The Big Picture - Aneesh Chaganty on Leaving Google to Make ‘Searching’ | The Big Picture (Ep. 82)

Episode Date: August 31, 2018

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey chats with first-time filmmaker Aneesh Chaganty to discuss leaving his job at Google to make ‘Searching,' a thriller starring John Cho shot entirely through the POV of screens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, it's Liz Kelley, and I am here to tell you about the awesome stuff we have going on at The Ringer. It's Pizza Day on Tuesday this week. We're doing brackets, we're talking about pizza and pop culture, and our staff is breaking down which is definitively the best pizza. Also, we are launching a brand new podcast with Ryan Rusillo called Dual Threat. It'll be a weekly podcast focusing on both the NFL and college football. It'll air Wednesdays throughout the football season, and first episode is being released on Wednesday, August 29th. So read about Pete's on Tuesday, listen to Ryan on Wednesday, and check out lots of other good stuff on TheRinger.com.

And we thought, like, if we could put 90 minutes on screen that make you forget that what you're watching is told in a gimmick, but rather just focus on the story. Like, wouldn't that be a very unique experience? That was enough for me to put together a longer pitch packet with Sev, give it back to them, it got approved, tell my bosses at Google that I quit, and I got on a flight and moved back to LA and made a movie for tears.

I'm Sean Fennessy, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show with some of the most interesting filmmakers in the world. We live and die by our screens. Every day, hours and hours are spent staring into glass. The new thriller Searching takes the existential panic of that experience and supercharges it into a story about a teenage girl's disappearance and her father, played by John Cho, on a quest to find her.

Every frame of the movie happens on a computer screen, and it's, played by John Cho, on a quest to find her. Every frame of the movie happens on a computer screen, and it's impressive and involving filmmaking. The movie's co-writer and director, Anish Chaganty, has an amazing story of his own. Just 27 years old, Chaganty left his job at Google to take a chance on this movie. I'll let him share the rest of his story, so without further ado, here's Anish Chaganty. Really delighted to be joined by first-time feature-length filmmaker Anish Chaganty. Anish, thank you for coming in. Thanks, Sean. I appreciate you having me.

Yeah, my pleasure. How are you feeling? You have your first film going wide this weekend, tomorrow. Tomorrow, yeah. You fired up? I'm fired up. I'm excited. It's been a really, really crazy last six months, six months being the beginning, when we premiered this at Sundance, to right now, now that it's coming out into the world. It's just like, it's so weird.

I've been dreaming about versions of this since I was a kid, of having a movie out in the real world, and now it's happening, so it's a really cool experience. Can you help us understand where Searching came from and how this became your first full-length film? Yeah. I never thought in a million years that my first film would take place on a computer screen in all of the versions of my life or practicing my Oscar speech in front of a mirror growing up. I was never thanking people for watching the computer screen movie. Long story short, I was working at Google at the time when this all sort of came together. I was writing and Google at the time when this all sort of came together. Um, I was writing and directing commercials for them at this place called the Google Creative

Lab in New York City. Um, and my creative partner, Sev Ohanian, who wrote Searching With Me and also produced it, uh, was in LA kind of doing his producing grind, um, the whole time. Uh, I had already just lucked my way into a job at Google by making a spec video that they saw. So I was like very happy and comfortable there. But every night we would always talk about how to get back into filmmaking world. And one day he took a meeting, a general meeting with a production company called Bazalevs,

which is run by a Russian filmmaker named Timur Bekmambetov. And they had made a movie called Unfriended, which took place on screens. And they wanted to follow it up, but they didn't know how they wanted to follow it up. The way they presented this idea to Sev and then to me, who was just like, yo, come into this meeting, you work at Google, they want to do something similar, is that they wanted to follow it up with a feature film

that was comprised of a bunch of short films, all of which took place on screens. And so when I came in, Sev heard this idea, it was like, yo, Anish, come in here. I was in LA at the time on vacation, and I thought that that was a far more interesting idea than a feature film. Um, because a short film that took place on screens to me, wasn't a gimmick. And I'd seen all the other films that took place on screens. And like, I didn't really respond to them. They never felt like capital M movies to me. So would you have been a filmmaker for one of the short films

