Films Not Made: Hi, I'm Avi Zev Weider. And I'm Amy Habie. Welcome to Films Not Made. Today, we have Film Wax meets Films Not Made. We have a special guest who we've known for a long time. I've known Adam for, ⁓ gosh, decades at this point. He has a podcast called Film Wax Radio. I was actually an early guest on it back in the day. And on his show, he interviews filmmakers and directors. ⁓ And the range of guests he gets is just quite astounding. Everyone from independent filmmakers making small documentaries up to Werner Herzog. Pretty exciting to have Adam Shartoff on the show today. Welcome to Film Summit. Welcome, Adam. It's great to talk to you, to see you. It's been a while. We certainly go. go back quite a while. think I was on your show. How long have you been doing film wax? Well, the whole idea behind it was, mean, when I really started it before it was even a podcast, it was an internet radio show for about, I don't know how many months and with this ⁓ Brooklyn based platform called B box radio, an internet radio station. And then they start, because it was just talk content. I was interviewing filmmakers and folks from the industry from the beginning. ⁓ specifically independent art house that that you know we could podcast this because podcasting was beginning to become a thing so and then after I started doing that I was like well why am I doing internet radio just doesn't I don't know if anybody's scheduling their time around my show at some you know whatever weekday in the afternoon they had me on so I just sort of forgot about that and just ⁓ started doing podcasting only and all that happened in the early teens, I guess, like I was podcasting, I think by 2012 or 13. But the show started 2011, the fall of 2011. Who have you had on? Oh, my God. Well, I only focus on what happened to head on. But well, I've had on you and then a number of your guests, I guess, but on the Your Fabulous podcast. But I you know, the highlights. I well. Let me put it this way. There really are. I'll just mention a few. I like to say that that I don't really draw a distinction between first time filmmakers and veteran filmmakers or actors or I just, you know, if they're doing something that's from their, you know, from their passion and their heart that that and they can talk about it with that kind of enthusiasm, then that's a great episode. And that is actually true. It's not just platitude to say that. Having said that, we're in a Herzogsman on the show. And that was incredible. We also, Adam, have people come on who have passion and put a lot of heart into everything, except in our case, the film doesn't end up getting made. The goal is kind of similar, but you you're doing with the absence of a film, which is very unique, I think, you know, really unique. and takes a lot more work in, I think, in some ways to kind of make all that happen. you know, we can get into all that for sure. I just want to wrap up by saying that I'm approaching 900 episodes and but I'm certain I will not get to a thousand episodes. Why? Why do you you won't get to a thousand? Are you retiring? You're so close. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I'm not there quite yet. And but I because ⁓ I want to I work at a radio station and we're doing a lot of the stuff I've always been trying to do with the podcast. But my audience has necessarily shrunk over the years because of what we're talking about, because of the sheer number or amount of content out there. Audio content has exploded, as you said, Amy. And, you know, it's ⁓ a joy, but it's a lot of work. So I can focus all the energy and everything else into the radio station where I work at because I'm part of this core team and then we're trying to really build something. And I think it serves, I serve by serving that with more of my attention, I'm doing more good, you know? What was the spark at the beginning, Adam? What like what was your, you know, passion? What was the spark for the idea to have a show? I don't know if you remember Amy, but back in Park Slope in a few months, like good six months before I started the show, I had a little film series. It was in the back of a bar. Which, uh, where was it? Was it at, um, it was on Fifth Avenue and 13th, like 13th street between 12 and 13th. There was a bar, uh, called, well at the time it was called the fifth estate, not a great name for a place, but it's now called Young Ethels. It's now called Young Ethels. was once, it's had, you know, course many lives, it's been Young Ethels for quite a while. it's, they have the back room and it's, you know, it's smallish, they have a, they have music, you know, live music back there. But then the owner at the time, this young guy, he bought a projector and He was like, Hey, Adam, I have this projector now. And I said, well, what about a film series like we can bring? know I'm starting to really create a lot of relationships with local filmmakers and friends, you know, so easy living in Brooklyn. ⁓ And so that's how it started. It started actually with that film series, which was called the film box film series before I had a podcast called Film Wax. So it started with a film series. So my first guest was Zachary Levy, who had a film called Strong Man and then I had on Michael Golinski with Battle for Brooklyn. yeah. Yeah. And it just Michael. Yeah. But very fast. I realized, well, wait a minute. Why limit myself? I could have, why just limit myself to my film series? I could have on all sorts of folks from the Brooklyn film scene. And then after a few months I was like, why just Brooklyn? Make it New York City. And then the world and then the world. Since you do, you've done 900 episodes. and you've seen things progress longitudinally. I mean, we've all been living in the business, within the industry, but what would you say is kind of an observation in terms of like where we've been heading and where we are now, because so much of what we're doing with Films Not Made is about stuff that didn't get made and then. you know, let's take another look at it now using, you know, AI tools and, you know, could it be made