WEAPONIZED with Jeremy Corbell & George Knapp - Hollywood In Transition - The Future Of Movies, TV and Streaming - Guest : John Long

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

The movie and TV industries have been pummeled by changes in recent years. The pandemic decimated theater attendance and the emergence of streaming services changed the model that major studios have used for decades. George and Jeremy are joined by John Long, co-founder of Buddha Jones, one of the most highly regarded and successful trailer producers in Hollywood. Long and his team have worked directly with most of the major studios and best-known directors but have also expanded into marketing projects for television and streaming networks, winning numerous industry awards for creative campaigns. Buddha Jones has worked on several UFO-themed projects including the blockbuster hit NOPE. George and Jeremy talk with John about the future of Hollywood, challenges to the traditional business model, and about the art of making the perfect movie trailer. (John also takes the time to poke at George while recounting some of their long history together.) GOT A TIP? Reach out to us at [e-mail] For breaking news, follow Corbell & Knapp on all social media. Extras and bonuses from the episode can be found at https://WeaponizedPodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. Secrets, cover-ups, and strange phenomena. UFOs and ideas that challenge reality itself. All these mysteries, all this time, are we ever going to get to the bottom of these? My name is George Knapp. I dig into news stories that others can't or won't. or won't. I'm Jeremy Corbell, and for some reason people tell me things they probably shouldn't. And this is weaponized. This is weaponized. I'm George Knapp. This is Jeremy Corbelle. We are here

in the belly of the beast and the heart of Hollywood. And today we're going to be talking about movies with a special guest. We are going to be talking about movies, but I am particularly excited to have John Long here because you guys have known each other for decades. Is that correct? Decades. Decades. So if anybody on planet Earth has more dirt on George Knapp, it's going to be John Long. So I want to get into how you know each other. That's why I'm excited.

UFOs, movies, that's cool. I want to learn a little bit about what you know about George. There's plenty of dirt to dig up. We have a policy of mutually assured destruction of our friendship. It's a basis of our friendship from over the years. I thought maybe we talked about John and his company before we get into where the body's varied. You are the co-founder of a company called Buda Jones. It's one of the biggest trailer producers in Hollywood. You worked on some massive projects, some really interesting prestige

projects. I want to know if you could tell us how you got into writing trailers and producing trailers, what Buda Jones does, how big it is, what a big player it is, and we'll talk about some movies. Well, first of all, it's great to be here, guys. I just want to say, and I also want to say, and I also want to say that when you look back on this episode and you think, my God, this is a ratings killer. It's you guys. The thought of this idea. No. And the other thing, to speak to your point, I mean, I'm not an expert in the stuff you guys do.

I love this show. I love what you're doing. But I do think I'm an expert. And what I think is the most exotic and mysterious life form on this planet. and that's George Naps himself. Yeah, 45 years. We'll get to that. He won't brag.

He's like you. Tell him a little bit about John. Buddha Jones is one of the two or three, maybe the top producer of movie trailers, movie TV trailers in the whole world. You know, we are here in the heart of the movie industry and TV industry in Hollywood. And John is a modest guy,

but the work that he's done, I mean, millions of people have seen it. I mean, people who are following our show will be familiar with this title. It's called Nope. It was a Jordan Peel movie, came out a year or so ago, gets into alien life forms,

E.T. Life, Cowboys. It's a very exotic, cool, original film. You did the trailers for it, right? We did, yeah. I mean, and just backing up a step, I mean, the trailer business is really interesting,

pretty anonymous, but important part of the landscape of entertainment, because we, We do what the studios want their products to be, which is a condensed version of some piece of art that is artistic itself and excites people to see more. And yeah, we've had the good fortune of working on a lot of different movies over the years. We started the company at the end of 2004, so we've been in business now over 18 years.

And as you mentioned, we worked on Nope. Recently we finished trailers on Thor and a movie called Black Adam. We're finishing the trailer for Flash. That's a lot of those obviously are in the superhero vein, but we do a lot of movies with specific filmmakers as well. We've worked with, we have the great privilege of working with Quentin Tarantino on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and going back even farther. We've worked with them on Glorious Bastards.

We've worked with Chris Nolan on Dunkirk. And we've worked with James Wan on the whole sort of all the different conjuring, that universe of movies. And so it's a great privileged sort of place to be. And yeah. You co-founded the firm when and with whom? So we started the company in 2004. There were four partners. Three of us were creative.

And one was the financial guy. We had eight people in the company. So we had four partners, eight people. We were a little top heavy. And we moved into this little space in Hollywood, right off sunset, right underneath the Hollywood sign. And it was like 5,000 square feet. And we started at the very end of 2004. And we did what we did.

We decided we were going to come in and try to be different. Everybody says they want to be different. but really try to do bold shit that's unexpected. How would you do something differently than other people in your industry? What would that look like to you? Let me give you an example. So, we started, when we started, we weren't working on top movies the way we are now. But pretty soon after we started the company within a year easily, we started working on this movie called Jackass 2.

And, you know, I'm sure your viewers are familiar with it. It's just a bunch of dumb shit guys doing really stupid things. Yeah, it's like Johnny Knoxville. Johnny Knoxville. You know, let's go to a... Bad Margarita, Steve, oh, this is Jackass. All these guys, you know, let's go to a restaurant, you know, and snort wasabi and throw up into our plate or, you know, that kind of stuff.

And so we're working on the sequel to the first movie, which was a big hit. And we knew that the magic was these guys and how stupid they were and all the stuff they would do. But we didn't need to tell the audience that, right? Because they had already seen it. And what we're now going to tell them, the sequel is that, but it's, you know, a little more. I mean, so we were sitting around thinking to ourselves, what is it we have to do to make this movie feel different? Different. And as we were tossing ideas around, somebody was like, can you imagine what like the Christian coalition

thought of the first movie when it came out. I'm like, yeah, we should do a little research. So we went back and we looked at, we did some research on what people were saying about the first movie. And we had our idea. We're going to do the anti-trailer movie cell for this movie by taking all the bad press that the first movie got and putting it into our trailer.

And so we put this scripting. together and we decided, let's not just make it the anti-trailer, let's make it really elegant. Let's do it as a story and it's narrated by, let's get the guy who did the Nova voice. Let's get Will Lyman. And so imagine showing all these slow-mo black and white images from the first movie. You don't even know what the hell it is, but it's super cheap, but it looks kind of stylized and cool. And you've got this guy, Will Lyman, and his stentorian boy saying, when it was released in 2002, people were outraged. You know, slow-mo of some stupid shot.

A new low. A plunge into depravity. A sick, twisted, propulsive spectacle. Unfortunately for them. we've just made number two. And literally, when we put the script together, we had Will Lyman read it, we're reading him in the booth,

he gets down to the, we made number two, he cracks up. And we're like, okay, we might have done something right. But the point I'm trying to make is that's what we tried to do going out the gate. So you're kind of like an intelligence agency for the movie business in that you do deep research and investigation into how to provoke a response

from audiences around the world. I love your emphasis on intelligence. I'm not sure that part of it applies, but it's absolutely true. It's like, how do you look at the guts of this thing and try to make it different? And why different? Because you want people to engage it, obviously to watch it, but also because people want to see something different these days? They're the board of something? Or what is it? I think people do. I mean, you know, look, I read this great book. It's called Hitmakers and

it was talking about the art of creating commercial art. And he was talking about music mostly, but I saw the applications to what we do in trailers because this big thesis was, if you want to create something cool and new, you have to have an element, of the expected and an element of the unexpected. And it's the merger of the two things. So in other words, there has to be some grounding. Say it again, the element of the expected. Yeah, he's like, I think he said something like, you have to make the expected unexpected and the unexpected expected. And that's kind of what it is. Like if you don't have some grounding, it's just chaos. And if it's too obvious, like we've all watched

anything, trailers, when you're like, oh, okay, I see where this is gone. Okay, I know what this is. Oh, this is what it. Oh, I've seen it. I don't need to see it again. You know, as a movie fan, I love trailers. There was a theater in Berkeley when you and I first knew each other. Yes. That would, once a

month, they would have a day of just playing trailers because a hardcore movie fan, you love it. It is an art form. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face

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6 p.m. Pacific Time. You tell yourself, no one wants your college-era band teas, but on Deep Hop, people are searching for exactly what you've got. You once paid a small fortune for them at merch stands. Now, a teenager who calls them vintage will offer that same small fortune back. Sell them easily on D-pop.

Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. Who knew your questionable music taste would be a money-making machine? Your style can make you cash. Start selling on D-pop, where taste, recognizes taste. Is your company just a trailer house? Buddha Jones, is it, or have you, we're going to talk more about that maybe, but is your bread and butter trailers? We've, it's a great question.

We've tried to keep in our sort of wheelhouse. What do we do that's really great and unique? And that's that short form storytelling, in this case for entertainment. So we started, when we started the company, there was really no such thing as TV streaming. So we wanted to be in the movie business. And there was broadcast and other forms of entertainment, but we stuck with the movie business.

And since that time, by necessity and by interest, there's so much great television streaming content out there that we've gotten, that we've broadened into. We've got a really robust and wonderful team that works on marketing for, games. And then, you know, we've had, we've, we've worked with people who are interested in getting that theatrical reflection, that glow on their brand. For example, we worked with Universal Music and Paul McCartney on the release of his third solo album, which, as you know. Which he doesn't

tell me until six months after it's over with it. Yeah, I mean, this is all part of the anonymous feature of our business, we have to be really low-key. Okay, so tell me about that. When I've entered John's facilities, it's like more than when we have to go into secret facilities, you have a card, I swear to God, you're scanning our eyeballs. So why is that? Because trade secrets leak out, that's a big deal. It's trade secrets, but it's really the IP.