as part of this kind of anthology story? Okay. They were asking us to come up with an idea for that. So I left and about a month and a half later, 7i started, it was September of 2015, 7i started texting one another about the idea for the short film version of Searching first. That's how we came up with it. It was an eight minute short film, very simple, not a gimmick, in and out, same plot basically. We put together a few pages of a pitch packet back to them. And then all of a sudden, I was in LA for a Google photo shoot, and they called us into a room. And it was me and Sev, all of a sudden, unexpectedly, like at like a large table with like financiers and executives. And they were like, hey, you know, we like this short idea, but we don't want to make

it like, okay, bummer. And then they were like, we want to turn it into a feature, you know, a niche. And Sev, you guys can write it. Sev, you can produce it. Anish, you can direct your first feature. We'll finance the whole thing. What do you guys say? And it was one of those like crazy surreal moments because I immediately said no.

And Sev was next to me on my left side and he started kicking me under the table and was just like trying to interject his thoughts and things like that. And I immediately had to explain myself. And I'm both proud and appalled at my own behavior for this. But it felt like in the moment what we were being asked to do was take a concept that we had found a way to not be a gimmick in eight minutes

and then stretch it right back into a 90-minute gimmick again. And that's the last thing that I wanted to do as a first film, as a second film, any film. So we left the room. I said, no, thank you. And Sev, as a smart producer, said, thank you very much. We'll be in touch. And we left. And, you know, we kept talking about the enormity of the opportunity. And like... Had you had any previous experience being in the room with executives about making a feature? No. No. And you said no on your first shot.

Yeah. Like I said, it was very stupid. No first time filmmaker ever gets told, here's the money to make a movie, regardless of what the parameters of that movie are. So we were like, okay, the way we pay respect to this opportunity is just by talking about it. If we hit a wall, we hit a wall, but we should try because, like, no one has ever, I've never heard this before. And, you know, I worked at Google, and it was just like, there's a very easy mental step that we're making in the narrative of like, oh, this kid like works for Google, makes a computer screen movie. But like, if we don't have a story, we don't have a story. Is that your thinking that how you'd market yourself? Or is that what you think the financiers were thinking about you guys? I'm thinking both. Yeah. We were just like, oh, that's like, it's like, we were just like, looking back at the narrative, it just felt like a seamless step into Hollywood.

It was just like, I never thought I'd end up at Google. I thought it would be a detour in my life. And when I took it, I was like, is this a detour? How would I ever come back to film? And then all of a sudden, there was this opportunity that felt like the Google job was like a step exactly to this thing. But still, if it wasn't a good story, we'd never make it. And for two months, we kept talking about this idea, and we couldn't find a single way into the story until one day I texted Sev with a weird idea, and I was like, hey, I have a weird idea for an opening scene.

And he texts me back, he bubbles, and it's like, I have a weird idea for an opening scene. He was in L.A., I was in New York, and I called him up. We both pitched each other the exact same opening scene, and to this day, it's now the opening scene of the film. And it's a seven-minute, the film opens up on like a seven minute standalone montage. That's a prologue. And it's basically seven told through 17 years of a family's life told through their home computer. And it was a very emotional,

it's a very emotional sequence. And for us coming up with that idea, for some reason, made open this door of possibility and made us realize that what we were coming up with maybe could be way different than all of these films that had taken place on screens before by being a capital M movie, by being emotional and cinematic and engaging and thrilling and hopefully actually make you forget that what you're watching was on a computer screen.

And we thought, like, if we could put 90 minutes on screen that make you forget that what you're watching is told in a gimmick but rather just focus on the story like wouldn't that be a very unique experience um and that was enough for me to to put together a longer pitch packet with sev give it back to them it got approved tell my bosses at google that i quit and i got on a flight and moved back to la and made a movie for two years unbelievable i love that opening segment shades of up yeah absolutely we pitched it as up meets a google commercial yeah i mean it's really and moved back to LA and made a movie for two years. Unbelievable. I love that opening segment, Shades of Up, Pixar movie. We pitched it as Up meets a Google commercial. Yeah, I mean, it's really brilliantly done.

