatrical and all this kind of nonsense. Even though At the festivals they were shooting they were they were showing, you know, all films off of D two at the time, you know. So they weren't even screening prints, you know, but that's another story. ⁓ anyway, yeah. ⁓ I kept shooting. And ⁓ in that time period I shot the pilot for heroes, which was a a ⁓ pretty big game changer. Got me an ASC nomination for best pilot. Yeah. It got me into the ASC, ⁓ as a member. ⁓ sort of o opened the door to that. And Steven Poster was one of the signatories on my I think I I think I asked him for you or I think I told you to ask him or something. You told me to ask him and you're and he and he did and I was very grateful. ⁓ got me into the ASC. And ⁓ right after the Heroes pilot I was doing a film with Rod Lurie that I was photographing called Resurrecting the Champ. It was a movie with Sam Jackson and Josh Hardnett. And I was ⁓ conveniently unavailable to start shooting heroes the series after it got picked up. And so I decided to use this time period as a trial to see if I could get hired as a director. By this point it had been almost a year and a half since I made the short. I'd gotten a manager at some you know small company to believe in me, but I had no leverage really. And so I I did everything I could to ⁓ ingratiate myself into the process of directing, which is to say I knew the showrunner on Supernatural, this guy named Bob Singer, because I shot some pilots for Bob back in the day. And I said, Hey, can I fly myself up to Vancouver? I'll put myself in a hotel. I just want to shadow a director. I want put my time in. And he said, Absolutely. So I did that. And that cost me five or six grand. And you know, that did not lead to a job. And then I shadowed on Heroes. And I kept, you know, bugging the producers on Heroes to Give me an episode. And ⁓ they kept trying to barter, saying, Well, if we give you an episode to direct, would you alternate with the DP we hired? And I said, thank you. I can't really do that. Because I knew that ⁓ in the industry those kinds of deals were looked at as ⁓ completely transactional. ⁓ they they didn't bel like. ⁓ people when they saw a resume they knew that that was a deal made and they didn't take those directors seriously. That's good that's a tough decision to make though. Yeah I turned it down. And and and in fact I doubled down and I said, but I'll tell you what, if you give me two episodes to direct, I will shoot. And they said, ⁓ yeah, we can't do that. Can't do that. ⁓ But to their credit, and this is ⁓ to to the credit of Tim Kring, who is the creator of Heroes, ⁓ they decided, he and Dennis Hammer, who's the producer, that if they got a a a back nine back order pickup that they would give me an episode and they did. No strings attached. Nice. And so my first episode of directing television was on Heroes. That's amazing, which was a huge show. People probably don't remember it, but it was a massive It was a gigantic hit at the time. And ⁓ I will forever be indebted to Tim ⁓ and Dennis for taking a leap of faith with me because truthfully that's what we all need. Whether you're an operator or an assistant or ⁓ any role in the industry, someone has to believe in you and give you a break. So ⁓ it didn't come without months of lobbying, it didn't come without months of ass kick kissing and emails and all kinds of stuff. But you know, I was kind of running out of money. And I thought, okay, if if by pilot season in two thousand seven, if I don't have a job directing, I gotta go back to shooting. And the dream's over. And in January, I was in I was signed into the DGA. And I directed my first episode in March of Heroes. And that's cool. I did not expect that. I thought, ⁓ well, you know, just like I had to put my time in on low budget features as a DP, you know, I'll start doing Aaron Spelling shows or Nickelodeon shows or whatever. And I'll and I gladly, I'll gladly work my way up. But when I got Heroes, I was like, ⁓ now this is a problem because now if I go do Nickelodeon and Aaron spelling shows, the the impression will be, what happened? You started on heroes and now you went down. Especially especially because I was I was I was trying to push my cinematography background as one of the th the assets that I could that people could hang on to to hire me as a director. So fortunately I landed into a string of very, very ⁓ visual shows like Pushing Daisies, ⁓ immediately following. And I didn't I didn't really have that problem. Although, you know, in the beginning I certainly took shows ⁓ because I needed to earn a living. ⁓ some shows that are not particularly ⁓ visual, like the mentalist and things like that. But ⁓ but I was building a career. And when building a career, as I had experience as a DP, you just gotta get your name out there. You have to become known to people. And when that happens, then you know, you start alienating the people. that ⁓ from