Frame & Reference Podcast - EPISODE 150 SPECIAL w/ "Unsung Hero" DP Johnny Derango

Episode Date: July 11, 2024

Episode 150! What a journey it's been so far. To celebrate, I went to visit my friend and first guest of the pod Johnny Derango to be educated on some top-shelf bourbons and talk about his new film Unsung Hero. It's double the length of a normal episode and as such, double the fun! Enjoy! Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.frameandrefpod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for everything F&R ⁠⁠⁠You can now support Frame & Reference directly on Patreon!⁠⁠⁠ Frame & Reference is supported by Filmtools and ProVideo Coalition. Filmtools is the West Coast's leading supplier of film equipment. From cameras and lights to grip and expendables, Filmtools has you covered for all your film gear needs. Check out ⁠⁠Filmtools.com⁠⁠ for more. ProVideo Coalition is a top news and reviews site focusing on all things production and post. Check out ⁠⁠ProVideoCoalition.com⁠⁠ for the latest news coming out of the industry.

Hey there, just a little note before we get started. This is obviously the 150th episode of Frame and Reference. And as such, I had the very first guest on, Johnny Durango, to celebrate, and we recorded it in person. And he introduced me to a bunch of whiskey and bourbons and stuff. So we're doing kind of a celebratory bourbon tasting during this podcast. So there's a lot of bouncing between bourbon content and film content. um so if you hear like gaps where just no one's talking uh it's because we're tasting the bourbon if you watch the youtube version um then you'll see that but if you're just listening that's what

those gaps are um so yeah again it's it this is a celebratory episode it's it's a little bit different than the normal episodes um but i'm sure you're still going to enjoy it but it is certainly more freeform as we've got the uh you know the old bevies involved um um And so that's that. I just wanted to tell you that up front also. If you didn't know, we just started Patreon. So if you go to frame and refpod.com and click the Patreon button, you can support the podcast directly, where you can get episodes a week early.

I'll let you know who I'm about to interview before I do the interview. So you can ask questions that I can address when I'm doing the interview. And you get a sticker pack. Few little bonuses, but it's just a way if you feel compelled to contribute to help keep the podcast going for another 150 episodes. So anyway, that's it. I'll let you get to it. Here we go. Hello, and welcome to this, another episode of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan. You're listening to Episode 150 with Johnny Durango, DP of Unsung Hero.

Enjoy. All right. So let's grab, yeah, let's do that. That's only 50%, 50%. So it's a safer bet than that one, which is barrelproof, which is probably what, 126? What's that side? Uh, one. 106.

106.6. That's it? Apparently. That's not heavy. We'll go light because I don't know how much editing you're doing and I don't want us. Well, it doesn't matter because, again, celebratory podcast. Everyone just has to deal with what we want to do. There you go.

I don't know. Of course. But I also have an insane tolerance. And I started today with two margaritas. Oh, that's what I was doing before I came. All right, good. All right. So we're good on the, yeah, let's say we're good here.

Yeah. I'm in. You're in. Shoutout's apple. Awesome. All right. Cheers, Steve. She's just a 150.

Yep. Oh, incredible. So here's the thing. I told you this. I'm not necessarily a bourbon or a whiskey person. Okay. Normally because I feel like I'm only, you know, getting Jack Daniels or whatever, which it can be incredibly grading. Sure.

You know, I tend to like some, most gins or a sake, especially. big fan. That is very smooth and also not as hot. You know, a lot of high alcohol stuff get incredibly hot, but that doesn't have that. Well, this one's bottled and bond. So it's 50% alcohol. But what is bottled in bond? Bottle that bond is a whole, well, so we can get into the whole process. We can only get into it. But no, I do. That's why I asked. Yeah, yeah. So, well, then I'll take it back a step further because bourbon, by law, has to be 51% or more corn mash. So that means what it's made of the, the mash bill of it. It has to be 51% of more corn.

It can be rounded out with barley or rye. But bourbon has to be 51% or more corn. And then it has to be done in a first fill charred white oak barrel. So most of the scotch you drink, if you're drinking scotch, he's done in American bourbon barrels. Because they can only use it once before they have to get rid of it. And it, and it's the champagne rule where if it's scotch, it's made in Scotland. Scotch is made in Scotland. Correct.

Bourbon can be made anywhere. But Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey has to be done in, you know, a certain area. But the other thing is, like, it has to be done between a certain proof. It can't be over, it can't go into the barrel, I believe, over 160 proof and stuff like that. So it's very specific, pretty much. But it's very specific regulations. But I think that's a cool thing. And that's why I like whiskey so much because I feel like it's not dissimilar from

cinematography and filmmaking and the fact that it's a very specialized craft that people, People spend their entire life honing. And you can do it cheaply. And no one necessarily likes it when it's still. Yeah. No, it's interesting, though, because like this bottle right here, it's E.H. Taylor, single barrel. Which, you know, is a hard to find bottle. Okay.

But it's good, you know. The problem is people have caught on what's really good and what's allocated. And the prices have just gone through the world. It's like people derive the prices up to stupid stuff. But I thought this was a good one to get us going. Going into Toast to 1 in 50. Yeah. That's, I suppose, because we are recorded.

For people who don't know, it is weird to do it in person. It's the first time we've done it in person. And one thing I've noticed is the audience that listens fully separate from the audience that watches. Really? Yeah, two completely different audiences. So in full disclosure, I have never watched your podcast. Yeah, yeah. No, that's the thing.

Everyone picks one and that's like their thing. but it is weird to granted we're friends so it's a little easier but it's I have now built after four years a mechanism for which looking into a square is comfortable and it's like oh fuck now I got this so do you feel like we should be cross covering this

with each other not exactly size with table I was thinking about that too but yeah so for people listening or watching Johnny was the first first ever guest And at the time it wasn't, I'll have to find the footage of us talking about it, but at the time it wasn't going to be a podcast, it was just an interview. Right.

And we were like, wouldn't it be funny because we're neighbors, like if we film it and make it look like a remote or whatever. Yeah. And then immediately, I got emails from PR companies saying, hey, if you're going to start a podcast, we have all these guests. Really? That's what actually kicked it off was that article went up. Because at the first maybe five episodes, I did transcripts.

and then that shit took hours. I have time hours and hours. Isn't you getting a robot like AI to transcribe it at some point? No, no, no. That was for, um, so the first, I want to say the first five episodes. I actually did transcripts, but I would have to go in and edit them. Like even if it was an auto transcript, I had to go in and edit and to make them correct. Right.

And I'm not even kidding. It would take six hours. And for something I have not made a single penny on, not worth the time, right? So I abandoned that. You don't get just like a $25 poor, though. True. Yeah. And depending on how long we do this podcast for, you'll probably make an entire year's worth of.

Yeah. But, no, the thing you're talking about was I had this one, I won't name the company because I don't, they weren't incredible. But they were doing the description, like the show notes. Yeah. And the problem that I had with that was each episode, like the AI did. didn't do a good job of understanding the show. They treated it as if it were a one-off in any show. So they'd be,

every episode would be like, welcome to the exciting world of cinematography. And it's like, yes, it's a cinematography podcast. You don't have to do that. Yeah. And also,

I don't know how many people read show notes. So I just went back to like, now I just copy a bio, a little, you know, people just want to listen. That's also why I don't, that's why I abandoned the intro.

Oh. I don't do an intro anymore. Now I just go, this is episode 186, whatever, here's Steve Johnson, let's go. And then because like I've listened to other podcasts where the host just yaps for like 20 minutes up front. I'm like, I'm not here for you, dude. I want to get to the get. If it's like an interview podcast, you know, if it's about you, then of course. But yeah, interview podcast.

I'm like, stop, stop talking to me about. Yeah. But that certainly took. probably the first season is rough. How many episodes in the first season? 40. I think it's roughly 40 for each, and so we're in season four.

I subscribe and listen. Yeah. So in terms of, this is a bourbon. Yes, this is a bourbon. So 51% or more corn mash in the mash bill. Do you, and this is like one of the nicer ones. This is a nice bourbon. I mean, it's not blow.

blow the doors off. I mean it's probably if you pay secondary prices like this bottle should cost probably 80, 90 bucks. Secondary you wouldn't have two 300 bucks probably. Got it. Because like expensive booze for me has always been like Chartreuse. You know, for whatever reason. I was in France.

Chartreuse is free. They just give it to you for breakfast. They're like here you go off. And then you come here and it's like a hundred bucks a bottle. Yes. But yeah, by far one of the more well, I will tell you the problem with Chartreux. You're talking about the, the, like, elder flower liqueur made from, by monks, like green and yellow chartreuse? Yes, yes. I didn't know it was elder flower braced.

I think, maybe I'm wrong. Don't, don't quote me on that. Yeah, yeah. But it's made, it's made a very, a large amount of botanicals, I believe. So the issue is the monks have recently dialed way back the production. And that's where it originates. It's made by these monks. And so the price of it has gone, boom, through the roof.

So I don't know. even if you went back to France right now, I don't know what the price on it would be because it's gotten more expensive progressively. You know what I discovered. So we're going to bounce everywhere. Yeah, that's fine. But maple, very maple nose on this bourbon

that I'm thoroughly enjoying. And as it's warmed up, that like, that evaporative heat has kind of wained off and now it just kind of sits on the palate in a much nicer way that I very much enjoy. But, no, the other booze that I figured out that I've thoroughly enjoyed that I found in France

was Genopee I've never had Jonathan too so I wish I should have saved some I've been told that so the only reason I went

was the ski company I work with sent us because we have an arm out in France in Europe and so they were doing a trip in Valteran and they were like hey

we're going to do a spot check do you want to come and I was like yeah we're there for 14 days I basically lived there that's amazing in the French Alps it was fantastic but um jennepi is like a botanical almost I don't want to say syrupy but it's like um it's like flower it's like a specific flour it doesn't taste like anything else I've never had anything that tastes like but I literally just the other

day one of Danny's my girlfriend's friends showed up yeah and was interested in tasting it because he finished it well we did because I had about that much left didn't you know I was like Because he's in the Air Force, I think. And so he had had it in France, but he's like, oh, I haven't had this in like years. Nice. So we were like, bap, bap, and it's got, otherwise I would have saved it for you. But Genepe's a, if I end up going back this winter.

Yeah, let me know. Yeah. But no, what I appreciate, like I said, is just the craftsmanship that goes into it. It's so cool because every little thing makes a difference, you know, from how long it's in contact with the wood to where it's in the warehouse, you know? Right. makers mark that a brand that I'm not in general crazy about has had a couple offerings in the last couple of years that have been incredible like there was one called FAE01 which is one of the best whiskeys I've ever had I think I put away like four bottles of it because it's it was a one year offering and that stood for fatty ester acids and that was sort of about the mouth feel and it was really amazing and then the following year they did one called BRT1 BRT2 and that stood for barrel rotation so it was about where the barrel was placed in the warehouse. So you have the barrels that are up high, which fluctuate

in temperature more because you get base heat from the heat rising. And then when it gets cold, it contracts. And so you would think that you have more contact with the wood that you're going to get an oak ear profile, more flavors. And then they had the one that was at the bottom where it would be more temperate, where it would stay, you know, more even. And the fascinating thing was, I preferred the BRT, too, which was the one that was at the bottom of the warehouse. And it was really interesting to taste them side by side. So it's really cool, like, just the little nuances and the little things that can change the entire profile of a whiskey. So as someone who's, I mean, obviously you've had tons of whiskeys for as long as I've known

you've had, you know, hundreds of bottles. How do you avoid, like, mouth blindness? Because to me, like, as an uneducated palate, a lot of them, that certainly tastes different, but I certainly couldn't tell you what that tastes like or better or worse. My only, like I was telling you, my only experience with good. Good whiskey, so to speak, is Bland's. Sure. And only because John Wick drinks and I went, oh, yeah, I'll find that, you know.