But I'm curious about how you actually write a script that is about screens. So is the actual formatting that you're doing, the way that you're conceiving everything, does it look different? Does it look like a traditional script? It does not look like a traditional script. In fact, I would say no single part of this film, from pre-production to production to post-production looked or resembled anything like its counterpart to a live action movie, a normal live action movie. Everybody was relearning their jobs to make this movie, including us in the beginning as writers. looked at a screenplay before, but that we couldn't feasibly or effectively have scene

headers in the script that were like interior Google Chrome dash Facebook dash tagged photos dash night. It just wouldn't read well. No final draft file tells you how to handle text messages in the way that we're doing it. So we realized early on that in order for the script to be read comprehensively and understandably, we just had to make up our own format. So we spent the first few days, Seve and I, just talking about the rules of make up our own format. So we spent the first few days, Sev and I, just talking about the rules of how this would be written. What we ended up writing was what we called a scriptment, which was like a script meets a treatment.

It had every line of text, every action, it had every beat of blocking or whatever. And everything that a traditional script would have, it was just written almost like prose. Whenever somebody would type a text in Backspace, we would cross it off in the screenplay. It would be formatted different, or in the scriptment,

it would be formatted differently. And there would almost be chapter selections to it. And that's the material that we gave to the actors to get them to join the project. We only ended up using a final draft file for production purposes. And that was really due to Natalie Kasabian, who's our other producer,

who's just like, we can't go into production with this scriptment. You guys need something real. Is that because everybody else who works on the movie is like, I don't know how to read this. I don't know how to make this work into a movie. Yeah. I mean, it's just like purely like the first step of our, of our, of the purpose of a screenplay was not to get into production on this one. It was to convince actors and to convince people to be a part of it. And usually a screenplay can do both. You know, it serves as what the actors read, and it serves as what, you know, production uses to plan out their days

and to get every department on the same page and stuff. But we realized, like, if we wrote this as a screenplay, like, it wouldn't do the first part, and we'd never get to the second part. It's interesting because I read that you wrote the part specifically for John Cho, who is the star of this movie, but when you guys first spoke, he did not want to do this movie. Yeah, no, he said no. We wrote the role for John Cho. It was always David Kim in the screenplay. And we got the script to him through traditional means, through his agents and everything like that. And then I got a call or I got an email from,

you know, the producers saying, hey, John wants to get on a 15 minute phone call with you. And I was like flipping out because like this was like the first time anybody who I've ever heard of wanted to talk to me specifically. And so I, of course, I texted all my family and my friends. And I was just like, this is the exact time I'm talking to John Cho. You know, it was a 15-minute phone call. And I learned so much in those 15 minutes about how to be a director and how to talk like a director and just how to make a movie in a weird little way. What did you learn?

I learned things not to say. And the second I put down those 15 minute phone call, I hung up. I was like, I screwed that all up. I completely messed that up. Like I let him do the talking. I let him probe around instead of me telling him what this vision for this movie was.

You know, it's a movie that has, in a lot of ways, what we're trying to do is make it unlike anything that you've ever seen before. And when you're trying to do something unlike anything you've ever seen before, it's hard to say that these are our comps. But John was like, oh, so it's like unfriended. And I was like, yeah, sure.

And he's like, I'll go watch that. I was like, okay, great. And I just didn't think anything. I was like a fanboy, you know? I was just like, oh my God, I'm talking to John Cho. And so he left the phone call and I was like, I don't think I did a good job on that one. And then it turns out a few days later, his agents got back to us and it was a no, his managers.

And we kept probing around to see how no of a no this was. And it was a very, very big no. Really? Yeah. It was like, you know, who in anyone's right mind would want their client, A, to be in a film that took place on computer screens directed by a nobody, with a screenplay that doesn't even look like a screenplay that nobody really knows how to make. And then on top of that, there's this other film that was made before that also took place on screens that we never wanted our movies even to resemble stylistically, but that was now being used as a comp. So we knew there was all these factors going against us, and we thought we lost John.

And I realized every single phone call in that pre-production process, when it was about an act or whatever, we'd always get connected through an agency, except for John, who called me on his personal cell phone. And I realized about four days after he said no, that I had his phone number. And I was like, we already lost him. This is not, like, let's just see what happens.