So these companies, these studios, these clients, they entrust you with what is a billion-dollar investment in many cases for them. Hundreds of millions of dollars, certainly. And it's the easiest thing in the world these days for that shit to leak out on the internet. And so they're incredibly proprietary and the hoops that we, that you're going through, or the hoops that we have to go through to make sure that we protect that IP. For example, we were going to work on this. movie Ready Player 1. That's so funny you mentioned that. Do you want to tell them why I wrote it?

No, wait, we'll come back to it. And we hadn't done work, much work, I think we'd done some, but not much work with Steven Spielberg. And there were other agencies that were on it. And I got a call from our client saying, we really want you to be on this project. We think you can bring something unique to it. In fact, we ended up finishing a trailer for it. you need to write Stephen a personal note assuring him that you're going to protect this IP.

Stephen Spielberg. Yes. And I was more than happy to basically say to one of my great idols that not only are we going to protect this with every molecule of our being, we are going to celebrate the fact that We as a collective creative team can bring something unique to this. And this is an absolute, you know, thrill. And you can rest assured that you have my word that this won't be protected. And so that's, you know, the level of, you know,

there's only so much assurance you can give people, but they have to know that you are personally connected to preserving that, that relationship. It's so easy in the digital age right now to break that trust, even if you try to protect it, that you have to lock shit down to the point where we walk in, we're basically being eyeball scanned, right? Yeah.

Okay. So the reason I bring it up is because I know that a lot of people have asked you for influence in their movies. I know that because personally I know people that have come to John and been like, hey, not just a trailer. Like, can you unfuck our whole movie? It's horrible. But you consult with people on a creative level more than just creating a product or brand identification

in a trailer. I know for a fact that you've helped consult people on movies to try to unfuck their whole movies. Yeah, I mean, so that sort of leads into a broader conversation around where we've, we're sort of trending as a creative organization because our focus is always the marketing. But over the past four or five years, we've also begun to branch into production on some level and working with producers on their projects, looking at scripts at the foundational level, sort of taking those ideas down to the studs, giving them ideas of how the project could be perhaps reconceived and, you know, adding some marketing ideas that will help.

And it's, you know, when you, we're not miracle workers, you can't, but, but, but I think we're, I think we're really like-minded, creative artists who, who, who want to see an idea be developed the best possible way. So I'd like to talk about the, the creative process and herding cats. You, you, you hire really creative people, independent thinkers. We've been to your building, you know, your facility a couple of times. And there's a, there's a feeling of a culture there that it's fun. Everybody works hard, but it's fun. How do you attract them? How do you keep them? And tell us about the culture of Bouda Jones, because we've seen glimpses of it where you take the whole company on a trip to Las Vegas or Cancun or something like that. When we started the company, as I said, our primary focus was how do we create some unique artistic creative brand? But it became really, clear to us very quickly that the work is the people. And a great creative culture really promotes

great creative work. I mean, yes, you can get great work out of people who are, you know, scared shitless of their job and, you know, feeling the pressure from the clients and just working themselves till they drop. But you can get even better engagement in that. better work from people who feel invested in something that's bigger than you are. I mean, we name the company Bouda Jones for a reason, we can get into that. Just to be, basically just to be bold and different and have it be about a thing as opposed to the three of us creative partners. And so, to get to your question, finding ways to you

to make that creative culture as vibrant as possible has been a huge obsession with ours. And, you know, I've been sort of out of the creative work for six or seven years now. And, you know, that was, it was hard. It was hard to let go because I love. I love being in the creative mix. I love helping to produce great ideas. But I learned that I really love the team-building aspect of it too. And, and, you know, all those, all those challenges that I felt I faced, I, you know, was thinking about, how do we, how do we make that easier? How do we make, how do we sort of friction-proof the process a little bit and make people feel as empowered as possible and, and sort of protect them from some of the, you know, the ups and downs of the

difficulties of, you know, all the stresses that come from the outside? And I think we've done a good job with that. The individuals and their ability to be creative and to thrive in that environment, you somehow nurture that, which is true. Yeah. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. I mean, it's like, it's like any creative business. At the end of the day, everybody goes home and all you have is furniture. You know, that's the magic is those people. And we just have, we have this thing, we talk about collaborative math, which is two plus two equals six. You put people together and you don't just get the sum total of their individual talent you get this mix that's greater than uh than any of it and you guys the sum is greater than its parts yeah yeah it really is and and and the more people feel

like they not just matter but they're indispensable to the final product the more engaged and committed they are the better the work is talk about some uh some examples of your work that the our listeners would record, Nope. So that comes in the door. Tell us about the process. So Nope comes in the door. It's from Universal. We've got, we've had a great run of success with them on, on horror movies and, you know, Halloween and various other projects.

And it came in specifically for one of our editors who's now a partner in the company, Bill Neal, who, for my money, is maybe the greatest trailer editor of all time. More than 20 years ago, he did a trailer for a remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I don't know if you saw this trailer. It's on every time there's a list of the greatest trailers of all time. It's like at the top. And it was just, it's just the sense of dread

and rhythmic sound that he developed with that was just, just absolutely stellar and it's it's been held up as a model ever since. And so he he got this movie and he did what he does. And let's sort of work backwards from the final product because I saw that trailer play in a theater and people were fucking freaking out. And I think, you know, a lot of it is, you know, the Jordan Peel effect and the rest of it. But so, you know, so, you you're sitting in a theater and for those of you who haven't seen the movie, I won't give anything away, but, but you're sitting in a movie in a theater and this trailer starts and it's kind of, you know, upbeat and it's got this cool energy and it's Kiki Palmer doing

her thing and she's incredibly charismatic and she begins to talk about, you know, this black-owned cattle ranch in L.A. and it's all kind of cool and she's dancing around and she goes to this phonograph and she puts on a record and it's sudden the the tone suddenly shifts things start to go dark and everything slows down and and the whole the whole feel of the piece gets weighted in something unsettling and then we get to this shot that's basically a vista shot of the of the ranch at night with a lot of negative space, which is just sky in the background. And he's, he, Bill, has built this sound design where you're hearing crickets and the crickets suddenly stop and it's completely still.

And you're holding on this shot. And suddenly, from the top of the frame comes down this massive white object. know what the fuck it is. It looks like a UFO coming down into the frame and it's a title card. And the title card says from Jordan Peel. And suddenly, and it's just this beautifully simple, but brilliant way to layer on an additional piece of information. Oh my God, it's a Jordan Peel movie. Now I know where I'm at. The process is Jordan Peel reaches out. You guys are going to be the trailer company for this movie. He gives you the movie. You all watch it and then you look for ideas. It doesn't quite work that way. Typically, again, it's a, we're somewhat anonymous in the process.

I mean, Jordan Peel certainly knows who Buda Jones is, but he doesn't deal with us directly. The studio gives us their movie. It's their movie. And we can talk about relationships that filmmakers, especially at the level of somebody like Jordan Peel or Quentin, you know, what, you know, the relationship between a filmmaker and the studio. I would love to hear about that because, you know, I'm a one-man show with my films. Yeah. You know that. So it's like, I would love to learn what the real relationship should be like.

So, so, so, but the studio actually owns the IP and they give us, they entrust us this movie to work on. And so in the case of Nope, you know, if, if Jordan or any other filmmaker had a special, a particular problem, with, you know, someone like us working on it, they would absolutely say so, and that would be the end of it. But we're working on the project and, you know, it's, it's, you know, kind of finishing that thought on that nope trailer. What that trailer does that I think every great trailer does really well is the audience is always one step behind and is trying to catch you and is hoping to catch you. And when it's done right, they never do catch up.

You got to watch the movie. You got to watch the movie. And so in this case, holy shit, it's a Jordan Peel movie. We've gone to this weird place. The music, very weird music, buss out, and you've got these big images, and it's, again, it's Jordan Peel. So you don't know what it all amounts to. Why is this fucking horse falling over?

Why is this animatronic thing turning toward me? Why is someone getting lifted up out of the, off the ground into the sky? We don't know. We can only assume that Jordan Peel has some really twisted, fucked up place that he's going to take us. And of course he does, but we never quite get there because we're not going to let you catch you. You produce multiple versions of a trailer and then send them to the studio or to him, and you get feedback, and it's a back-and-forth process. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

If one of our editors were sitting in this chair instead of me talking to you, they would take you through the painstaking process of producing a trailer and the multiple, multiple versions. I mean, you know, for a big trailer, for a big movie like Nope, or some of the other big, It, you did it. Yeah. It, which, by the way, had 200 million downloads for the trailer that we produced. It literally broke the internet.

I don't know that that's ever been surpassed. It may have been, but back, you know, because that's going back now five years of six. Excuse me. It was, it was crazy. But did more people see the trailer than the film? Oh, I mean, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and that always happens because, you know, it's easy.

It's a click, especially to watch a trailer online these days. If you go see a movie, it's a process and you have to do something. But so, I mean, what's so fascinating is that there's all this interest and all this attention, but at a certain point, you know, the process gets, it just becomes, there's so much at stake that it becomes a grind. There's just 30, 40 versions of a trailer. I've heard of 100 versions before. It can go to these crazy places

because you have this gauntlet of people that have to sign off. And not even sign off, weigh in. So you've got all kinds of studio executives and they're getting notes from their bosses and their collaborators, and they'll give you their set of notes. And then when they've got all their notes tidied up and it all feels like it's where they want it to be, then it kind of runs the gauntlet of filmmakers.