That's amazing. I did not know until the other day that you said that that's why you knew Blant is. No, John Wig. And I'm sure, I guarantee you there's like a hundred other nerds out there. It's the same thing, same thing, which is right here. Yeah, I've got three. I think I have four of these little horsies. I'm almost built out.

Nice. I've had a full set of eight, all of them in, on open bottles. And I traded them all away. Oh, damn. I traded them for other things. things. Like, I'm a big, so it's interesting. When I got into whiskey, it wasn't bourbon. It was scotch. Okay. So, and this is a cool story. So maybe, maybe this is actually more interesting than anything else I'm going to say. But the way I got into whiskey was sort of backwards. So a friend

of mine had just partnered with another producer. He was starting a production company. That producer had just done a movie in Boston with Morgan Freeman, Bill Macy, Christopher Walken, and none of them could make it to the premiere that they were doing at the museum that they shot in.

So I say, hey man, any chance you can just help us out and go to Bill Macy's house and shoot like a little intro piece him intro in the movie to the crowd, the people who were there,

the people who made the movie. I'm like, man, I'll go hang out with Bill Macy and shoot something in the backyard. So I went with the producer. We had a nice little interview. We got to walk around the property

and see Bill Macy's house. And then at the end of the day, he goes, man, you know, I know we didn't have anything to pay you. But he's like, what's your drink of choice? You know, are you like a scotch, bourbon tequila guy? In the moment, my brain short circle, I go, scotch. I don't know why I said scotch. Not a beginner. No.

And so, cool. Like two weeks later, the guy shows up and he's got a bottle of Glenn Kinshi 10 or 12 year. I can't remember what I was. I think it was Glenn Kinchie 12 year. And Glenn Kinchie is a lowland distillery in Scotland. And there's only a handful of lowland distillery. So I'm like, I think this is like a $100 bottle. And I had never had an expensive bottle

of booze in my life. So I was so excited. I called my neighbor who like, I didn't know this but my neighbor down the hallway I had seen him somewhere before. And then later on I placed that he worked at wooden nickel. We live in West Los Angeles, which is nowhere near wooden nickel. So I became friends with him when I figured out who he wasn't. I was like, dude, I'm like Matt, I got a bottle

of whiskey. It's like $100. You want to come over and try it? And so he came over when we drank it. And it was really good, right? And so then the next time I was at the grocery store, I bought a bottle of like, um, uh, Glenn, Glenn, Thetic. No. Yeah, Glenn Siddick. I bought, like, a bottle of Glenn Fennick. And then the next time was our bottle, like, a bottle of Glenn Livitt. And I was like, wait a second, these all tastes different. Like, this is not like, I thought it was all going to taste like Jack Daniels. I was like, oh, there's a reason why people buy different bottles. So that is how I got into whiskey. It was shooting a little intropea. It was shooting a little intropea.

at Bill Macy's house and a producer giving me a bottle of whiskey and then I realized it all tasted different and then I went to Chicago to film a pilot for Tommy Shlami

who created or show ran the West Wing and stuff like that and we shot in a whiskey bar in Chicago that's no longer there called the Fountainhead but when we wrapped

I hung out at the bar and talked to the bartender and I tasted all this other stuff and I tasted this bottle of it was not McAllen it was oh by the way i love this little uh the delmore mackenzie i still have the empty bottle and i hold on to this um delmer mackenzie was a one-off and at the time when i purchased it it was

a hundred and thirty dollars it was the most expensive bottle of whiskey that i've ever purchased but i had tasted it in the bar and it was just phenomenal and so i purchased it i just recently looked up that bottle now is worth well over twelve to fifteen hundred dollars on open i'm like Albae. Yeah, well, you buy your boots like, whatever. But yeah,

and you do a wine searcher. But there's stuff that I purchased over the years that I just haven't opened or put away. And the value was just like skyrocketed. Yeah. Yeah.

The thing for me that's always been fascinating is like, because I remember when I started bartending in Arizona years ago, it was right around the time that the IPA boom hit. Sure. And simultaneously there was

bourbon becoming incredibly popular. Yep. And ship Moscow mules. Sure. And so everyone stopped carrying the copper

because everyone kept stealing it. Right. But it was when you had a lead beer driver's license in certain places to get a mug. Everywhere, yeah. And so I just instinctively hooked on to the IPA thing

because I've always been a beer fan but I brewed it when I was in high school, you know, me and my friends. Really? Yeah. I grew up in Napa Valley. So, you know, the idea of brewing beer was not like our parents weren't like

because you know I lived on a vineyard you know it wasn't a not person like it wasn't our vineyard but the entirety of St. Alina is vineyards okay you know so your backyard just happened to be good and also the library was in that vineyard like that's how that's crazy

yeah it's silly but but I feel like I could always taste the difference between various beers but again that's an educated pallet thing uh nowadays all IPAs tastes the same to me.

Interesting. I've like completely lost that. So you're talking about the mouth blindness that you're talking about. Yeah. And I get it

because there's a lot of times where two, three, and I don't drink whiskey like excessively. I'll drink an ounce or to a night or every other night or just because I enjoy it

and I enjoy the differences between them. And that's like some nights I come home and I want something that's super peaty. You know, I want that smoke. I've never been a Pete guy.

If you can turn me on to Pete, I would be, be fascinating. I will find you something here. Like I just bought this. Overall, I've never been a huge another day. And this is Glen Scotia. And Glen Scotia is a Campbell town, which is another

region in Scotland. Okay. And there was a bottle that I bought when I came back from Fat Man. So right after our last podcast. Yeah. It was a Glen Scotia. And there's a festival on Iola, which is the island off of Scotland every year in May. And they do special festival bottlings. So they had one that was a glenskosha finished in rum barrels oh i do love rum and i purchased it and i will tell

you it was one of the most beautiful whiskeys i've ever had i drank through that bottle so quick and it's it was irreplaceable because it was a one off once a year one time in one year offering but the other day i was down in um newport beach and i have to run across high times liquors and i found a new glenskosha double cask which is finished in rum barrels so i purchased it it's not not as good, but it's still a nice jumping off spot for something that's got some peat in it and has a little bit of the sweetness. Like, my favorite thing is when you find a peated whiskey that's finished in like Pedro and a sherry or a pork or something. So you get the delicate sweetness along with a smoke. And if you can find that balance, it's really nice.

You know what? I'm going to pour you a little bit of this. And you say you don't like smoky. Yeah. This has a little, it's not heavy in the peat, but there's enough there to let you know. sure and well and also something that uh i appreciate that something that um i i'm on the opposite side with is like i actually love mescal and i'm not a tequila guy i i'm in the same camp with you i do not love tequila but i love mescal yeah but oh but the problem with mescal is the cheap ones

taste horrific but then you can get like a one called like mal bn that i really like that my friend was uh worked for the distributor for like you know so that That's maybe I'm going to get a band from the Mezcal subreddit for mentioning that I probably should have got us with Malibian clean glasses because that, that, uh, that, uh, ooh, okay. Oh, is, I'm still getting that. And you're still getting a little bit of the maple. Yeah. It's from the other one. Just give it a swirl and it'll dissipate after a while. But you'll start to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The scotch. Now, scotch is different than, than bourbon because scotch is made of 100% barley, malted barley. And malted barley is a very different profile. But see, that doesn't taste. That doesn't taste is peaty. Like when I, like I said, it's a very, it's a very light peat. Yes, I very much enjoy this. It's nice, right? I mean, you can get the smoke on the nose when you, but also the sweetness. It also has sweetness. It also has sweetness and that's from the rum. Well, and I was going to say that sherry, but yeah, rum totally makes sense.

Sorry, you were you were saying to another one. No, I was just saying that this one is one of those. ones where I find that it definitely you'll feel that smoke lingering on the palate like yeah like it has a sweetness up front from the rum but you definitely have like towards the back of your tongue yeah get that lingering smoke

yeah it's it again this whole thing was just going to be an education movie because I don't drink a lot of rum or sorry whiskey but also I'm frustrated with all of these various wine companies, beer companies, whatever, always going, you know what? We rested these in bourbon barrels. Everything tastes to be a bourbon barrel age and it's not

bourbon. But it's never good. Like these tastes great. If that flavor was imbued in something, sure, wonderful. But it's always like the cheapest possible one they could get. You know what's a really interesting one? Because I used to drink it and I used to love it. I don't know if you ever had Kentucky bourbon barrel ale. That one to me had, yeah. And I drank it when I was in Ohio and for the longest time you couldn't get it out here. I'm not sure if you can, but I really liked it because it had those flavors of bourbon. You know, it had that oakiness. Yeah. So is that kind of the main tent pole flavor of bourbon is oak? Not necessarily. I mean, you get, so personally, bourbon is like third down the line for me. Oh, I'm single malt scy.

It's my favorite. Okay. Then rye. And you talk to a lot of people, and rye is less of a transition grain-wise to corn. Like you have your barley, you have your rye, and you have your corn. Corn is inherently sweet. So all your bourbons are going to be sweet.

That bottle right there that's sitting there, I don't think it's on camera. You can pull it in here. But this is a mictors barrel-proof rye. Mictors, now I was blessed to shoot two movies in Kentucky in 2022. too and it was just down the street from mictors and mictors became one of my favorite spots to go first of all lovely lovely people at mictors uh my friends brian and jaclin who live there um who worked there wonderful people but this mictor's barrel strength i think is really special you'll talk to a lot of people it's hard to find there was one day that i walked into a

whole foods in palm springs and they had three bottles on the shelf now it was was $90 or $99 at the time, so I only bought one. Had I known how hard it was to find, I would have bought all three bottles and felt like I've won the lottery. So I don't know if you do this ever, but I have a, there's a lot of things about me that I'm like, I should probably get tested for something, some version of the spectrum or whatever. Sure. Backups.

I am, I have a natural aversion to not having backups. so if I see something that I like I always buy two and this comes down to like cereal if there's like a and I know there's going to be whatever cocoa pumps I know they're going to exist but I got to get two you know I get two

potato chips I always get two because I'm going to finish one maybe I need another one if I saw something that I like I hadn't seen in a while I literally just today bought four field notes packs of the Ansel Adams U.S. Post Office edition Really?

It's so obscure that I was like, no one else will, no one will ever have this. I need four. So this is a lesson I learned in not having things that you can't get anymore. Like a bottle, certain bottles of whiskey. Like I said, this one I bought one because the price point was fairly expensive. Yeah. And I have three now. We got two bags now.

Okay, okay, okay. Because I realize the air of my ways. Also, we're in an industry where I don't always know where my next job is coming from. So sometimes to buy three bottles at one. once, you might want to be, might want to be responsible, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and I have the most amazing wife on the planet because I've never been questioned once, you know, I pay my bills, I take care of stuff, but yeah, yeah, yeah, do you know, do you know, do you know, do you know, he's a very good whiskey buddy of mine, Greg? Oh, really? Yeah, he does a lot of commercials, but we,

I picked up a bottle of, um, E.H. Taylor, barrelproof for him the other day. And that sucker was like 300 bucks yeah so i try not to get into that territory unless it's something that i'm really really passionate about that's not something i was gonna you know well luckily for me everything i collect is affordable okay blue rays nice you know decks of cards speaking of blu-rays uh i think may 28th uh red red hand comes out on blu-ray there you go there you go i see i got i got plug that that's one of one of the four movies i have coming out this year yeah yeah that's well uh i remember when uh fat man came out i got the screener I don't know if you gave me the screener.

I think that was probably the screener was probably sent to you by Saban. Yes. Yeah, that's the only time I've ever contacted Saban and I was like, the Power Rangers people? It's fascinating, right? They've crafted quite the business. Yeah.

