The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Nicole Conn’s Journey: From Filmmaker to Author with “Descending Thirds”

Starting point is 00:00:00 You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. My host is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, the Iron Lady sings it from Bugs Bunny. Can I make that reference to Bugs Bunny? That makes it official.

Starting point is 00:00:45 Welcome to the big show. As always, for 16 years and over 2,300 episodes, we bring you the Chris Voss Show. And why not? Because we had nothing better to do except entertain you folks. So, damn it, you better appreciate it or else. I don't know what or else means. It's just a great callback. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the chris faust show some guests of the show may be advertising on the

Starting point is 00:01:08 podcast but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind anyway we have an amazing young lady on the show we're gonna be talking to her about her insights her multi books that she does the shows that she makes for the television and the movies i believe uh and we'll get into all of her stuff but in the meantime we have to guilt and shame you to refer you to the show to your family friends and relatives go to goodreads.com for says chris voss linkedin.com for just chris voss one of the tiktokity and chris voss facebook.com today we have an amazing young lady on the show we're talking about her newest book nicole khan joins us on the show her latest book is called descending thirds and is gonna be out wherever fine books are sold so you can check them out there and

Starting point is 00:01:51 we're gonna be getting to some of the insights of her experience and what she does well if I can just find her bio here we'll be good to go there it is Nicole Khan too many tabs on the podcast. Nicole Kahn has been pioneering filmmaking for 35 years. She's known for her cult classic, Claire of the Moon, soon to have its 35th year re-release, following its 10th and 20th year re-releases. Among her best-selling features, Elena Undone, a perfect ending,

Starting point is 00:02:21 Little Man, and More Beautiful for having been broken has achieved worldwide industry recognition with her lesbian themed films and is perhaps best known writer, director of women's films in the world. Notably, Elena Undone holds the record for the longest kiss in cinematic history. I like to try and break that record, i haven't started my only fans another pioneering effort she created coming out for love the first ever lgbtq dating competition show it's kind of like a version of the bachelor only i don't know with less annoying people on it maybe i don't know throwing rocks at the bachelor in her earlier she was published by Simon Schuster, Angel Wings, Passions, Shadow, She Walks With Beauty and novelizations like Elena and Done and Claire of the Moon.

Starting point is 00:03:10 It took her 25 years, but finally in 2025, Descending, Descending Thirds will be published March 15th and is deeply personal like her films that will also release Blue Love Dance, A Center Romance, and behind-the-scenes look at the making of a single favorite sequence of her career. Welcome to the show. How are you, ma'am? I'm doing awesome, Chris. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for coming, Nicole. We certainly appreciate it. Give us your dot-coms. Where do you want people to find out more about you on the interwebs?

Starting point is 00:03:44 You can find out everything about me and all my product at NicoleConFilmsGlobal.com. I know that's a mouthful. NicoleConFilmsGlobal.com. I know that's a mouthful. NicoleConFilmsGlobal.com and ComingOutForLove.com. That's where the show is. Writer, director, editor, and mother. How do you do it all? Lots of caffeine? I've been extremely driven.

Starting point is 00:03:58 I used to do a lot of caffeine, yes. I am so in love with what I do, Chris, that it's very easy for me to just keep pumping things out. As long as people are watching and supporting, I'll keep making the movies, the books, you name it. So tell us about this latest offering that you have coming out, Descending Thirds. So, yes, I started Descending Thirds 25 years ago. And when I first had it out as a script and a book, It was like completely this insane moment, like Hollywood moment. All the agencies wanted it. ICM, CAA, William Morris. I signed with number two at William Morris who said I'd get seven figures for this book. And ultimately he couldn't sell it.

Starting point is 00:04:36 And I essentially veered into filmmaking for the next, you know, 20 plus years. And then I decided to do another couple of drafts. I had been revising it over the 25 years and found a manager who loved it. And finally found a little boutique house, Story Merchant Books, that's publishing it March 15th. Oh, wow. That's awesome.