And filmmakers have a lot of thoughts, as they should, and, you know, it's like their baby. And what I love about the filmmakers is, for the most part, they really do on understand that what we do, it's a different kind of art. It's not as hard. I mean, making a two-minute film is not as hard as making a two-hour film. It just isn't, especially when you're using their footage. But what we do is unique.

And I think they know that. There are times when they're like, they pull rank, they go, this is crazy. But they don't typically do it themselves. And so you have to run the gauntlet with them. And then there's the third phase, which is testing. And that's, that's grueling because basically now you've got people on the internet. It used to be people in malls, but you have people on the internet being asked questions that, from my perspective, an audience member shouldn't even be asked.

Like it's one thing to say, this washed over you, what was, what was your general feeling? Did this work? Are you, would you see this movie? Instead, it's like, what did you think of that scene? How did you compare that scene to that scene? What's the most important moment in the movie and the trailer for you? And it's all of this trying to create all this saliency around things that I think are, it's very pseudoscientific from my perspective.

But that's a whole gauntlet. And that's many, many, usually many versions. You got to work with Quentin Tarantino on What Upon Time in Hollywood. I mean, how much of the, is there interaction with somebody like him? I mean, you're a movie fan, so you've got favorite directors. That must have been really cool. Oh, it, yeah, I mean, again, it was, uh, this was another trailer that, uh, that Bill cut and did. And it, as much as I'd like to, you know, tell you the stories of hanging out with Quentin and, uh, shooting the shit and, and, and you're giving him notes on the movie.

It doesn't really work that way. He deals directly with the studio. There have been times when we've dealt with big, big, big. directors and filmmakers and and other talent. It's not wise of us to talk too much about those stories because, you know, there's never a real upside to it. But in the case of Quentin, I can say this. He, we only got 12 minutes of footage. And it's a pretty great statement of Bill in our team that we were able to replicate the magic of that movie with 12 minutes. I mean, it was so, because I saw a lot of different pieces and they had some, you know, they tried,

you know, they got some perspectives from other places. But what our team was able to do, I just think so fully inhabited the vibe and feel of that movie. I was so, it was great because I was so pleased with the trailer. It got such great response. Quentin was effusive to the studio, which was then effusive to us. But then I saw the movie and I was like, oh, I'm so fucking proud that we were able to encapsulate all that was great about that. And not, it wasn't like a condensed version of the, of the movie. It was its own piece. But it just, it, it, it, it, found the flavor. You took your whole staff to the theater that is in the movie, right? To watch the movie. So, yeah, so the movie comes out, and this was obviously pre-pandemic,

2018, I guess, and 2019, I can't remember. And everybody was so jacked up to see this movie, obviously. Once upon a time in Hollywood. Yeah, and so we took the entire company to the Cinema Dome, which was just down the street from Bouda Jones, to see the movie, and it was just an absolute thrill. And it's in the movie. The theater's in the movie. Yeah, the theater's in the movie. He drives by.

But did I get it right? So you were not able to see the whole movie. You were only able to see 12 minutes. You didn't get to watch the movie, then get 12 minutes to edit with. You were only able to see 12 minutes. Okay, so we got to read a script, so we knew what the movie was. And then we got, here you go, 12 minutes of footage. And, you know, and Quentin's a genius.

So he's like, it's not like 12 random minutes. It was 12 minutes. And it wasn't just the 12 highlights. You saw that movie. There's more. It's like he just, he's a storyteller. He could, he could see how it would work together. But again, even with 12 minutes of footage, there's a million ways you could

cut that thing. Right. And all but a couple are probably not good. But, and again, in this case, you had the music. So we've got Neil Diamond music. We've got, you know, this incredible pop 60s music. It was all there. But it's one thing to do a good or serviceable version of his movie.

It's another thing to do something that really can make, make us proud that it, it represented that movie at the highest level. So I really want context in this conversation. I really want to get to the crux of this, John. I want to hear George Knapp's lies about how you guys are friends. So tell me this. How did you, what was the first time you met John and just describe that to me? I was a coach, the debate coach at UC Berkeley.

I'd been at a college debater and had some level of success, I guess. And I got invited to teach at a debate institute at Loyola Merrimount. Loyola is a great school. They have a great debate tradition. I had competed against them. I judged them in tournaments. They had some really terrific guys. We're going to talk about one of them, Ed Dyson, and Ernie Martz and some other guys who are really good debaters.

And they invite me to get down and spend like a month, a good chunk of the summer, teaching high school kids about debate. How old were you at this time? I'm 24 maybe. But so when you say you're pretty good at debate, what he's saying is that like he was part of like a, he was good and that he was, he was outstanding. He was a premier level debater. And that is something that you were also doing or is that?

Yeah, well, not at that level. I mean, I had in the past and at that point I had sort of my, my debate career had sort of petered out and I was doing other things, but I was there. I knew the team. He was sort of in the thick of it. I was sort of on the fringe, but, you know, and we can get into the whole story of how two guys in the early 20 should be, you know, somehow representing, mentoring the next generation of talent. That's a whole other sort of. Yeah, I want to ask about that, but I want to wrap my head around it because, so I know you from your journalism. And I just, I always knew it was different. The way that you took at stories was different. But like, what's George's background? And that, for me, I learned that really through you. He doesn't really. wouldn't really talk to me that much about that past,

but it's become apparent that George from his, I don't know if you're going to go early history, but you worked your way up all the way to the point of being... Well, surprising in a way that there are more debaters who become journalists, because it's a great training for gathering and consuming and, you know, sort of ingesting a lot of information and then being able to spit it back out or condense it,

get your head around things. But there aren't many. It's surprising. But so you're in school and you start, like you go to a debate class and then you start excelling at like winning debates, like wrestling matches, and then you get promoted? They have tournaments. So, you know, most colleges and universities have some form of a forensic team. Some of it's debate and some of it is other independent individual events, public speaking events.

But debate is like a sport. And at some level, it's like college football. It's one-on-one. It's two on two, two-on-two, I don't know what it is now, but it's a team from, say, University of the Pacific versus Loyola Merrimount, and you go in and you have a national topic, and the affirmative team defends the national resolution, and the other guys on the other side have to oppose it, and there's a judge or a panel of judges, and you compete. They rate the speakers, and then it's a sudden elimination tournament.

So you have eight preliminary rounds. then you're into the quarterfinals, semi-finals, and the winner of a tournament. So the way I'll understand it, so it's like for me, like a jujitsu tournament, if you beat one person, you get to go up and maybe wrestle the next. So really, I want to take my time with this

to understand you better. This is like a secret mission for me right now. So basically you're a young George Knapp. This is before you're, you know, the journalist, George Knapp, even before you're the worst cab driver in Las Vegas, George Knapp. So you're now worked your way up, these grappling messages of intellect, of public speaking, of debate,

and then you get offered a job to teach the youth out in California by the coast at Loyola-Merrymount, this beautiful campus with this big grass knoll that goes. That's the one, right? Loyola-Marri-Mir? Okay, so there you are, and you've got this new job, and you're going to kind of shepherd in the youth and teach them. What's the first moment you meet this guy? That's a good question. I'm not sure, but we were introduced, I think, by Ed, Deeson.

He was now a top attorney here in L.A. Who is Ed D.C.? So, yeah, so Ed is, he was a, he was a friend of mine from high school. And we were in debate together in high school, and we went to an all-boys Catholic school out in Laverne called Damien High School. And we had this tremendous debate program and we had several great teams and Ed was part of one team. I was part of another team. We ended up meeting each other in the finals of this district tournament, all of L.A. and then we went on to the semifinals state and they went on to the national tournament.

So we had a really celebrated sort of high school experience. And then we all went to, several of us went to Loyola and Ed stayed with it. Ed was great. He was on a different level than I was. And he was phenomenal and he stayed with it and he and George mixed it up and went head to head, I'm sure, in many occasions. I was judging it. By that point, I was at University of Pacific.

I was the director of forensics there. so I'd go to tournaments and judge debates. That's, I think, I'm not sure if I ever competed against Ed. He would have kicked my ass because he was really good. He was right. And so I got to know them from judging them. They were a lot of fun. They were smart.

They were really clever. It was always entertaining and educational to judge one of their debates. And we became kind of friends on the circuit. And then their coach, Bussie? Bussie. Yeah. And invited me to come down for their tournament, figured I'd be a good mix with the,

Loyola debaters were the other instructors for this summer institute. A summer in at Loyola in L.A. That sounds pretty good. So it came down and and they put all these young and prescientable minds in our hands probably have warped an entire generation there. But we we hit it off. We became friends immediately. Right. So you enjoy it. Go ahead. Well, let me take the story in a slightly different direction. Because I think I have a way of sort of creating a foundational view of the magic of George Knapp. Oh, please. Okay.

So it was that same summer. I think it's all defined by Stockton, California. Tell me how. Have you been to Stockton? I've been to Stockton, but not on a tour with George Knapp. Okay. So Stockton is George's hometown. I've been to Stockton once.

And it's kind of a dusty cowman. to be honest with you and it's you know somewhere in the you know the periphery of the of sacramento and that same summer 77 uh i was traveling up to washington state with a friend of mine which is the year i was born which makes this even funnier for you to go on all right yeah no totally well so so we decided we're going to go through stockton spend a night hang out with george drink a few beers and we pull into town and the next thing we know, a wheel bearing goes out on the wheel of this piece of shit car that we're driving. And it stopped him.

So, you know, fixing a wheel bit, you know, that's going to take a week. So instead of a night, I spend a week with George Knapp and, you know, sleeping on a sofa. And here's what I learned in that week. Tell me, John. First of all, so what do you do? You spend a lot of time at one of the cowboy bars. And in that week, George drank me into the table. George's mom drank me out of the table.

