The Press Box - ‘Sleight’ Director J.D. Dillard (Ep. 301)

Episode Date: April 28, 2017

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey sits down with first-time director J.D. Dillard to discuss how he went from dropping out of school to being on the set of ‘The Force Awakens’ with J.J. Abrams to debuting his first film, ‘Sleight,’ at Sundance. Dillard also talks about helming the long-rumored reboot of ‘The Fly.’ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, before we get started with today's show, I just want to congratulate my boss, Bill Simmons, who you may know is the host of the Bill Simmons podcast, which just won the 2017 People's Voice and Webby Awards in the Best Sports Podcast category. So thanks to everyone who voted, supported us, and shout out to Bill Simmons. Okay, and here's my interview with J.D. Dillard. Hello, and welcome to a channel 33 podcast. My name is Sean Fennessey, and I'm the editor-in-chief of the Ringer. Today I'm joined by J.D. Dillard. You may not have heard of him. Three years ago, J.D. was a receptionist for J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot.

But today, he is the writer-director of his first film, which combines street magic, hip-hop, crime, and a little superhero mythology. Are you interested yet? The movie is called Slight, as in Slight of Hand. J.D., thanks for being here today. Thanks so much, man. J.D., not a lot of people know who you are, so I want people to understand who you are, because your movie is very interesting,

and you are, seems like, at the precipice of an exciting young career. So why don't you tell people sort of where you're from originally and how you got into filmmaking? So I'm from Grove in Philly and had sort of the great benefit of having a teacher who was from that world a little bit. Not necessarily in the professional sense, but just a really, I guess, important person of my creative growth, a guy named Mr. Granger who actually has a namesake in Slype. And funny enough was like also my dad's film teacher. We went to the same high school like 30 years apart. I also grew up in a military family and I was thinking, okay.

maybe military or maybe film, which are very different, turns out. So the decision kind of came down to going to West Point or going to Syracuse, but wound up going to Syracuse to study film in their visual performing art school, which is the sort of like more avant-garde side, because they also have a new house, which is a little bit more like public communications and maybe even a little more Hollywood-oriented. But I think what was really cool about those two years at Syracuse was, was, you know, my teachers who then kind of became my mentors, Cooper and Emily, I was just like watching things. I never would have watched. You know, I feel like that's kind of the weird thing about film school. The curriculum is so the same at a lot of these places. And, you know, after you've watched, like, the same eight movies, it's like, cool, now go make your movies. You know, I think that's, you're just like putting kind of the same point of view back out into the world. So that machine was, I'm kind of glad to not really have come from that necessarily.

But in the visual performing art school, we were watching like Bill Viola video art, and we were really getting like inundated with all of these things that I think kind of helped denormalize me a little bit. What kind of a movie fan were you as a kid? Were you like a Raiders of Law Stark, Star Wars kind of person? As you can tell with the Boba Fett tattoo of my arm, Star Wars is kind of the sole reason I'm in the business. But I think it was really helpful and important to shake some of that off.

Granted, like that doesn't sort of devalue Star Wars or devalue Jurassic Park or all these movies that I, you know, grew up like burning the VHS tape down. But it was also good to, you know, watch things from like every corner of the planet and watch things that aren't so linear in their narrative and, you know, representative of like different cultures and subcultures and types of people, et cetera, et cetera. So Syracuse is great, but it's also very cold there. I went to neighboring Ithaca college. Oh, there you go. It's horrible there. You know about upstate New York and Lake Effects Snow. And I also just wanted to be near the business, not necessarily study the business, study filmmaking, but just be near it.

So I applied to a bunch of schools in New York and a bunch of schools in L.A. And ended up getting into USC. But not to go to film school. So I wanted to do English textual studies slash creative writing, which sort of, you sort of, over the course of the semester, I realized that I kind of wanted to do, you know, like 18th century British Lit, which I don't really know how I wound up on the last. Yeah, exactly. I wanted to be rich. So there was that, and then there was getting kind of interested in like Middle Eastern studies and maybe women's studies. point being it didn't last long because I ran out of money and had to drop out. But I'd been interning at this company Revely for a while. And at the time, they're sort of like bread and butter

show was the office. And I went over there and started working for one of their scripted TV execs because I had been interning that semester and then coincidentally, you know, that assistant got promoted. And I became the assistant and I started working there. And that was sort of the start at least of my, you know, somewhat able to pay my bills professional life. But more importantly, in a very different way, shook the green off of me because I could, I was suddenly responsible for reading, you know, so much more than I ever had. And providing coverage and really just like learning the language of writing, which is something I had been doing.