Starting point is 00:04:56 I mean, some things just take longer to make and that's what makes them great is, you know, they sit around and they ferment. They ferment? Ferment? Ferment. They gestate ferment they yeah i tend to i tend to ferment more than foment my old age but yeah i have discovered that projects only happen when they're ready it doesn't matter what you do you know and yeah it's one of those things i learned you know about 20 years ago because i would want to do something and then something else would happen so i just sort of let the world show fate show me where i was supposed to be

Starting point is 00:05:29 that's what that's how i described my first 10 marriages so i don't know what that means you got me beat there guys i don't know what to tell us how you finally got this book out give us a can you give us a tease out a little synopsis maybe of it it's a super personable book for me because my mother was a classical pianist before she decided to have the three of us girls. She remarried and had two more boys in the meantime. But when she, the story goes, when she had me, she came home and my father had bought her a piano and she threw me in the crib, never to be seen again until I was screaming for food. And so I think from that point forward, it was sort of

Starting point is 00:06:05 part of my DNA that I fell in love with classical music. Our daughter, Gabrielle, was gestating when I started working on this script. It became the outline for the book. And it was like the most creative burst I'd ever had while she was gestating. It just felt like these two things really, really went together. And after she was born, I'd put her in a Bjorn and finish writing the book with her, you know, strapped to my chest. So I always felt like she enthused me with a lot of, you know, creative vibe. And then my son was born a couple of months later, and he was a micro preemie and the subject of Little Man, the documentary that I made about his first five years of life, which were pretty hospital ridden. But he also loves classical music. And that's the one way in which we communicate with each other, because he's

Starting point is 00:06:55 sort of nonverbal. He's 23 now. And he classical music and classical piano in specific are his loves. So now we're 25 years later, my mother has aggressive Parkinson's, severely aggressive Parkinson's, and she still sits at the piano every single day, playing her heart out, whether she can hit the notes or not, whether she can feel her fingertips or not. She told me the other day, I don't know what's happening. The keys, the black keys are two inches above the white keys. And so it's just sort of this heartbreaking, but also like she's valiant in the fact that she keeps going for it. I'm very happy that in the audio book where I'm putting all the pieces of music that you hear will be played in the background.

Starting point is 00:07:41 There are four pieces that she had recorded that I'm going to be able to use in the book. Oh, that's wonderful. I'm very, very happy that I can showcase my mother's, you know, because today it's just very, it's heartbreaking to watch her, but it's also on some level, like I said, very valiant the way she approaches it. I'm glad she does that. I mean, I think that helps keep the brain as sharp as it possibly can. And there's some people that sometimes they go into a different state when they play music.

Starting point is 00:08:08 And, you know, they found that, I mean, I remember watching, I think he had Alzheimer's, Tony Bennett fade away. And it was really sad. And it came to a point that he didn't know where he was half the time. But if they put a mic in his hand and played some piano. It's the muscle memory. Yeah, the muscle memory. He would go right back to being Tony Bennett.

Starting point is 00:08:27 It was amazing. I'll let you know. So the book takes place in the classical music world, and it's a triangular love story. It's a sort of sweeping, epic, romantic book. But it's also thematically about what we do in our lives, whether you're an artist, which is art versus commerce, packaging versus talent. It's what we all do when we compromise. We face choices where we have to sell our soul to become world famous. Do you do that or do you not sell your soul and stay like one of the characters who's a genius savant who doesn't really care about

Starting point is 00:09:02 how people respond to his music it's just he writes the most beautiful music in the world because he is such a genius you mean there was an option not to sell my soul yes there was podcast damn it check that box five dollars is what i got yes you did five dollars five dollars but i mean it was i am a cheap soul was it worth it chris oh my dates have told me I'm a cheap soul so I think that's where that goes uh the other joke I want to claw back to is let's see you you mentioned that you and your family indicate using classical music like someone ever says anything bad do you like say to them hey do you want to take that bach get it yes or was it something I

Starting point is 00:09:42 played was this why we just turned the show a whole different way didn't uh so tell us about get it yes or was it something i played why we just turned the show a whole different way didn't we uh so tell us about your films your and your tv work is the one show that you have uh coming out for love dating show is that on tv film streamed through coming out for love.com or you can get it also through nicoleconfilmsglobal.com but i'm really super proud of this show because when my daughter was five, six, seven, we started watching The Bachelorette together. And after three or four years, you know, she loved picking her horse and betting on that horse that that person was going to win. That's what she was in it for. And after a few years, she said, Mommy, why aren't there two women? Why aren't there two women dating?