George's sister, his brother, all of his friends, and all of the townspeople drank my ass under the table. You must have been a total amateur. Well, I mean, I thought I had some skills. But the point is, We would, so we would drink hard. I'd go back, I'd be in a puddle in the, you know, in the sofa that I was sleeping on. I'd hear, you know, I'd fall asleep. I hear noises in the morning.

And it was people getting up to go do shit. Like, go to their jobs, you know, report to the office, take care of business. And they all did. And that's when I started to see how it all came together. And again, we didn't know each other that well at that point. But it was proven over the decades that that was the thing. You play hard and you work hard and you never. This guy never once Mr. Dale work.

Ever once. I mean, he might do everything at last fucking minute, but he always passes that finish line in spectacular fashion. And so I don't know if that's exactly what you're saying. So the character of George before he was the journalist. There's a reason why he got to where he got. He goes after shit, right? And he doesn't put it down, not the next day, not the next week.

No. Not the next month. For 35, 40 fucking years he'd been going after a story. He'll keep going after it. And he'll wake up every morning and he'll go into it. He doesn't drop a syllable. It's breathtaking. Let me, so let me, okay, so let me now move into the early 80s when I'd go out to visit.

And, you know, I had to bring a new person every time because I basically fry them out. and that, you know, after two days of being in Vegas with George, it's pretty intense. There were a couple of trips that John made to Las Vegas with friends that were momentous, what I can remember of them. It might have been slightly exaggerated, my stamina, but some of that's relatively true. Man, you guys have had some adventures, so that's become clear if I've included them in this episode or not. I just heard an earful. But really, I, my selfish reason.

for being like, man, John Long coming on as cool, is because you just known George for a long time. And you've known him in different phases of his life, probably highs and lows. And when you really get to trust people and sometimes admire them for what they've done, it's not because there's one thing they've done. It's not because of two things they've done.

It's because there's a consistency and a pattern with the way they live their life. and at all the fun stories and everything that you've thrown at us and kind of how you know George, what is it that makes George different in his skill, in his art form? What is disruptive about what he does? Like, you want to be different with your work. What is it about George that you think either is the origin of why he's so dogged about his reporting or give us insight into where that comes from or how you've seen consistent?

consistency over George over the years. Does that make sense? Totally. Okay. Well, I want to start with the fact that he was a natural born, brilliant storyteller. I knew that like the first week I met him. We would shoot the shit, we'd talk about things and the way he would reconstruct a bunch of seemingly disparate details with a sense of cohesion and clarity.

And an entertaining value was really unique from the very beginning. And so when he said to me that he wanted to go into journalism, because as we had talked about, most of the people we knew from debate, it was like the superhighway to the legal field or politics, that sort of thing, where you would use those verbal skills to basically you know, manipulate the system or, you know, somehow, you know, exploit someone in need and to get back to the community. But George wanted to be a storyteller and he wanted to be a journalist. And at first when he said, I'm going to Vegas.

I'm like, fuck. No, man, just go to L.A. Go to a big market. You're going to be famous. You're going to make it. But I think it was clear to him that what he really cared about was the quality of the story. And what better place to find crazy, unexpected, colorful stories than Vegas. And he got there and I remember thinking, you know, this guy is going to do whatever it takes.

He's going to drive a cab. He's going to carry cement. He's going to, I remember when he worked at the PBS station was, I think the first gig he had. And you could tell. I mean, it's just, he just had it and he was hilarious. And, you know, they would make up all these games and we'd walk, you know, we'd go around town and you could just feel. And the more I spent time with him in Vegas, you started to see the connection he had with the audience because you'd see him on the street with people. And he was so approachable.

And people, it was like, you could tell that people felt he represented their interest because he was always trying to do something. I mean, in a town where it could have been all about the sleaze. Right. And everything's kind of facade of things. Yeah, and everything is artificial. Yeah. He would try to actually find the real story that had some kind of social significance as well as personal significance. And he always made it personal.

And the other part of it is his writing. It was just extraordinary. What is it that motivates George now? a fucking passion to get to get the answers. Like, it was funny, and he and I were talking about this in the beginning, before the, before we started the show, it was like when, you know, all through the 80s, when I would visit him,

I would get updates on what he was doing in the early 90s, but it wasn't like it is today where you could just drop a link and show people what you're doing. So it was always kind of from a distance. I was sort of half paying attention to stuff he was doing. And, you know, there's a little bit of, oh, he's, okay, he's, he's really into the UFO thing. Okay. And all right.

Well, and for me, it was like, oh, maybe he's going with the, you know, the superficial, you know, catching us of it and is trying to sort of ride that wave. But no, what it turned out was, and what we talked about later, is that he was driven to get answers because the people he was talking to in levels of power were not telling the truth. The story didn't line up and that, and I just don't think he had let it go. He doesn't like liars. Yeah, and I think, and he doesn't, I think he's driven to express the truth about something. And this just happened to be what could potentially be a massive truth. But why?

Well, you'll have to ask him or as therapist, but... Back in those days, we'd write letters, actually, write letters. And it was, you have to be in a competition with John because he's such a funny guy and such a great writer. And it would be, you know, I'd have to really think about what I'm going to write back because these guys would read it in a group, I think. Out loud. Somewhere those letters, there's got to be some later floating around somewhere,

but the back and forth was just hilarious. And I felt the same way toward him. Of course, I'd never admit it, but just he was just, he was daunting. His talent was so obvious. And as you said, his communication ability was just kind of off the charts. I know this makes George super uncomfortable, you know, just having private conversation. But why I think it's truly important is because I have learned. And so I wouldn't put so much effort into following in the footsteps, but also trying to do things with George, to break news if I didn't trust that George was 100% after the right thing.

And people like from the outside, they always try to look at, because look, George is disruptive within his field. New York Times, 60 minutes, BBC. You name the network. You name, put your name there. He outpaces, out maneuvers, and outperforms all of them. And this is a single guy out in the middle of the desert. One dude that does that. So I see the slings and arrows he gets.

So I wanted to hear from a friend of his, where does that come from? Because he's actually fucking doing it. He's breaking the sound barriers each time that we didn't know. We thought the world would crumble if that story got out. It didn't crumble. So I'm just reporting the news here myself, which is that I wanted to understand kind of like what mode. And I can ask George and he'll give me like the answer that I need to hear. But from a friend and you guys knowing each other so long where there's consistency in action and you can tell better than anybody like where that comes from.

If I had to answer, I would say, I think George does not like deception. He is honest to a fault. He puts me in a position with checks my ass all the time. So I don't know. It's like you got something a bug against that. And it's great. I just, I want to get into John Long's origin story. I know. We're going to get there. Hold on a second. Because I think you're onto something. And I kind of go back to what I was saying, which is he's just, he's driven. I still think Stockton plays a role in this story. When you grow up a certain way, yeah. Is that what it is? How does Stockton? Well, I mean, because I have the same, you know, it's the same but different story. I grew up in Pomona. And it was. like, you know, lower middle class family. And I always felt compelled on some level to do something, make something of my time. To prove yourself. Yeah. And I felt like that was, you know, I feel, I feel like, you know, there's a, you know, there's a part of Stockton that's in him and I think that's good for us to be, you know, not complacent and not okay with just,

So is it fair to say that, I mean, when people feel like George speaks for the people, it's kind of what you're saying, like on the street, that he has a voice for people, is it fair to say that's because he actually does? It's that marriage of, I'm going to get deep into this, and I'm going to find out what you don't know or you and try to get the answers that I think you want. And I'm going to speak to you like a, you know, with, with receipts. I think he's always been really respectful of the audience. Yeah.

And never dumbed anything down. That's right. And never, and, because, you know, a lot of these are very complicated issues with a lot of pieces. Well, that's the thing. He'll kick ass when it's a story about UFOs and not put it down, but he'll do the same for water rights, animal rights, corruption, anything to do with politics or people taking bribes doing stuff wrong. So, you know, mob stuff even.

I mean, I know that there has been, you know, attempts at George to harm him and his family. So, okay, I just wanted to kind of get a picture on record here of what I see and try to understand it. So thank you for that. Yeah. And last thought. I mean, you know, he was a pretty face back in the day. And he absolutely could have made that migration from that small market to a bigger market.

He might have had to clean up certain aspects of his life or whatever. but but he absolutely could have made that move but i think it was more compelling to him to do the stories that he cared about and that's that's a journalist these you know these talking heads the pretty talking heads may have been journalists at one time but they're not they're not now so so george knapp the underdog but if it was george nap the reservoir dog which one would he be see you're a movie guy which reservoir dog is george nap well i think he's both but but no no you're the movie man hit me he's the character oh which character so in reservoir he's he's probably mr pink um yeah no he's he's he's definitely not the guy who's gonna get

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So we've heard enough dirt on me. I want to get into some dirt on John, not really dirt, but his origin story. If this were a Marvel movie, and you've worked on some Marvel movies. Indeed. And we'll get into some of those. The humble origins of our hero is John and I are friends. We go back and forth. I'm in Las Vegas.

He's in L.A. Our friendship maintains over a large number of years. But we, both of us wasn't really clear where we were going in our lives. I mean, I had a path, but I didn't know where it was going to end up. And there are different relationships and job changes and things like that. And I'm worried about my friend John because he's a brilliant guy. He's a brilliant writer. He was so goddamn funny, like a stiletto.

He could just cut somebody's body parts off with one line. And I always thought maybe he'd be great in stand-up comedy. And I thought maybe that or writing comedy show or something like that. But I think for a while he was training. He was doing training with. celebrities, stars, right? I figured, all right, this is what's going to happen. He's going to end up marrying Anne Margaret and become a kept man, something like that.