But you can kind of tell how bad of a writer you are after you've read a thousand scripts. So, you know, that sort of began the process of, I think, just orienting myself with where my writing stood. And, you know, I knew what it was better then, and I knew plenty of things. that it was not better than. At that stage, were you thinking you were just going to be a screenwriter? Yeah, and weirdly, like, half-hour comedy, which is so strange because I'm not funny. But, yeah. We're the judge of that.

It was really, you know, writing was always in the back of my head. Directing was such a far off, like, you know, 10-year plan. But writing is free, you know, so I think in trying to flex that muscle and work it out and grow in a craft. Like it's something that is much more economical to do. So, you know, was that readily for a bit of time? And then kind of just reached this point where, you know, I felt like I'd learned a lot from this experience.

I realized that I really wanted to be in features. But almost more importantly, you know, when you kind of realize that you don't want to at all be on like the executive track, quote unquote, your time is like the most valuable thing. And I was just like responsible for a lot of reading at home and at night. And, you know, if I wasn't eating or sleeping, I was reading. So I needed to find something where I could at least, you know, get my time back.

So through a friend of a friend, I had heard about the receptionist position opening up a bad robot, which was like. We should say JJ Abrams production company. Yeah, JJ's company. And, you know, it was like two career steps backwards. and a very significant cut in a paycheck and a sizable increase in my commute. But, you know, the psychological income that that would yield was astronomical. And I think, you know, my move there is sort of the first push down the hill of the, you know, one day, hopefully avalanche or at least snowball to get, I think, my career started.

So, you know, that's a 9 to 5 job. And you can't, turns out you cannot be a reception. is from home. Your responsibilities cease when you walk out of that door. And, you know, from being an assistant with, you know, sort of increasing responsibilities, jumping to receptionist, you know, is a relatively easy thing to do, mostly because all I would really need to do is like smile and say bad or about 4,000 times a day as the phone rang. But that place became family and, you know, I became very close with a lot of people there. And in general, just to like see people you really respect directorally, editorially, just all of these various positions on a movie.

To see them at work and see how they interact with each other, certainly leaves an impression. So I was there for about two, three. I can't, I don't really remember. I needed to look at my old resume. And then that ended up being the first piece of writing. My writing partner, Alex and I, set up, was a pitch that we took to Bad Robot. And from there, it's like not glamorously, but it was enough to like, okay, I can take a step out and explore this life as a writer and just sort of see what happens. I read that when you were first figuring out how to become a writer in Hollywood that you sought out a copy of the lost pilot script on eBay.

Which is like so embarrassing that I think I paid like $60 for it. But it's like it was just before the time where, you know, like everything was just like readily available as a PDF and like Scriptorama and SimplyScript and all these places that, you know, now do a great job of archiving all of these things. But it was like a, so embarrassing. But it was like a photocopy of an autographed script from Lost. $60 worth, huh? I was going to say, yeah, just to like know what like Damon Lindeloff and JJ's. like signatures look like. You know, I think in sort of your your path as a, you know,

artist in general, which I'm certainly still on and still trying to figure out. But, you know, it's really funny to look at that jump from emulation to your own style. And when I look at my old stuff, like it's not, it's not like hard to tell at all the writing that I was influenced by. Because, you know, there is like kind of a bombastic quality to JJ. in Damon's writing. And that was what I was basing everything I was doing off of. So, you know, just like capital letters and very kinetic and just making the read and experience, not just like a blueprint to shoot, was definitely something that I was trying

to emulate. But then, you know, you grow and you write more things and then you're writing things without having the lost script open next to you. And, you know, you get to a point where, yeah, maybe you're going to lose some of those qualities, but you're now infusing new qualities. You know, it's really funny to go back and read those things from 2007, 2006, and be like, got it. Yeah, this is just a, like, copy paste of the lost script, but with, like, different characters and, you know, and different circumstances. What was it like then having a little bit of real access to JJ?