the profession that you came from, ⁓ like I became competition to all the directors that used to hire me because a lot of them did television. So it was a frightening thing for me to to make that leap. It was ⁓ it was a tough couple of years. Well that's that's an amazing story. ⁓ and ⁓ clearly it's paid off 'cause now you're you know you're directing and producing and And everything else. ⁓ and like I said, if you look at your IMDb, I was I was amazed at how much you've done in your IMDB. I didn't realize that 'cause ⁓ we've sort of I've sort of lost touch of that that that part of your life. But ⁓ congratulations and thank you. It's cool to hear someone who took the leap and it actually worked. Even though like you said, when you break it down, it's like it wasn't quick. You had to stick with it, you know, you had to put your time in, all those other things. But ⁓ it's nice when it works out. You know, I was in the right place at the right time. No doubt. And I had the right connection. And to my credit, I suppose, I had spent twenty years building a cinematography career. So I knew people based on another profession. I just pushed real hard. ⁓ because, you know, going back to what we were talking about earlier, no one's just gonna hand it to you for free. You know, you really you you gotta get people to ⁓ to get to believe in you who are willing to put their asses on the line. And put their name on the line to give you a shot. ⁓ I'm gonna ask you a couple quick fire questions because this will go on forever because I have a good time talking to you. Same. ⁓ but ⁓ worst thing that an operator can do. ⁓ change a shot and not notify the DP or the director. Love it. That's fantastic. I have to stop doing that. ⁓ hence why we don't work together anymore. Five movies that you think an ⁓ an aspiring operator should should watch. Apocalypse now, Annie Hall. Ooh interesting. ⁓ Interiors ⁓ by Woody Allen, ⁓ Atonement and ⁓ Raiders of the Lost Ark. ⁓ I would that the that's not something that comes up that often, but totally, totally. You know, you know what? I don't I I don't know if I've sent this to you or not, but ⁓ there's a new website, ⁓ new page on the website, the op.io, that that is specifically about blocking, because I don't think that people know blocking the way that they should. And to me, that's like the foundation of everything. Yeah. and and it's almost annoying how much Spielberg stuff is on there. Yeah. Because ⁓ it's it's just he's a master. And and there's there's stuff that I've found in Raiders. Yeah and Coppola. I there's a ton of there's a ton of different people. Yeah. But ⁓ there's stuff that I found in Raiders that, you know, like I I don't I'm sure like you, I grew up on Raiders, right? I've probably seen it a hundred times. Like I can I can quote the movie. But then I started watching it from a blocking point of view. There's stuff in there that's genius. I mean on a on a complete different I mean even there's even the moment where ⁓ ⁓ his boss at the school whose name is forget I'm forgetting, but comes home to tell him he he got the money to send him, you know, ⁓ on the expedition. Yes. That's just the two of them talking and it just moves around the one comes into the foreground. It's it is a wonder. Well there's a there's a criteria. But ⁓ God, you know it. Yeah, ⁓ yeah, very it's a nothing scene. Yeah, and it's so beautiful. ⁓ yeah, it's incredible. So anybody should go to the blocking of the website what what scenes like that do, and and Coppola did this in The Godfather as well when Michael's coming to power after his father's been killed, is that it shows through positioning and whether people are sitting or standing who is actually in control of a moment and who has become subservient. And it's brilliant because you you're not ⁓ you're not relying on cuts in order to focus. You are asking the audience to become participants in the scene by not cutting. Yeah. Yep. Well, well, so let me ask you this. I was gonna ask you all these quick questions, but forget about it, because this is more interesting to me. So the more that I watch these things, and there are probably like 80, 80 different ones on there. And I'm not even saying that, you know, some of but I've brought I've found some of them, some of them been suggested to me. I'm not even saying all of them are necessarily like exactly that. They're just what I think is, and other people should look at it and take what they want from it. But the more that I realize it and I watch things that that don't have good blocking, the more that I realize how much of it has to do with the characters having business to do in the scene. And I I don't necessarily mean like filling out a chart, but it's like, you know, sitting down and then standing and then coming close. And as opposed to a lot of these things where I'm on shows where they go, okay, let's just like, you know, sort of like speak the words and the actors