You weren't doing that for a while, though, right? Yeah, I never quite got that before. So, yeah, I mean, the 80s were, you know, sort of a bit of an up and down period for me. I mean, I was, as I was telling you, I had sort of two jobs at the time. I was working as a personal trainer, like one of the first sort of person. I had met somebody who, through this writing partner that I had, who had done a profile of this personal trainer in LA. And he did this profile for the LA Times and I met with this guy and I was like, look,

I'm a writer, I spend my days writing, but I'm a super fit person. Let's talk because I could probably take on a few year clients. So I ended up having this bizarre dual-quit. career in the 80s where in the mornings and the evenings I was at a gym training people and during the middle of the day I was working on all kinds of different projects with this writing partner that I had and we had some success enough to keep this in the game we'd get some uh we'd have a project and development here a project and development there's yeah screenplays primarily and some TV shows and some uh you know comedy uh sitcom kind of stuff and

never quite getting the level of success that we wanted. And it became pretty grueling. And I was telling you, I was living in this kind of hovel in West Hollywood, or in West Los Angeles. I was living in this sort of single unit on the second floor above this Argentinian family. One in Juan Cito would cook Argentinian beef, every night and this big column of smoke would come up and fill my single apartment every evening with smoke. And that was sort of my life. And finally, I had a client that I was training

with who had some connection to people in the studio business and marketing. And I met with them and I showed them stuff that I had done and they showed me stuff that they had done. And they were like, oh, no, you could do this. And so they gave me a, you know, a kind of a short tutorial training program had me do some stuff and they said no you're ready and they introduced me to different people in the business agency owners of of companies like Buddha Jones but you know this was 1990 something like that and uh I went to work for this company and this guy was like you're good uh here's a movie I want you to help us with it's called home alone and uh that was my introduction into the, and I worked on Home Alone with them,

and I worked on, you know, Terminator 2 and Basic Instinct, all these movies in the early 90s. And what were you doing? I was doing primarily copyrighting, because in those days, trailers were sort of wall-to-wall, you know, voiceover to help shape the story. But because I had a pretty good visual sense and had a fair amount of,

because I had done some work in some documentaries and things like that. I was in the editing room pretty quickly, and so working on actually producing pieces pretty quickly. But, yeah, started as a copywriter, and somebody was hoping to kind of shape the ideas. It was a pretty good movie to start off with Home Alone. That's a Terminator 2. It was crazy. It was nuts. And I'm like, Jesus, I like this business. And I worked for that company for 10 years, actually more like 12 years, and then got to a place where some colleagues and I decided, you know, we can do this. And went and started Buddha Jones with no more than, you know, a very short roster of clients that we worked with and, you know, this belief that we

could do things that were different and it worked out. Boy, it's like jumping out of the plane without a parachute at that point. All right, go for it. And it's funny because I say that to people all the time who are up and coming. I'm like, if I can give you one piece of professional advice, it's believe in yourself and jump out of the plane because you will survive. And when you plummet to the ground, don't blame me. Buddha Jones is now a giant. I mean, it's not a huge company, but a giant in the industry in terms of its respect. I saw the, you have the golden trailers, right? Is that with the golden trailers, which is kind of the, you know, the Oscars and, or maybe it's the People's Choice Awards, because there's

also the Clios, which is, you know, they give out awards. So it's kind of competing award shows, but, you know, we're prominent in all of them. You got 23 golden trailers last year alone. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, there's, there, it really is important to say that there are a lot of great companies doing great work in this industry. I think I'm proud to say that we are in the on the short list of companies that are thought of as really being preeminent in the business. And it's fun, isn't it? It's fun. It's just like, that's the other thing I tell people is find something that you get up every day and say, I can't wait to get to work and mix it up with people that I care about. Yeah. I mean, look, man, it's not.

bragging if you're confessing. So it's like both of you, it's so hard. Like I got no problem saying what I've done and what I'm proud of because I feel like it will either inspire people to rise to that level of what they're trying to do. I know my shortcomings. I try to learn them every day, but I got no problem with confessing when I've done something good because I think it's like if you shadow yourself and you're like, oh no, no, no, it's no big deal.

Then what that does, it's a disservice to everybody. Like, no. You got to be fucking proud of your work. If you're not proud of it, you did something wrong. It's true. I mean, there is an axi-men writing that's basically, don't say it, show it. And so there is that, like, show me. But once you show it, fucking say it.

Because that makes people, that makes people, look, that has made me rise to the occasion. When people are bragging to me, but they're telling the truth, I'm like, okay, then I'm going to try that. So I've got no problem. I think people should say more what it is. that's on their mind that they have achieved. And if people feel uncomfortable about that, well, guess what? They need to fucking catch up.

And so about that, there have been three, which would have been nothing movies if it weren't for you. And I'm going to be honest with you about that. And I'll tell you why. But I made, so our audience can see, okay, this is Patient 17. Okay, this is a movie.

And this was my first movie. Unknown filmmaker, Netflix picked it up. Okay. I didn't know you yet, though. Right? I was like, oh, no. I had a shitty-ass trailer, but then I went in and jumped in and tried to make it better. But I'm not like what you do. Do you recognize this second movie for the audience, Skinwalker Ranch Hunt for the Skinwalker? I do indeed. Okay. That was the second movie. That is what I was able to make because of 50% of the footage is what George was filming for all that, maybe a decade, right? But it was a complex movie because you're talking about vintage archive footage. You're talking about stuff that was filmed on camcorders on the ground, dealing with a government program. And then I'm trying to film stuff that is like cinematically beautiful.

Man, I could not take that two hour movie and be like, this is what it's about. It's not what it's all about. I want you to always be behind, as you said, like somebody looking at it. You did the trailer because you're friends with George for this movie Hunt for the Skinwalker. This movie, I was like, I remember thinking, oh, fuck, John made a trailer and it's better than the movie. What does that mean?

I'm like trying to figure out what that means, right? Look, for people that are the patience to watch the movie, you gotta get them to go see it. So I wanna thank you because I don't think you know So many people are allergic like me to things that are highly strange. But I'm curious about it and I want to find out the truth about it. But I do have this allergy to things that are highly strange. I feel like I'm nuts and bolts.

Like I'm a straight guy when it comes to this thought process. You made a great trailer. I want to multiple trailers and I want to thank you for that. And did us a solid too. I mean, it's like we're not exactly in a league that could, qualify to get a Bouda Jones trailer. Yeah, but but it was it was just a great process working with you guys. And I remember very vividly that first phone call we had because we were talking and

you guys had a trailer and you were saying, I don't know if it's great. And, you know, we're working with this company Orchard and, you know, they've got a lot of ideas. And I said, well, let me, let me see the movie. And I'll tell you what I think. And I saw the movie and I immediately thought, well, this movie, this trailer that they have doesn't represent what I think is powerful about this movie. It was a fine trailer, but it felt like a documentary about a documentary instead of a piece that would somehow embrace the real mystery of why the fuck are these stories happening and what's the way. the real why aren't these questions being answered and so when we went back and forth I think

you probably remember I got pretty excitable about oh my god no we got to do something that's way older than this and and and and it was just fabulous that you that you uh that we were able to work together and that you guys were so uh supportive of some of these ideas and I was thinking about it too because like I remember watching the movie and thinking, this is a documentary, but I want to capture what's magical about it, which is this, this question of why are we not being told information about these incredible, weird things that are happening and what the fuck is going on? And so I wanted to do the what the fuck is going on trailer.

And that's what Robbie Williams has said is, you know, he goes, I don't know what this is. He goes, but something's up. And I love that. That's great. That's how I'm coming from it. I don't actually remember that phone call. There was a moment I do remember with you. It was for the next one.

But I don't remember that phone call. But it was just so cool because we're not, we're not in your league. I'm not in your league as a filmmaker. Let's be clear. I made this film. If there's something wrong with it, it's on me. Matt Adams edited all of the, or all of the, you know, what we call archive footage, but I'll take full responsibility if something's not good with the movie.

It was a hard lift for me as being somebody who's not like a real filmmaker, like the people you normally work with who work with studios and shit like that. But I couldn't make this film without all of George's guidance and evidence. That's why you're a producer on each film. It's not a monetary signal. It's because it could not have happened without George. you know, allowing me, bringing me to Skinwalker, and then, you know, kind of nurturing this story

that is so important, the fact you trusted me with this story. You know, I hope I did a good job, but when you got to this trailer, which, by the way, we can show people, because mine, I can show it, so I can actually show something John May. So let's play that here. It was dead knife.

That out of nowhere, that weird flash. Can you see that? Look at that. That's amazing. That's not possible. That is not possible. There is some kind of intelligence operating here. And you're not allowed to talk about it. This is like the area 51 of the paranormal. So many things have happened on the properties that have not been made public. Going public now.

It is perhaps the most important scientific effort of our time. The Pentagon and CIA, they've been investigating encounters with the paranormal at the ranch. We're talking about unidentified flying objects, UFOs. The program received more than $20 million for its work. This is a potential threat, a grave one to our country, and everybody who lives there knows about it. Something is here. Something that the government's doing. Right above my head, and I could hit it with tennis ball.

The Skinwalker is extraterrestrial. They should not have vanished, but they vanished. We are on the eve of something momentous. Will any of the fingers be pointing toward Skin Rock the Ranch? Declassified videos. Authentic Department of Defense footage published in December. There's a whole fleet of him. I look on my essay.

After you saw that, I mean, it's like, I was really worried the trailer was better than the film. But you did capture in that the quest to at least watch the film. Yeah. And that's, I really appreciate that. Now, what I do remember, and this is kind of the, for me, a defining moment, this was so dear to my heart. And I was like, didn't want to let anybody down, but I wanted to have my honest and direct signature, my voice, my every single millisecond in this, every sound edit, everything.