I think the, really the big takeaway was just, like, oh, my God, everybody likes working with him. and regardless of how incredible a filmmaker he is, I think the biggest takeaway for me is almost from like a, it's almost from like a leadership point of view. You know, I think when you, everybody's directing style is different, and I have certainly seen sets where, you know, the artistry is like a 10 out of 10, but the experience of being there could be significantly less than that.

But JJ really strikes this incredible balance of, like being so good at what he does and also being the nicest dude on the planet. So there is this, that was like the almost the immediate takeaway was just, oh yeah, okay, first definitely try to do both. Definitely like try to be a good person and also do good work. And, you know, you don't have to be maniacal or mean or cold or any of these, you know, like brooding or whatnot to like make the art good. and people should leave the experience of working with you

and want to do it again. And that energy, I think, translates to your set when people feel included and involved and valued. Like, these are all things that it's very, very, very easy to feel when you're a bad robot. Let's go back again. The protagonist in your movie Slite is a street magician, among other things, and magic really is in the undercurrent of the movie in a lot of ways.

I'm curious about your personal experience with magic, you're a magician yourself. Yeah, so I, you know, it's one of those, it's definitely one of those kids that just had, like, way too many hobbies. I mean, making movies was always, like, the forefront of that, and the other hobbies would, like, feed into movies. So whether it was, like, Lego Mindstorms and trying to, like, make animatronics,

which was really one of the things that I thought I wanted to do in film when I was younger, it was, like, you know, looking at that old Discovery Channel show, movie magic. and just like seeing the Stan Winston shop, like building the velociraptors. Like, cool, that's what I, that's what I'm going to do. Obviously, I want to just build velociraptors. So one of the many sort of, you know, collected interest was magic. And, you know, I think it started a little bit before David Blaine,

but I think in seeing that very first ABC special is what solidified it. And then it was just like going to the library and finding, like, the one book that would teach you a couple of tricks. and then, you know, in getting a little older and having access to the internet, I suddenly realized like, oh, my God, there's a giant community of this, and you can buy tricks. I didn't realize that.

And, you know, when you're young and can't drive anywhere, have a car, like, you don't really, and also with the internet, just not being exactly what it is right now, just to not know that there's, like, a magic store downtown or not know these things.

So, you know, I never really grew up with a community of magic, but in sort of seeing what was available, online with like places like penguin magic and illusionist and that's when I started asking for tricks for Christmas or give cards to these websites and buying things and really focusing on, you know, like teaching myself slide a hand and getting to a point where people were paying me to do it at events and, you know, it was funny. I remember maybe my sophomore year in high school, you know,

you sort of watch everyone go off and get their summer job. And I remember that's one of those summers. I did like two or three magic gigs and like made the money that I needed for the summer. So it's like in three days I like, you know, sort of like surpass my friends like being lifeguards and whatnot. And it's like, cool. So I'm done. I'm good. Like this is the summer money. And that was that was like really empowering, realizing, oh, cool.

Like here is like a skill that I have that, you know, is both entertainment but can also, again, I'm not going to say support me because I'm like 14. But, you know, at least, like, gave me money to, like, go buy more magic and go buy video games and, you know, do all the things that spent all the money that 16-year-olds spend. Were you ever going to do that as a career? I don't think so. You know, it does, magic does sit in that weird line between, like, hobby and passion. Can be a hard living. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, look, I'm already collecting, like, really hard life.

livings, you know, screenwriting and filmmaking are not necessarily the most linear, immediately lucrative careers. But, you know, it's just something I loved. And in general, you know, magic is tied to so many reasons why I like movies to begin with. I mean, there is a level of, you know, inherent deceit. And, you know, I think when magic is working at its best, like, there's a narrative with it, you know, it's not just showing. someone this, but it's also explaining how you get there. And, you know, you use your words to, you know, as part of the slide of hand. And you can direct attention and you can, you know, it's funny. Like when you're, when you're doing a trick, it's incredible when you need someone's eyes off

your hands to like speak to them empathetically. You know, it's like there are these things that it's, I don't know, magic is weirdly like a crash course and just like how to deal with people. You know, I think part of that slips into something that maybe is a little scary and sinister because it's also manipulative, but, you know, if you are doing a trick and you need to get someone's attention, you speak to them, like you talk to them, and now they're looking at you, and now I can cut the deck in half, and you're looking in my eyes, not at my hands. So, you know, it is, there are all these weird intersections, I think, between magic and film, and, you know, it certainly, and finishing slight didn't surprise me in, like, looking back, like, oh, my first movie was about magic.

