The Extras - Four Films of Roland Joffe with Daniel Griffith

Episode Date: December 8, 2022

Documentary filmmaker Daniel Griffith joins the podcast to discuss his extras on the IMPRINT Blu-ray release of "Directing Roland Joffe (1984-92)."  These four films were released in less than a decade and represent an amazingly creative output in a short amount of time.  The films are "The Killing Fields" (1984), "The Mission" (1986), "Fat Man and Little Boy" (1988), and "City of Joy" (1992).  Daniel Griffith's 90-minute documentary titled "Prisoners of Our Own History" is an intimate conversation with Roland Joffe discussing the themes and issues of each of these films. The extras alone make this release an important addition to your collection for fans of Roland Joffe and his films.We also talk about Daniel Griffith's two-hour documentary for the IMPRINT Blu-ray release in September of "The Beast" (1988), directed by Kevin Reynolds (Fandango, Water World).  A somewhat forgotten film of the 80s about a Russian tank crew fighting in Afghanistan, the film has more resonance today than most people may realize.Purchase from IMPRINTDirected by Roland Joffe Blu-rayThe Beast Blu-rayBallyhoo Motion Pictures websiteThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and their release on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Lard, your host. Today, documentary filmmaker Daniel Griffith joins the podcast to talk about the extras he produced

for the recent imprint Blu-ray release of Directed by Roland Jaffe 1984-1992. And that covers director Roland Jaffe's first four films, The Killing Fields, The Mission, Fat Man and Little Boy, and City of Joy. We'll also talk about his two-hour documentary extra on director Kevin Reynolds' 1988 film, The Beast, which was released earlier this year. Well, hi, Daniel. Welcome to The Extras Podcast. Thank you. It's an honor to be invited. I'm so glad we finally could get together. I think I emailed you literally like three months ago and you've been just slammed and we both have families and kids and our own businesses and everything. So it took a little

while. But when I saw this project that this release that we're going to be talking about on Roland Jaffe. I thought, well, here's something we can kind of focus in on. And that was like two months ago. And we're just kind of getting around to doing this right before the release. That's just the nature of things. But I have been following your work on social media. I know you've had a lot of other releases this year.

And we'll dabble a little bit into that as well. But I'm really happy that you were able to find some time here to do this right before the holidays. But before we get into the creative discussion, I did want to get a little background from you for the listeners on how you broke into the film industry. Well, I would say that I'm still trying to break into the film industry. I have always wanted to be a filmmaker.

I say visual storyteller. My friends, I have to elaborate on that. But I would say I want to be a visual storyteller. And I've always been fascinated with documentaries and also film history. And certainly the untold parts of film history or the shunned or forgotten or the parts that were kind of swept under the rug. And I think in the process of working as a grip on film and television sets, I started collecting interviews on my own for a documentary. And that documentary would be about a really obscure figure. And the guy's name is K. Gordon Murray. He was a film distributor from the 50s,

60s, early 70s. And I thought, I'm going to do this just as an exercise. I feel like filmmaking or any art form, really, you have to just do. You can read books and study all day about how to be whatever it is you want to be. But the best, I guess the best school is to really just do it. Learn from your mistakes, make plenty of mistakes. So then when it really counts, you know what you're doing. So I started making documentary on my own. I had some background being a DP. I had background with lighting and certainly doing grip work. I got to work with a lot of different lighting techs and got a lot of pointers there. And of course, I watched movies all my life and read whatever book or magazine I could find. So this was my lifelong goal and kind of dabbled into doing this.

And slowly, a narrative started to build. I started to flex a little muscle by shooting B-roll or try to do historic recreations of different things to create B-roll. And I think it captured the attention of Turner Classic Movies and also captured the attention of Shout Factory, who just entered a deal with distributing mystery science theater, 3000 television episodes. Right. So, um, they thought, well, Hey, there's this guy that seems to love cult film and cinema obscurity. So maybe we could bring him on board to maybe produce some bonus features. And I had this thought, if, um, you were putting out mystery science theater episodes, what if we created sort of the, I guess, the criterion collection version of movies that were considered to be the worst of the worst? And I thought,