kind of wander around the set and the directors go, Okay, well, let's mark that. And you're like, well, wait, aren't I mean, isn't this gonna be designed somehow? Yeah. And I'm wondering like how much how do you think that's what it is? Is like is is the the characters having something to do that helps with that? I think that I mean my observations as a DP and and an operator working with other ⁓ under other directors, ⁓ which I did a little bit of ⁓ in my time, is that ⁓ often directors ⁓ ⁓ who rely on the storytelling of a shot to be the guiding force are sort of ignoring what the basic needs of the character are. So you have to blend those. ⁓ I when I started directing, I s I was thinking exclusively in shots. Like, ⁓ I could tell like this, I could tell like this. And I would almost have like three openings to every scene because I've I kept thinking of shots, you know. ⁓ wow. But what I wasn't doing and what I learned how to do was to when I was reading a script, ⁓ figure out what's what is each character going through? Where are they coming into the scene? What is their goal in the scene? ⁓ more from an actor's perspective. So that because when I figured that out as a director, then I understood the blocking became simple. It's like, well ⁓ interesting. You know, it's like a and and you and I both have had this conversation before, but Like when you see actors sort of tackle blocking where a director kind of doesn't know what they want, where to put the camera becomes very self-evident. Absolutely. It's really easy. ⁓ it just falls right in, right? That's exactly right. Now, if I'm doing a genre show like a Western, then there may be visual ⁓ signatures or markers of the genre that might dictate how a scene is blocked. for example, it's very common in ⁓ you know, ⁓ Sean ⁓ Westerns like Good Bad Me Ugly to have the camera just above the brim line of a cowboy hat and have the actor kind of look up into the lens. It's very much a part of the style. So what I found is that if I can talk to the actors in terms of of being in service to that, they'll get it right away. and if I want some sort of particular moment directorially. But the most important thing is to understand what the actors are needing in the scene and what they're experiencing ⁓ from the scene that they were last coming from, which may not be adjacent in the script. It might have happened five pages ago. But that's what they're focusing on. So a lot of the time my blocking ⁓ comes in the form of relaying to the actors what I know about that. homework that I've already done. They say, well, you came from this scene and you were upset about this. So, you know, you don't have to do this, but you might you might be coming in with trepidation into this scene. And you know, and and and when you when you when you talk about that and you bury that into direction. And listen, you know, we're all directors. Camera operators are directors, DPs are directors. Any kind anytime we have a relationship with a crew or cast. We are directing them at one point or another. and so understanding their needs and how to work with them so that a trust can be formed is the name of the game. I that to me that was the most important part of being a DP and working with actors was to be able to find ⁓ a common ground of trust, ⁓ so that ⁓ if I needed them to do something, that they would do it for me. ⁓ and you only got that. I'll tell a good story about this actually because we're in it. But I did a movie as a DP called The Man, which was a new line cinema movie with Sam Jackson and Eugene Levy. And ⁓ on the it was a it was a for me it was a big movie. It was about thirty-five million dollars. And I had done movies in the teens and the twenties before, but nothing quite this big. And I had oddly worked with Sam ⁓ once before. I had done a tiny little movie in the early nineties that was directed by Anthony Michael Hall and before Pulp Fiction. And Sam Jackson was it he played the postman. He had he had one line in a scene. So in between he became a movie star. And and I'm now shooting this movie. And I came in ⁓ to the ⁓ camera test and I said, Hey Sam, you you may not remember me, we shot and he finished my sentence and he said, Yeah, we did that little movie with Anthony Michael Hall. And I thought That's great. ⁓ either he has an ironclad memory or he's done his research. But he's prepared. So we get on the set of ⁓ shooting the first day, and because it's a it's it's it's a comedy, it's a buddy cop comedy, ⁓ it's supposed to have a lighter contrast in the lighting. And Sam's pretty dark and Eugene Levy is sort of olive skin. And I usually tried to like put Sam closest to the light so he would get most of it. And we're doing the scene where he has to walk around a corner. and stopped at the corner and he ends up being shy of his mark by about a foot and a half, just enough to where he's t he's really too dark, you know. Mm-hmm. So I go up after