Starting point is 00:10:24 And so at that point, I was like, oh, I've got to do this show. And it took me 15 years to get it off the ground because everything in the industry, as you know, takes forever. But I'm proud of it because we have 16 incredible, diverse, multi-talented contestants. We have 19 guest judges who are the same. Our key master is Amber whittington who has a big huge following from amber's closet on youtube and our host is the amazing jessica clark who's like our padma lakshi and kat dealy all rolled into one she's just brilliant in her role as host at 16 one hour episodes and you get to see who she picks at the end and it's got trans queer lesbians bisexual it's got the whole lgbtq community on there and all

Starting point is 00:11:12 that good stuff but now is it still it's in season one i see here is that one right now the thing i would love for people to the straight world does not know us this way and that's one of the things that i'm really really proud of the show too it's not the bachelor in the sense that we deal with some really very intense pieces the first day of shooting the amber found out one of the girls there and had used the n-word in a video and that she knew her from that and so we had this huge race talk right in the first couple of episodes and we had alcoholism storyline i mean it's really a lot of depth to it as well the bachelor drove me to drink this show so annoying anyway i'm just kidding i love the bachelor because it's just so silly and romantic yeah

Starting point is 00:11:57 that's i mean i i think i i just don't buy into all the drama i'm not well now it's just becoming insane i mean the first five six seven, I think it was pretty fascinating. Yeah, it was kind of interesting. I'm really, everybody's talking about selling one soul. It's everybody's avenue to a bigger sort of industry role. Some of the dudes they have on there, I think, are definitely not supposed to be on a hetero show. I'll just say that. Maybe they should be on your show.

Starting point is 00:12:24 But then when they had like the really old guy on oh yeah i didn't see that my mother watched though and she loved it so i don't know why i'm throwing shade at 57 at old guys but i suppose that's the self-effacing part of this joke but yeah i remember the old guy was on and i'm like what the fuck i don't want to have people anyway I was just like I don't know I'm not into this whole thing and then the cat fighting and stuff I just don't get into but you know hey man everyone's got their shows they like right I like Landman other people like The Bachelor people like your show but it's all good um so yeah I think you guys recorded the longest kiss was on this show is that oh no that's in elena undone okay it was

Starting point is 00:13:07 i was trying to figure out how do you convey that first kiss you have with somebody that you're madly madly in love with and you just sort of fall into it and you lose consciousness practically and it just is forever time and i thought that's a hell of a kiss yeah elena and dunn is completely based on my relationship with my ex-wife partner marina rice bader i didn't even have to write half the dialogue pretty much the film is our story and the first time we kissed it lasted about eight hours so i wanted to present the film yeah now is it eight hours in the movie or no it's three minutes and 29 seconds it just i think in film time that's eight hours it is there's a montage that long you have to really work on making that happen work and satisfy it

Starting point is 00:13:59 but people love it and of course you have to really like the other person too so that helps yeah helps me do i won my espresso machine my expensive espresso machine showed up the other day i gave it a very long kiss that might have been some sort of inner i don't know that's probably a record breakers i'm not sure your coffee machine i know there's an lgbtq, but maybe we need to add a C to the end for coffee or something. Because I'm in love with coffee, and I kiss it every morning as I drink it. I kiss my espresso every morning, but that's it. I can't drink it later in the day anymore.