there's something novel about that. Like, really, I mean, I find the story about what happened on a film that's considered the worst movie of all time, which I don't really believe exists. But finding that story, to me, is more compelling than, you know, let's do another documentary about a Cecil B. DeMille film or another documentary analyzing Citizen Kane or whatever. Right. I thought, well, you know, these are people that clearly put a lot of heart into something. And, you know, it may not have turned out the way that they wanted it to but they tried and uh there's something admirable about that um all the components everything that goes together uh to make a movie and a friend of mine uses this term

uh it is alchemy um you know it is it's it's this magical concoction of all these different things, all these different people and places coming together to tell one story, to realize one vision. And I was always attracted to those, I guess, misfits of Hollywood. And I think that it was a nice fit to work with the Mystery Science Theater crew and certainly to work with Shout Factory. Right. Well, I think that's an interesting story because you're in Atlanta, right? And so you're not in the backyard of Hollywood with the ability to maybe get meetings with the studios and things of that nature. But you didn't let that stop you. You had a love for the stories and documentary. And let's face it, the documentary is not the big moneymaker in the filmmaking community, but it is for those of us who really enjoy history or like you said,

the quirky stories or the really interesting things that are not as well known. That's a great way to go. And then you just took that personal interest and you obviously were good enough to get the recognition from others. Now, how long have you been doing this behind the scenes type documentaries? Yeah, I guess it's been about 15 years now. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it was a couple of years into it where I decided to just go full time. I decided to just go full time. One interesting thing that I've run across now that I've been doing the podcast and talking to so many people who work in doing extras, many of whom I, like yourself, like we never worked on anything together, but the respect I have for all the folks who are out there doing documentaries or audio commentaries, whether they come from a writing background or a filmmaking background or personal interest, you know, or they're a filmmaker who does the extras on other projects besides their own, is that there's a real community of people who are just really passionate about these titles and about physical media, because that's where you can put the work that you're doing so that it's attached with the film and the release and things of that

nature. So I'm kind of enjoying just meeting more people and bringing them to the listeners outside of just the friends I have at the studios or, or at the bigger distributors and things of that nature. So, uh, so it's great to have you on now. This is a really exciting release. This one, uh, that's coming out later in November from Imprint called Directed by Roland Jaffe, 1984 to 1992. And this is a release that only has 1,500 copies, I believe. So it's very limited. It's four films, though it is six discs, because I think one of them is the documentary that we're going to talk about that you did. And the four films are the 1984, The Killing Fields, 1986, The Mission, 1988, Fat Man and Little Boy, how did you kind of then get, you know, who reached out to you and kind

of got you involved in creating this extraordinary documentary that you have on this box set? Well, I'd been collaborating with imprint for, I would say almost at their inception as a label. I think they'd been maybe a month or two into their releases when I reached out to them. And I think they were trying to reach out to me. So it just kind of ended up kind of a perfect opportunity to work together. But like a lot of clients, I get contacted saying, here's the title. What do you think? What should we do with this? And I do a little research and I come back with some ideas. They had mentioned, I would say almost a year ago, they had mentioned that they were going to

be putting out this set with these films as a part of an ongoing series, which I'd already done. I'd already produced features for the Zhang Yimou set and is one of my favorite international filmmakers. Highly controversial, but one of my favorite international filmmakers. And so I was really excited to do that and sort of actively lobbied, even though it's really complicated to do bonus features for films that are predominantly Chinese produced. bonus features for films that are predominantly Chinese produced. They're just, I would say anything that's made, unless you've networked in, it's hard to get participation on those things. So I had to really improvise and what I could do to honor this filmmaker and the films that were included in the set, at the same time, face the facts that there were going to be limitations to what I had access to.

But in that same timeframe, they had mentioned these films. I grew up watching a lot of movies that I probably shouldn't have for the age that I was. My grandparents kept me over the weekends. They took me to this local video store all the time. I could pick out whatever I wanted to watch. They took me to this local video store all the time. I could pick out whatever I wanted to watch. And I spent quite a long time studying boxes and connecting the dots between film composers, film directors, screenwriters, and so forth. And I picked up the mission primarily because I had discovered Ennio Morricone's music on several other films. And I picked that up just because his name was the composer on this film. And it looked intriguing.