the first take and I look up at you know, Sam's like six four. He's like big guy, you know. And I and I say, Hey Sam, ⁓ you didn't quite tell your mark. Could you tell your mark in the in the next take? And he looked down at me and he said, Why? And I said, Well, because you're not in the light where you landed. So if you actually want to be seen in the movie, hit if you could please hit the mark, that'd be great. If you don't want to be seen, you could stand wherever you want. And he looked down at me and he said, I'll see what I could do. And he never missed a mark the rest of the movie. Because Sam is the kind of actor who is a bit of a predator. If he smells fear, in you as anything as a DP, an operator drug, he will def he will spend his life on that movie devouring you. And yeah. So if I needed him to like, hey, can you just s open up and be more to the window, he'd do it. Because he he trusted me. ⁓ he had already pushed you and you pushed back and and that was that was what was and that's the entire relationship that we all have with cast. If if if you're an operator and the and the actor thinks that you're timid and that you're not gonna I they're not gonna look good because you're too timid to say something, then they're not gonna trust you. It's universally true. And yeah, and no, that's that's that's fantastic. The the thing about it, of course, is every actor is different in figuring out where that need is and what that line is. I mean, that's why I I tell people if you really want to be successful, you should get a psychology degree and then go into film because you'll do much better because it's all about therapy and it's all about sort of going All right, what are your quirks and what do you need and what don't you need? And when should I talk to you and when shouldn't I talk to and who's had a good day and who hasn't? You know, I mean it's all that stuff. so you end up becoming a little you know, a little bit of a therapist in a weird way. Actresses will look at you to help protect them, especially if they're of a certain age. Men will look to make sure that you're looking out to make them the most heroic. ⁓ or leading man like because of their aspirations. So yeah, there it's it's it's trying to figure out exactly. Man, the psychology thing is so spot on. It well it is because ⁓ the thing is the answer isn't always yes, but sometimes you gotta you gotta put it in a way that they feel that it's yes, do you know? Hey, listen, most most people and this is Cass and Crew alike, they just want to be heard. Yeah, they want to be seen. And if you can establish that relationship. then you will gain their trust likely. Yeah. No, that's great. That that's absolutely spawn on. ⁓ back to my final couple of quick questions, ⁓ for you. ⁓ best part of your job as a director? Getting to work with crew. ⁓ I love that. I mean it's true because I come from crew. Like crew's my family. So like I I I know how hard it is to make anything. You have to put the same effort on a bad show as a good show. If you really care about your people try to Do people try to bullshit you and then you catch ⁓ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ all the time, man. I'd like to see that. Yeah. Well, y y y you you can pretty much guess what happens, right? I'm sure. That's what I'm saying. I'd like to I'd like when I say I'd like to see that, I'd literally like to be sitting on set without a job watching that happen. I was born a nightcorn. But it wasn't last night. You know? I mean yeah, I mean it's like I I I I know more than I don't know them all, but I know a lot of them. No, ⁓ but which is which I mean, and also as long as you as long as you wield that well, that makes you that makes you valuable, not necessarily problematic. ⁓ because you can also fix things. But there is that thing of we're all trying to sort of, you know, make s we're we're all trying to get away with things all the time. Well, listen, it's like with operators, like, you know, sometimes I will have a very specific note that's operator based. on a shot. Like if, you know, sometimes I largely joke about this, especially with ⁓ newer operators, that they that a lot of newer operators have issues ⁓ with commitment. I don't mean personally. ⁓ well that's that's a hundred percent but it's no but that's a hundred percent I mean ⁓ that I I I I yeah I think everybody when they're starting out because you're ne you're never you're always wondering like Is this the dream or is that the thing? Yeah, and you're second guessing, right? So if you're like walking down a corridor with somebody on a dolly track on a CETI cam, it doesn't matter. And you're if the shot requires you to leave somebody prematurely to go pick up another actor, that's the biggest culprit. And I'll often say, John Doe, you gotta commit, man. Like, do you have do you have commitment issues? Are you married? Like I'll start I'll start I'll start fucking with