Got it. Yeah, there's, even in the movie, you can see Jacob Latimore, who plays the protagonist of the movie, the camera shows his face, his hands, then the other actor's eyes, looking at his eyes. And you're really communicating that connection between magician. It's interesting, though, I mean, it's very much like how a director forces you to look in a certain place and what's happening off-screen. something you don't think about as much. Well, you know, and it's funny, like the, and even looking at how magic is portrayed in slight, you know, we knew we were not going to be able to compete with, like, now you see me, you know, Jacob wasn't going to be able to, like, jump off of buildings and turn

into decks of cards and, like, fly away. Like, they're, they're, they're, it required, like, a very, very different approach. But then also, like, you know, magic is only one of the spinning plates in the movie. So it only required us to check in on it, you know, very specifically when, when necessary. But even in its framing and how we shoot those scenes, you know, it's kind of more about him than it is the performance. And that's why, you know, most scenes where he's performing, like end on him. It ends on how he feels about it, not the like, oh, my God, face of everyone freaking out about it. Because, you know, the point is to sell his love for it and that this is, you know, his passion more than it is necessarily.

Like, these are tricks you've never seen in your life before. So let's go back again. You're working at Bad Robot as a receptionist. You're starting to learn how to pitch. At what point does something like Slate come along, or do you have several other stories that you're trying to sell or make happen at that point? Well, it's funny.

Slight sort of existed first as a short film script that we couldn't find money for. And, you know, as Alex and I sort of took the step to figure out what it meant to be working writers and going out for pitches and going after like bigger studio gigs and blah, blah, blah. You know, I think we just kind of reached a, like a weird point of fatigue that I think stems from a few different things. Like, one, I don't know if we were just, in general, I don't know if we were ready yet.

You know, I don't know if we really had the chops to be pitching on the things that we were pitching for. You know, then there's also a weird feeling when you kind of lose the same, when you lose all of these jobs, who kind of like the same group of people who are, you know, a few years you're senior. a few movies past you, not a few, I mean, just movies past you. We hadn't really done too much, you know, up until that point. And I think the biggest thing that we learned sort of, you know, if we already use Slight as the A and B side of our career, you know, we were only going after jobs instead of self-generating.

And the problem with that is, you know, winning a job is very difficult. And if you're only focusing on that and you don't. win any jobs, you don't have anything. So, you know, that's been a huge adjustment in the way we work now is, you know, the game plan is pretty much one for one. So if we go out for a pitch, which, you know, can be a two to four month process, depending on where it's at, we're also writing something original simultaneously. So the second you get that call that, hey, sorry, it's going over here, you know, we can immediately like turn back to our reps and be like, cool, we'll also. we wrote this thing, and that's literally how

Sweetheart came to be, the movie that we're leaving for next week. So Slight really kind of came from that frustration. And I think at the height of that frustration, something really interesting happened in that I, with very little heads up, left the country for more than a year

to work for J.J. on Force Awakens. And you know, in some regards, like that was very disruptive, just leaving L.A. and LA has this weird thing where you're kind of afraid to leave the city

because you're going to miss opportunities and people are going to forget. Very quickly you realize that the numbers to the agencies aren't changing. Like nobody's going anywhere. It'll still be 70 degrees every single day while you're gone. And then, you know, when you come back,

like nothing changed. So, you know, the fear of it being disruptive vanished very quickly as I realized just how much this trip was going to teach me. And I think in sitting on that set and watching, you know, one of my favorite directors direct my favorite film franchise, it really galvanized the desire that, like, I have to direct something. There couldn't be a better movie to just be a fly on the wall.