So like I pulled out my phone and seven out around me and I was like, hey dude, like, how's it going? I heard you passed on the project and everything like that. If you're at all open to changing your mind, like I'd love to take you out to drinks. And like, I waited and I was like, this is might be the stupidest decision that I've ever made. And then it bubbles and it goes away

and it bubbles, it goes away. Shades of your movie. Yeah, I know, right? Yeah, that's where I was learning right there. And an hour bubbles and it goes away and it bubbles, it goes away. Shades of your movie. Yeah, I know. Right. Yeah. That's where I was learning right there. And an hour later, he's like, yeah, let's do it. And so that Saturday, you know, we went to a restaurant in LA and he came down, he came, he sat down and I was so prepared to like not be the person that I was on the phone call. And he sat down and I stood up and I pitched him the best version of the pitch I've ever pitched before, after, since then, you know. And I remember like everybody seven hour, like he has to say yes right in front of you. He has to say yes right in front of you. And I pitched it and I was like so confident. I sat down after 20 minutes and he

looked at me for about 30 seconds, checks his watch and was just like, thank you so much for taking the time. I have to put my kids to bed. I really appreciate you kind of coming out here and explaining all this, shakes my hands and leaves. And I was like, okay, so we lost John Cho twice. So I got on the phone with seven that told them we lost them. And by Monday, you know, the set, I've got a phone call from an agent, from one of his agents. And usually when agents tell you that their client is in a project, they're very excited. But this is a very not excited call. It's like, John's gonna be in the project.. So, you know, it was a very, very interesting process. Because, like, you know, if I was this person's agent or manager,

I would never tell them to be in a project like this. There's no reason, you know, like there's absolutely no reason. But what ended up happening was just, and this is John's words, not mine, is just me selling him on like the energy and the excitement, the idea that we could do something new. And him going like, no, no, no, I really want to do this. And so we ended up shooting with him and it wasn't until we showed the film to everybody around it that people finally got what we were making. That was a very like long process because it was sort of like us against the world in a lot

of ways for a long time. Did your actors feel the same way? Because obviously Deborah Messing is also in this film. So you've got two really experienced, well-known actors, first-time filmmaker and an unusual structure. And so when you're making the movie, does it seem not like how a movie is traditionally made? I know you haven't made another feature length film, but I imagine that there was some different elements to the execution of the movie. Sean, the whole movie was like a different, you know, our film takes place on screens, but it's not unlike unfriended. It doesn't just stay on a one wide shot of the whole film. There's a camera that's kind of going around. It's zooming in, it's zooming me out a video and like, that's really

small can be full screen. So basically, you know, we basically had a camera in this film. So in order to know where that camera was and where the windows were and everything like that, Sev had this idea that seven weeks before we even started shooting the film, we should start making it. So we hired the editors before we shot a frame of the footage. And for seven weeks, they were screen capturing the internet, you know, taking pictures of everything, taking pictures of my face. And we ended up having an hour and 40 minute cut at the end of seven weeks, starring me

playing every single role of every character, the dad, the daughter, the brother, the father talking to myself. So we'd understand how to make this movie and what it would look like. It's like a new version of storyboarding. Yeah. It's a, we call it an animatic, you know, and all we very, this whole process almost resembled like a Pixar movie. And we basically took that animatic and on set used it because John chose character whose, whose characters are using the computer.

His eyeline needs to perfectly match where every cursor is, where every button is, where every window is popping up and we're shooting it on a GoPro which is mounted right behind this laptop on a little rig and that GoPro on a wide angle lens is exaggerating his eye movement so it has to be perfect otherwise it's going to

look like he's looking off screen. There would be so many times where I'd be like John that was a great take but next time just, the button is a little less to the left, you know, or like move your cursor a little more to the right. And it was the same with Debra.

It was like, they, and on top of that, they were acting against nobody. You know, they were acting against a black screen with me coming in

with these references, a GoPro mounted on top, and they're acting like they're talking to one another. And they can barely see one another. They're each in far rooms or across from each other

with those little small windows that you can see the other person's face and an earwig in their ears. Did they meet at all in person during the production of the film? They did. Yeah, we shot all those scenes where they're separate and talking to each other

in the same house. Oh, okay. So they had met each other and everything like that, but it's still like, you know, I feel bad because like John will always say, like, you know, it's as an actor even if you're kind of unsure in a scene you can always if there's somebody across from you you can always just respond to that person sure you know like and we didn't give any any of them an

opportunity to respond to anyone and john just has to carry this entire film talking to nobody oftentimes talking to me because i was making the comp videos and there'd be no one on the other end and I would be in a mic shouting into his earpiece as the character that he was talking to. It was a friend or somebody else. So it was a huge, huge, huge challenge. We only had 13 days to shoot the movie at all.