I grew up in a pre-religious household. early mission journeys through tropics, through Central America. Those things were fascinating to me. That setting was fascinating to me. And I responded to the film. As soon as I watched it, I was immediately hooked. I was like, who is this filmmaker? By this point, he had only made The Killing Fields, as far as a feature filmmaker, that only made The Killing Fields, The Mission, and Fat Man,

Little Boy had just come out. So I actively sought out Killing Fields and was just blown away by it. And then I would catch Fat Man, Little Boy. I didn't see it in the theater, but I did rent it when it came out. I loved the approach that Roland Jaffe took with the subject matter. Somewhat dark, introspective characters sort of dancing around these very controversial topics and themes, but he did it so beautifully. I mean, you just, you're looking at it. It's like, this is, it's a painting coming to life, the way he would capture and compose scenes.

And I think part of it is the partnership of composer and filmmaker. And that probably at an early age is what attracted me to it. Some of the themes and characterizations and certainly some of the controversial elements were a little lost on me. I think I was nine years old when I watched the mission. I might have been eight. That's pretty young. I immediately watched The Killing Fields. So the things that were discussed in that probably blew my mind away.

But at the same time, I was probably more or less interested in the composition of everything and how music and editing and all these things work together. But I was very moved by the stories and the humanity that he would, you know, explore with the characters, with the themes. And there's something interesting about those movies because they're very specific to the story and the environment that they're set in. But at the same time, you can walk away from it feeling like you connected to this, not from a standpoint of era, like period or location,

but that the characters are painted so broadly and so complex, but yet at the same time, easily digestible. I really just fell in love with that work and never thought that I would interview Jaffe for one and never thought I'd have the opportunity to, from his perspective, dissect those films. But I always saw those first four films in his career as almost untouchable. I mean, you look at that body of work, those first four films, imagine those first four films. We always talk about all these other filmmakers, the four films they do in a row that are just, wow, I can't believe this happened in this small duration of time, back to back to back. But no one really talks about Roland Jaffe from that perspective.

And I think that, you know, it's time that they should. So in print, you had a relationship with them. They reached out to you. Talk a little bit about how you decided to approach these once the partnership began. Well, originally, like I think any filmmaker, certainly in an independent world, you enter a project with very, very high expectations. A, these films are so important, they got to be important to all the people that were involved. They had to have made some kind of impression

on their lives. And because it made an impression on their lives, they would love to talk about it. And that's never the case. There's been a few film documentaries that I've done where I could get so many people involved because of how important the film and the experience of the film was. Despite its initial reception, despite its critical reaction, I'd been able to get most people involved. I thought, because I was able to do a documentary, a feature documentary about Streets of Fire and get most of the people involved. I did a documentary about, a feature documentary about Dark Star, John Carpenter and Dan Abanon's, their first voyage into filmmaking. And I was able to get most of the people involved. You know, I'm, I'm just, I'm going to say like a vessel, you know, I mean, I, what stories they

tell just filter through me and they go out to the world. I mean, I just, I'm there for that moment. You're representing the fans. But it's interesting is that I don't, I never, I never enter a project as a fan filmmaker, even if I'm a huge fan of a movie. I try to step away from it, almost cite a documentary filmmaker that everybody knows and it makes it a lot easier for this.

But, you know, Ken Burns, he often says in interviews that he's trying to find like this emotional narrative, like he's trying to connect to the emotional side of an experience. You know, the facts and the dates and the, you know, all these things are just there and anybody can compile that information and say, here it is, here it is, you know, five step, here's the story. But he kind of comes into it like on the night of this particular battle, what did this general eat for dinner and what did that mean

to him? You know, kind of thing. And it's like somehow in that there is a human story. What would someone be thinking the night before a battle while they're having what could be their last meal? There's something special there and everyone connects to it emotionally. So now those facts and figures are tied together with this emotional bow that everybody can appreciate and certainly relate to. Well, I don't know. What would that be? So I try really hard going into these things. And granted, sometimes I have no schedule, no budget, no time to really make this work. But in a few occasions I do is I really just try to dig a little deeper and like, let's talk about the people that made this, not let's talk about making this. And I think with Jaffe, I was able to have this really long discussion.