people because yeah, because it's I I I know that feeling. I know it. I've been on the camera when I've been afraid to commit. ⁓ and it's it's something that you have to ⁓ put your trust and faith into that you will make the right decision. Exactly right. Well, and I think you have to get to the point what I always tell people is ⁓ committing and when you commit, it's a choice. It may not be the choice that the director wanted or the DP wanted, but it's a choice. If you don't commit it's it's always a mistake. Right. If you do commit, sometimes you're gonna be right, sometimes you're gonna be wrong. But if you don't commit, you're always wrong. Right. So exactly you know, it and and and I think the key to it is for me, the point when I think I my operating change was when I realized, like, ⁓ I'm gonna screw up sometimes and that's okay. Yeah. it's more important to make a choice. It's more important to make a choice. And because good good directors and good DPs will recognize that and say after a take, I know you made a choice and I appreciate that. And let's do something a little different for the next take. Yeah. Because it's it's not about it being right. There is no right or wrong as far as I'm concerned. The only wrong is not committing. Just commit to something. And I'll tell you absolutely I'll tell you, Phil Parmett, ⁓ who is a DP out of New York, and I I don't know if he's still with us, but ⁓ Phil gave me great advice years ago when I was an assistant on a movie that he was shooting in New York in the late 80s before I left to go to AFI. ⁓ I was the second and He threw me on a C camera one day for a stunt because that's what happened, you know. And he said to me, Now just take a deep breath when the sticks are marking and exhale, and you'll do just fine. And that is something that I carried with me. Sometimes I do it at the monitor when I'm directing. Is I take it because I cause I'm I'm carrying a certain level of anxiety and stress with me. But when I was operating on a fluid head or the gear head, Man, that kept me relaxed. Is that I would or handheld. I would just take a deep breath ⁓ when mar when the marker went up. And I was always able to stay relaxed through shooting. That's funny. That's really interesting because if I'm doing a big steady cam shot, I've had people ask me about this before because I didn't realize I was doing it. As the sticks are going, I will actually take both of my hands one at a time and shake them vigorously. ⁓ yeah. It's the same idea. And it's sort of like it sort of it sort of wakes me up a little bit. Loosens up flowing. Yeah. Yeah. No, and it's it's just it's the same i same idea. Yeah, because like man, it it's something else when you're on a big movie and I was on a movie with Dick Donner directing as an operator. ⁓ wow. Like I was doing like G camera. ⁓ you know, take it easy. I was like a day player. But I saw, you know, we're shooting this little thing like on a rooftop in Chinatown in LA with Mel Gibson going across the frame. It's one of the lethal weapon movies. And the operator looked up afterwards and he said, ⁓ sorry, Dick. I I missed the I missed the you know, the tilt. And Dick looked at him and playfully said, Excuses don't photograph. ⁓ That's great. And everybody laughs. That's a t shirt right there. That's a t shirt. That's fantastic. That's what that's what all of us fear. Is that we will make a mistake when we're rolling. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's great. ⁓ I love that. That's fantastic. ⁓ what's the worst part of your job as a director? ⁓ having to deal with stupid people. That's the worst part of a job. It is. But there are there aren't stupid people in Hollywood, are there? Let me let me just let me go back to writing the scripts. Let me start with that. Yeah. No, but Exactly. Could you explain that again? And most of it has to do with people having other agendas that have nothing to do with the making of the film or the T V show. That's exactly right. ⁓ other agendas about them looking good to the studio or being afraid of conflict or want having a way of doing things that's a little more underhanded that they usually get away with. So it's dealing with people where their priority is not the quality of the product. Yep. Yeah. I I couldn't agree more. And I don't know if you have this, but there are times and it's almost on every show where something'll happen or someone will say something and I sort of want to look around and go I serious like is are we on camera? What's going on? Like you didn't you didn't really just suggest that or not understand that or or whatever it happens to be. ⁓ it it's it's yeah, it is it is kind of a well this is like here's a classic example. ⁓ not to just take up the rest of your afternoon, but I'm having fun. So this is both great. ⁓ I did a show ⁓ with Ian McShane ⁓ in New York many years ago, a TV show that I directed. And i if you've ever s met Ian, he can