We finished the entire shooting of it in 13 days and once you see the film, there's a lot going on. And then got into the editing where we would be for another year and a half and putting all that footage into what ended up being like a very, very technically complex puzzle piece. Was there anything during the making of that animatic that you described that made you realize that something wasn't going to work in the movie?

Was there anything crucial that made you sort of rejigger, rebuild? I wouldn't say crucial. We learned a lot about how to make this movie while we were making that animatic. And one of the things that we learned specifically was, I guess a nerdy question, a nerdy answer, but we learned how to transition really well between sequences.

So in a normal movie, you can just kind of go from an inside of a house to an outside of a house, and you can easily show that go from an inside of a house to an outside of a house. And you can easily show that by putting a camera inside the house and then putting the camera outside the house. But for us, how do we convey time passage without always showing a clock? How do we convey like a little jump in a location or time or space or something like that? So it's for us, there was a lot of rules that we had to, to kind of figure out,

you know, like if we start on an extreme closeup, we could never jump to a following scene on another extreme closeup, unless we were looking at a clock, you know, like that's a way that we would always jump time in this film is by jumping from an extreme wide, you hear like,

and we cut to something different, you know, like that's, we, we played with audio a lot, you know, like a lot of times you'll hear that, like vacuum sounds in this film. And that's a thing that we learned

because like a vacuum sound tells you that time's about to pass. It's like Morpheus goes, we're on extreme closeup and then like top and like we're on a wide. And all of a sudden mentally we're like, oh, different time or different space. Like there's these weird rules that we learned about how the shot structure works

and what shots could be next to each other. And also there's this full scene that we learned about how the shot structure works and what shots could be next to each other. And also there's this full scene that we ended up cutting from the animatic that was in the script that we just straight up didn't need. It was like a workplace sequence in the beginning of the film where David was like had a task at work to do and he was like really good at the task or something. It was very clever. He had like a clever solve for a work problem. And then we were like, we don't need to set up the fact that he's good at this. He had like a clever solve for a work problem and then we were like, we don't need to set up the fact that he's good at this. He's an engineer.

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Drive sober or get pulled over. Why was it important for you that it be john cho uh a couple reasons we went in wanting to cast an asian american in the role there's the why asian american and there's the why john cho and i'll give the first part first so it was asian american because you know i grew up in san jose which is where the story takes place um and you know my family my parents are both in the software industry and work in silicon valley and and you know it was important, my parents are both in the software industry and work in Silicon Valley. And, you know, it was important to us to cast a family at the heart of this that looked like everyone's neighbors in San Jose and the people that, you know, we would have over for dinner and stuff. And B, you know, I grew up watching my favorite movies, none of which had anything to do with identity or color of your skin or

ethnicity or culture or anything like that. It was more about jumping out of a plane or like, you know, breaking into a building or something like that with people who never looked like me. And I, we both seven, I thought like,

this is a really cool opportunity for her to make this movie that like, just like have a card deck and then slide a card that we never like saw, like saw in a movie before, just slide it in and really never talk about it. Which is one of the things that I really like about this film is that like, to me, and John says this best, is like, it's a version of the future. It's like beyond this moment of like diversity talk and representation talk. It's just a movie that just like says, hey, there's nothing wrong.

There's nothing weird about this. It's just like, let's just tell a movie. Let's just tell a story. Were there any issues with the financiers when you pushed that concept? I assume that was also the case in the short. But when they said full-length film, was it always an Asian-American lead? We never specified in the short what the race would be. We never even got to the full development of it.

It was just an idea. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't like we had pushback for sure you know it's like if you had if you think about it i mean on a purely financial level no corporation no anybody is going to want to you know everybody wants precedent everybody wants to cast people who have made money before who have bankability or you know have proven box office success and i mean that's just for the film industry but any industry you want to cast things that have success or put things in give money to things that have already made money

um so yeah it was definitely a difficult kind of thing to navigate but and that's the beauty of john cho you know getting john involved because like with and this is the thing that i ended up being most proud of this movie for which is nothing I never thought I'd be proud, like most proud of is, is like, because John got involved and there's a family component to this film, we're able to cast all of these people around John who are relative unknowns, who will now have this movie in parentheses before them, who will now have that precedent moving on to another film. And that to me is something that I like,

is this like, ah, this is how this works. This is how you do this. You just like, you anchor new talent around talent that you recognize. And then all of a sudden that new talent has this movie in parentheses and they now can be bankable in some way and recognizable in some way.