Starting point is 00:14:39 Oh, really? Yeah. I hope I never burn out. I got an iron belly of steel. I hope I never burn out, but I got an iron belly of steel. I hope I never get sick of espresso, but you know, there's still time. Yeah. I just couldn't, I couldn't handle it after a while in the afternoons and evenings. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:14:55 I give my dog kisses on the forehead too. She hates it cause she's a Husky and she judges a lot, but you know, that's a different show. She just looks at me like, just give me treats, dummy. Leave me alone. I don the she just looks at me like just give me treats dummy leave me alone i don't don't touch me just give me treats um but you know they're cute let's get into what else have we missed that we want to plug out for you and talk about clear of the moon is having its 35th year anniversary re-release we're actually up resing so the first film i did i shot on 35 millimeter you know we cut it on a flatbed. It's like back in the day. And now, you know, my films are all on one drive sort of thing. It's just, it's an amazing transformation that the film industry has gone through. So we're up-resing and recoloring and restoring the film for its re-release. Yeah, I'm very happy about it. It was the first film I did. I'm autodidactic, so I learned on the set. Pam Curry, who was my producer, she was there for me every step of the

Starting point is 00:15:52 way. I've been blessed with people helping me, people funding me. I've been super, super blessed all my life. Third Moon is probably not my best film because it was my first film, but it is still, I get letters from college girls who watch it and i'm like really out of my films that's your favorite because it's old and clunky but it's a gift that keeps on giving like it we said it's it had a 10th anniversary a 20th anniversary and now it's 35th and i'm really happy about the place it's held in sort of the history of our film you know it's funny how some of our work that we think is going to be great, sometimes, I don't want to say flops, but, you know, and other people think it's great.

Starting point is 00:16:32 There's probably like some fans of the Chris Voss show that believe like the first thousand episodes were like, you know, up into Metallica Black album, and then Metallica Black we like sold out after the next thousand episodes and they're probably like we like the original chris voss the first thousand episodes and i'm like those episodes sucked like i don't think the ones last year suck but you know we try and get better all the time so that's kind of it's kind of like what we were talking about before projects don't happen until they happen and the way they're received is its own universe. Why? How? Who knows? You never know what people are going to like. I'll see YouTube

Starting point is 00:17:11 videos that take off for us and I'll be like, seriously, that one? And that's going to be the one that you're going to go? I made a UPS rant video,. Postal Service rant video off of a conflict I had with a delivery contractor. And that video is still up, just hammering it today. Oh, wow. It just knows never. It's got comments like every day people yell at the Postal Service. Yeah, and how does that happen? There's a sneak preview of a perfect ending that's got 118 million views.

Starting point is 00:17:42 It's like it just keeps going. I guess they get into algorithms and sort of oh yeah you know explode on there and from that whole algorithmic method it's funny it's just funny what people tune into and what they like you know you hear a lot of in music there's a lot of that too where you know i'm kind of dating myself here but the black sabbath album the song iron man which is one of the breakthrough hits that they had that made them successful you know they thought it was a junk it was like a filler part for the album and just throw that stupid thing on there it'll be fine i think the stairway to heaven might have been close yeah and you're just like who could have missed that one uh what

Starting point is 00:18:20 else do we want to plug and promote while we have you on i'd love to plug my last film that i did more beautiful for having been broken it's also very personal it's based on my relationship with What else do we want to plug and promote while we have you on the show? I'd love to plug my last film that I did, More Beautiful for Having Been Broken. It's also very personal. It's based on my relationship with my son, who's very special needs. And my number one thing was I was casting an actor who actually had a disability, a real disability. And I was able to cast Cal Farron, who suffers from Fanconia anemia. And he is the best little actor he could you couldn't even dream of somebody better than him to represent my son. It was just super awesome.

Starting point is 00:18:52 And my daughter who had been a theater brat, all of her junior high and high school had her first role in the film as well. And I'm so proud of her that that she's in the film. And it, it has my favorite sequence that i was talking about because i did every time i do a love scene i try to do something different i'm known for my love scenes and casting leads with super chemistry and so what i did was intercut it with a dance i happened to cast kayla radomski who was the one of the on the so you think you can dance show and was one of the finalists in 2008. And so she choreographed the dance sequence.

Starting point is 00:19:28 But I intercut that with the love scene and also with this gorgeous sunset that we stole on one of our days off with a huge drone and a huge jibway camera. The blue love dance, the making of Ascent of Romance is the making of that sequence because it took me a year to cut it the right way. I wasn't sure how it would go. I had 18 different producers that went through the film because we couldn't get the funding right away. And everybody said, are you

Starting point is 00:19:55 kidding? You're going to do these dance sequences? You're out of your mind. And they are the absolute favorite thing. People walk away from watching the film both dance sequences i'm very proud of that so that's what blue love dance a center romance is about it will be out later this year through through nicole kahn films global as well it sounds like it's got some good cinematography to it as well those phenomenal cinematography plus an amazing way you can do with their own style and stuff it's great oh my gosh yeah yes and those cameras that you guys use for filming that's not i i'm a i have to have two reds on every one of my shoes i won't do anything yeah i have to have that that's my thing definitely complicated yeah uh what else do we want to plug what we have here let's see we

Starting point is 00:20:39 plug clear of the moon elena undone a perfect Perfect Ending. That's a really, A Perfect Ending is a very interesting film. People respond to each of the films in their own way. That's why we have a whole thing where you can vote for your favorite Nicole Khan film because everybody has their favorite and they're like, that is your best film. Perfect Ending, there was a gentleman in the UK, 77 years old, a projectionist, emailed me and said, after all the years I've been in the same theater for 50 years, and your film is my absolute favorite film I've ever seen. So for somebody who's seen all the films for 50 years that have been projected, for him to say that just blew my mind. So we stayed in contact. He used to send my kids gifts and stuff along those lines. He was

Starting point is 00:21:25 just a lovely, lovely man. But the biggest perfect ending story is a woman contacted me. Her name is Joanne Millar. And she contacted me and told me she saw a perfect ending and she watched it like every day. She had been in a 40-year marriage with a fairly abusive man and she was a lesbian and she knew it but because of the church they went to she knew she would you know go to hell because she was sinning we stayed in contact for about a year and a half her husband ended up dying from a heart attack and left her a bunch of money and she funded the entire show of coming out for love and he came to the set around all those lesbians and once she left the set she went home to canada and she came out to everybody wow so that's the power of film you know at its extreme and i always say film can go so healing in so many different ways plugging

Starting point is 00:22:22 little man now my documentary that was very award-winning, Showtime picked it up, ran an Emmy campaign on it. I traveled the country doing speaking engagements and stuff, talking about what it was like to go through a birth of a child who's 100 days early, and not only 100 days early, but is what's called intrauterine growth restricted because they were not getting any nutrition from the surrogate who was carrying my son. Yeah, so he was born and there was only two hospitals in the country that would provide an under 500 grammer. One was Cedars-Sinai and one's one in New York. We happened to be Cedars-Sinai. And that was the only reason my son exists today.

Starting point is 00:23:05 Outside of the fact that, you know, the first five years, as I said before, we're in the PICU and the NICU. I mean, it was just nonstop hospital visits. But he's today, he'll be 23 the day my book is being published. And he is the most gentle, sweetest, lovable human being on the planet. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. You know, my sister was born premature, not 100 days. That's way early.

Starting point is 00:23:32 But, you know, she was born a little premature and had issues in childhood. And her baby, she was in the primary children's, you know, the hospital where they have all the preemie babies. Yeah, totally. I spent a lot of time around the preemie babies in that hospital ward. I forget what the ward's called. It's the NICU, the neonatal intensive care ward. Yeah. And it was hard to go through when I was, I think I was like 12 or 13 at the time,

Starting point is 00:23:57 and to see just these babies that were pin cushions, basically. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah, and they're just suffering because they're just like, hey, it and what's what the hell is going on this isn't that's the thing that i you know i'm posing to the viewer all every step along the way i'm saving my son's life saving my son's life but should i be should i be doing this look at what he's going through you know it's like when you're stuck in there you know first, first of all, you don't expect to go in 100 days early to have your next child. And so you completely are in shock. And you're not aware of really what's going on until you've been there for a while, you know, very, very

Starting point is 00:24:36 challenging. And the other piece is, I ended up connecting with another preemie mom, and we ended up doing a preemie handbook, because there's an entire lexicon of language and acronyms that you can't possibly understand unless you have, you know, a nursing degree, some sort there. So we wrote a preemie handbook, you know, how to survive the insanity of the NICU. And we had a lot of terms for the mothers, but we called also the Bermuda Triangle, the place where the doctors, the nurses, and the parents meet. Because mothers are used to being the hands-on person for your child. Not so in a NICU.

Starting point is 00:25:12 You can't touch your child unless they tell you you can touch your child. You can't hold your child unless they can figure out a way to put everything on you, which is in the first time I held my son was probably oh eight weeks after i was there oh really well yeah they had to put all the you know because he's on a ventilator so they had it's a big you know transition to move them to you yeah but we were able to shoot all of that stuff because we happened to be before born before the hipaa privacy laws were enacted so little man has footage you will never see again. And that's one of the reasons it remains out there. Yeah. It's good to make people aware of that experience.

Starting point is 00:25:52 It changed me. Sometimes I think about it. It left an indelible print, I think, in my life. You know, I remember one of the things we had to do was we had to scrub like really hard. We had to do the scrubbing you know you couldn't get bring germs into that unit because those babies were yeah yeah and they get a virus they all get the virus it doesn't matter how careful the nurses are they all get it it just doesn't matter and so it's like yeah it's very critical for people to scrub when they come in from the

Starting point is 00:26:21 outside yeah those babies they don't have you know they don't have their defenses up yet they haven't survived all the stupid bugs we have in the world no i'm still trying to survive the stupid political bugs we have in the world but that's oh my god the politics jokes oh my god can i just say one thing i used to watch three hours of political news shows i haven't watched one second since the election. I think a lot of people that saw some of the first administration stuff, it's 2025 people, those of you watching from the ruins, 10 years from now on YouTube. 2025, I think most people in the first administration were up in arms.

Starting point is 00:27:01 This time, we're not blowing our hearts out over so much about it but it is important to yell and scream and use your voice as we always say in the show we're all stewards of this democracy so it's up to us to keep it especially when people are declaring themselves king yeah moving on so give us a final pitch out on your projects you want people to check out the latest book the tv film film? The latest book is Descending Thirds. It will be available on Amazon. It's available as a Kindle right now, but it'll be available March 15th. And it is my opus, as it were. Everybody who's read my work thinks this is the best thing I've ever done. And I kind of agree. The story is really a really wonderful story. It's got two sort of jaw-dropping twists reveals that you don't see

Starting point is 00:27:45 coming, which I'm a big fan of the reveal anyway, and I've used it a couple of times in my films. But yeah, so there's Descending Thirds. And if you go to NicoleConFilmsGlobal.com, you can see all the films that I've done. You can vote on your favorite film if you'd like. We have that ability. You can vote on your favorite contestant from coming out for love as well um yeah it's a lot of wonderful what i call adult storytelling that's one of the sort of other earmarks of my features is that they're not rom-com they're you know real romances even though i think romance has gotten a bad rap, the word's gotten a bad rap. It's, you know, romance is a good thing. It's a great thing.

Starting point is 00:28:29 Yeah, we need more romance in this world, I think. Maybe we need to all love each other much under the references we're making with about politics. Love each other more. So give us your dot coms as we go out. Okay. NicoleConFilmsGlobal.com and Coming out for love.com and ascendingthirds.com come check it out and enjoy thank you very much for coming the show we really appreciate it thank you so much chris i had a blast thank you and thanks for tuning in

Starting point is 00:28:57 everybody thank you very much nicole we really appreciate it. And we try and do a lot of infotainment. Laughter, fun, education, make the world smarter or dumber. One of the two. But hopefully they'll laugh at it. Anyway, thank you very much, Nicole, for coming to the show. Thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, 4Chest, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, 4Chest, Chris Foss, Chris Foss1 on the TikTok. Any of those crazy places on the internet. Be good to each other.

Starting point is 00:29:24 Stay safe. We'll see you next time.

The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Nicole Conn’s Journey: From Filmmaker to Author with “Descending Thirds”

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