It lasted, I mean, the interview was about six hours. But I was able to talk to him on a more emotional level and take this journey through these first four films. And it's all about, it's all about meaning. And it's all about what he's trying to express, what he's trying to say, not so much about this shot's great. Let me tell you about how I composed this shot. I got some of that in his interview, but as I was piecing this together, I kind of thought, you know, to me, that's interesting, but it's kind of bogging the narrative down, going from how important these themes are and how all these themes of these different films are tied together by stopping and taking a little break and saying, oh, by the way, don't you love that shot where

this is going through here? And, you know, it just doesn't work the same. And you can do that with his films because certainly they are a wonder to behold, but still it's not the same. Right. Cause you were, you were going more for, I mean, the piece is called prisoners of our own history, the first four films of Roland Jaffe. And so you were going for more of a thematic kind of overarching look at all four films rather than breaking down each film. Is that kind of, do I have that right? Yes. That was not how I originally was tackling this. That was not the vision that I had. The vision I had was, let's interview everyone that ever worked with Roland Joffe on these films and put together this epic journey into the making of

these films with all these different perspectives. And I reached out to everyone I could and got a lot of people interested in doing it. But once I interviewed Jaffe, that changed because I saw that what I got out of him and the stories that he told, he's a great storyteller. I felt that they would end up on the cutting room floor. Maybe 80% of that would end up on the cutting room floor in lieu of connective tissue of, I need to cut from him to this actor talking about this, and I need to cut from this actor talking about this to this actor talking about this other subject. And then let's work in the DP and let's work in the editor. Let's work in. I felt like I would lose his story, its meaning, I guess, the complexity of what he was trying to accomplish within these four films within this really decade of his career.

It's so interesting with him is that he, I would say to a degree, like Malick and to a sense how Kubrick, you know, these like filmmakers that would make movies and you knew when they made a film, they would be important and that you would have something that you had to anticipate. Or, you know, maybe they had a struggle finding that project that spoke to them. And it may take a couple of years interim between completing and releasing a film and starting production on a new film. And that was one of the things I wanted to learn through doing the interview was, you know, here's a filmmaker that didn't. You know, he had success with the Killing Fields, certainly critical success that would immediately lead to another project. And then with the mission, not as much critical and commercial success, but were it count, it was there. You could easily have bounced into another project, but it took several years for that project to come about.

And you learn that, well, the reason why it took a couple of years, because he was really trying to make City of Joy after the mission and couldn't get things connected there. And that's how Fat Man and Little Boy came about. So it's fascinating when you just take the journey with the filmmaker. And I compared it a little bit to the Diploma doc in the sense that that was my thought. That was how I convinced Imprint was, you know, we wanted to make this documentary. I've got several interviews already in the can, but I can make those interviews their

own features and we could kind of put them on the corresponding film. And let's just take Jaffe and run with him. Let's take the journey through his eyes with him over the course of this decade, making these first four films. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. or look for the link in the podcast show notes. Yeah, and I watched the documentary.

Thank you so much for sending that to me so I could see it. And I see where your interview with Jaffe was just so enthralling that he gave you that much time. His number one is amazing. But his intellect and his passion and his brilliance, I guess, in that sense comes across in the interview, because you can just see, as he's talking about each of the films, all of the thinking that went into it thematically and what he was going after and how he worked with his actors and the scripts and things just pop out at you. Like you said, it's not, well, this shot was beautiful.

Or how did you get that shot in the city or out in the jungle or so forth? But the themes that he was going for and how he saw each movie was very unique. And the stories that he told were fascinating in that sense. and the stories that he told were fascinating in that sense. So, I mean, I found it really enthralling to hear directly from him about his films that way. That's what I responded to as I was doing the interview and he was telling me these different stories. Usually when I do an interview, I'm already editing it in my head.

I'm like, okay, that's a good story or that's a good soundbite or that's a, as. Or that's a good soundbite. Or that's a, as he was telling me these stories, I was like, I don't, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with this because it's just good. It's, it's, it's just, it's compelling. The information is rich and it's, it's got an, like an emotional strain. There's this through way that just kind of carries along. And he keeps harping on these themes. And these themes are the same. And they resonate. And when you're thinking about the films as he's talking about them, which often I do, I start thinking, oh, that does make sense.