You know, I made sure was to the best of my ability. And that's the Bob Lazar film, right? So now you've seen that. So now tell me about that because, again, your damn trailer, I thought was going to be better than the movie. Because you're friends with George, you know that he broke this story, that this has impact. And this impact is larger. If it's true, this impact is larger than just a movie. You get this documentary.

I'm like, John, can you do us a solid? You know, this is like, now you're talking to me. Now you're like picking up the phone for me. what can we do now to be clear i'm pretty sure we paid you but nothing i'm sure compared to what people pay so so you did me a solid you did the ufo community a solid because just hundreds of millions of people have seen this film now more than that have seen the trailer and i did a pretty okay trailer on this one but yours was excellent so can do you remember kind of about that film anything oh i remember many things about it. And first of all, I thought it was a really important movie. And, you know,

we sat around. I remember us having a, in, at Buddha Jones, we had a creative meeting around. What is it we want to try to do with this thing? And it came back to that same question of, here's this person, a really bigger than life kind of character. I mean, Lazar is really an interesting person. And how can he stake so much? How can he, put himself in such sort of physical and psychological peril to tell a story. What is motivating him and why is his story so suppressed? And we were trying to get to that human thing. Not, again, not to make a documentary about a documentary, but to do something visceral that you felt. And but you put, you had a lot of the elements there. You had that incredible Mickey Roark voiceover,

which was, I mean, like, that's gold. Okay, I love Mickey Rourke. People hate that. Like, he always mumbling with rocks in his mouth. It was great. It was amazing, right? It was great. And he said, he goes, I don't know what all this means, Jeremy, but it sounds pretty deep.

I like it. I was like, yeah, man. And so it was amazing. As soon as I heard that, I said, no, there's the spine of the, you know, first half of the movie, of the trailer, at least. So you did a lot of the heavy lifting. We were just trying to do what I think we're paid to do and what we're experts at doing is how do we distill this down to its most essential experience that's going to move people. This is not a documentary course. This is not a newscast. This is not informational. Trailers are meant to create a visceral experience. And so what is it about this particular

piece of work that we think has the most powerful resonance. And so that's how we went at it. And all the pieces were there. And I don't think the trailer is better than the movie. But again, what we do in two minutes is easier than what you do in an hour and a half. But... Oh, no, nine years, but go ahead. Yeah, nine years. Exactly. Well, hold on. Let's play people that trailer. I want to see, We want people to see what John did with the movie. They haven't seen the movie, watched the trailer. Here we go, play.

This story is extraordinary, especially if it's true. And it all started in the desert. This north of Las Vegas. A local scientist who worked at Groom Lake. Said to be where top secret weapon systems have been tested over the years. He has asked that his identity be shielded. Exactly what's going on up there.

What's going on up there could be the most important event in history. Physical contact and proof from another system, another planet, another intelligence. What would happen to you if the government learned that you were giving us this information? He just wanted to stay alive. Maybe this has been kept from us for a good reason. Sir, how do we know you are who you say you are? My name's Bob Lazar. I'm known for working at a classified base and reverse-engineered alien.

engineered alien spacecraft. And it went all over the world. 51 on the map. Can we ever be made whole if we're not believed? We can't verify what was going on in his background. I have no motivation to lie. The science and the technology can change us. We've always looked in the skies for answers.

Instead of looking into ourselves. Well, thank you, first of all, for, you know, making these trailers for these films. They really did allow people to access them and to want to access them. That was the things my friends said is like, the trailer's got to make people want to watch the movie. If you really believe in your movie that it's honest, it's genuine, it's important for people to see. Trailer needs to make people watch them. Now, I know you did it because you're for long-time friends, you know, with George. But I also know that you said to me, you know, you gave me a good of me.

You gave me good material to work with. That's you being bashful, but I do get that. Do you do a lot of documentaries, or is it mainly? Yeah, we do. We do a lot of documentaries. We just did one recently for Bill Russell for Netflix. And I was really proud of that piece because it was able to showcase not only the sports icon, but this social, you know, the social movement that he represented and that he supported and that he was a big part of.

And I think it was one, I mean, for someone like me who actually knows the story, I'm old enough to remember Bill Russell in his playing years and afterwards. But there's so many of the young people in our company, they didn't even know who he was. I don't know who Bill Russell. Yeah, well, there you go. So the point I'm trying to make is that that documentary made it made the story so relevant to so many people and you know we've done several documentaries and they you know centered around race relations and and and you know where we are as a society and and and you know we have a long history of working on those.

But it's the same process when you make a documentary trailer as you do with a movie. Your attempt is to engage people on an emotional, subliminal, deep level. That's what you're trying to do is hook them into learning, whatever it is they're going to learn inside of the film. That's right. For those of us not in the biz, in your biz, identifying the elements that have to go into making a great trailer is hard. But you certainly can recognize me as a... a movie consumer and can recognize a bad trailer. And those are the ones that tell you the whole damn movie. There's a lot of trailers I see that, well, don't need to see that one. You know,

you can fill in the gaps of what's going to happen in that film, horror films, for example. So you get to see a lot of trailers in your biz. You can identify which ones are good and which ones are bad. What's the difference? Well, okay, so let's settle back and kind of look at it. Let's start with what I think are the elements that make a great trailer. And then we can talk about the elements that make a lesson great trailer. The first thing about a trailer, as I've said, it's a piece of entertainment that's meant to evoke some kind of emotion in people. It's not informational. It's not background. It's not a documentary. It's meant to evoke a feeling. And I'm a The way it works with the great teams that put these things together is this beautiful marriage

of style and story. There has to be a story. There has to be something, some compelling reason to want to know more about this material. It can't just be the greatest music video you've ever seen. We have great talent, you know, writers and music people and, and editors. We could make music videos all day. we've actually done some in the past. But that's kind of an empty experience. This has got to be some story that you thread through that compels people to see more. But so it can't just be style or that's a

music video and it can't just be story or that's a news clip. It's got to be some marriage of the two and the good ones do that better than anybody. And The second thing is the journey they take you on. So many up-and-comers that I see are out to sort of dazzle you and show you how much they can do and a lot of visual pyrotechnics and musical leaps of fancy and all the rest of it. And mostly what I end up telling them is take out 50%. And be confident with the stuff that you leave in. You want to take people on a journey, and that journey has got to have highs and it's got to have lows.

If it's all at 11, it's not going to be compelling. And so it has to be compelling, and part of the way you do that is to create this emotional ride. And the great ones suck you in in the beginning. You absolutely are going to be out of a trailer in 10 seconds. In fact, these days, what we have is what they call a bumper, which is literally four or five seconds, six seconds of visual images that say, now watch the trailer. It's like, and that's the music video portion of it.

So, you know, especially because everything's consumed online these days, everybody, you literally don't have the luxury of time. The way you did when you suck people into theaters and they were a captive audience. They were sitting there and they got to sit through all the trailers. But online, they don't have to. And so we've had to speed up that process of hooking people. So you have to find a way to hook someone, set up the idea. But again, it can't be so complicated that they're thrown off in the beginning. And then you want to build, stay one step ahead, as I said, at all times, and have people feel like they're catching up, but never quite catch up. And then you crescendo out and maybe you end with some quiet moment,

and it feels like a whole piece, but you feel like you didn't have the whole meal and you want to consume the rest of it. And that's what the great ones do. You did the trailers for Jeremy's two movies, and suddenly people in the UFO world are beating a path to your door. At least some of them did. And I remember you'd call me and you'd talk to your staff because they're going through bits and pieces of these other films. And we're in them. And your staff is gone. Are you guys in every UFO movie in the world?

But so did you see that as maybe a niche? Well, first of all, it started with, there were people who knew who George Nap. And they're like, wait a minute, George Knapp is in this fucking movie. That's where it started. So there was already a certain level of interest and excitement. And it was, it was, it was, it felt like that moment, the aha moment that I had when I understood why you were so driven. And that was you wanted to answer why people, why people in authority, why the official story was so unreliable. And so our team members is they started to get into this stuff. And I never really

thought that much about UFOs. I always thought it was kind of a bunch of cranks sitting around talking about whatever. But wait, how do you explain this? And so it's just, it naturally, it's got its own kind of centrifugal force. It just pulls you in. And so, yes, it's a niche and I think we can be good at it, but I think we're good at it because we're good at the art form of telling trailer stories. And this just happens to be a particularly interesting subgenre. You know, not all documentaries are really fascinating. I mean, there's obviously some are better than others, but this is, I think it's a world that just to sort of as inherently interesting to people.

But this is a world that has now been kind of knocking on your door. I know for sure, because I always tell people, I don't know if you can afford them, because I sure can't, but you should go to Boota Jones. And I'm sorry for that. I never take responsibility for introductions. But now the UFO world is kind of going to one of the top trailer-making companies in the world.