Yeah, John occupies this interesting place in our imagination, right? If you know who John Cho is, there's a 99% chance you'd like him. Yeah. Right. I've never met somebody who's like, I'm not really into John Cho. So he's obviously a perfect leading man. That's what you kind of, what you want from somebody, this familiarity, this identification, this general enjoyment, but also he's just not getting a ton of roles like this, obviously. And there was that whole hashtag last year about getting him in it. I guess, has, do you sense that his career has changed at all since having an opportunity to do something like this, obviously, and there was that whole hashtag last year about getting him in it. I guess, do you sense that his career has changed at all since having an opportunity to do something like this,

even though maybe this isn't a movie he originally wanted to do? That's a crazy question, that our movie could even have a shot at changing someone like John Cho's trajectory. I hope so. You know, this is his first, this is any Asian American's first leading role

in a thriller ever, which is crazy. But I think to me and to the reason we cast him is because he's a movie star. He's so good. He's the guy that you always are like, I love him. I would totally watch him in more movies, but nobody puts him in more movies. It's almost universal. And that's why we cast him. He's so empathetic.

And we realized for a film that you don't always see his face in, sometimes you're watching a cursor. We got to maximize the amount of time that you see someone's face. You got to have someone who is so likable. It's like, oh, John Cho. I hope that people can see him clearly for the dramatic chops that he can have. The everyman dramatic chops. Like the movie shows his range, I think, to a level that he hasn't been able to be shown yet, that he's always had.

I'm not kind of privy to the offers that he has or anything like that, but I can only hope that more doors open for him. And I have no doubt that they will because this is a thriller and I think once people can see him in this way, that they'll hopefully imagine him in more. I had an interesting experience.

I saw your movie and then the next day I saw this movie that's coming out in October called The Oath. He's in The Oath. Oh, you saw the, okay, cool, cool, cool. And he plays a supporting role in that movie and he's very funny and he's very good. But at the end of it,

I was kind of like, this movie needed more John Cho because I've become familiar with getting a lot of John Cho. Yeah, I want him to get some more leads. Like, you know, like I think, and he has one. I think he just announced a project with Alan

Yang, who co-created Master of None, called Tiger Tale. And yeah, he just needs more leads. I keep telling him that I want him to get more leads. He's a leading man, and I have a good feeling about the next five years. What about you?

Let's talk about the next five years. You didn't want to make a movie that was in screens, but then you did. So now, I assume you're not making another movie with screens. No, it's an Apple Watch movie. Yeah, no.

No, I'm kidding. Yeah, I've never imagined my trajectory involving this, but it's turned out to be fruitful so far. The next film, which we already kind of, in a weird way,

have off the ground in some capacity, is another thriller. And it's shot with regular cameras, which is going to be a new one for me, in regular spaces. It's a contained thriller. It's called Run. And it's about a mom and a daughter. The trend that I'm seeing is that every single thing that we write is about a parent and kid or a kid and a parent.

Why is that? I think it's because Seven Eye, the co-writer, we both come from very kind of tight-knit families. And the very famous Google Glass commercial that you made is also a relationship with your mom. And our first script too,

the one that no one will ever see, and searching, and this one. I think it's just because we have come from these tight backgrounds that, you know, whenever we come up with a heist plot or a thriller plot, our intention is always to add emotion and to true emotion. And for us, like, that is so obviously capital T true to us and something that we can both access that I think, like, it's never like,

oh, what's the parent angle here? It's just like that ends up just coming right in. And it's just like, oh, we pitched an idea for a heist movie, but then some character has a parent relationship or something like that. And we're like, oh yeah, that's true. And this is true.

I don't know what it is, but our minds both naturally gravitate to it. And our third movie after that, which we already have the kind of light groundwork for, is again about another parent-child relationship. Interesting. Yeah, it's weird. Are you worried at all about doing a more traditional production style?

I'm scared, yeah. I'm scared, yeah, definitely. Like in a good way. You know, it's like I was scared before searching and I'm scared before this one. So it's like right now we're kind of in the process of crewing up and getting the kind of department heads together and casting and pre-production.