But this one, so yeah, let me show this mixture with you. Yeah, so we're talking about it. In a glass that says Pappy. So, yes. But shooting two movies in Kentucky, it's a miracle that I came back alive because that is where you get the back. Best bourbon, best rye in the United States.

And, yeah, Mitcher says, well, that is awesome. So, so what I was going to say was the, the need to get backups. Yep. Only applies to me when it, not always, but only applies for things that I use. So food, drink. Sure. But certainly, like, even those two microphones we were going to use, like, I got a second one because I was like, well, they're inexpensive and what if I need a second one, you know?

But I think it, it, whatever. part of my brain wants to collect Blu-rays and stuff, I think is the same, like, at the end of the day, for instance, Singani 63. Have you ever had that? No. Stephen Soderberg's brandy. Okay. It's great. I got signed bottles. I'll give you. A bunch of

samples. I will take you up on that. Yeah, yeah. But I have one that the other day, I was like, ah, I want to make, I want to make someone a Singani drink, but the only bottle I have had left at the time was the one. Again, I have multiple signed bottles. Right. This is not like, you can still buy them

online right now. Okay. If you want, you get some sign bottles. It's like a, I think he signed like a thousand. Nice. But I didn't want to take the one off my bookshelf because I was like,

but that's, that's my sign. That's my special one. Yeah. So I always end up having to buy two. So the same thing. I would like, even, you know,

if that was like my favorite whiskey, I'd be like, well, I can't open that one. You get another one. Yeah. I understand. Oh, you know,

it has to be display of whatever reason. And then there's me who, I don't know if that photo, it might be out of friend. No, that white photo right there. Mirangi Alanta. I remember when you took that photo, you sent me that photo and you're like, look, because you did that with the, uh, swinging, uh, it's probably a lens. And yeah, I used probably used aperture lighting. You bought like a bunch of MCs or something. Yeah, like, go go to go there with the MCs. Yeah. But I did a tilt ship lens that I think was a lens baby. Sure. And that Glenn Marangiaealanta, this is how long I've been collecting whiskey was a 2013 private edition. So 11 years ago. Still to this day, the best whiskey I have ever had my entire life. I have two bottles. I've one on an open here. and I have one in my secret stash in Illinois. I have...

Oh, because for a split second, I went, why? You're from Chicago this one. I'm from Chicago originally, but shout out to who did I just interview that you... Veronica. Veronica, yeah, shout out to Veronica. Yeah, shout to Chicago. I love that your interview with Veronica was derailed by bringing me off. Yeah.

You got so off track. It was amazing. But this one right here is a rye, and there's going to be a... Rye is a much spicier grain. so you're going to get you know a lot of times with rye you'll get notes first and foremost of rye the grain itself but you'll also get sometimes you'll get dill sometimes you'll get mint sometimes you'll get like anus yeah and i'm a big fan of anus you know like even just down to straight up absinth or whatever like very much i has it i have a bottle of absinth finished rye down there from peerless distillery that i got in kentucky it turned out a woman who worked on our movie found out that I had gone to the Peerless Distillery while I was in Kentucky

I was like, how do you know I was at the Peerless Distillery? Well, I'd been talking to somebody in the distillery about my TV I executive producer and have a TV show that ran on Hulu and Paramount Plus and is now on Apple TV and Google, not Google, Apple TV and Amazon Prime.

And it's called Everyone's doing great. There you go. Yeah. And I was talking to a woman who works in the gift show shop and she actually hadn't everyone who's doing great t-shirt on and she had actually donated to our indiegogo when we were crowdfunding in the beginning so we had this amazing conversation so she must have told someone the distillery owner's son is a director well he found out that i was there and told her because she's his sister-in-law so i get back to the set and she knew that

i'd been at the peerless distillery and uh it was amazing i was like i was looking for something special. And one of the most incredible things that has ever happened to me in that sort of situation, he hand-filled a bottle for me and gave it to her to guilt to me of this absent finished peerless. Oh, wow. Yeah. And it's, it's fantastic. And peerless is just an amazing distillery in general. It was that the show that my friend Kelly was the makeup artist on. She was the makeup artist on everyone. It was doing great. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Kelly and JP are actually getting married and they just sent me a, who saved the date? Okay. And it was like this cute little like postcard like it was like oh and greetings from rome and i was like oh is it

going to be like italian themed or whatever and i flipped it up no they're getting married in rome i was like oh you bastards like and two of both danny and my barber both go like oh it's because they don't want people to go and i was like a hundred percent like you're trying to weed out the people and which makes me want to go harder right so i went my sister-in-brother-law i got married in italy yeah and i had been dating my wife for five months and i went with her to the wedding in Italy and it was it was amazing yeah but i went i went to roman i don't think they were trying to weed my my wife out probably twin sister no trying anyway we'll get you on the uh the you get you come to us yeah yeah you come with me and danny i like that to to kelly's wedding and she's going to

turn around and be like oh anyway so this one so so so rye it's going to be a spicier grain it's it's definitely peppery yeah and uh i prefer rye like i said i think it's a more natural transition from single malt scotch to rye than it is to bourbon now when you say single malt because i'm an idiot what what malt's it's it's one single grain from one single harvest once so there are like double malt triple malt there there's blends okay okay yeah so it's it's one single got it so it's single malt or blend can be yeah all right yeah yeah these um this one definitely hit in like the top top palette, I suppose. But it's a whole different experience.

See, okay, here's the problem. Every whiskey derivative that I've had clearly sucks. Yeah. Because all the, yeah, I like, and I have said for years that I'm not a whiskey person except for like your blantins or whatever. But like even, Rye specifically. Like, it went into reverse order

of what you said like hate Pete the most Okay Rye I hate the second most and then normal whiskey or bourbon is okay and the regular whiskey usually tastes like rubbing alcohol

But if you're worth three for three with you Yo 100% I would say We should do a little Yeah a little All the thing you can Here we'll put them in front here And then you can

Of these three Because I think these are Three fine whiskeys In my opinion I would say I'm gonna I'm going to go one, two, three. However, this one, so I should, I should, for the listeners, the Colonel Taylor, single barrel, number one, the one we just had, the rye.

The mictors, the mictors, single barrel, number two, and then the one that was in the rum casks, the glenskosha, number three. However, I would probably end up drinking the glenskosia more. It's the lightest of the fling. It's more drink by far. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas these things, I mean, even just having, the, especially with the, what did we, what did we just say this was? The victors.

Mictors fills your palate in a way that is very agreeable, you know, because like, I'm a big, like, you know, I'll drink a high life. You can slam 15 high lives and you're good to go. Yep. That definitely fits your, that makes sense when people talk about sipping whiskeys. Because every time I've heard of sipping whiskey, it's always like, okay, I could drink that. But that sits with you in a way that you're able to actually enjoy that experience for longer than just it makes sense why people would drink that and maybe have a cigar, although I imagine a cigar would kind of jack up the palate. Well, a cigar pairs really well with a pitted whiskey. And now let's talk about pete.

A lot of people don't know what pete is. Here we should. So we can move this outside. There you go. So, sorry microphones. Scotch is made from barley. and the way they do it they the traditional way was a floor malt so they spread the the barley out on a floor and they water it and as soon as the barley starts to get green sprout they need to immediately dry it out and then they grind it up they mash it up and that's what they make the beer from that is distilled do you know why they wait like that's such a weird thing to like you have to get the grain to sprout but why not let it continue do not know that's that's outside my my knowledge i just know the process so they would do traditional floor malt or it's like spread out on a screen, it's watered, it sprouts.

So you're talking about hundreds of years ago. You didn't have commercial electric dryers. So what's plentiful on Isla off of Scotland? What's plentiful in Scotland? Peat, which is just decomposing matter. So they would dig giant blocks of peat out from near, you know, the rivers, the locks, and they would burn it. So that peat burning, that smoke is then sucked into the barley as it dries. Got it.

It's not like it's something in the wood. It's not something they're adding. It's literally the way that they dried out the barley. Got it. Because I always assumed like an idiot that they were like dripping the whiskey through the peat or something. Like it was a filter off. Which is not stupid. But it's literally the way that they dried out the barley.

Okay. Fast. And so when you grind it up and you mash it and you make it into the beer, which is then fermented. it's it's soaked in that smoke the middle step is called beer yeah or is it beer no no it's called beer oh it's just called yeah okay that's the distilet that they then distill which goes up through the column or however the distill is made you know and then back in condensed were there any other uh liquors that you ever got into or was it always once you started once it started into whiskey it's mostly whiskey you know i'll i'll try a mess

hell here and there. And, you know, I'll have a gin here and there. But there's nothing that hits my palate like whiskey. There's just something special about it. And every time I good stuff, again, like, it's so easy to find. The same thing's true with like, vodka's dog shit. But like, my intro into spirits has always been hospitality based. Okay.

You know, being a bartender, bar owner, whatever. And so I've never had like a specific. oh goodness, you know, this is my jam. It's always been a far more holistic thing. But also that means that I don't necessarily know enough about any one thing to speak with intelligence. So I feel like whiskey and tequila especially, there are so many bad bottles out there that it's annoying that you have to get to that price point to like taste something. Because that is transformative. I mean, like, I've never had a ride that I enjoy.

Okay. And that's like, that's a special right. Actually really good. But there's a lot of riots that are, this 1776 right here is probably a sub-40 bottle. Okay. And I bought it to make cocktails with that. Old old. That should be part of this episode.

Affordable, excellent. Oh, I can pull out five bottles before the end of this that I think are excellent that are sub-50. Perfect. All right. So here we go. So this is so I largely make. Manhattan's with this. And a Manhattan for anybody who doesn't know is basically just rye or bourbon, sweet vermouth, and bitters. So three ingredients. How do you feel about a paper

plain? I'm not really familiar with a paper pane. I know I've had one. Bourbon, Amaro, Apparel. Okay. All right. Lovely. Interesting. I love Amarro's too. Got it. That's, you know, you put the... I also enjoy Black Manhattan's. Beware out of Black Manette? No. It's just... That's the guy from the new Watchman show. Is it? No, that was...

I'm so proud of myself for pulling that joke together. I have not seen the... Dr. Manhattan in the... In the Watchman television show is played by a Black Man. Okay. That was my joke.

His name, he has a really cool name. I can't remember it. It's long and involved. So I'll be honest. The Watchman TV series had no appeal for me. because Larry Fong didn't shoot it. That's right.

Larry Fong had shot it. I would have watched it. I would have been there immediately. No, I just never get around it. I've heard it's fantastic. But Larry should have shot it. Yeah. I'm sure Larry was busy.

Larry probably. Larry should have shot everything. Luckily, he doesn't listen to this podcast. Not at all. So we can't pick on him. We can see wherever we want. But yeah, a Manhattan, a black Manhattan replaces the sweet burmuth with,

tomorrow. Oh, yeah. Okay. See, that's my jam. Maybe I'll make you one before you leave. Yes, I would love that. So once we get through the podcast.

Yeah, once we start this podcast, we're going to get ripping. Anyway, so the 1776 is that what? 1776, yeah. And James E. Pepper. James E. Pepper. Pour yourself a little tiny taste of it because I don't want to lie to the audience.