be kind of intimidating. He's kind of a you know little fiery Scottish fellow. And I was on my first day of shooting, which we had talked about with the producer as needing to go to hour thirteen. And sure enough, around hour eleven, the A D comes to me and says, Well, they want you to wrap it up in twelve. And I said, Well, it's a little late for that and I I really don't know how to condense it. ⁓ and then I had an idea and I said, ⁓ here's an idea. The next two scenes are with Ian. They're both day interior. We were on stage. They're both at his desk. All he needs to do is put on a different tie and shirt. So I could block shoot these scenes and probably save me 45 minutes because I wouldn't have to turn twice. So I watched the AD go across the set to the pr the line producer who's sitting on the opposite side, whisper something to her. I then watch him go to Ian McShane, who's on the other side of the set. And all I s all I see are Ian's hands start throwing up in the air wildly like a muppet. And then I watch the AD go back to the line producer. And she walked away and went back to her office. And the AD comes back to me and he said and I said, What happened? He says, Well, I went to Ian and suggested what you what you said. He says, I'm not fucking helping you guys. You haven't been taking care of me this season. I'm not doing fuck all. ⁓ lovely. And and and and management didn't deal with it. So we shot 13 hours. There you go. And so when I say stupid people, it's like I gave you guys every opportunity to help yourselves. Yeah. And yet you didn't have the courage to be able to go talk to your actor directly. Well, I I'm not gonna solve your problems. And if I don't if you don't want to work with me again, that's okay. Because I don't want to work with people like that. Yeah. Yeah. Look, ⁓ it's the logical way to deal with things. Unfortunately, ⁓ things aren't always that way. ⁓ before we finish up here, I just it occurred to me we should take a minute and give a shout out to all the people not all, but a lot of the people ⁓ from back in the day. And I'm thinking of Crash of course wherever he is in heaven. ⁓ Dave Slodkey Michelle McKinley, ⁓ Corey Garyak. Who el who else is in there from back in the day? Mike Bauman. Mike Bauman is what is Mike Bauman doing these things? Yeah, exactly. He just got nominated for an Academy Award. ⁓ no. Who was and won the ASC award. And by the way, Mike Bauman, who was my best boy on my first feature, which Dave worked on that we talked about, the Double O Kid. Mike Bauman was on Double O Kid. I didn't realize that. He's I he I have the crew photo. I'll send it to you. That's awesome. Please do. And he was make so Corey was making eighty bucks a day, Mike was making seventy as the best boy. ⁓ my god So like you know so shoot, shoot, shoot, operate, operate, operate, operate on everything, operate on anything. Yeah. ⁓ because you just never know, right? ⁓ but as far as shout outs goes, ⁓ gosh. Who else? ⁓ Poodle, remember Poodle? Poodle. Susie Diaz. Yep. Rocky Kiros. ⁓ those are those that's a long time ago. ⁓ I'm trying to think of the sound Tony Smiles, who Rocky used to work for. Do you do you remember by the way, on on on Bitter Harvest, Crash and I took ⁓ god, what's his name? He was in Raising, Arizona. He was the he was the detective in ⁓ Blood Simple. ⁓ he has three names. ⁓ I know what you're talking about. ⁓ ⁓ God, I can't think of his name. We did the anyway. In Raising Arizona, he has this very small part where where Nicholas Cage is drilling and he's sitting there and he's like, So they're he's walking down the road and he's got his head ⁓ head in one hand and his sandwich in the other, something like that. Some stupid thing. But he used to crack us up. And Crash and I were like, Could you could you do the dialogue from that? Of course he doesn't remember it because he's he's like probably you know, seen the movie once and we've seen it nine million times. And we were literally like feeding him lines in this. Poor guy was so great because he he was he he was trying to get it right, but like he doesn't know it the way that we know. ⁓ it was ⁓ Emmett Walsh. That's who it was. ⁓ Emmett Walsh, yes. Yes. We were so excited to work with him. ⁓ I was. I was stoked, man. That was awesome. ⁓ man, those were the days. Those were ⁓ well of course, ⁓ Dwayne, ⁓ Dwayne Clark directed that who I still who I still am friends with and I still see. Yep. When I go to LA. ⁓ my God. Jeanette Scheid. Remember Jeanette Scheid? Who was who's loading on on that? I think, or seconding on that or something like that. Yeah, boy. Nobody's gonna care about any of this one. No, but it's fun for us. Yeah, that's right. That's why that's why I do my own podcast, because I can do whatever the hell I want. ⁓ but anyway, those were phenomenal times. I I'm sure we're let we're leaving a ton of people out, but what are you gonna do? Yeah. Did I say Dave Slotke? Yeah, I