They're like, can you help us? We're making a documentary. This is not like a big budget film, but you have. And you've done it for a lot of people. I don't know how you must have like different levels with what you'll work on people or work with people on. You're talking about getting people's attention. The world's eyes, the world itself is creaking under the weight

and the strain of the UFO reality. It is literally right now, people are like, if this is true, if UFOs represent some sort of non-human intelligence engaging humanity, which is the open question, is it? that, they're like paying attention. So your job and creating, hey, let's look at this, people are coming to you. So from my perspective, what you've done for this topic is you've made it accessible for a large number of people that wouldn't, it wouldn't be accessible for. The way you humanized

Bob Lazar in the Bob Lazar movie, I did that in my film. That doesn't mean people are going to watch my film, the fact that was a Netflix film, and the fact that that was seen by hundreds of millions, I showed them the trailer. So you have helped people in this field to tackle the question that is one of the biggest questions that people are asking right now. Is this real? Is reality? As George likes to say, reality ain't what it used to be. Is that true? And so I think you've kind of played that role by embracing independent filmmakers like myself. Listen, it's very gratifying to hear and, you know, and I think the additional value we can, you know, the additional role we can play is that we can now have conversations with these

filmmakers and say, okay, so now what is the fresh insight, the fresh perspective, the fresh take? Because like anything, if the story starts to feel like, I heard it or seen some element of it before, then, and I think that's what filmmakers do best is try to give you that unique story. And so we're always trying to help them sort of carve that out. But what you're talking about is different than what you and I did together,

and this is so exciting to me, is that you really help people from the get go now. They have a bunch of, I know, because I've heard some stories. There's a whole bunch of footage. We have this idea for a movie. Here's like a really rough, shitty cut. So are you moving into the world where, when I do my next movie, where not just the trailer, but can you help guide artists from beginning to end, if it suits your business, on how to bring these movies into full-fledged form into the world?

Is this something your company might be engaging moving forward? Full production. Yeah. Well, that's something I want to talk about more with, there's a particular project that we worked on called Fall. I do want to linger for a second on some of the things that I think we can add value to in the marketing realm of a film. Let's talk about Skinwalker's first. I'm for Skinwalker for a second.

I remember thinking that you guys had done some things that were really uniquely cool that we could exploit in the trailer, that weren't in that original trailer that I saw because I felt like they immediately went into all this razzle, they had. like the first 15 seconds of a bunch of kaleidoscopic cool images, but I'm like, how do you ground it and make people feel compelled to sort of lean in a little bit? And you had that one shot where you're basically just coming onto the ranch in the car, in the vehicle. Driving at night. And it feels a little eerie and the stars are coming out. And I'm like, no, this is a vehicle. This is something we can actually use. And so we created that.

that whole opening around that shot, and then we intercut it, as I remember, with title cards that, you know, began to show, you know, began to speak to this phenomenon, you know, and explained things and cattle mutilations and, you know, it's asking these really provocative questions, like, what the hell is going? So you're already kind of like, wait, what's going on? But you have that sort of slow introduction so that you can be pulled into it as opposed to kind of being a little sort of thrown off to begin with. And then it continues to build. And I remember talking to the editor saying, we need some moment where it just all stops down and something that you'll remember. And I remember you guys had in the film, you had some cross talk where you were asking,

it was some of your footage where you were being asked something by somebody and you answered it and then you walked off frame. And we recut that sequence so that the question was asked and you stood there for a beat and then you walked off frame. Because I love it when a trailer doesn't answer a question. It just raises a question. I got to say, George is the best in the world at answering me and walking the fuck off frame.

I don't know why he does. It's like he's just done with me. He's done. He's done. It's the only way. But it's not even because he says something. It's just like, I'm done. And he, like, walks on frame.

Are you going to walk off camera again? No, I am not. I'm standing here all goddamn day. That moment, by the way, was a huge moment in the history of this UFO. transparency because I'm not sure if you know, John, but so I kind of go with George, or kind of sneak onto his studio, not sneak, but we're there and he's got all these dishes behind him.

He's telling me what's about to happen. And I'm like, how do you know what's about to happen? He's telling me because I let the story, I let someone else have it. It was like a month before the New York Times story breaks about that. Oh, wow. He says something big is happening. And of course, my job is to push him and get him to say it on camera. So I'm like, what big is going to happen, George?

What big is going to happen? And he basically says, all I'm saying, and he told me personally, but walks off mic drop, classic George Knapp, I got so many shots of him walking off a frame. I'm going to do a montage and put them together. But that was a really big moment because in our movie, he was warning people that, hey, something big is about to happen. Now, I don't remember the timelines or when what happened. And that feeling that you gave people of there is more to know and you're not going to see it

right here, man, that's the beat we live on. We know some things before they happen. And we got to live that. We got to experience that. So the fact you gave that in the trailer, I felt it. Yeah. And to kind of circle back to that broader question of what makes a bad trailer? Yeah.

It's like, one, it's not compelling. And, you know, sure. You as the trailer company can blame the footage, the IP, the piece that you're working on for not being compelling. But I've been in this business long enough to know that if you do your job right as a trailer maker, you can make almost anything really compelling. You can. And so when I watch a trailer and it's not compelling, this team has failed to do their first job, which is to pull me in and make me want to see more. The second big thing is telling too much. I mean, I did this whole interview with Good Morning America.

And why do trailers give away all the movie? And it was hilarious because I went on this really well-considered and very politically astute kind of answer, which is, look, our job is to make people want to see more. If we have, if people watch something and say, oh, I've seen the movie, we haven't done our job. But it's also our job to be as compelling as we possibly can at every single moment to keep people engaged, surprise them, perhaps distort the story in ways that isn't true to the actual movie, but is its own storytelling thing. And if you do that right, you will engage audiences. You will make them want to see it. And they cut that down to, what a, why are you trying to speak the movies? Hey, look, it's called advertising. You know what you do.

And I'm like, you motherfucker. But, but it's true. If you're watching something and you go, I know what's going to happen. Oh, I guess I don't need to see the movie. I don't need to see the show. You've absolutely failed at your primary responsibility. And there's lots of reasons to blame the process. you know, again, with all the testing and all the things people want to get in.

But I think we as an industry have gotten way better than we were seven or eight years ago. Because I think the trailer art is becoming more of a tease. And I think the Internet is hoping to make that shift than a whole full meal of, okay, let's cram everything we can at two minutes and 30 seconds because that's how much time we're allotted in a theater. when people go to see the movie. And trailers are really important because people go to theaters and see trailers, we'll see movies. Yeah, I think we've grown up a bit.

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Tickets on sale now at yamava Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. U.N. must be 21 to enter. One of the recurrent themes, it's almost like folklore in the world of UFOs that Jeremy and I are pursuing all the time, is that the CIA or other furtive government agencies control Hollywood, that they have been conditioning the public through the release of TVs and movies. over the years, TV shows, how to get ready for the impending alien invasion or the reality that ETs are here or, you know, that reality isn't what it used to be, something like that. Can you discuss the general idea of any agency that would be herding the many, many cats that

exist in, in Hollywood and pulling something like that off? Fuck that. Who do you work for? What is their agenda? Who's controlling you? Yeah. First of all, when I declassed. in front of you and I start shooting lasers at you, you'll know that the whole process has come has been accomplished. Yeah, that's, first of all, fascinating. I'm not particularly familiar with that story. Here's the thing you have to understand. Our industry is so fucked up and no one knows anything. That line goes back to William Goldman in 1960, whatever. It's true. We're trying to trying to intuit what the audience wants to see.

And we never really know. Yes, we become dependent on the things that have worked before. Is there going to be another superhero movie? Are we going to be working on another trailer with people in capes? You bet your ass we are because that's worked. However, we don't really know. And so the idea that there's some organizing. intelligence, some, some group that's creating some kind of structure and is somehow, I mean,

we're so disorganized that there's just no possible way that could work. So alien movies, ET movies, alien invasion movies, sci-fi concepts, they're made, those movies get made because the public likes them and they make money. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. We know in some movies that, and I know actually very specifically in the abyss, that there's direct consultation by people in position to inform the movie maker about what might be of truth about the UFO phenomenon straight up. We also see in popular movies like Close Encounters, we see that there is. you know, boxes from Lockheed Martin. We see a hand scanner, which we'll talk about when Bob is here, Bob Lazare, but there's

this hand scanner in the movie in 1977, I believe. So we know military and intelligence agencies inform movies to get things into public consciousness. That's not like some big mystery. I think it's really cool. Now, what the intent is behind that, not quite sure. But what you're, you know, what I guess I'm wondering is. is, I mean, you don't see that in the industry you have, no one's ever come and said, okay, for nope,

this alien needs to look like a balloon jellyfish. That's not something that someone ever, like you've never heard that kind of thing. I haven't. There may be a part of the process at the conceptual stage that I'm ignorant of and naive to. I don't know what to be the case, but I'd certainly like to make that moving,

myself. There are influences on movies. I think of Independence Day. The movie makers, Devlin and Emmerick, they needed the cooperation of the military and they were getting it up to the point where the Pentagon told them, we need you to take out any reference area 51. Wow. And they had to say, no. I mean, it was central to the whole film. And we also know, you and I have kind of direct knowledge that there was a movie called UFO's past, present, and future. I've said it one time on the show. It's my favorite UFO movie because it was fully funded by the CIA, fully funded by the CIA. This isn't conspiracy. This is

true. And instead of like a against UFO's movie, which was another DOD filmed product, this one came out a few years later with Rod Serling as the narrator from Twilight Zone. And it's almost an apology movie about lying about UFO. It was almost like, testing the waters. And they told this one filmmaker, or sorry, this one ad guy, this guy named Eminager, and he was an advertisement guy, and the CIA had employed him on numerous projects to create advertisements. And we know that to be true because of all of these things, like Project Mockingbird that we didn't know is true, like with the MK Ultra programs. That's not conspiracy, guys. I thought it was. I stayed away from it. No, we found out through the church committee

that our CIA had embedded people in journalism and that they were using them to promote certain narratives, which I am now hyper aware of. I totally accept the idea that CIA or agencies like that could influence a particular project and probably have done it many times. The idea of the larger narrative of controlling, okay, over the next 60 years,

we're going to plant the idea and condition the public to get ready for ET to arrive. That's the hard part to believe. I am undecided, but it just, I see that these things are real. And I know that, you know, so Eminegger, how the story goes is he was said, we're going to fund this. You're going to be able to deliver to the American public and the world footage over Holloman Air Force Base and this UFO coming in, dropping down beings stepping out that have like Egyptian garb and they're strange looking and like meeting with emissaries. So that's the story he tells. but the thing is, is that they, as soon as he does the movie, the story goes, they pull it,

they don't let him use, they never give him the footage, but he's seen some of it with his own eyes, but he was able to leave a few seconds of that in the film that Rod Serling narrated, and it's debate whether or not that's actual footage from Holloman Air Force Base. George and I pretty much know now, or I'll speak for myself. I am pretty certain that that is real footage from a landing of a U.S. UFO spacecraft from where I don't know, who's occupying it, I don't know, who's piling it, I don't know, but that did happen to the best of my knowledge. If that is true, if that is true, wow, man, then agencies do work to bring things into popular

culture, but why? And on whose behest? And where is it going with that? But the point is, you've never had the CIA or men in black come shake you down to change something in your trailers, John? That's far as you know. Well, I know that much. So is that a no or yes?