Oh, that is kind of interesting. Oh, I was like, wow, I get it. I get this. And I didn't want to rob any of the viewers, certainly people that are fans of his films like myself. I didn't want to rob them of taking that journey with him in this interview. a lot of interviews with, you know, cast crew, uh, historians, critics or whatever, um, which is what you would do in this situation. I didn't think that I would, um, honor what he was trying to communicate by doing that. I would almost, uh, I mean, I'd almost be watering it down and it would lose a bit of its, uh, power. There are a few things I'll, I'll just throw you away and see and see what your take

was. But when he was talking about the killing fields, one of the things that stuck with me is that he had read the script or had been given the skip to read by the producer. And then he kind of went off and that producer approached other filmmakers. And I think if I have it right, maybe like a year later, they crossed paths and he had given the producer one note And I think if I have it right, maybe like a year later, they crossed paths and he had given the producer one note, I think it was. And he'd said, be sure and approach this as a love story, which I don't think people necessarily think of the Killing Fields with that in mind, but that stuck with the producer. And when he went out to the other filmmakers, people just didn't have the kind of approach. So he came back to Jaffe because Jaffe was not when a filmmaker makes a film, certainly when the film turns out to be as powerful as something like Killing Fields, you never suspect the

possibility that that could have been an entirely different film made by an entirely different filmmaker if fate didn't intervene. But yeah, it's, it's fascinating that, that note of this is how I would approach it. And it wasn't even like, I don't think Jaffe was looking at it as I'm being pitched my approach on this. So I'm going to give them my approach. I think he was more like, Oh, this is kind of nice. He's letting me read this script and here's my note. You know, this is what I think. It's very humble, very was very humble about it. Yeah.

So it's interesting that that piece of, when I say criticism, that take on the material that Jaffe wrote on that note that Nauman kept, you know, would end up getting him a job and starting his career as a film director. I guess the reason why it stuck with me was because it showed a kind of emotional resonance that he was able to find in the story. It wasn't just this, Hey, this is a story about this action and that action. And then this happens. And then that happens. He found the emotional core of the story. And that's what he focused on in giving his note back. Right. And it wasn't so much about the craft of being the director and the shots and things, which really goes back to what you just said about how you ended up making your documentary, not about the, you know, scenes here or how we're going to set the shots or where are we going to film or how, what cameras are we

going to, that all comes later. His initial response was the emotional story, which when you watch a Killing Fields, it's the emotion. It's not just what happens. I mean, there's horrific things that happen all the time, but if we don't emotionally connect to those characters of the story, we're not going to remember it the way we remember the Killing Fields. story, you know, we're not going to remember it the way we remember the Killing Fields. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog

physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. You can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. When it comes to the mission, one of the things that kind of popped out, I thought in the story was that he really saw this as a musical story. And of course, I recall, I mean, after seeing the mission, I, I immediately went out and bought the score. This was his first collaboration also with Ennio Morricone. Tell me a little bit about that. Me being a film music fan, I would almost say since inception, I guess. It's like, I think I came out of the womb loving film music because I can't remember a moment in my life where I, I mean, I was that

weird kid that was listening to film music more than I was listening to rock and roll or jazz or whatever. Um, uh, so I mean, I loved early on just loved, uh, film music. So they were screening the mission for, uh, Ennio Morricone to potentially be the composer. And Jaffe was there. And I think Jaffe kind of stepped out of the theater and was going to let Morricone just watch the film and see what his reaction would be. Anyway, the film was over. Morricone came out and was basically just saying, I think it's perfect the way it is.

was basically just saying, I think it's perfect the way it is. I'm pretty sure Jaffe, by this point, had temped a few classical pieces into it, but I'm pretty sure he didn't temp the whole score. I think that he put in the classical pieces because there needed to be something identifying the sequence where Jeremy Irons is playing the oboe and the natives are gathering. So there was an aspect of this going on. But yeah, I think he came out of the screening, it was like, it's perfect the way it is.

You know, the sound and everything else, I think it's just great. It's very emotionally impactful. And he left. And so Jaffe called Putnam and said, hey, I think we lost Morricone. He watched the film and he said he didn't think it needs music. And I think that's where David was just basically telling him because of his experience working with composers. And I said, well, let's just wait a couple of weeks and and see see what happens. I'm pretty sure Jaffe just kind of assumed he either didn't like it

or didn't think it was the right fit. And, you know, a couple of weeks have passed, and Jaffe gets a call from Ennio Morricone saying, hey, you know, I've been thinking about the movie, and, you know, I'm going to play this melody for you. And he plays the melody that everyone recognizes. And I think that's it. That's history.