And, you know, Star Wars is certainly, even now, like, my goal, like I want to wind up and do something like that or be able to like go into that world. And it was like so insanely demystifying, you know, I think. And it really was what gave me agency to, you know, come back and have Alex and I go shoot something. I think seeing a movie at that scale, it's very easy to be an audience member and be like, cool, like, JJ and Larry Kasden just like wrote this thing and there was one draft and then they shot that draft and they edited it and then it came out in theaters. And just to think that it was like this immaculate conception. And this is obviously nothing to their process, but it was so helpful for me to realize that, oh my God, we're all doing the

same thing. Like, no matter how many zeros are at the end of the budget or how many people are on the crew or how many movies you've made prior, it's like you want people to care about this character. You want this shot to look good. You think that we need to move the camera over here so people will feel this. Like the building blocks are all the same, no matter how, you know, how sort of big the production is. To answer your question, seven minutes later, and coming back from that, it's like, okay, we're frustrated about not selling writing or winning gigs and what the hell just happened

overseas, watching Star Wars get made. let's just like distill all of this down into something creative and something we can shoot here in L.A. And something that feels hopefully ours and that we can do for a price so that I can direct it and Alex can produce it. And that really was like the bedrock on which we built slight. And it seems like it actually went into production very quickly and the money came together quickly after all of this time of figuring out how to write and how to sell and how to pitch, did you feel like you were sort of thrown into the fire immediately after that? I mean, yes and no.

I mean, it was all kind of by our design, so we at least had that. But, you know, I came back from overseas in September, October of 2014. By December, we are already talking, at least Alex and I, about Slight being a feature. and then, you know, I would say first meeting about Slight with our, you know, eventual financier, Eric Fleischman at Diablo. That conversation was first in January. Then we maybe really kicked it off in February. We had written a draft in March and we were in prep by April to shoot in June.

And we shot in June for 16 days. And then had a work in progress cut sent to Sundance by October. So by the time we had heard about Sundance, sorry, by the time we had sent a cut into Sundance, like I had just been back a year. So, you know, the process was very quick. But, you know, we were both like kind of lit with both this inspiration and frustration. So we certainly didn't waste any time to sort of get into it. But, you know, it's funny because it's felt like a long time, but I know by like a typical movie calendar, like this slight. took 14 seconds.

So, you know, even coincidentally, like, you know, we wrote, shot, edited, and posted Slight all during Star Wars Post. So just as like a frame of reference for the amount of time. Wow. And quite literally, we sent the screening copy of Slight to Sundance the day of the Star Wars premiere. So it was like literally the calendar kind of like ended at the same time too. So that, as weird as that was, it was kind of like nicely,

metaphorical for what the experience felt like. That's really fascinating. So the movie, you know, we should say is as small as low budget, despite some of the themes, but then at a certain moment in the movie, it brings a, there's a new atmosphere and it feels bigger than maybe what we've been watching before. Right.

On a low budget, how do you bring that in? Is it by working with people who know the bad robot experience? Is it just by pluck and verve? How do you pull that off? You know, I mean, I think the balance that we're trying to find in slight is scale was largely going to have to be something implied. What was really helpful is, you know, we knew how much we were going to have to shoot the movie when we started writing it. So the game plan was like, cool, let's write it to that budget and then maybe push it 15%. It's just so it's kind of difficult.

But, you know, that 15% goes a long way. I think if we shot exactly for what the budget was, it would be, you know, slightly less impactful and fun. But you know, you got to take a little bit of risk in there. But I think in just being able to build the narrative with, you know, the price point in mind, it's like, okay, cool. So let's make as many scenes as we can, have, you know, take place in the location that we're already using.

When in doubt, shoot a scene in a car, a part car specifically. you know, reduce the number of speaking roles. Like there are all of these things that you just start realizing as you're sort of having the line producer live run the budget while you're putting it together. You realize very quickly where you can cut corners. But the point is that you always want it to feel intentional, not like a corner cut.

So I think that is the benefit of knowing really what you're working towards while you're writing is everything can actually happen with intent. Had you been to Sundance before? before the movie's premiere? I hadn't. I'm kind of weirdly superstitious about festivals without a movie or at least festivals without being an alum.

So I'm dying to go back to Sundance because I saw, when we went last year, I saw slight five times and two other movies. And movies that I since have seen, it was like, damn, that would have been so fun to see with the festival crowd. But the sort of schedule you have

when you're there with a movie as a little nuts. So we didn't have as much time to sort of hang out. But yeah, that was my very first time at the festival last year. Tell me about the experience of, so the movie premiered at Sundance in 2016. Yeah. Very well received. It must have been a good experience for you. What is it like to have people pursuing the sort of ownership of your movie and the distribution?