I don't want your fans, your whole 3,000 subscribers. You know, it might be a little more than that. What I, again, the two. audiences are separate. One thing I have noticed though is the majority of the people this podcast audience as far as I can tell is quality over quantity. As far as I can tell the people who listen to it are also the people who eventually end up on it. How interesting? Because I used to ask like have you heard this and then most people said no. Okay. And then

now not more often not but pretty often like 60, 40, 50, 50, 50. Someone will be like, oh, yeah, you had my friend on and I listened to that. And then I, and then I binged it because nice, I'm just happy whatever I'm doing is working. I don't want to think about it too much because

I feel like I don't want to be two of them. To what? You'll need two. You'll need a backup podcast. Yes. Where it's just me talking. I think the goal is it's clear that we've tasted three whiskeys at this point. Yeah. Well, and again, I started, my my lunch turned into a

hanging out with I love our neighborhood so much unfortunately I have let it slip and mentioned where we live not specifically but like generally but I don't care I love this neighborhood so much I never want to leave

I've been here since 2007 damn yeah not in this building I've been in this building for 11 years yeah because I oh then that would have been right when I moved I've been in this area for since 2007 yeah it's the best part part of L.A., because I think we just get

enough beach city vibe, but also not the, like, foot traffic. You know, all the restaurants here are fucking dope. Like, yeah, it's the best. I mean, we, we live in the third homeless encampment on the left. Me and Danny call them the neighbors.

Because, to be fair, they don't do anything. Like, you know, it's not, unless you get a metro, they stab you. Not our, not our neighbors. They stab They stab people at 7th Street. They wait until you get on the red line before... Well, go down towards Santa Monica.

Have there been problems? The Third Street promenade's a... Oh, yeah, the promenade's a nightmare. Yeah. It's a ghost town. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Santa Monica has to deal with their own problems. But...

Back to whiskey and cinnamon cinnamon sauce. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so the 1776. 1776, James E. Pepper. So we get... So when I say maple, I feel like I've felt that smelly, that top in everything. Okay.

So what is that more likely to be? Is that just the smell of whiskey that I'm, is that I'm just misinterpreting it to be maybe. I don't care. Oh, I am getting a bit of hairspray. Not in a negative way. A hairspray. Interesting, okay, all right.

Like a, like a, it's sharper. I also realize I have a different whiskey in my glass. Oh, yeah. You don't want to have. I'm not able to break that one down for you. Okay, so definitely I want to say, like, yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if it's thinner.

You're talking about a, let's a bottle of 50% of 50, ABB. I'm definitely getting the traditional kind of whiskey alcohol heat. Okay. Um, flavor profile is good, but definitely, I, I'm still kind of bowled over by the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, uh, the, the, the, the, uh, the, the, the, uh, the, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, this was, uh, this was, this is, uh, this is me and, uh, larry both saying, like, uh, uh, we're just here for the education. Yeah. Like, I, actually, you know, we, we, we, we, will dovetail briefly. Um, um, is there, is there, is there something we can just sip on while we chat? Well, sure. I'll say you that's something. Yeah, just something to, but I did want to know because you were in episode one. Yeah.

Anyone who has listened relatively knows what I've been up to. Sure. Because I have a big mouth. But in the past four years, how has your career progressed? Yeah, it's been a pretty incredible run. Like I said, in 2022, I did two movies back to back. And then 2023, I shot a movie, two movies actually in 2023. So I've done four movies in the last two years.

And the first one was an Orlando Blue Mandi McDowell movie called Red Right Hand. It's a super violent dark thriller that checks all the boxes if that's your thing, you know? And you've shot action film. I shot a lot of action. It's the Nelms brothers who are some of the most talented directors that I've worked with. And it's just a fun down and dirty thriller. Yeah. Right.

After that, I moved on and did what I would call my first face. based film, a film called Unsung Hero, which is probably the most beautiful and I would say special movie that I've ever made, special to me because it's, it's very different and it shares a hopefulness. Yeah. Like, it's just a beautiful movie. It opened it number two at the box office. Saw that.

Three weeks ago. I was there. Thank you. I appreciate that. I sent you the photo of the, I was in the theater. So we're over 20 million on that. And it's just a really great story. And we can dig in a little bit later on that.

but I'm just really proud of the work that I did on that, that movie in particular. It looks great. Also, I remember you calling that shot. I remember however many years ago, was two, three years ago, you would text to me, we were talking about something and you were like,

I think I kind of want to get into more faith-based films. And I was like, oh, hell yeah, dog. And then, and then shot your shot. Like, and didn't even start with like a whoopsie. Like, it's like a good, it's good film. Yeah. Overall. It's a beautiful family drama.

In a true story about the Smallbone family, and they lived in Australia. Their father was David Smallbone was a concert promoter. He did live music. He had a lot of success. And he took on an Amy Grant tour in a recession hits Australia and wiped him out. He lost a half a million dollars. And at the time was like finding this was like 1992, 191, 1992. And very prayerfully, they're a very strong.

faith-filled family and they made a decision to come to the United States and help start a record label. And they got here and he lost his job. Yeah. And there was no job waiting for him and they were in a house that had no furniture and nothing. And the community really rallied around them and lifted them up. And so it's a really inspiring story. The daughter went on to become a major Christian recording artist in the early 1990s and two of the brothers, Joel and Luke became probably the biggest band in Christian music right now for king and country. So it's just an inspiring story and it's something I'm really proud of. And, you know, it's probably to date, I feel like my most mature work. It's, sure, it's a small story, but it doesn't feel small. No. And as someone who grew up incredibly in the like, we were

non-denominational. You know, that whole community grew up in it. I, I am not religious. just now, but watching it, I was able to, you know, tie those two worlds together. And I appreciated how, um, universal it is. You know, because I like we were saying earlier, uh, off camera, you know, where I was saying like, oh, it is, there are moments that are pretty much like, here they are praying. And it's, it's shown with more reverence than I think an average film. Sure. Um, but, uh, it's certainly a, uh, film in which you could watch it as, as not being a religious person. Like you can still get the emotional beats and it still hits

like that. The one thing that you just mentioned, the reason I started smiling. Because I definitely wrote it down here. I wrote no furniture. Yes lamps. They walk, it's my favorite moment in the movie. They walk into this empty

house and they're like, oh, we got to build beds out of cardboard or whatever. And then suddenly there's lamps. and they're in every corner oh what a cinematographer's dream they're just so having to leave the lamps in the house like walking into a house with zero lights would have better problems

so yeah when they walk in there's this amazing shot where they flip on the lights and there's one lamp on a folding chair in the living room and that's all the furniture and that's all the lighting there is and it's just a really cool shot because Helen who's the mother and the family who the movie's called the Unsung Hero

and she really is the unsung hero. But there's this amazing shot where we're with the whole family behind them looking into the room and she steps forward by herself and the camera just sort of pushes past the rest of family, isolating her in the room by herself. And we turn around, we do the reverse, we push towards her. But it's this awesome moment where she's leading. She's stepping out by herself in front of everyone and she's going to hold it together at all costs. And then you see in the very next scene, she's in the bedroom with the kids,

making these adventure beds, which they took their clothes out of the suitcase. laid the clothes on the ground and put the sheets around the clothes to make makeshift beds. You do really centralize her in a way that you would assume it's about, this is also how I knew that the dude was a good actor

is because I started to hate that fucking guy. And I was like, oh, wait, hold on. It's because the dad's conflicted. You know, there's a lot, there's a lot on that man's plate in this moment. But you do really centralize the mom in a way that, it was just it was just interesting in the in the context of the film like how we always kind of

seem to pull aside to to check on mom see what she's doing sure you know yeah I mean she's she's the lynch bin she's the anchor of that family and to your point Joel who directed the movie he plays his and plays his own dad father in the movie which is really sort of like they talk about there's their cinematic universe right like they're you see the real family members appear throughout the movies. I was going to ask that. So at the end and the credits, when they show,

you put all the family members in the film. Like the stewardess, the air stewardess. Yeah. So that's where Back to St. Jane. Yeah. Play is the flight attendant

on the flight from Australia, the Qantas flight attendant in Australia, the United States. So that was all then. At the end when you're showing the, okay, cool. Yeah, each and everyone is featured

except for Ben, who is the filmmaker of the family, which is interesting. Now, I can say, without a doubt, Joel and Luke are the filmmakers as well. And they're all filmmakers at this point because for his first film out of the gates, for Joel and supported strongly by Richie Ramsey, who had directed three other movies before this. So they co-directed Richie, Ramsey, and Joel Small Mode co-directed the movie.

But for his first film out of the gate, I feel like Joel hit a home run. I mean, he stars in the movie. He directs it. He plays his own father. It's just a lot to carry. Well, and also to play your father as a not necessarily agreeable person. Like, I assume he loves his dad. Yeah.

But to play him as a real man, you know, because, like, it's, it would be so easy to show all your favorite parts of your dad. Yeah. And to show when he wasn't at his best. And to have to, um, uh, physicalize that. Right. You know, it, uh, I give a lot of props to him for, for doing that work. Because he does a great job. I had no idea until I was a happening on IMDB and I was like oh my god this was like this was like an indie film almost with how many family friends are involved right um but yeah he did he did a great job uh well and I think that's part of personifying is that the really cool part about the movie and showing the Christian faith sort of unfiltered where it's it's not about always being perfect there's failure and it's about overcoming the failure and the forgiveness like there's there's a scene where

he goes to his family basically on bended knee and needs to be forgiven because his pride got in the way. I mean, like, it's a real thing. Like, he lashes out at two of the most amazing people who have done nothing but supported him, but because his ego as a man is bruised and feels like he did not deliver on a promise he made to his wife. Yeah. Which is what's really cool. Like, it's warts and all. Well, and one thing actually, it was a small mode. I don't even know if you guys, necessarily intended this to be like such a thing but one thing as again someone who is not religious anymore that I appreciated was when the kids came out for talking about Santa yeah and they're like let's pray about it and dad goes that's not how this works I think

that was an excellent window into what faith is sure there there is I think the Christians who don't try to take away other people's rights, you know, look at life and go, okay, there is a element of, I don't want to say reality, because not to say that religion is unreality, but reason that it's difficult to explain to kids. Like, oh, no, God does not grant wishes. Right. He's not a genius. Yeah. But that's how you are taught when you're in Sunday school or whatever, it is kind of this, like, magical wizardry element. And just that little brief moment, I was like, that is a great little moment in the film that does, as you're saying, like, kind of warts and all show a religious family.

But you see at the same time, by holding to their faith in the end, ultimately, they stuck to their guns and, like, we actually cut back the amount of miracles that happened in a real life, because we were to the tipping point where already people are like, nah, that's exactly that happened. It seems fake. And we cut back the miracles that happened to these people, you know? But like I said, they're faith filled. They

never lost you know, sight of what was important to them and what they believed in and they've been rewarded tenfold. Yeah. Well, and it's, I mean, you have a big ass family like that. Like, getting everyone on four. Seven kids. I think my, you know,

I was just watching who was it Colbert Okay Anya Taylor Joy Yeah Is number 11 Come on

And he's Seven I think He comes from a big Catholic man Yeah big ass Catholic I mean she's Argentinian So I imagine Okay Also probably Catholic Catholic Catholic

My dad They were Protestant My dad's like number eight I think I don't think People aren't doing families Like that anymore No

But the weird thing is everyone picked their own path you know my dad's family kind of like went everywhere but like

you know it used to be everyone made a big ass family to have a farm sure and in their case in the small bone

case it was they ended up all in getting to music somehow which it didn't start and I think part of that is just the family

structure and sticking together and loving each other and supporting each other you know you got a brother who became the lighting designer

You got a brother who filmed everything. You got a brother became a stage manager and the two brothers became the backup singer. It's the built-in indie film crew. It is. Like literally, and that's what it is. And I think there's something beautiful about telling a story about family

and a traditional family structure where so much of what you see today is not about that. And it just lifts family up. And I'm proud that I get to be a part of that. Yeah. Yeah. And so you made that one,

red right hand, and there was another one? Yeah. So, oh, you can't quite get it. I can tell you at least what it is. But the first time we chatted was about Fat Man, which started Mel Gibson. And so Mel and I connected on that set. We got along well, and he was very complimentary of my work on that.