I'm sure Jaffe in that moment was like, oh, this is perfect. I think this is better than what I expected. But I think it was this experience of Putnam with film composers, I think, is what allowed him to have the instinct that, you know, maybe Marconi was just sort of speechless and didn't know what to say and had to spend a week or two mulling it over and thinking about it. Yeah, that was a really fascinating story. Obviously, after that, the three films, The Mission, Fat Man, Little Boy and City of Joy, NEO scored all three of those films. And so they had a great partnership that developed after that. But I think so many people obviously associate The Mission with that music. I mean, you can't you can't separate those two. You can't separate those two.

It's one of the film scores, I think, that has sort of transcended the film that, you know, initially is related to. Right. You know, people that have never seen the mission, they hear that theme and they're like, oh, I know that, you know, that was used on a commercial or something like that. But I think that that's something that's kind of interesting. And I think even that music shows up on various different CD compilations that are not film related. That would be some kind of easy listening music or. Yeah. And was Putnam involved in Chariots of Fire?

Yes. Yeah. And that's another involved in Chariots of Fire? Yes. Yeah. And that's another film where I think the music transcends. Yeah. Which those two were... I don't know if you could say the same thing about The Killing Fields as far as Michael Fields score. You know, while Michael Fields' music that was used in The Exorcist certainly, I think, transcends The Exorcist, I don't think you had that same kind of relationship with

the score of The Killing Fields. I think the score of The Killing Fields is, it's an experimental masterpiece. I don't know if it quite works in some ways. I feel like it's finding itself. It's trying to discover itself. But I do think that the marriage between music and imagery in The Clingfields is incredibly impactful.

In some cases, it adds to the tension of certain scenes when they're being huddled around. of certain scenes when they're being huddled around and the Khmer Rouge are taking them from the car to the back of the tank. Their lives is in jeopardy. That music, that chaotic soundscape that is in the background, it just really makes your heart start to beat out of your chest. It's just so intense. Well, we don't really have time to get into all of these films but uh your your documentary is really compelling and um i think

it's you know obviously the movies themselves seeing them with the do you know if the films have been restored for this release or remaster so um there I know that the master for City of Joy is a new 4K master. Okay. The other films are, I believe, just the... I think the master that was from Paramount for Fat Man and Little Boy is a new scan. I don't know how long ago that scan was done.

Right. The other two masters, I think, are Warner Brothers. They're HD masters that they had made probably for streaming, not for the older Blu-ray editions. I'm pretty sure it's a more updated transfer, but it's not 4K. You alluded to it earlier, but you also did some other extras that are on the individual film releases. Is that correct? You have the interview that you did with the cinematographer. Is that right? Chris Minge's. Is that yours? Yes. Apart from the legacy features that the, uh, or what we say, like the, like the archival features that were used. So I did all the new features for the set. And all of that was made up of me in the process of filming interviews for a documentary

in which it would be intercut with multiple interviews about Jaffe and his career. And after I did the interview with Jaffe, I sort of changed the format. And I realized I didn't want to lose these interviews because they were great on their own and in their own merits. And I think that by making them separate, it allowed me to use more of the material than I probably would have if I intercut them together in one piece. Certainly the Jaffe would have been butchered maybe a third of what I used if it was just him telling the stories, but that would be the same for the other interviews. You and I have both worked on these extras where you're trying to figure out the structure, you know, okay, is this going to be a box set of certain films or is this focused on one film?

It's just focused on the legacy of a actor, director, you know? And in this instance, I really enjoyed the way you approached it, giving this 90 minute documentary on Jaffe and letting him just speak to it and give his story and kind of going with him through the film. So I have not seen the other pieces you did, but I, I think that's a fun way to approach it. And for the fans of Roland Jaffe's films and of these films specifically, buying this set allows you to not only enjoy the film, but get all of these like in-depth hearing from the different filmmakers who were involved and really adds to the enjoyment of, of the ownership of this set.

And I think that was the goal. Ultimately with me, I'm just interested in telling people's stories with the documentary itself. I just thought it was a neat way to, to take all this information. I mean, it's wealth of information and weave it into a bit more of a, and weave it into a bit more of a, I want to say an easily digestible version of his interview, because there's a lot of stuff I cut out of it. I could easily have made it a lot longer.