So all I got is, I guess, the references. I grew up on a very steady diet of Hitchcock and Shyamalan movies, and I want this one to feel the same way. Very, very classically composed and everything like that. But, yeah, I'm scared. I don't know what it's going to look like, what a normal movie and me and set's going to look like. But so far, this sort of pressure and fear has been a pretty solid and reliable constant

in everything, every single thing that I've done. And that has hopefully kind of fueled me to some sort of creating something of at least a little bit of value. So hopefully I use it for some good. It's very exciting. I'm always fascinated to talk to filmmakers at this stage of their careers. What is going to be sort of the way

you measure your success on this movie? On searching? Yeah. Because there's box office, there's reception, there's reviews. Is that all part of a mix? I can't. I think box office is the one that is the

most easily identifiable. But for this film, I think it does so many unique things that it's hard for me to say, Oh, well, let's measure it by box office, you know, because I think this movie is one of those films that will just have legs, you know, it'll just have like, like, whether those legs exist in the box office run, or a little after the box office run. I think this is one of those films that people will just be like, oh, I heard about this movie. Let's go watch it. How do I measure success on searching? I think we already hit it.

It's like everything right now is like when I was working in New York City making Google money and having a job that allowed me to make commercials that got seen by the whole world and like use my creativity and my heart and like made people feel emotions because Google commercials are so emotional. What did Google say when you quit? Were they like a huge mistake, dude? My two bosses, Jesse Jarriga and Josh Rosen, who I learned so much from and stole all those lessons from to make this movie, I mean, they were all initially like, here's why you should stay. But at the end of the day,

they all knew that I wanted to make movies. And it was a non-logical argument. They were arguing logic. And like, here's why you should say it logically. And it was, like, 100 arguments and then one on the other side of me leaving, which is just pure love of wanting to make a movie. Like, that's it, you know? And, like, you can't argue against that one.

You know, it's the one they couldn't argue against. So I, like, I left and they all gave me their blessing. And, you know, I have such a close relationship with the Creative Lab now, even now, and they're such huge supporters of this movie and of me but this you know we i left on a dream came to la brought five people into a single edited room it was me sev natalie kasabian and the two editors and we edited a movie in a in a space that's about as big as a space we're in right now um which for those who are not here is small like if for two for an edit an edit room, we had two Mac computers that were constantly crashing

every about two hours, and we would lose about 15% to 20% progress. Oh, jeez. It was like us from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. on a movie that even the people who were surrounding the talent on our film didn't believe in fully. You know, it was a movie

that nobody thought would succeed, and nobody really cared to swat down. Cause everyone thought we would kind of fall on our own faces because like, if we had failed, no one would bat an eye. It was the computer screen movie that failed. Right.

And like, we just worked on this movie for two years and just like grinded and like sweat and bled and cried and like collaborated together on a movie that we thought maybe five other people would maybe one day watch. And then we applied one day to a film festival called Sundance and then got into Sundance and we're like blown away. And then at Sundance, we premiered our film and 12 hours later, Sony Pictures bought us to be distributed worldwide. And it comes out on Friday. Like we already won, you know, like there's like, like, you know, like it's like, I get so emotional. I

tell it when I tell that because it's just like, it is so cool that this can happen. Like that a bunch of kids can like, can do that. Like can convince a movie star to be in a movie and it can come out around the world. Such a great story. Anish, I end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing that they've seen.

So what is the last great thing that you have seen? The last great thing that I saw was, that's a good question i watched election recently yeah um and election is one of my favorite movies and i hadn't watched in a while and one thing that i really like about election that is something that people don't usually comment about is i think there if you watch that film the framing of of just every shot not just the story the screenplay is awesome alexander payne knows how to write a script. I think Jim Taylor wrote that as well. And obviously Reese is great,

and all the characters around are great, but the framing was something that I never thought I would want to borrow from, but I'm going to borrow and steal so much from that framing and put it into a thriller because it is so beautifully framed. That's a great answer. Election is great. Anish, your film is great. Congratulations, and thanks for doing the show.

I appreciate it. You bet. Thanks again for listening to this week's episode of The Big Picture. Please tune in next week when we'll have a new episode with a new filmmaker. Hopefully a very exciting one. And check out TheRinger.com if you want to know more about searching. Adam Naiman reviewed the film on the site. And also, we've got a ton of movie coverage as usual, so please go to TheRinger.com. See you next week.

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