said Dave Slotke. You too. Yeah, but this has been fantastic. It's great to catch up with you and hear all this stuff and and there's so many great nuggets in here. ⁓ I really appreciate it. ⁓ I'm gonna leave you with the question that I leave everybody with, ⁓ and you can take us out with it, which is ⁓ advice advice for people ⁓ working in the industry now, you know, starting out on their path on how to succeed and or something you have learned along the way that you wish you knew early on. Well In terms of succeeding in the industry, ⁓ I think being your own advocate and your own salesman is really important, saleswoman, salesperson. ⁓ it's incredibly important. ⁓ as we talked about, nobody is going to give a break to you without putting their own butt on the line. And we all need breaks. I've had breaks throughout my entire career from people that were willing to vouch for me. ⁓ but ⁓ if ⁓ if if one thinks that they're gonna be able to f find a producer or someone who's just gonna hire them carte blanche and that there's no politics involved and that they're you know you're never gonna have to talk to anybody. ⁓ I I would not to dash your hopes, but I would say ⁓ be the hero of your own story. You know, they that you you cannot play if you don't ⁓ you can't win if you don't play. ⁓ the business is like the lotto in my view. ⁓ and you're certainly not gonna win a hundred million dollars unless you buy a lottery ticket. I don't play the lotto, by the way, but I did play the industry. And ⁓ you know, I've had three really great careers ⁓ that have sprouted up ⁓ because I because I was willing to put myself out there. shoot anything and everything. ⁓ have dreams that are beyond the job that you're currently focused on. If you want to be an operator. It is okay to want to be a DP or director. You do not have to hide that from other people. I think that the best operators were people and are people that are people who have shot, that are people who have directed, that are people that understand the other aspects of filmmaking. ⁓ I want people to have aspirations beyond being a loader or a grip, you know? That makes them filmmakers. ⁓ so if you have curiosities, explore them. And I I would say don't ever affr be afraid to try something that seems like it's out of your wheelhouse. ⁓ as I mentioned before, shooting a news footage for Associated Press would seem to be the farthest thing away from narrative filmmaking. And yet I probably took more lessons from the jobs I did in my three years of shooting for them than I ⁓ have ⁓ than I had previously in all of my educational time at NYU and AFI put together. ⁓ learning how to tell stories ⁓ is not the exclusive realm of narrative filmmaking. You can learn wonderful things from documentaries or shooting news or shooting weddings. ⁓ it's not glorious and it's not glamorous, but ⁓ all those experiences lead you to skill sets that you'll use for your entire career. ⁓ what I wish I knew earlier, ⁓ make relationships with people even if you think you're never gonna interface with them. ⁓ This is something that I was not very good at. I thought that the front-facing people that I dealt with, like the directors and producers and the DPs in some circumstances, were the people that I pretty much needed to know. ⁓ what I didn't understand is that we live in a people business. So if you are able to form any kind of rapport with a production manager, with a coordinator, with a producer, It will expand your horizons later. I once got a job opportunity to shoot ⁓ my first TV pilot because the coordinator I became friends with on a previous show recommended me to the director because they were looking for somebody. And it's like who I how did I ever think that was gonna happen? But I ended up getting that job. It was my first pilot for television. So ⁓ you know, form relationships because it can backfire in the same way if you become the target of some kind of ⁓ either political scapegoat or something like that, which crew people do all the time because God knows that we're not gonna fire producers ⁓ or directors for that matter. That's too disruptive. ⁓ then you know you become you can become a target if you ⁓ don't have relationships with people. And it took me becoming fired off of a TV show as a producer director. really understand that because I had not made ⁓ the relationships that I should have with ⁓ people at the studio. ⁓ so I I would say ⁓ you know if you're shy work on that get used to talking to people ⁓ it's really hard to be shy and become ⁓ embedded in a leadership position like an A camera operator or DP or a director in this industry. I think that you know being front facing is really important. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. We'll be back soon with another great episode. Don't forget to check us out on the op.io for all sorts of information on operating and storytelling. So thanks for listening and have a great day.