And after Fat Man, mid-pandemic, he asked me to shoot a movie for him. And lo and behold, four years later, or three years later, it came to fruition. And so Mel directed a movie called Flight Risk, which stars Mark Wahlberg, Taufer Grace, and Michelle Dockery. It'll be released on October 18th. But, yeah, I get to DPM movie for Mel Gibson as a director, which was pretty special. Oh, he's directing. He directed. He directed in your DP.

Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. Is he in it? He is not in it. Okay. So it's just a, no, no. It's a pretty cool little thriller about a female U.S. Marshall, played by Michelle Dockery of Downton Abbey, who is taking Tofer Grace back to testify in a trial because he's fled.

He doesn't want to testify against a mob. but he's being brought to testify against a mob and then Mark Wahlberg plays the pilot who is taking them back to Seattle to fly to New York to testify and it becomes this pressure cooker thriller. Nice.

Yeah. So that'll be out October 18th. Lionsgate just came out with a release date on that this week. Oh, oh, that's coming out this year. This year, October. Oh, hell you. So I would love to come back and chat, flight risk. Yeah, sure. Let's see. In terms of no, do you want to get a sip and whiskey involved? Would you like one

Yes, you look over your notes and I will find us one more. So of these, you said that the Taylor is your favorite so far? Yeah. It's a hard, well, between the two. But granted, again, you've given me, you know, the S-T whiskey, so it's hard to say. But I would say it also could just be that it was the first one and, you know, your first love, whatever. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to find a weeded whiskey for you to try.

Okay. Now, when it's weeded, it's usually softer. It's usually much easier. on your palate, and it's usually a lot more drinkable for people who are not, like, deeply invested in whiskey. Right. I think the main thing that whiskey has always been, uh, an issue for me, I suppose, is just that hot alcohol forward, that essentially vodka angle, you know what I mean?

The Kentucky hug. Yeah. It's, it's going down and you can feel it. Like it's as, as an alcohol stand. I don't I'm not here to get blasted you know I would I would like to enjoy the experience on my way to blast him yep and I feel like a lot of the cheaper whiskeys that you can get in bars when you get an old fashion and it's a well whiskey sure it just tastes like rubbing alcohol and weirdly enough I was raised on Japanese food and that hot sake that tastes like rubbing alcohol for whatever reason I love that shit you know when you get that just that weird hot in the white container. No, no, I know exactly what you're talking about, but now I need to grab you something special to try.

Oh, okay. This is, all right, so this is not a sipping. Well, I mean, it's absolutely a sipping whiskey. Perfect. This right here, my friend, get back in frame. Oh, yeah. It's the Hikushu 12th. So I don't know if Bill Murray made a commercial for this when he was doing

a lot of translation or not, but, But Hakushu and Yamazaki are two Japanese whiskeys made by Centauri. And back in 2011, I would buy them for $42 to $47 a bottle. This whiskey has exploded. To find a bottle of this now in the wild is rare. And you will pay between $150 and $200 a bottle for the exact same thing. And it's only because the collector's market. It's because it's limited and people go crazy for it.

Now, Yamazaki is a beautiful whiskey, but I, prefer Hakushu, which is more or less the peated version of Yamazaki. So this will have a smoke to it, but I think it's a beautiful whiskey. So once you pass me the first glass that you had, the non-peppy glass, you give me a little tiny taste of this.

But yeah, this one I think is a special whiskey. I think when I smell this, I feel like it's always green. It does not have the maple flavor. No, it's probably like green apples. And sure. I was going to say, I would say, like, um, let me see.

Maybe, maybe, maybe stop talking and, and start smelling, which is great for a podcast, but it's definitely, um, I read a review and it's what people prefer most about your podcast when you stop talking. When I stop talking, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, no, uh, I was going to say, um, when you said green before you said apple, I was like, there is definitely of like a vegetal. They're a single. Yeah, yeah. I get a lot of, I get like pear and green apple. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just for comparison, for sake of comparison, this is, oh, that is decidedly different. This is the Yamazaki right here, which is the, these two are both Suntori products.

Very hard to find. Very good, though. This doesn't taste like any of these. Not at all. No. It's a Japanese whiskey. Why are they different? Why is Japan doing it different?

Japanese whiskey is to me full on that sweeter side and Japanese whiskey is going to entail more gray no corn because that's the thing I like about Japanese loggers is if you drink a lot of like whatever Coors Light you'll start to get bloaty

you can drink 107 Sapporo's and be just fine yeah you know Sapporo's give me money do you like it I actually I very very much do I would but I also am a sucker for novelty so again in this in this realm of being educated.

I mean, there is no novelty. Japanese whiskey is a huge category. Oh, no, I'm not novelty to my palettes. So because we've had all these and they taste vaguely similar, this is now, now I'm just excited by it, but I think I need to take a second and like, actually. So while I'm figuring this out, I wrote all these down in the theater while I was watching. Let's do it. These are all questions in regard to unsung-hero?

Yes. So, oh. So some of these have nothing to do with cinema. Hardman. One of them was, uh, there's no coupons in Australia. Like, why were they surprised by coupons? You know what? I think it's because financially they were steady. Like, I don't think they needed coupons in Australia. I think it was just the thing where when you hit dire straits like anybody else. Right. I don't clip coupons right now, but if I suddenly lost all my jobs, they certainly give it to, does your mailbox just

get to all the time? I don't know like that in Australia in the early 90s. Well, it's expensive right now. I should probably, like Rouse is wild. So let me tell you one quick story. Yeah. So I was in Ralph's the other day. And I went to literally get like razor blades and toothpaste. Yeah. So the razor blades are all locked up in LA. Oh yeah. Huge that problem. CvFs is brutal. Okay. Everything in CVS is locked. Everything. Okay. So I go, the first thing I do want to go in the grocery store is I go on a whiskey hunt. Try to see if there's anything special. So go to the first glass case. Huge. It's like the whole front of the store. Yeah. And I don't notice anything. Oh, that's right. They moved it. Yeah. Yeah. Because they just revamped. They revamped. Yeah. So huge. Front of store is. mostly alcohol, but they still have the original case where they have the higher end whiskeys. So I did the first like casual glance at the front and then I go to the back, didn't see anything like

the higher price whiskeys, special to whiskeys, didn't see anything that caught my attention. And go back and get the razor. Now, I noticed that there was a digital coupon to save like $3. So I'm trying to clip the digital coupon. Can't get it to work for? Does I go talk to the girl up front? I'm like, do you have to

leave the store? Like, do they not allow you to do it in the store? She's like, no, no, it should work. So go outside, I reboot my phone, do all this stuff, get it, finally get the coupon to work. Go back in, and then I go up to the register and check out, and the woman, the coupon is not working. And then I realize

she's brought back the wrong product. So she has to go back up front to get different set of razors because it was a 10-pack, not a 4-pack. And so I glanced over at the case again, and I look down and buy the Seagram's seven and seven, there is two bottles

of Weller and T's, 107, which is stupid hard to find. It's only like a $59 bottle. But again, on the secondary trades for, you know, like 100, 120 or something like that, then there was two bottles. And so because my razors caused an incident at the checkout line, which I apologize to the woman behind me multiple times, I ended up with two bottles of Weller 107. Fuck, yeah, dog. Because of coupons, which goes back to our podcast. Yeah, the digital coupons at Ralph's do not work. Ever. ever. Well, I did get mine to work and I did save the $3 on those razors.

Luckily, which clearly I have not used if you're watching on YouTube. Yeah, well, I just, I've had that big long beard since 2015. Yeah. And I had to like warn my friends. I was like, by the way, it's going to be short now. Because I started doing strength training.

Okay. And it just, the sweat and it would get mad, itchy. I just hated it. You know, so I had to get rid of it. And I go to Allegiant. Shout out to Allegiant. Um, dude was like the old coach of the strength and conditioning coach for the Chargers and a few other teams.

Sick program over there, but yeah, it's like pretty, it's mostly like heavy lifts, you know, or no cardio. But great, they do great like with opening and closing with like mobility drills and like having everything be centered around not getting injured. Okay. Which is red. Anyway, Shade the word. I remember my friend

what, yeah, I was giving him something. He comes to the front door and he looks up through the glass and, like, where is I going that? Nowhere. Okay, but I would like to say before Larry Fong, this used to be a cinematography podcast. Yeah, I know, yeah.

And then Larry. No, and to be fair, I've told, I have opened up every single episode, off camera, like before we start recording, I've been like, hey, this is not a serious podcast. If you want to go on a rant about pencils for 20 minutes, go for it. That has been my opener for,

every single guest, like we do not have to talk because nine times out of 10, that guest is on three other podcasts or does like different interview or whatever. Why would you listen to this one if you've already listened to that? That's great. So I just do everything else. And by the way, I listen to every single minute of the two hours of magic with you guys two episodes ago. That was great. It was great. No, I personally loved the hell. It was my favorite episode by far. Well, top five.

Not, well, not better. Okay, back to your question. Yeah, so no, no furniture, yes, lamps, no coupons in Australia. Was there virtual production on this show? There was no virtual production on this one. Okay, I don't know why I have that in here. It's probably because flight risk did entail quite a bit of virtual production. And I would love to come back and talk about that another time.

You know what it was? I think it was the exterior. The exteriors looked so pretty. what were you doing for those because were you just constant is that something in australia it those were you just constantly shooting at um golden hour because those so when they're out on like the balcony or whatever like the outside australia yeah yeah so that was actually gorges rural kentucky kentucky we faked australia for world so you never shot in austral never shot in austral i can delete that whole no no it's great and that makes me feel really good

because we so the whole family still goes back to Australia lived in Australia but we found a house in Kentucky that was in the

middle of nowhere with these rolling hills and vistas and I shot it a little bit differently I shot it so the colors were more saturated

there was more atmosphere to it like in the sky it felt like there was a different atmosphere that's okay so another question

I had was about diffusion were you diffused yes I've always diffused so this is an interesting thing because I

one of my ACs one time got really excited. He's like, I love working with you because you still use filters. And I do. I always filter. So with this one, it was the first time I shot Canon, uh, the K-35s. I, I, I, I, he never shot a lens. They were K-35s and FDs rehoused by Zero Optic out of, uh, I'll do a shout out to the camera department in Cincinnati. Also shout out zero one of, yes.

Zerlopter podcast. Great. He's the best. Yeah. But, uh, the camera department out of Kentucky is a fantastic rental house. I've done two movies with them. They're just Mal who owns the place is amazing. They have the best year and they're out of Cincinnati. So they provided my gear for both red, right hand, which I shot on Tribes up and Black Wings, the T tuning.

Yep. And then I shot this one, like I said, on the K-35s. And K-35s are just special, special glass. Like, I had no idea what I was missing. Really? Yeah, until I shot K3. Didn't we, when we did that lens test years ago, didn't? Didn't shoot K-35s?

No, no, we had to test the Black Wings. We tested the master-bilts. We tested the ingenues, and we tested whatever the master-bilts are made from. So, Keaton. So-Kas. Yeah. So we tested lenses, but not the K-35s. And the K-35s, I stumbled into, because I had been hearing so much about them.

But also, there's a Nikon series that I can't remember. what Nikons they are. Yeah, girl. But I have them. Do you? Yeah. Which Nikons are that? The AISs is.

Yes. So I tested those alongside because they had a re-out set of those. Those are the original zero, not the original zero optic. The original zero optics were literally zero optics. You guys a pinhole camera that they made, or a pinhole lens rather, that they put in a cinema house. Yep. The next one, as far as I'm aware, were the Nikon, the Nikor AIS, which in my opinion are the best capital B vintage lens. Okay. So when I

835s are incredibly charactery. Well, I did side by side with him. Oh, and the one thing, because I test him side by side because of all things, there is a gentleman by the name of Caden Tooley. He's a younger guy. He is for King and Country's video guy and media guy. He travels with him. He shoots, but now he directs. He directed a music video that I shot early in the year. I shot a music video from the soundtrack for the movie that I shot. Which was amazing. It, it It's a country artist by the name of Lee Bryce, but he did it for King and Country. It's a beautiful video.