Are you in all those conversations? Do you have any say in terms of where things like that go? or are you at the will of the production company? Kind of all of the above. I mean, in terms of deciding where we would take it for distribution, you know, it's funny. Like, we heard stories of like, you know, agents will be calling that 3 a.m. and blah, it's like a crazy thing.

And we're like, okay, well, it, going into the festival, not really knowing, like, what was lore and then what was true was kind of interesting. Sometimes it actually does a very good job preparing you. They have like really great, like, informational packets and, you know, quotes from other filmmakers is just kind of telling you what the experience is like. And it's really, like, nonlinear and not even, like, categorize. It's just, like, blurbs from people who have been at the festival saying things about the festival, which is really helpful. You know, I also talked to a few people who had films at the festival just to, in previous years, just like, what was your experience? And are some of these things I'm hearing true?

blah blah blah. And so much of it turned out to be true, which is crazy. Like, we premiered it on a Saturday and then like starting Sunday day into the night, you know, there are phone calls and people are talking like, oh, we're going to do this and we'll do this. And, you know, we want to sit down with you, but we want to change these pieces. And we want to, you know, we want to take it into, you know, direct to VOD, but here's how we're going to do it. And other people who are like, we'll just put it on the screen now. We like this version.

So you're sort of ingesting. not just different distribution strategies, but also what it'll mean to the movie as it stands. You know, there were some people who didn't want to touch it. There are some people who were like, what if we reshoot like this piece? And all that is part of the conversation while you're also talking about the business side of it. And again, we weren't adverse to changes if it made sense and there were some good ideas. And, you know, ultimately, like we know what slight is. It is a, you know, it is a low-budget movie that we shot in 16 days in L.A.

And not to take value away from it, but, you know, that process comes with some concession. So, you know, we were open to whatever anyone was saying. But while maybe it's naive, we wanted to see this movie in theaters. You know, I understand that the distribution model is rapidly changing every single day. And, you know, Netflix and Amazon are just as good as venues as opening on 2,000 screens. but for what this movie is and honestly that was sort of motivated by what the energy of Slight was at the festival

you know we were not the best movie at Sundance like there are movies that I've since seen that were there that I think are incredible and like you know my friend's movie The Fitz and a Rose Homer's film like it's one of my favorite movies of the year and like and I wish it was in more of the conversations

with like Moonlight and La La Land like I really really think that movie should have been or should continue to be elevated to to that to that level but the cool thing about slight was like we were like while not prestigey we were like commercially compatible you know I think the sort of rumor at sunday I'm just like oh that's just like a normal movie uh which is like was kind of funny you know and like that we quite literally overheard that like in coffee shops and just on the street when people are talking about what to see and I think what solidified that the most was when we took it into the Salt Lake City screening.

So in your sort of tour at Sundance, most times you'll have like a screening back in the city. And the cool thing about that is that, you know, it's a multiplex. And you're walking in and like Kung Fu Panda is also playing. And the people who are there are from Salt Lake. It's not, you know, and that's the funny thing also about Sundance. It's basically just like going to the mountains with everybody that already lives near me here in L.A. But to go to Salt Lake, these are people not in the industry. These are just people who like movies.

And, you know, they're only going to the Salt Lake screenings. They're never coming in a Park City. And to see slight up against normal movies at the multiplex, it felt so natural there. And, you know, I think the audience sort of confirmed that for us. Like, oh, cool. It just belongs here like these other movies. And because of that, we were really motivated to find a way to get it into theaters. You know, Jason Blum called, funny enough, the night of our Salt Lake City screening, we,

Alex and I introduced the movie and then, like, stepped outside to talk to him on the phone. And, you know, he had the same vision for it. It was just, like, he saw that this could be, you know, quote unquote, commercially compatible. We could release this in theaters. We could, you know, target not just a black demographic, but it can just be a movie. And that was really important to me, too, that it not just be targeted. targeted to a black audience because, you know, I think weirdly from a marketing standpoint, it's not a two-way road, I feel.