now? ⁓ You know, how do you feel about it? Are you putting it to bed or, you know, are you sort of reinvigorated? So give us a sense of your ⁓ take on kind of where we are now for people trying to make films. Well, I mean, you know, it's an interesting period because of AI and, I really respect the way you guys are deploying it. It's very, very, very intentional and very specific. And it just kind of really ends up working really well with films not made. And I think if that were ⁓ true across the board, there was some oversight to AI. I'd feel a lot more comfortable with it. just, we live in such a, a, a, you know, a capitalist country, a run amok, you know, that I had no faith that AI will, you know, be ⁓ just a tool, but will just do what it's threatening to do, which is to replace human beings and jobs. And so that's, and I think a lot of people have that anxiety for a very good reason, you know, in this country, whereas in Europe and Asia, they're actually there's oversight and there's you know, control is being put into place. So. Yeah, I think it feels scary for a lot of filmmakers, right? Like you're not going to have agency jobs are going to be lost. The IP you work so hard on for years is going to be stolen in one millisecond. But I think it's not AI generally. It's just the lack of our control over it, right? The lack of. legal oversight, lack of our abilities to use it as a tool and use it to our benefit. I think part of what we're doing on the show is trying to show and demonstrate that, right? How can it be a way to help you? How can ⁓ you have some agency over it? How can you use it to ⁓ demonstrate something that's in your imagination, right? Because we always made pitch decks, right? Like, I've been making films for a really long time. And we always made, you saw Poodle Power, episode two. You saw my very first pitch deck that I made. it, you boy. For those on my show who don't know, I just want to mention, for those that is the Iditarod, there was a true story, right, about these, I guess, standard poodles who actually. Right, who ran the Iditarod. Yeah, and it was my film with Ann Hubble, my producing partner at the time. And it really animated. Well, because we didn't want to go to Alaska. Make a film is too cold. And you knew nothing about animation. We made decisions for, I don't know, weird reasons back then. We're like, we're not going to go do that. We'll just be animated. And plus, Poodles running the Iditarod in animations. It's pretty funny. My first pitch deck was really just like clip art. And you know, had I been able to have a tool that could help me, you know, have what's all the stuff that was in my head ⁓ on the page and help me convey that to funders, ⁓ things might have things might have gone a little differently back in the day. Right. And I think we just have to keep talking about it. And figuring out how artists can ⁓ have agency. Do you think that it's increasingly ⁓ more difficult ⁓ for people to get films made? mean, what's... I'm really curious about sort of general sentiment, I suppose. It's always been a conversation. It's always been part of the conversation. How challenging, how difficult, how... nearly impossible it is to not so much make a film, get it seen. Yeah. And there's, and there's, there's definitely a deflation of ⁓ film festivals. mean, there may be, it had been an overabundance. I don't know. for, for as far as I can tell the film festival culture or, you know, ⁓ it's been a distribution for a lot of films, ⁓ You'd be seen at all by human beings in the same room with the filmmakers, you know. And, you know, when I talk to filmmakers, yeah, they're... They seem to be more... feeling like more challenged than ever to get their film out into the world is the biggest issue, you know. And not so much making the film. 2019, 2020, I started a collective called Distribution Advocates. We also have Substack. We were early Substack adopters. And we started because we saw filmmakers not focusing on audience because it's so, so hard to get a film made. And I think when we started talking about distribution, nobody wanted to hear about it. They're like, I'm making my film. I'm going to go to Sundance. I'm going to sell the film. That's someone else's problem. But very quickly in five years, conversations, think pieces. labs, all of that has popped up around distribution. And so I feel what you're saying in that it's the big issue of our industry right now. In terms of like the tone, the tenor of people that come on the show, mean, know, still in all, these are people that have made a film. They figured out some way of getting their film out, but the expectations have really kind of been lowered, you know, like ⁓ the current episode, which is a French-American documentary filmmaker named Anne Agion. Do you know this woman? Yeah. Sure. She made a personal documentary called Turbulence. And then she also is known for making these films in... ⁓ Africa and in one in Antarctica and and She's put them on this platform a couple of them anyway on a particular platform You know and that's kind of you know for her that that's this surprising because she didn't get into that many festivals and It's not getting into theaters ⁓ So she's just depends on your goals it depends on your goals, right, you know, ⁓ right how big an audience you can garner, right? If you spend $50 to make your film, then you can distribute it however you want. can put it on YouTube, right? YouTube has the biggest audience in the world. it's not that the audiences aren't there, and it's not that the good films aren't there. It's the stuff in between, right? This is just hypothetical. I wonder if the drawers and cabinets of unmade films are getting bigger and bigger with people like the more or it's just my focus on it, right? Because I was on a call with Carl and Tia ⁓ who just did the Amy Goodman documentary, Still the Story. And I mentioned my podcast and like, ⁓ we're going to be guests, you know, like everyone I talked to wants to be a guest. So ⁓ from doc filmmakers, scripted writers, directors, producers. There are stories and ⁓ yeah, do you have that? Is there any sense for you like that? It's people are struggling a little more with getting those great films mean? I mean, there are a lot of a lot of studio films have been, you know, made and never out there, right? Is it cat? Is it catwoman is the most one of the more recent examples? ⁓ yeah, catwoman for sure. Do you know the producer, Blair Briard? She came on our show. ⁓ She shot a whole ⁓ series. episodes. filmed it. They were halfway through editing. ⁓ The writer's strike happened. So they paused because she was still writing in the editorial process, essentially. So she made the, you know, brave decision to make a statement and say that she was doing this, she was pausing the work. The studio that was funding and the affiliated distributor, when as soon as the strike was over said, oh, sorry, we're going to just take the loss on this. So they shelved it and just took a loss. 10 episodes, shot around the world, shot in Argentina, shot in Iceland. my God. Yeah, based on underlying incredible IP. Yeah. So it's that that's we didn't think we would do. We thought, oh, it's just films that aren't made. But then the stories were super compelling around films that were made but not seen. We're like, oh, that counts. I'm just so impressed with how open and forthcoming and even, you know, looking at the humor. Obviously, it's a big part of your show's humor. There's a lot of laughing going on. because of just the ludicrousness of these experiences, ⁓ or the ideas maybe in some cases. Well, tragedy plus time equals comedy, right? That's right. Exactly. You I worked with Steven Soderbergh on a very tiny doc a while back, and I emailed him to see if he would be on the show because there was recently a whole article and a lot of press around something of his that did not get made. And he said, he felt that he would come across as bitter and he didn't want to come on the show. And I responded, Hey, Steven, tragedy plus time equals comedy. And he emailed me back and said, reach out to me again in, you know, 2031. It's a tiny part of the genesis of this show, which is people don't want to talk about their failures. Right. So when I was going through my closet and cleaning up and seeing all of these unmade projects, I felt embarrassed, right? I felt like I had let some people down, right? And, you know, when I read some of the emails, like coverage from Ted Hope and like 20 years ago, you know, it was funny, but you know, it did like I was grappling like, what do I do with this. so yeah, the whole publicity machine, you're supposed to talk about all those great things, you know, and publicists and festivals and ⁓ step and repeat. You only say like, things are going great. My next project's this it's already greenlit. Occasionally, you'll tell that hard story like you will have succeeded, right? I've succeeded. won Sundance, you'll say like, I used my credit cards, I was broke, it was so hard, but now I'm here. But what if you're not there? Why can't you still talk about it? So that was part of the conceit in a way. We need to talk about these things, normalize it. It's still part of me. These projects are still part of me. I had friendships gained from them, lessons learned. It's hard. It's hard to keep going. ⁓ you know, especially in the indie world, although I do wonder now, you know, and again, of course, I'm, I'm an optimist for technology. ⁓ You know, I do wonder if that feels like there are more tools available to. elevate people's or accelerate people's ideas in the, you know, what we call the indie film world. It's an open question. We're building stuff with the show ⁓ that would, I mean, a year ago, completely not possible. and even from December, not possible. Like that is the advance of what's happening. I have another question, Adam. What is your dream guest? The number one person who, if I... had to jump today and decide it would be Jim Jarmusch because he to me was the ultimate New York film, indie filmmaker. I've been able to kind of orbit but never land, you know, that he doesn't do podcasts as far as know. But I that, you know, if I could get a message to him, I'm like, hey, you know, I've been doing this thing for 15 years and I don't have a sponsor, you know, those dried up many years ago. And I just realized my effort and energy would be better spent on the show and the quality of the conversations then in trying to chase after a little bit of money here and there, you know. Cool. So that's that's a good dream. Yes, that's a great that's a great we're going to put it into the universe. One hundred percent. My dream guest is I was at a. John Waters. That's a good one. Yes. You haven't had him on. think has he made a film that he hasn't made rather? Yeah. Rumor has it. I'm on the among the only is a new one, right? But yeah, there's one there's some there's some stuff in the closet. Most of it's come out, but exactly. That's a joke. I know. Yes, it is. For those who haven't heard or don't already know ⁓ everything about you, where can people find you? I live in a small town. That's just to come by because I am a film wax radio. You can go to film wax radio dot com film wax dot com. Of course, you can find the show on your, you know, all the apps and ⁓ then we're, of course, on socials. I and the show are both on Instagram and Facebook. ⁓ yeah, so it's very easy to Google and find Film Wax, Film Wax Radio, Adam Shartoff. And you guys, please mention as well. Yes, everybody, filmwax.com, like, subscribe. ⁓ It's a living archive. Well, thank you again, Adam. I really appreciate taking the time. Thank you guys. I think I want all the success for this podcast. You know, it's great. It's terrific to have. And we want we want to get you to a thousand. Yeah. Well, it sounds like with you guys on my way. I can't let you down. So yeah, that's the spirit. All right. OK, thank you. You've been listening to Films Not Made, but if you want an even better experience, check us out on YouTube where you can see all the new materials, including the pitch deck and trailer. 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