It's called Checking In. And Caden, who was their video guy, directed it. He also directed a concert film that I shot to them, which was pretty incredible, too. So Caden owns a set of the Nyquorse. The Nyquorse, but they were like still lens. Yeah, they have one. Mine rehoused. They're not rehoused, right?

So I was like, those are beautiful. so it just happened that they had a set of the zero optic ones also at the camera department and so I was like okay well then I should shoot on this because I'm going to throw a third camera in from time to time that's going to be on a commoto and these lenses fit on it it would make perfect sense and so that's that's where I went in leaning towards that but also in my heart I also know when I go to a project what I want to shoot I knew that when I shot red right hand even though I tested everything I knew that I wanted to do it on the black wings yeah I just knew it Those looked sick. And I knew that I wanted to do this one on the K-35s, but when I put them up on the camera

and tested the Nikons or Nightcores or whatever they are, the Nikor, had more contrast. Yes. And I'm usually a contrast guy, but I'm shooting a movie that takes place all in the early 1990s. And there was something about the contrast level that I liked a little bit better. It's just instinctual. At this part of my career, I used to be ACs must have hated me because I was a micromanager early in my career. And now I'm not anymore. I think I'm at the level now where I can hire people who are at the level. And they bring their skill. And I trust them now. And so when I have

a conversation with a gaffer, it's not like, I need an 18K through that window. I need a 4K over there. I need to do it this way. I'm like, okay, this is what I want. I want a soft push coming through here and I want hard light bouncing off the table. And over there, I want you know, hard light hitting that wall and I let them do it out if they're going to do it. You know, and it's just a trust that you

develop when you get to a level where you're working with people who know what they're doing. But also, this is, I just talked about this with a previous guest, but like that also makes your job easier. Like, I think when you... It's a D-Rango, 14, phone.

Okay. Thank you, Alexis. Uh, the, uh, when you're starting out, you know, indie level, whatever, you often have to wear 17 hats and you have to be so, not necessarily micromanagey, but you just have to know everything. Yep. And then it, it's funny that the further along you get in your career, the more often you're able to instead of, again, like you're saying, call out fixtures, you can just tell people, I just need light, X light coming through here. Go ahead and do that for me while I figure this out. versus, for instance, at my level, I have to go set that light. I have to go do that, you know, and then, or tell someone exactly what numbers to put in the back of it. You know, I can't give them a color meter and be like, do this.

Right. Otherwise, I have to explain it. Yeah. No, no, I get it. And it's a neat place to be in to take that step from A to B because it does. It frees me up to focus on the creative. And this is one thing that I would love to talk about. When you go to film school, they don't explain to you that as a director of photography,

your job, if you're lucky, is 30% creative. Yeah. 70% managerial and political. Like when I walk into a movie, like as a director of photography, you're in charge of three different departments. You're in charge of grip, electric, and camera. It's a lot of personalities that you're managing and a lot of just technical stuff that you're figuring out in pre-production, right? so much of your job is and political too because you're squeezed as director of photography you're trying to hold your crew together and empower your crew who you generally like most

time I love my crews right so you want to empower them and protect them and at the same time you have the producers and the director above you who you want to please who a lot of times I'm friends with and I love them as well and you're sort of getting pressure from both directions And so to be able to hold fast and do what you do and still be creative takes a lot of, a lot of skill and a lot of managing. You know, it's funny you say that because only recently, I want to say in the past like 10 episodes, have I started asking more about the managerial side? Because it is exactly as you said, they don't tell you about that. And when you're in college, I feel like you're so used to. being around different personalities that you it's just built into the society of a college

or at film school or whatever that everyone's slightly different you just deal with it it's a completely different experience when you're on a job and now you have to deal with Kevin who's a little testy and maybe is on you know his fourth day awake right might be a volcanic whatever you know the pressure cooker of you know in certain situations you'll have things that like weather issues you know which is a big one and you'll have people on the line to a studio for millions of dollars and everybody starts to just get squeezed and I think that's really what separates great DPs from good DPs is to be able to both do the managerial side of it the crew management side of it the management of personalities on every department

and then still like deliver beautiful images that make sense do you find at what point are you able to so in my head management a lot of times is in any capacity not just on film is empathizing and then also

somewhat passing the buck at a certain point if people are upset with a situation there are certain times you go hey the higher upset I can't do anything about that but as the head of the department I imagine

And it's more difficult to say there's nothing we can do. I'm sorry. It's interesting for me because a couple of years back, well, more than a couple of years back, the Nelms Brothers, who I said, I've done five movies with who I love, they pass me off a book called Extreme Ownership. I love that, but Jock Willick. I've got all Jocco's books. And what I love about that book,

dichotity of leadership, if you didn't buy it. I've not read that one. Oh, sir. Solid thought of it. I'll look into it. But for me, it's about if my. My team fails, I failed as a leader. I legit.

All right. So I don't mean the shortcut because that book is literally the book that I was like, oh, now I can be a DP. Yeah. Was legitimately reading extreme ownership. It really is. Because if you contextualize it where anyone else who is under yours failings is because of you, because you did not relay the information, you did not prepare them, you did not do that. Like, it's an amazing part of the book where they talk about the teams doing the boat races.

I can't remember what the name of this is where they have to run the boat across the shore they have to throw it in the ocean and they have to paddle out and where they had a team that was just terrible and had a team that was great and they took the leader from the great team

and put them with the losing team and that team excelled and the team that was great was put with another leader and they did not do the same so it just goes to show you how important leadership skills are in any business

any profession anything But on a film set, when you are thrust into extreme situations of pressure, you know, you have to be ready. You have to be prepared. And for me, over the last 10 years, pre-production has become the most important thing in the world to me. That's something that Mezzershmit said to me that I thought was kind of the last time. I've interviewed him twice, but most recent time for Ferrari. Two things. One, he turned me on to this program called Scatter, which is like a diffusion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I listen to that. I've been telling, film box needs to give me money or whatever that company's called needs to give me money because every episode I've been like Scatter Fox. That would break my AC's heart

because I told you how heavy. I know, I know the second you said that I was like, but honestly, well, you know, and it's something I need to look into but I will tell you something that I do and I don't mean to derail this whole conversation, but I,

no matter whether I'm interior, whether I'm exterior, whether I'm night, if I can afford the stop or day, I will keep a pull in my camera. All times. And I have four handsets because most time I shoot two cameras, right? I control my iris like it's my only job on the plane.

Sure. Yeah. So I have two that have A&B iris, but I also have motorized my polas on the last three movies that I've done. So I control the pola. So why is that habitual as opposed to situational? So with the pola, like you can literally dial out, dial in your reflections. you have a darker skin tone then like gets muted

and looks muddy in a situation all of a sudden you know you can dial it in you can get a little bit of reflection now all of a sudden I can see I'm feeling good about that sometimes I'm in like on Mel's movie I was in an airplane interior

the entire time and sometimes the direction of the light would be too hot with the thing and I turn my pole a little bit and now all of a sudden my highlight it is muted down a little bit so I live and die by the pola interesting

And there was one shot in red, right hand, and I don't mind saying this, of Orlando, where my polo was out of position. I don't know if my HMEs were not working, which I also live and die by the agents. Yeah, the headsets. And or I don't know if we were in just such a bang, bang, bang thing where there is a highlight on him that I don't like, that I feel like is out of place with the rest of the movie. And because you're, you're firing away, I was not able to do anything about it. But guess what? Since then, my poll has been geared. It's on me. It's nobody else's problem. Right. Like I will get it where I want it. And, you know, that's actually not. That's a great. I was talking to someone else about that. And I think she was saying how she similarly, like kind of habitually has a polarized her test just to deal with skin, skin, essentially. And that's what it is. A lot of times for me is for skin. And I think it's because in the early 2000s, I came up doing a lot of hip hop videos. in Atlanta. And you realize that there is a difference in skin tone. And if there's ways to

shape things, because it, it's specifically with reflectivity. Reflectivity. Absolutely. And you can do amazing things with a polarizer. Yeah. You know, so I, I love my polarizer. And then I, I love diffusion too. Like, I mean, I'm a big black pro mist. Like I'll use black pro mist. Oh, you know, so you also use. Oh, go ahead. And I'll also use HD classics soft. Not the regular classic soft, the HD classics soft. The ones made for digital. Made for digital. made for digital, which contains a different size dimple. And so I broke it.

A lot of times I'll shoot a one-half HD classic soft, which interestingly enough is what is in the Black Magic filter. The Hollywood Black Magic. Hollywood Black Magic. I'm a big Hollywood Black Magic fan over the Black Kromis. You know who killed the Black Kromis for me? It was in an interview. It was with Ellen Curris.

Really? And she shot Eternal Sunshine Yeah And she shot Some stuff for What's this fate Bamboozled

Okay A bunch of Spike Lee Yeah Yeah And so I was interviewing her For pretend it's a city With

I don't know This Fran Lee Woods Okay Who's a I want to say writer But she She's like Kind of this institution

in New York, as Martin Scorsese. Anyway, so I was talking to her about diffusion because at the time, I was using quite a bit of primarily black chromist and promist at the time, and still is, but like YouTube especially was just like, if you want the cinematic look, you have to have a black promist, you know? And she, and she like, she was the best.

Like I'm putting words in her mouth to a degree, but she basically recoiled and was like, ugh, no. And I remember she goes, I never, everyone was shooting ProMist when I came up. And I hate Promist because it doesn't have sensibility. It's just fuzzy. And then she likened it to using like frost diffusion over lights where it just punches out. Sure. She's like, I prefer a grid because it, like a half grid or whatever, because it just direct,

there's still some directionality and some sensibility to it. And then I left that interview going like, I'm never going to use blackrolls. You know what's interesting about? That it comes out to sensibilities. And it comes back to that feeling. And like cinematography is so much a feeling. Now, I like that look for so. Here's the thing I like about scatter is now I can tune it to when you're backlit, you know, and you got a window back here all super hot. It just blows out the entire image, especially on like a pro mister frost or something. Being able to just go, you know what? On the window, make it innate. And on the skin, make it. And go back and look at my movies. Look at my movies. Look at. my my back catalog of movies and I've, there's plenty of times where I've gotten dinged by a double filter reflection. Oh, yeah, sure, sure. And you know what? Sometimes you should rock with it, you know?

And the audience is. The audience doesn't care and it's all about a feeling. Well, a lot of times the minutia we do is for other DP. Yes. Or something we think a producer, which nine times out of ten, a producer is never going to notice anything like that. Most times directors don't notice. a lot of times it's for ourselves and our own insecurity. And at this point, I watch other DPs, the biggest of the big DPs, right?