Yeah, no, I mean, again, I... Has an agency ever asked you to change anything? No. No. Look at me in the eyes and say no? I have not had an agency say to us, you need to do this or not do that? Any individuals that were on behest of an agency

ask you to change anything? Not as far as I know. Okay. It could have been somebody who was secretly representative, but... Sure. Yeah, no. If they asked nicely, would you have done it?

I mean, here's the thing. Most, that, if that's happening, and I'm not saying it's not. I don't know. And I find it fascinating and life is more interesting if it is happening. Yeah. It's happening at a place. They're not coming directly to us because it's not ours to control. Right.

You know what I mean? They could be doing it through a studio system, absolutely. And that would be a much riper place for infiltration. Right. you know, Bouda Jones. I just know for a fucking fact that nobody was able to change a fucking thing from the movies that George and I did,

especially the Luzar movie. People thought that I fucking hired an FBI fake team to come and raid his place. Oh, is that right? Oh, my God, dude. Like, my mom reads the internet. I don't. I said, you have a comment. I'm taking your phone. But she reads that shit and told me about it.

People thought it, okay, so that was the first bar that was set. I faked an FBI raid. They're not even thinking about Bob Lazar as a human being, by the way, just the whole point of the movie and like what he's experiencing. And the bar just kept moving, moving. What happened did happen. But I have seen how the influence on me or people that I work with, how it could easily be shaped by a narrative that is false. I will always remain independent. You know that from the way I do business is like, it's my way or the highway because this type of influence may be good, maybe bad. I

think the real story is when you hear it, even if it's fucked up because it's one person's agenda, if you hear it directly from somebody and it's their vision, their voice, at least you're going to get something authentic. You're going to get their authentic opinion, right? So, okay, you have not been shaken down by the men in black. Do you believe in George? Yeah, I do believe them. Okay. There were a couple of things, big pictures about your business that Jeremy and I are interested in. Theaters are closing. You know, it seems like the only movies that get people in the post-COVID era out to theaters are these superhero big event movies, but smaller films, great films, don't do the box office anymore. A lot of the businesses moved to these streaming

services, Netflix, which are, they're producing some great stuff. They're exposing audiences to TV series from around the world that we'd never otherwise see, which is great. But it's got to be challenging for your industry to adjust to all those changes that are underway. You give us a sense, big picture of what what's going on with the movie industry where it's going and how you and your company are adapting well yeah i would absolutely agree that there's been massive disruption as i think we talked about there's been changes in the business for a long time now uh there's even before the pandemic there was an erosion of the number of people that would go to theaters for example the studios were able to maintain the revenue profile by raising ticket prices.

And that's how they maintain profitability. But then the pandemic hit, and it completely turned everything sideways. And there was no theatrical business for a year. And then it kind of came out of deep freeze and it blew up and then it retreated. And now it's kind of coming back again. And nobody really knows how we're, you know, if I were the, you know, no Stordamus of this industry, I could make a lot of money by predicting what we should do and how to do it.

But, but I think it's, it's going to have to figure itself out. I've been accused of being a pathological optimist before. No, I love the moviegoing experience. I think that the pandemic has absolutely shifted people's viewing habits. It's going to be a lot harder to get him out of the comfort of their living room to go to a movie. On the other hand, that experience is not completely replicable at home. I've watched some of the big Netflix movies that they spent $200 million on at home. One with Adam Driver with the thing in the sky.

Right, wow. It's amazing. But it's not the same experience. Or don't look up or gray or whatever. They're perfectly legitimate entertainment vehicles. It doesn't replace the experience of going to a theater from my perspective. And I think that just broadly speaking, the studios have a vested interest in trying to bring the movie going experience back as much as possible because there's just more money to be made

if they work. You know, the top guns, the avatars, you know, the everything everywhere all at once even, those movies actually produce money in a way that a streaming experience can't. So they have a vested interest in trying to bring it back. It's a question of how to do it. And And I think what we keep coming back to is the originality of the work itself. Like, Top Gun was absolutely something that... Did you see it in the theater? I didn't see it in the theater because I'm a total freak hermit, but the pilots called me after a number of them and said, we know.

And they said, that's it. That's it. They nailed it. Like, what do you mean? Because he looks fucking cool. No one's named Matt Call Sign Maverick. That doesn't even exist. you can't even have that number of characters and so you know and they're like no no they did show

it though how it is there's some embellishments but they felt they were connected to it but the movie standpoint you're saying was just a great movie yeah i mean from a movie standpoint the experience was so pleasant so so and you know it was just so fulfilling because they set the bar so high the action was absolutely extraordinary it was all practically shot or almost no visual effects. So you really had this visceral sense of being there in the moment. And it was a triumph. And, you know, avatars obviously played really well. And so, so the question is, how do we broaden out from there? Marvel, Marvel movies will play. As I said, we're working on the TV campaign right now for Ant Man. I think it's going to do well.

Now, there are other movies, but, but, but, but, but it, but the slate has to be broad. There are movies. And I, I, I, I, really encouraged by the fact that the movie the movies like every everything everywhere all at once i thought that movie was an absolute triumph and something that you do want to see in a theater i mean the visuals uh were just extraordinary that was the most visually complex movie i've ever seen and and and i happen to know that um the filmmakers spent like 18 months just plotting out the sh the shooting schedule and what every shot was going to be like because it took and then they shot it in a couple of months it was crazy so that movie was unbelievable uh there's been a couple of others that i

thought really worked this movie megan which is this uh you know it's basically this this crazy animatronic doll that takes over and terrorizes this family we took the we took our kids to see it and And people loved it. And the communal experience of seeing that movie with hundreds of other people laughing and just getting worked up was just unique and great. So I got a little game I want to play. And then I got one last question, okay?

There's no favorite movie on planet Earth. But you got to tell somebody to watch them off the top of your head. We're playing something called Cinema Roulette. Beyond the Black Rainbow, Panos Cosmodo. Do you know it? No. Damn, dude, you're in for a fucking one of the greatest movies all times. That's awesome.

George. Any movie. Godfather. One and two. One flu over the cuckoo's nest. Searchers. No, no, don't. No, no.

We're playing one for one. We're playing one for one, man. So you don't know the rules of the game, obviously? No. Tell me one fucking movie. We keep going. So here we go. The Black Rainbow.

One movie. The Searchers. Don't know it. Once upon a time in Hollywood. Great one. Holy Mountain. You know it? Yes, I do, but I haven't seen it. You're going to obscure, which I don't like. Not obscure, this is just visually stunning. Apocalypse Now.

Spinal Tap. Stand by me, one of my favorites. The man who shot Liberty Balance. It's a Western. It's a great movie. I'm going to go a little obscure. Little movie, Blue Ruin. Perfect little movie made on a tiny budget. budget, a little thriller, it was great. We're going blue, blue velvet.

It's a good one. As good as it gets. Bonnie and Clyde. Only lovers left alive. You're welcome, George. You know it. Chinatown. Adolcha Vita.

Adolte Vita. Another great one by Pannos. Mandy. Mm-hmm. Mandy. With Nick Cage, the god of movies. Nick Cage.

In Bruges? Goodfellas? We're going to leave it at Goodfellas because I feel like we're Goodfellas right now. Okay. Last question that I got for John. You know, man, I feel like you're talking to us about movie trailers

and I know about a little bit about your life and I know that you learn from your life and your experience. And it's like, what is it that you're so obsessed about as an artist with making these perfect trailers and building these teams to like bring this artistry forward. What has that taught you about yourself? How has that changed you? Has your work at in any way the way you see trailers

being made, the way that you perfect your craft? Has that changed the way that you relate to your daughter, to your wife, to your family, to the world, to the people around you? Has it or has it not? Well, I love that question. It's a great question. I don't want to give you some dumb, glib answer but i would say this it's taught me to lead with love and by that i mean if i don't love the thing that i'm trying to do it whether it's utterly challenging or perhaps even a piece that i don't particularly you know a piece of work that i don't particularly like that i'm working on but that thing that i'm doing if i don't lead with love and i don't love doing it it's going to feel I'm going to, it's going to somehow be there and you're going to feel it.

And I feel the same way about being a dad, a husband, and being a friend. It's like you just have to be all in on the experience that you're trying to share with people. Yeah, I guess that's... Who would think John Long, 35, 40 years later ends up being like a straight arrow pillar of the community? Let's lead with love. I don't get what Buddha Jones is,

but I feel like we just heard from the Buddha Jones himself. Thank you so much, man. Appreciate it. Never has so few had so much to tell, but could say so little. Following this in a weaponized presentation of Jeremy Corbell, George Knapp, Dark Course Entertainment, and Cadence 13 Studios. Available now for free on the Odyssey app, wherever you get your shows.