But I just sort of took certain themes and certain stories that all tied to a theme and just sort of honed it down into a feature length. Something that is easily digested. But all of his stories, even things I cut out were pretty fun and interesting little factoids. Well, it's a terrific documentary and I'm sure it's going to be a really fantastic release. I'll have some more information about some of the specifics of the other extras. I'll put that on Facebook and on some of the social media where it's easier to kind of write that stuff out for those of you listening.

There was one other project that you worked on though recently, Daniel, that I did want to spend a few minutes talking about. And that was a project from earlier this year where you worked on another, was it feature length? Oh yeah. It's over two hours, that documentary for the 1988 film, The Beast directed by Kevin Reynolds. Tell us a little bit about that project and how you kind of got involved in creating such an in-depth documentary? When I started, actually, I would say even before I was doing bonus features for Blu-ray releases and DVD releases, I always had like a list of 10 making of documentaries or biographies I wanted to do before I died. And one of them was for Waterworld. I was a film

projectionist when Waterworld came out. It was going into my senior year of high school. I worked full time as a film projectionist at a local multiplex. And from the beginning, I followed the making of this film and was enthralled with the film. And I became even more excited about it while the bad press surrounding it started to surface and started to make its way into my small Southern town that I grew up in. So anyway, you would hear people when they see the poster in the lobby or if they're watching the trailer in the theater for Waterworld, you would see or hear mummers of, that's the movie is the most expensive movie. It's going to completely fail. I'm sure it's going to ruin Constance's career, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and all this stuff. And it just made me more excited about it. Something similar happened when Titanic, the James Cameron's Titanic poster or trailers would show people would say the same thing. This is going to tank. I mean, obviously, Titanic was much more successful commercially and critically than than Waterworld.

But I really responded to Waterworld and I thought this is a very simple concept to be sure. It's Mad Max on water. I mean, you can't escape that. It's Mad Max on water. I mean, you can't escape that. But in its core, it's this amazing, complex, you know, action adventure film. And if you really studied it and you really dug deep into how it was made, you would find that all the money it cost to make the film was for the most part was warranted. It needed that money to be what it was. And, um, and I just, I was fascinated with, so I was fascinated with Kevin Reynolds. I loved Kevin Reynolds, uh, film Fandango. And, uh, I'd loved, uh, Repi Nui. And of course I, you know, like most people enjoyed Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, when they came out and I'd watched The Beast on cable.

And it was a film that had not been easy for me to find or see. And I saw it while I was, I think, a freshman in high school. And I was just like, wow, this movie, this is like a movie that no one really talks about, has ever heard of. And it really kind of stuck with me. And it was a part of the Kevin Reynolds career that I followed and really appreciated. I think he is a great filmmaker. So anyway, I'd made Waterworld and made the documentary about Waterworld. It's a feature documentary and got that off my chest. And this project,

I was trying to get some distributor in the United States, some boutique distributor to go after it. Like, let's go to Sony. Let's see if we can get a new master done on the film. And then let's make a documentary about the making of this movie. And no company was really interested in it. And it's like it's a it's really obscure to the point where it might as well not even exist. And eventually Imprint mentioned it in a handful of titles and whatever other titles they mentioned, I completely just blocked out. All I did was hone in on the beast.

And I was like that, I want to do that. Uh, like what do you do? And I was like, I want to make a documentary about it. And like, really? Like that felt like 100%. I want to make a documentary about it. And like, really? Like that felt like 100%. I want to make a documentary about it. And so I reached out to Kevin Reynolds and he was on board with it. I think he was happy with what I did with Waterworld and how I treated Waterworld. And so I think he was happy to help

me do another project. And then it just kind of came together. But that's one of those films where a lot of the people that made it, I would say most of the people that made the film, were eager to be involved. It was such an interesting experience for them. And they really believed in the film. They put their heart into it and kind of felt, by circumstances that had nothing to do with the film, had everything to do with the regime change. Certainly, we were dealing with Putnam again, Putnam's reign at Sony. Putnam believed in this, and it was a project brought to him, and he was behind it. But by the time the film was finished, or in post, and was, you know, going to go out to the world, he was kind of ousted and the new regime had zero interest in the film and was more interested in supporting Rambo three. Yeah. Well, it's a, I think the documentary is over two hours. You obviously have Kevin Reynolds in there. You have Dale Pollack, who is the executive