And I think there's a point where you go, okay, at this point, everybody knows what I can do and what I know. They don't make mistakes, but I think, and I've even seen it in my own career, you let things slide because you know what you're doing at this point. And if it doesn't bother you enough to do something about it, it's not going to bother anything. else. Well, and I think, like, I had this kind of, I don't want to call it revelation, but everything kind of made sense when I was talking to Bob Richardson, which is like at a certain point, because he was just really kind of, not flippant, but just like, yeah, it's kind of, you just do what you do. And as you're saying, you feel it out, you know, and it occurs to me like at a certain point when you are at that level, it's less about, you know, when you're

an indie person or whatever, you really have to prove yourself. Right. But when, Once you've proven yourself, you're able to kind of not necessarily take your foot off the gas, but focus on the big picture and not these little minutia because the script is so good. The production design is good. All the other elements are so good that you don't have to do all the heavy lifting from the cameras. And I say this when I was early in my career, you feel like you have something to prove. So you're pulling every light off the truck to show everybody, I know what I'm doing, right? Now, sometimes a backlight and eye lighter enough for me, you know? If it feels right to the situation in the setting, like there's a movie I did 10 years ago

and I was just telling somebody the other night, I overlit the movie and I lit the movie to what I thought it was supposed to look like instead of what I wanted to look like. And that only comes with experience and time. You know, now I'm at the point where I'm going to light it to what I think is appropriate and what the director and I have discussed, you know, and I'll never override the director. I am there in support of the director. I love my favorite kind of director is a director who brings something to me

and goes, this is what I'm thinking. Like when I read a script and maybe we talked about this before, I don't know if we did. But I never, ever, ever, the first time I read a script trying to picture anything. I want to know if I connect with the story,

if I connect with the characters, if it's something that I want to be a part of, if it's something that I believe in. And then the second or third time I read it, I will like wrap my head around what I think it might look like visually. Mark it down. Yep.

And then when I talk to the director, if it's somebody that I'm, I'm interviewing with or haven't met with, and even if it's something that I've worked as, I never, ever, ever say what I think it should look like until I hear what they think. And then I can say, well, you know, I was thinking maybe this looks like this, you know, or maybe we take your idea and we wrap this around it. But I'm never there to overwhelm. I'm always there in a support role to take your idea and make it better. I think that's another thing that a lot of specifically film students don't quite figure out

about when they these days because cameras are so accessible YouTube makes visual art more appealing

you know they don't realize that when you become a DP you're not the director right you're here to support

you're you you are here to make someone else's shit realized yeah not run the show because I feel like even when I was in

film school I remember remember people wanting to be directors but also wanting to do the camera part and then breaking off and becoming DPs and never having a career go because they were they didn't have the right mindset of this is not your shoot this is the director shoot and you're here to make that you know and there's a younger DP that I listen to on a podcast and maybe not that much younger than me but I listened to him and his whole thing was pushing film film film and I listened to why he pushed film

and it was because it was this artistic endeavor and no one else knows what it's going to look like except for you so the directors and the producers can't get in the way it's your vision because you go best and I'm like do you realize what you're saying right now you're coming off so pretentious and I would never hire you because you're not a team player you're about what you're trying to do

and you don't care you basically said the director and the producer is dumb and it made me so sad when I listened to it because this guy who was a fairly talented DEP. But I was just like, man, you just shot yourself in the foot because I would never hire you. But it's funny because that also reminds me of, I feel like a lot of people loved that era. You know, but if he was a younger DP, especially if he's like my age or younger, like, you're pining for an era you weren't a part of. Correct. And I was by the beginning of my career was in that era. Yeah. And I don't care if I, and

And it's probably hilarious for me to say this on a cinematography podcast. But I don't care if I ever shoot film again. I love digital. I love instantly being able to see what I have. I love being able to show the directors what they're going to get, the producers are what they're going to get. And I'm confident enough in what I'm doing that I'm never worried that somebody's to be like, well, we need to completely change it, right?

And if the directors and the producers are in love with it while you're on set, chances are you can walk away in the color grade and it's going to look 90% like it looks when you shoot it. When I was talking to, I was just talking about this to someone over, uh, I was around down the street. Um,

when I was talking to Eigle about shooting the holdovers. He was like, yeah, we, uh, shot film first as a test. And it was too clean. Yeah.

Because 5219 is literally built to be scanned. So he was like, why would we deal with all the pain of film? When at the end of the day, we're going to color grade the hell out of it. and adjust it temporarily to look like old 70s 16 mill. Yeah, and there are, you do what I fought for it just to have that experience. And it doesn't always make sense.

Yeah, it sounds rad, but I don't, today, I think it's a non-factor. And by the way, one of my two favorite movies the last year, holdovers was just incredible. Oh, like such a beautiful story. I kept saying top three, it might be my number one. Well, that in American fiction for me are my two favorites. American fiction was great. Yeah. With our last.

shot that. She's great. Right. It was great. Yeah, I love that. There's one more that I'm going to be remiss and not coming up with because I saw it after. I saw it this year and it was a last year movie and I can't remember what it is, but I'm going to kick myself later on when I. Maybe a hour later. But yeah, no, I think holdovers was by far. Like, I was like that, that felt like movies to me. Like suddenly in one shot, I didn't know I go shot it either. I just wanted to go see it. And then his name came up in the credits. I texted him. immediately, I was like, you come back on the podcast. That's awesome.

But that was one of the first times in a while that I felt like, oh, I'm, I just saw a movie. Yeah. You know, because I saw Planet of the Apes. That did, you should a great film. It's awesome. Yeah, great movie. But it feels so modern. It didn't feel like I'm what.

It didn't have. This is going to be a weird comparison. The way I felt seeing the original Star Wars is the way I felt watching the holdovers. where I'm like, that's a movie. That is a thing that exists outside of time. And they designed it that way, which I think is credit to them. You know what did that for me recently? That new Beverly Hills cop trailer, it felt like the robot.

It's so excellent. They should have just called it Axel. I don't know why they put the F in there. Well, because that's the track. Axel F is the name of the song. That's like Axel F is the name of the song. But just call the movie Axel, the F, the F, Axel Foley. Every middle of, I know that.

Or call it Foley. I'm just saying, Akvel Follish, but I'm saying Axel is a cool movie name. Axel F, no one's going to say that. It doesn't matter because it's awesome. Like the trailer's great. I really, I'm praying because if you ask me, if you pin me down in top five movies, the original Beverly Hills Cop falls in my top five movies without question. Like that, the usual suspects, maybe Buffalo 66.

Oh, damn. It's a diverse. It's a diverse. Yeah, yeah. But mine is, mine is, uh, super dumb.

It's, uh, the Matrix, fight club, Willie Wonka and the chocolate factory. Okay. Men in black. Okay.

And the Phantom. All right. Phantom. Deli Zane. Yeah. Yeah. Just the, not the shadow.

The Phantom. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, the, the super campy borderline

kind of superhero movie. I fucking love that. That's awesome, man. I don't know, but that's my. And oddly enough, when I go back and I look at my top top, well, I give you three, but when I look at the movies that I love the most, I did not know before I moved out here that I had a cousin who lives out here who was a prop master and he was the prop master on

the usual suspects. Oh, hell yeah. Which is amazing to me. Do they keep any, or does he have it? I don't know. I don't know if he has anything. Like there's this incredible story about how his trailer coming back from when they shot, I think they shot part of it out in the desert in Vegas, but coming.

back his trailer caught on fire and it was on the side of the road burning and because he had live blanks in there the blanks were going off and so because there was gunfire the fire department wouldn't go anywhere near it and the whole trailer burned to the ground so i don't know what he has left from that movie but i will say uh i just want to give a shout out to my i got to introduce you guys because maybe but my buddy carrie and his wife janey okay work at legacy effects so they make like baby grogo they make like and fallout the power armor like they make all of that dope shit yeah every day i just i will watch a movie and i'll go that's carry isn't it i'll just text them and be like what what did you do here and then i like it's no i no longer ask did you

work on this i go was this you and it's always yes and he'll send me a little cool like behind the scenes thing but uh yeah if you if you love uh prop stuff yeah that's cool i got to introduce you Harry. I bet my cousin knows him. He makes, probably, he makes the coolest things. How long have we been going? Do you know, have you been talking? I was going to say my wife is texting me, so we should probably try to find a way to wrap it up. Yeah. All right. All right. What should you get anything else? Otherwise, I'll just plug the three movies that I have coming out. And let's see, you had a lot of big moving masters. Was that, was that a thing where you just decided to like move the camera a lot? So it is probably, I would call, um, it's definitely the most active camera to any movie I've ever done and it's because it was this little tiny family drama and I felt like it needed to keep an energy

so it didn't get stale and the director has done countless music videos because they have their band so there was just this flow to it that really seemed to work and shout out to my camera operators on that movie because

the two best camera operators I've ever worked with Jess Haas who is my longtime steady cam operator came down any A camera option And in the process, I met a who was also an A camera operator, a guy by the name of Sam Willie, who's done some really great stuff. I don't know if you've seen the movie Old Henry, which is a Western. No.

But Sam did the gimbal on that. And he also did big George Foreman, which came out last year. He did gamble on that. And he changed my mind on what can be done with gimbal. And so I didn't carry a dolly on Sun Hero. Anything that would have been a dolly, I used gimbal. No kidding. And he kills it.

So these two guys. I would have assumed it was all Dolly because it's so steady. So my steady cam is super steady and has that neat organic feel when you need it. And then my gimbal is rock solid. And to both of their credits, there's two shots. There's two different things that I always think about as a DP when I think about that movie. And early in the movie, there's a oneer that you probably didn't even recognize as a water. It's where David finds he's telling Helen that he's lost everything.

And it starts on the baby onesie bedroom. I didn't, I did, I did you? Okay, so it goes off the onesie was expert. By the way, that was steady cam. What? That was steady cam. That's Jess Haas. He's incredible.

So off the baby onesie, up to him on the edge of the bed, short siding him because I wanted to show his struggle. She's on this side of the doorway. Then she comes over the bed and it wraps around. It becomes a two shot. And the camera is always telling you what to look at. Focus is where it needs to be. So they have an exchange there.

then he gets up and walks the doorway and it wraps around to a single of her with a tighter thing of him in the background and then she bolts out of frame and throws focus to him and she runs away. Yeah, no. And it's a oneer and it's spectacular. I'm not even kidding.

Like, I'm glad you reminded me of that because I don't know if I wrote it down. I just kept writing like movement, movement. Yeah. But if you can, you need to clip that because I think if you put that on YouTube and go like, I think that could be studied as like a really good example

of like an expert moving master. And that's amazing, man. And that's where one of the things where I feel like when I say it's my most mature movie, that's really as you, I think get into your career and you start to look at blocking

and go, okay, I'm telling a story. I'm not just throwing up a master and then I'm doing coverage. I'm looking at the scene, I'm going, what's important? How can I tell the story in the most effective way? And sometimes it is a winner, you know?

And that just led the audience where that, so I'm glad that you remember that shot because I love that shot. Yeah. And the other one is that Sam, dead. And listen, there's lots of great shots in this movie. But Sam does a oneer where David is having this breakdown. His father has passed away. His daughter just lost the deal that he thought she was going to get. And he takes a fax machine and he slams the fax machine to the ground. And he

and his wife, Helen, slide down on the counter in the foreground. And the camera's pushing towards them. The kids come around the corner and they're standing at a doorway. And Helen is waving them out. Like this is not, you know, go. So all the kids except for the girl who plays Rebecca, yeah, stands in the doorway. The camera drifts past. She was amazing. Yeah, drifts past Helen and David, lands on Rebecca, wraps around her in the other room,

and then it leads her. And she walks through the house, right? Yeah, goes to the closet door by the front door, gets her coat out, puts it on, and leaves frame, and we're back in the doorway looking at the couple who's crumpled on the floor and push back into them and it's a wanner and it's beautiful and it's Gimble

no kidding that's Gimble so I didn't I guess I did know that that one didn't strike me as a water the other one I guess maybe I was

earlier in the movie I think I was more in notes phase sure and then as the movie progressed I stopped thinking about taking all it's like oh shit

I got to you know I'm supposed to be doing journalism but that one I do remember that shot also because I remember specifically landing on her grabbing her

code leaving I remember that being that second one. Yeah, it's all one shot. And that one was really cool because Richie Ramsey, who's the other director, Richard L. Ramsey on the slate, that's a shot that he really pushed for to do as a oneer. And you could have easily broken that shot up. But the fact that it just carries a lot of weight because I call it, it's like her, it's like the moment she becomes a superhero.