You know, it's very hard for it to be a black movie and then try to get white audiences to see it as opposed to just having a movie and then have targeted marketing for whoever you need to see it. You know, very shortly after that, we decided to, yeah, team up with Blumhouse to get the movie out there. And, you know, the part that nobody talks about is when you make a low-budget movie, you're basically paid enough to afford to live

solely like production. So it's not that much money. And then suddenly it's your full-time job for a year and a half. And you can't take on new work. You can't do other things. And it's funny. You've been selling blood? What are you been doing?

What was I doing? Well, you know, it's like so, hey, here's the not so glamorous side of independent filmmaking, or just filmmaking in general. You know, all of my student loans. defaulted. All my credit cards went into collections. I went back to Bad Robot to help my sort of friends who chef there, help them in the kitchen. So, you know, I was doing whatever I could, but I still had to keep so much time open for slight. And, you know, that process sucks. Like,

it really sucks. And that's nobody's fault. It's no one's fault. It's just the nature of a low-budget movie where you can't just pay somebody $85,000, like, go get it done. Like, go make sure the movie's ready for theaters. Like, that's our job. And it's literally me rendering new credits on my laptop to then put into the movie. And it's, you know, my writing partner, Alex, who was also producing the film with me, you know, it's him just like going over paperwork again and again and again. So the analogy we made, which was maybe grim, but it's like, it's kind of like being the

captain of a golden chip, but it's sinking. So what you have is so great and so valuable, but you're also drowning. And at a certain point, you're like, what's better to have a golden chip or to be slowly drowning? And that's a really

tough thing. And not even for ego, but it's just you know, you're excited to watch your actors go off and do these great things and your DP and editor go off and like join these new projects and everyone in a great way is, you know, I mean, they are already talented, but also benefiting from slight and

growing and all of this. And you're like, cool, like, I'll be right there as soon as this is done. So that process is hard. It's a good segue, though, to talk about what happens after this. Obviously, this is a very exciting moment. The movie comes out April 28th. You've already mentioned Sweetheart, which is the next movie you are moving to Bali to work on for a long period of time.

Bali's neighbor, we're going to Fiji. Fiji, excuse me. But, you know, we decided in the process of coming back from Sundance and sort of how I was talking before, you know, we would, we decided we would sort of create something original while going after a bigger, bigger job. So we swung for, you know, a big studio gig and I think got pretty close. And all during this, you know, multiple month process, we were writing sweetheart. And, you know, what was funny is that it happened. happened really exactly like we dreamed, where, you know, we got like a call on Friday night from our agents that, like, hey, sorry, they're going a different direction. We're like, cool,

please check your inbox. There is a script called Sweetheart. We would like to take this out next week. And, you know, within the next two weeks, we, you know, had set it up at Blumhouse. Just, you know, it's a place that had become family in the process of getting slight ready. And, you know, also it's just a very, you know, also it's just a very, you know, it's just a very, you know, exciting time over there and Jason has been great and Cooper has been great. Everybody over there has been so remarkably helpful. But it's really boom times post split and get out and it's a lot of. You know what's been kind of funny is even just in the past six months the perception of our

own movie when we told people working with Blumhouse because, you know, of course, coming from slight, people were wondering like, so wait, your next thing is like the the people that did like purge and insidious, and we're like, yeah, of course, yeah, that's what we're working with. And, I mean, those movies are great, but I think people didn't see how we fit into that type of movie, which Sweetheart isn't necessarily, but, you know, now with, like, get out and split

performing the way that they have and, you know, articles being written about is Blumhouse the Pixar of horror. And, like, you know, they've even taken a step, I think, in the perception of the types of films that they're making. But, you know, I think what's important to mention is that, like, they've always been on that track. There are just, you know, two even newer, cooler movies to talk about. But we're so thrilled to sort of be, you know, able to catch that wave behind, you know,

M. Knight and Jordan Peel to just continue to try to make what Blumouse, I think, does is just kind of cool, left-of-center horror. And that is sort of our goal with this movie. It is a survival thriller, sort of survival horror thriller, starring Kiercy Clemens. And, you know, we're shooting the whole thing out in Fiji. But the dream is to sort of, you know, it's been funny. I'm not traditional, like, an insane horror fan. And for that reason, it's been kind of fun to put the movie together because it's, we want to use those tropes. We want to use all the pieces that you're used to seeing in horror movies.