producer, and they have a very interesting story about how, how they teamed up. And then on a recent podcast, we talked about the Lost Boys. And so I found it interesting to see Jason Patrick in your documentary talking about his lead role. And you could just see that this was an important film to him. And that was really cool. I think it was a departure for him because he was looking for roles. I think he was looking at something that would be a bit more challenging that would take him outside of that, you know, the next phase of Brat Pack actors and into something a bit more, I would say a bit more challenging. Maybe I was looking for something that would.

And this certainly was one of those roles. Yeah, I mean, The Lost Boys came out in 87 and Beast came out in 88. And this certainly was one of those roles. Kevin Reynolds kind of broke in as the writer of Red Dawn, but he wasn't at a point in his career where he could also direct that. Then Fandango, I think was his, was that his first major film. And then he did a number of films with Kevin. And there was interesting story here in the beast too, how I think it was Dale Pollack said probably any other studio head other than Putnam would have really pushed for Kevin to be in the beast from a casting perspective. But Kevin Reynolds didn't feel that that was the right choice and

he really stuck to his guns. That was interesting. And, you know, Kevin Costner was coming, uh, coming off of some pretty big success from this point, you know, the difference in time between working with Kevin Reynolds onynolds on pandango a film that was not not received very well necessarily uh certainly it wasn't you know commercially a success but kevin costner i think his performance in that sort of did shine to a point where by the time they were doing beast he had name recognition yeah certainly you know the beast might have been it might be more in the zeitgeist if it was starring kevin costner and now anyway that you know people would be like oh there's that other kevin costner movie um as opposed to

the beast uh is that the peter benchley made for TV? People like, well, there's obviously a movie out recently this summer called the beast, which is a totally different film than not to be confused with the 1988 film. And I did want to ask you about the name of the documentary. It's in the pronunciation. You might want to help me out with that. Nana Watai?

Nana Watai. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is the name of the, uh, the, the play, you know, as, as written, it was the name of the play. And I mean, for good reason, they did not make the film under that title. And I think they were actively trying to figure out what are we going to title this? Because what would that mean to most people? And certainly at that time frame, I mean, it's given what was going on in Afghanistan. I think it would have probably just been a weird, certainly weird word. You can't walk up to a neighborhood theater and go up to the ticket booth and say, yeah, I like two tickets to see Nanwadi. What is that?

It's like that movie with who in it? So I think that they were trying to find a way to market the film better than under its title as a play. I think the title as a play works perfect as a title for the film. I thought it'd be interesting to name the doc that because then I would be associating the documentary to the play that turned into a film, which I think probably in his mind, Master Simone's mind, I think that he probably saw it as a film more than he saw it as a play. And I think the opportunity of it being a film was basically realizing his ultimate and original vision. Well, it's a fascinating documentary as well. And with the war in Ukraine, I mean, there are things that still resonate today to that film back in the 80s. resonate today to that film back in the eighties. I mean, sometimes we, we talk about how history repeats itself and things don't change necessarily, or we don't always learn from history. So that's, uh, it's an interesting time for this film to come out and for your documentary to come out,

to kind of shed some light on it and, uh, uh, highly recommended for the listeners to check that out as well. So, but Daniel, it's been a real pleasure having you on the podcast today. And I've really enjoyed our discussion about these projects that you've been working on. Well, thank you. It's an honor to talk about them. Both of these projects this year were really important to me. And it was very important to try to give the fans, I would say maybe exceed the fans expectations the best way possible. Well, thanks again.

And I look forward to following all the other stuff and having you back on in the future. I appreciate it. Thank you. For those of you interested in purchasing the titles discussed in the show today, there are links in the podcast show notes and on our website at www.theextras.tv. So be sure and check those out. If this is the first episode of The Extras you've listened to and you enjoyed it, please think about following the show at your favorite podcast provider. And if you're on social media, be sure and follow the show on Facebook or Twitter at The Extras TV or Instagram at The Extras dot TV to stay up to date on our upcoming guests and to be a part of our community.

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