It's like her transition shot because it literally just pushes into her lands on her wraps around, leads her. And then you just see the emotion in her face. It's all about what she's going. through at that time. Yeah, because in the scene, basically, that's the moment where she realizes, like, I'm done letting my parents tell me what's right when they've got their own problems. I can, maybe, maybe I should go do my own thing. I can't remember what she, didn't she want to get ice cream or something? I can't remember what. No, that was, that was, she, I don't even think she knew at that point that she lost her, her record contract at that point. Is that right? Yeah. Right, right. And so I think it was just everything had built. And I think she thought at that point that, that, you know, she was the route out for the family. She could save the family. Yeah, I think the way. That's right.

She went to the, to the, uh, curly-haired dude. Yes. To talk about the, yeah, okay. Um, not to give away the film. I don't know if that's enough. Uh, all right. So we'll wrap this up. Uh, VHS consideration.

What did I mean by that? Oh, VHS. Yeah, there's a ton of VHS stuff, which I see another shout out too. That was, that was all done in post, but that was. So at the time, so I talked about Caden, who became a director, who shoots for freaking country. But before Caden, there was a guy by the name of Mitchell, who did the same job.

And Mitchell Schlepper, Mitchell Schlepper is his name, came on as my third camera, and he was sort of like, it was sort of like an understudy role with me. Like I was giving him what knowledge I could and explaining why I was doing stuff, but he would pick up a third camera from time to time,

because this was a non-union shoot. So he would pick up a third camera from time to time, and he would grab different angles. And he did all that amazing footage. That's from the kid's POV. And that rounds out the movie. It really fills things out. But Mitchell, to his credit,

got one of my favorite shots in the entire movie. There's this heartbreaking moment where David realizes he's lost everything. And he has to tell his family. But he walks in and it's a surprise 40th birthday. I, dude, that scene is shattering. Dude, you're a man and you're trying to provide for your family. You've lost everything and you have to tell them

and you walk in and it's your birthday party. he does such a good job of playing that too like incredible like no it's such a beautiful line between trying to hold it together hold it together and maybe I'm just projecting you know it's what's that the Kulashav effect or whatever you know the guy looking at soup hungry and then it's like you know whatever a baby and but it's like when he walks through them and you can tell he's a little disillusioned but in my head I was like that is a he's doing a great job of simultaneously trying to not let them know what's up and also fully on his face wearing the fact that this is not okay.

And this is, so this is like the most important moment of empowering people and letting them do their own thing under your guidance, right? So Mitchell, in that scene, gets a shot that I did not ask him to get. Like there's the amazing shots where I'm leading them back, leading him, and I'm behind him and you see the reaction. Mitchell, on a long lens, on his, the red commoto. Was everything red?

No, no. So it was all area LF, many LF, except for this commota that we had as a third camera. And like I empowered Mitchell to go get what he thought would help, right? So there is this tight, close up profile of him going through that line of people and it's a little bit shaky. It's my favorite shot in that sequence. can he and it's something that I did not ask him to get it's empowering trusting your people and he came back with that shot and what I saw it in the cut I called him up immediately and said dude

that is the best shot in the sequence yeah and and that's such a cool thing you know when you trust people to do things and people will bring you back special stuff totally how do you feel about the commoto in a cinema workspace does it work out even great and so yeah yeah I had no problems with it. My colorist on the movie Jay Cody Baker at Company 3, who I adore, made me matching lots for the airy and for the red. And

it's slotted and perfect. It's great. Oh, cool. All right. The other problem is I was in the AMC, so I had to like lean it out like this. Yep. You know, exterials, all look golden. Yep, dollar store. Oh, this was

something funny. The only part of this film that actually looks like the 90s, besides the costumes is the fucking dollar store where I was like oh yeah there's some purple neon I remember that and that's another one

where I'm going to give credit to my gaffer because my gaffer decided to take some of his lights and shift the edge lights to match the neon and it was not something that I would have

necessarily gone for because I would have thought that maybe it was too much but he auditioned it for me and I was like that's great It looks good. It's great. It steals the part, man. And I think the movie, you know, costuming wise and, you know, overall has a great 90s feel to it. Yeah. No, 100%. I started giggling because here I've written diffusion and then a line, vintage glass question mark, WFO question mark, Nikor. That's funny. No, so I will tell you this too. Again, in, in something that I feel is also great score. so Brent McCorkel who was an incredible director

he co-directed Jesus Revolution which I said was a huge box office hit he scored this movie oh wow and he's fantastic his scores great but your WFO throws me to something

that gives me anxiety as a cinematographer because I see especially younger DPs who came up in this DSLR world we'll shoot a 1-3 and then they'll throw their ACs onto the bus I heard a story about a big series on a big network and they asked the DP if they could move on and the DP said maybe

if my AC didn't effing blow the focus. They were shooting a one three dude. They did that over the radio. You don't do that. I'm hard pressed to ever open more than a two eight. Like I will do it in certain instances where I have to. But there's a there's a level of respect. And unless I'm doing it for a very, very specific purpose, there's no need to go that wide open. Well, and also I think that is a holdover from granted that you know this 1835 that 1 8 is sharp as hell okay and uh you know it's it's it's at most a 35 mil so it so the depth of field is actually pretty decent you know you're not throwing anyone necessarily under the bus at a 1 8 but when you're talking about 85 millimeter lens you get your life dude what are you doing it's also look at all the

greats f4 yeah to f8 generally And also when people talk, oh, what's the, what's the film look? Oh, this is what I was going to say, was these, these wide open lenses, I think is a holdover from when we had smaller sensors and we needed, like, on a DVX where you'd have to zoom all the way in and then open it as wide as well, you know, to get anything. Yep. Now it's like, it's fully reasonable to shoot a 50 mil at F4. Yeah. It's like, it's not, no one's getting scared about the background. I tell you, most of my interiors were probably two eight.

and I aim, and maybe it's something that I heard Deacon's saying a podcast one time or not in a podcast in a ASC article like American cinematographer magazine years ago, but I like to aim to keep my exterior daylight exterior out of four, five, six, roughly

they're about, you know? I'm not trying, unless they're, and like I said, sometimes there's a story moment that calls for something to be super shallow at the field, right? But I'm not, I'm not trying to like make it so all you see is one. I'm usually, yeah. Even all of Fincher's stuff sits between a 2-8 and a 4, and he's like the king of shallow depth field.

I think it's a lot of people who came up with technology that they didn't quite understand, and it was the cool look at the time. It's also why we spent a decade looking at garbage that was no contrast, that was log and look because people didn't understand what they were doing. I've always been a big proponent of contrast. Unsling Hero is probably my least contrasting movie out of anything I've done, and the reason I did it was because I wanted to. to go with a little bit more of a 90s vibe, you know? The, uh, something that I will say that I've mentioned, you've heard me mention it to other people on this podcast. Sure.

Is, uh, your note about shooting in the snow. I have carried that with me for the past four years because it's, it's such an, uh, non-intuitive way to think about normally you would think, all right, the backgrounds, whatever, I'm making numbers up. Background's at an F-16. So that means the skin's got to be at a 32 and we got to endy the hell out of. Right. It's like, actually, no, skin's going to be at an F8.

Yeah. Like, what? Trust me. And looks natural. And again, man, like, that goes back to testing and preparation. And I cannot tell you how important pre-production is to me. And on The Slinger Hero, we had two directors who were willing to go the extra mile. And they would come to my place for two hours a night after we worked at the office.

We talked to every single scene in the movie. I knew how the camera was going to move the entire movie. I knew how it was going to light it. And, you know, there was maybe a scene or two that we didn't get. It's talked through, right? Right. And on those days, they're not quite as smooth, you know. But, I mean, when you look at it as a holistic picture, that movie, I feel like has a genuine arc.

Yeah. And I feel like it has a genuine look that we never deviate from, and it feels consistent all the way through. The only thing, and then I'll let you go. But the one that I actually did want to ask about is the interior, especially night scenes seem to have kind of a traditional toplight, backlight, key thing going. on. And I was wondering if you could kind of elucidate what your general lighting style. So yeah, you're probably talking about a lot of the stuff where we're interior at the dining room table probably because there's a Christmas scene where they're at the dining room table before they go at also the bedrooms. Yeah. Um, that came where I like, there's a bedroom scene. I'm just not

seeing a backlight so often. And you, listen, I'm it was tasteful back like, but it was like her. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm just because she has like red hair, you know, so. Yeah. I'm a big fan of backlighting. I've always been a big backlighting fan, and I think that if you create a world and you stick with it, you can do anything. Oh, yeah, it didn't stand out. I was just evaluating the film.

Yeah, no, and I probably did more top lighting than I generally do. And I did it because we had low ceilings. And I was, I'm not a big fan of this fake blue moonlight. Like, I will do a half blue with quarter green. I feel like that's my special sauce. I always put a little bit of green in with my blue

and I don't know from one that when I used to do tungsten units I would do half blue quarter green when I did HMI's I would do half O quarter green and that's sort of where I've fallen in and I will glow lightly but I don't ever want it to feel like there's a sun right that's blue

go outside right you know so if you watch the scene I think the one that would be best referenced for this is if you watch the scene where he gets the phone call about a spotter in the middle of the night where she gets up she flips up on a light which becomes that backlight which you're talking about

which is the separation it's the thing that I've done more frequently over the last few movies than I ever did is color contrast like I will mix lighting now more than anything because it makes your image

so much more robust it makes it stand out like you can you can have somebody with a warm tungsten light with a little bit of blue and then it's the separation that's crazy

like I made a mistake in a movie that I shot I don't know less than 10 years ago where my cast had a darker complexion and the production designer came in and pan the walls like a mocha color and that I lit with warm lighting

and I look at that scene to this day and I go it's all one note like the lighting is in the right place but nothing stands out and it's something that still drives me crazy is it's one of those things that just comes with experience where I won't make that mistake again

well and the number one thing that I think everyone talks about all the DPs that have been on the show is pre-production as you said and it's not free but quote unquote pre-production is free you know planning is free

dreaming is free right and then production's like yeah having a well have just listen to our thing like I talked about

you can light the most beautiful lighting setup in the world but if you're in a white room with white walls and yeah it's not interesting it dies

yeah that was actually someone I just I was just telling someone on Reddit some kid was asking I think I mentioned a different podcast but someone goes

hey you know I'm a student filmmaker what should I focus on and so and people gave really good advice but no one's I was like definitely focus on production design because nothing screams in the no budget film like a 30 something year old girl in living in what is clearly a college students males first apartment right you know like you got to build the space that's that's like 60% of the storytelling is just where they are and like what's in the room you know yep uh she's Shooting out, you know, anything in my apartment would make everyone look poor.

Well, in shooting this direction, everybody thinks I would be a bar. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, this was awesome. It's probably two hours or so. Oh, for sure. We'll pick one last whiskey to send your audience out on. Oh, yeah.

Or do we, which we could just end it and do it. Do you have the makings of the, what did you call it, the Black Manhattan or whatever? Oh, yeah. I'm going to make you a black Manhattan soon as it's done. And we let my wife down. She'd come back downstairs. Yeah, let's, I may never make another movie again. Yeah.

All right, well, episode 150. One, congratulations, Cathy. Thanks for helping me start it. Yeah, let's get to Manhattan's. Cheers. Bye. Awesome, man. Frame and reference is an Al-Bodd production.

It's produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan, and distributed by Pro Video Coalition. If you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can do so on Patreon by going to frame and reppod.com, where you can get all the episodes. and clicking the Patreon button. It's always appreciated, and as always, thanks for listening.