And those pieces will certainly be in the trailer. but funny enough, like my reference for the film more than anything else is Sicario. You know, I think Sicario is a movie where, you know, if you could have a film experience where rhythmically the entire, like every few minutes you felt like the leaving the border scene when you don't know there's going to be a shootout in Sicario, if you can just live in that for 90 minutes, I think that would be so remarkably painful but fun. and that's sort of the goal with Sweetheart is to rhythmically find that sense of dread

and not necessarily be jump scare horror or be cheap about it at any moment but to live in this like atmospheric terror. It's been funny, we've been calling the movie like a terror movie just internally because that seems more right for us but still utilize all the pieces that people are attracted to horror but I think you go in

and it delivers something just slightly left of center. Let's wrap up with this. There are a lot of reports that you're also working on a remake of the fly. There are. How do you talk about things like that? Is that happening? What's it like when you have something in front of you that you need to do first and then those rumors happen?

Yeah. Well, I mean, look, the goal right now is absolutely to make a killer movie out of sweetheart. And we're so psyched to be teaming back with Blumhouse to do that. you know, at the same time, you know, we're trying to build a career. And, you know, scaling up is never really the important part of the conversation for me. You know, if my next movie, it turned out, like, made sense at 25 or made sense at 3, like, that's all that matters. It's what the story needs and what it needs to effectively pull it off. You know, and what I am happy about is you know, the fly is very early days and, you know, still in negotiations and, you know, I think our take on it I'm extremely excited about and it would be so, so, so fun to work with this, I work with this franchise with Fox, but, you know, at the same time, like, it's, it's, for us, it is always, always, always going to be character first.

And it's character over genre, it's character over intellectual property, you know, its character over budget. And, you know, whatever we step into, that's going to be, that's going to be the, the priority. So, you know, I, it is crazy, so crazy to, you know, get those Google alerts. There's a lot of them out there now. There's a lot. Like, I, it's no secret that I, I certainly had a panic attack in the middle of the night because, you know, I keep Google alerts up for slight and I wake up to, you know, like 60, 70 emails of compiled Google alerts.

And I was like, oh, my God, this is, you know, and again, it's even in just the word being out there that this is a conversation, very quickly you realize just that it's very different to work with something that people already know about. IP is a hell of a drug. IP is a hell of a drug. Yeah. But, you know, whether fly or anything else that we swing after, you know, there is a sort of balance you need to split where, you know, we would never write a movie based on what, like, forums are saying it should be. But no matter what, it's helpful to know what's, you know, what's in this sort of collective hive mind.

And while that shouldn't drive the creative, it certainly can influence. It certainly can influence. And more, I think it's just it's helpful in the. the data gathering of like, yeah, like, what are the important pieces of anything? You know, one thing Alex and I talk about all the time is, I think in so many remakes, the wrong part of the movie is being remade. You know, and that's not to say that like, oh, like, just shoot a movie with, that has nothing to do with the IP and then like slap Star Wars on it.

Like, that's certainly not the point. Like, people are showing up because there's something that they loved about its predecessor. But, you know, I think what people also forget, is that, and this is something Alex and I, it is like the weird holy, this is kind of our creative Holy Grail, is to create a movie where for no reasons of nostalgia is both wildly entertaining and also at some point, like, you cried, you know, and I think that there is this thing that happens with some bigger scale movies where, and it's no one's fault, like making things is hard and there are a lot of steps

and there are a lot of people involved but sometimes the emotionality is kind of lost and when scale comes into the picture and that's certainly a gap we're trying to close and for me that would be legit the craziest

experience to like go see a movie that had like insane spectacle and explosions and this and great dialogue and all this stuff and then I'm crying and I don't know why but this person I made a joke at like a Q&A the other week I was like, I want to make, like, beginners meets gardens of the galaxy. And I literally don't know what that movie is, but, like, beginners crushes me.

Like, every single time I watch that movie, I am floored. But then if, like, the two of them got on a spaceship and then, like, fought people, I'd be like, ah, yes, also this. Also this. So I think in anything that we do, you know, here on now, like, that is slowly the gap we're going to try to close. That's a great place to wrap. JD, thank you for being here, man. Congratulations on Slate.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay.