How Rick Pamplin Transformed Life-Threatening Challenges into a Cinematic Masterpiece

[00:00:00] Entertainment. Insights. Don't take life too seriously. Welcome to Brainsky Unleashed.

[00:00:09] My guest today suffered some serious health issues when he was young. Those health issues

[00:00:15] could have killed him. In the face of death, he boldly decided to live his life, come what may,

[00:00:21] science be damned. His choice to really live has led him to a remarkable and rewarding career.

[00:00:29] He lives every single day with passion and a desire to help others. I'm pleased to welcome

[00:00:37] writer and director Rick Pamplin. Welcome to the program, Rick Pamplin.

[00:00:44] Thank you very much. Yeah, no, thank you so much for coming on. I just want to come right out of the

[00:00:50] gate and say that I've just watched a recent movie that's Movie Money Confidential. You sort of in the

[00:00:58] movie, you kind of touched on overcoming some of your challenging times. And I kind of want to dig

[00:01:03] into that a little bit because as I've been doing with my podcast lately, I just kind of see that people

[00:01:09] have had some real challenges in life. And some of the most successful people are successful because of

[00:01:15] overcoming those challenges. So can you kind of go into some of what that looks like?

[00:01:19] Well, I think that I think life is challenging. In many ways, I think life is corrupted and evil people

[00:01:29] have control of many parts of our world. And I'm concerned about everything. And from the time that I

[00:01:38] was a young man, growing up in Michigan, you know, I cared about the starving children in Bangladesh.

[00:01:47] And I remember going to my church to my pastor. And he said, Oh, you should be out throwing a football

[00:01:54] and chasing girls. You shouldn't worry about things like that. And I said, Well, aren't you an agent of

[00:02:00] Jesus Christ? Aren't you supposed to be supposed to care about these people? And so, you know,

[00:02:05] I've been deeply concerned about a lot of things a lot of my life. I was very ill as a child.

[00:02:11] I was in the hospital. I was born with some physical defects. Twice, I believe when I was in

[00:02:18] the hospital, I'm talking about from five to 15. They came and gave last rites. Wait,

[00:02:25] what difficult? I didn't think I would live to be 18. And I was on a number of prescription drugs I had.

[00:02:33] I was in intensive care, I had surgeries, I had a lot of problems. And through a weird series of

[00:02:41] circumstances, my father left, and my mother was committed to a mental facility. And I was sent

[00:02:49] off to military school because even though I hadn't played sports, or I wasn't a particularly

[00:02:54] interesting or engaging person, I read, I read everything I could get my hands on, which was what

[00:03:01] we used to do before the internet. We'd read books. And you could go to a library, and you could check

[00:03:07] out books, and you could read about people, and you could be inspired. And there wasn't a Tony Robbins

[00:03:14] or a J.T. Fox or people like that at that point. But there was Dale Carnegie. There were biographies

[00:03:21] of people that overcame things. And they were very inspiring. So I was able to get a scholarship.

[00:03:28] So I went to military school. And they sent me off to Indiana. And you know, military school,

[00:03:35] or I was in 10th grade, was a very physically demanding thing. And my mother had sent me with a

[00:03:42] bunch of letters from doctors, I couldn't play sports. I couldn't jump out of an airplane,

[00:03:48] I couldn't go play war games and maneuvers. And, and I had two dop kits. And one of the dop kits was

[00:03:57] my toiletries. And the other one was filled with all these prescription drugs that I'd been on my

[00:04:01] whole life. I mean, I was like a zombie. And I went to military school. And I want I want to do this.

[00:04:10] I want to fire an M16. I want to climb a rope. I want to grapple off the side of a building.

[00:04:15] I want to play in war games. I want to play football, basketball, baseball. And this was

[00:04:22] probably the turning point of my life. In 10th grade, I took the dop kit of pills, and I flushed

[00:04:29] them down the toilet. It knows our school. And I didn't tell anybody. And I took the letters. And I

[00:04:37] think I burned on my desk, you know, like you'd light a magic bird, you know, I, I destroyed my past

[00:04:44] life. And nobody knew me there. And I thought, I'm going to die. But I'm going to die living.

[00:04:55] Amen. It was very important to me. And so my mother every 90 days, would send a box,

[00:05:04] filled with all these pills, all make sure you take your pills, how are you doing? And I would go to

[00:05:10] the toilet when no one was around, because we had a big communal, you know, bathroom. And I would

[00:05:16] put all these pills and flush them. And this went on for two years. I lost weight. I played football,

[00:05:26] basketball, baseball. In my junior year, I got my varsity letter at a military school.

[00:05:32] Uh, and I found out that girls liked me. I know. And it changed my life. And I became fiercely

[00:05:40] independent. I then ran away from military school, because I didn't, I didn't want to be there anymore.

[00:05:47] I wanted to be free. I wanted freedom. And I hitchhiked my, my idea. And 11th grade,

[00:05:56] I ran away with another student. And we hit the road. And we were trying, we were going to move to

[00:06:02] California and get the movie business. And I guess we were about 16 or 17 years old. And we slept in

[00:06:09] ditches. And we hitchhiked. And we rode with truckers. And, um, you know, we, we got halfway

[00:06:14] across the country. And then we just got exhausted. And, um, so eventually we, we turned ourselves in and

[00:06:23] got on a Greyhound bus and came back. And my punishment was, I lost all my privileges.

[00:06:29] And I had to go to the, the, uh, the horse stalls and I had to shovel, you know, horse manure,

[00:06:37] but I didn't care because I didn't want to be there anymore. It had served its purpose. And, um,

[00:06:43] I really wanted to be artistic and free. And while I was there, I had been, you know, I had written

[00:06:50] some poetry that had been published in the magazine and I wanted to gravitate towards the arts and

[00:06:57] filmmaking. And I felt more comfortable in the movies I was watching, which replaced the family

[00:07:04] I didn't have and the love I didn't have. And I wanted to be part of that. And so that began,

[00:07:11] began my long quest. I eventually went to a prep school. You know, I eventually, um,

[00:07:17] went to university of Michigan, Flint, Michael Moore worked for me. I was the editor of the

[00:07:24] newspaper. Um, I spent a lot of time with Mike. Um, we were both a couple of kids wanted to,

[00:07:31] you know, go make movies. Although I think Mike wasn't sure at the time exactly what he wanted to

[00:07:36] do. He went out to Hollywood and Michael Moore called me and he said, you don't want to come out here.

[00:07:42] It's all concrete. And I said, what do you mean? It's all concrete. Well, there's not enough trees.

[00:07:47] There's not enough, you know, you wouldn't like it. So he came back to Flint. Um, I did the newspaper.

[00:07:56] I'd also shortly before that I'd worked for CBS news. There was a CBS station and, um, Flint,

[00:08:02] Michigan. It was Flint Saginaw Bay city. Midland was the 56th, 52nd largest media, um, you know,

[00:08:11] market in the world. And I worked on the CBS. I talked to Walter Cronk and I worked with Dan

[00:08:16] rather he came and we did a story and, you know, I learned to film and edit and shoot film and write

[00:08:23] copy and, you know, you know, have a deadline. And it was a great experience. And after a year

[00:08:29] and a half, they fired me because I wasn't really interested. The sales department would tell me

[00:08:35] how to, you know, like, well, go do a story on this, you know, and this will help us sell ads.

[00:08:40] And I'm like, go to hell. I'm a journalist. So they put up with me because I was a really good

[00:08:45] reporter and I broke stories that went on the associated press. I broke stories that other

[00:08:51] TV stations picked up across the country. And I had some stuff that was on the, there used to be a

[00:08:57] CBS morning news with Hughes Rudd, which is now the CBS morning show.

[00:09:02] And I had stuff that was on there and Walter Cronkite, who was this grand, you know, grandfather

[00:09:08] of journalism, he would call up and, and the news director's office, which was next to my desk,

[00:09:14] the phone would ring. So I go in and pick it up and I go, you know, this is, you know,

[00:09:18] news directors, this is Walter Cronkite. You know, what's going on up there in Flint,

[00:09:24] Sagittal Bay city. And I would sit down in the news director's chair and talk to Walter Cronkite

[00:09:29] for a half hour when he was the anchorman of the CBS evening news. And that was, that was the

[00:09:35] greatest time of CBS because they were actually reporting on news. Yeah. There wasn't spin.

[00:09:43] There wasn't propaganda, you know, there, there wasn't any political correctness. So when we went

[00:09:49] out to do a story, you know, I went out one time to do an article, a story on welfare and the

[00:09:56] cameraman and I went into the welfare office and they announced we were going to take film

[00:10:01] and every person left. And it was a room of empty chairs because people were getting welfare

[00:10:06] illegally that shouldn't. So I changed the story. I showed the empty room. I showed all the people,

[00:10:12] the parking lot running away from the camera. So, you know, I was willing to do, you know, real

[00:10:18] journalism, you know, they, they would give me a story and I would go out and I would dig.

[00:10:23] And there was a sheriff that was campaigning for public office. His wife was running for office

[00:10:31] and he had on duty sheriff's deputies out campaigning for his wife. And that's completely

[00:10:39] wrong. And they, we had a lot of likes in Michigan. And so we had sheriff marine, you know, people that

[00:10:46] would be at the lakes in case someone was drowning or they needed help. And he would pull these people

[00:10:51] off of these potentially life-saving, you know, sheriff's deputies on the county payroll, the

[00:10:59] taxpayers to go campaign for his wife. So I aired the story. It was the lead story on Associated Press

[00:11:07] in Michigan. It made all the Detroit stations, you know, I got a lot of death threats and, but it was

[00:11:16] journalism. And that was the kind of thing that, you know, I was interested in doing. What I wouldn't do

[00:11:21] is kowtow to the advertising department. And, you know, when they started selling gold, they come to me

[00:11:27] and say, well, you have to go to this client or, I don't do that. I'm not, no. And so, you know,

[00:11:35] President Nixon came, he was about to resign and he came to Saginaw and Dan Rather was, was there. And

[00:11:45] we, we helped do all the legwork for the CBS Evening News. And I met Dan Rather and got to be

[00:11:52] involved in it and did some stories. And, you know, it was very exciting because we went out

[00:11:58] and did real journalism, but I had a 16 millimeter CP16 with a mag stripe when we had a microphone.

[00:12:07] And then I had a little handheld camera, a bolex that you would do, but it was all on 16 millimeter.

[00:12:13] There was no video then. So you'd have to shoot the video. Then I had a news car and I have to drive

[00:12:19] like a hundred miles an hour to get back because at 430, all of the film went into the bath,

[00:12:25] the chemical bath. And then at about five o'clock, it would come out and we went live at six.

[00:12:32] So you had to like, look at your film, splice it, cut it, work with an editor, write to copy,

[00:12:39] do the voiceover and, and put your story. And I would have three to six stories a day,

[00:12:46] you know, that I would have covered. And then I had to put them on a chalkboard. And then, well,

[00:12:50] which is the most important story? And what do we have film on? And a lot of times in TV news,

[00:12:55] the story that you have film on is the story that gets on, not the most important story.

[00:12:58] So I would have to run into a recording booth and go, this is Rick Pamplin, blah, blah, blah,

[00:13:04] blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, cut it, cut it back. And I would do these

[00:13:08] little masterpieces. I would put Beatles music on these shows. And one night I was, I was guest

[00:13:17] anchoring the 11 o'clock news. And we had a story about Amtrak leaving Flint, Michigan,

[00:13:24] which was a huge thing. Cause when I went to military school, nobody drove me. They just

[00:13:28] threw me on a train and I went on a train, you know, from Michigan to Indiana to go to military

[00:13:34] school. And I was in love with trains and I loved the old trains. So I went down and I did a thing

[00:13:41] about the last thing. And we went on the train and we interviewed people. So I put the Beatles song

[00:13:46] ticket to ride as a soundtrack. I love it. And I said, there's not going to be any more tickets to

[00:13:53] ride on Amtrak and Flint, Michigan. So the director was this kind of hippie guy who before

[00:14:00] the 11 o'clock news would go stand in the snow outside and he would smoke a joint and come back

[00:14:06] and direct high. And he and I would fight all the time. So he heard the thing and he goes,

[00:14:12] we're not having Beatles music on the moon. You can't do that. And I went in and I said, yes,

[00:14:17] we can. And I threw him up against the wall. You know, I got him a movie scene and I said,

[00:14:20] I'm in charge. I'm anchoring the 11 o'clock news. That story stays. And it was a little bit like

[00:14:27] broadcast news. And it was a little bit like network. And it was exhilarating and exciting.

[00:14:34] But I learned filmmaking. I learned how to tell a story in three minutes with footage that I'd either

[00:14:41] shot or directed. I knew how to write copy to make it work. I even learned how to put music on over the

[00:14:49] objection of, you know, people at the station. And I learned a great deal. And I eventually did a

[00:14:55] couple of documentaries. I hosted some shows and that was great training. And I did that for about

[00:15:00] a year and a half.

[00:15:02] I'm going to stop you here for a second, because as I'm listening to you, I kind of want to take

[00:15:09] a step back just a little bit because, man, you have fire. Like you have fire. And that does explain

[00:15:19] a lot. Even in my pre-notes for the interview, I said, you have passion. I mean, it's right in my

[00:15:26] notes. You clearly have a lot of passion. And I wanted to kind of find out where you think that

[00:15:32] comes from. But then I'm taking notes while we're talking. And I'm like, man, this guy has

[00:15:36] tremendous fire. You say it started in about 10th grade. Was there anything that you could even

[00:15:42] distinguish that created that fire that would lead you to the boldness? I mean, you've literally

[00:15:49] listed out some incredible things that you did in your life that, I mean, there are people that

[00:15:55] know about the things that you've done in your life. Even just so far that you've listed,

[00:16:00] there was a spark. What was it?

[00:16:04] Well, I think it was a number of things. I think I've always had a deep faith in a God and a Jesus.

[00:16:10] And I've tried to live by that. Although I've been estranged from the church for long periods of

[00:16:15] time, mainly because of the pastor who told me to go throw a football and chase girls. Don't try to

[00:16:20] feed starving children. So I've always butted heads with organized religion. And I've been in and out of

[00:16:27] it. I think the other thing I've noticed, there's a bit of a motif with movie directors.

[00:16:32] People like Francis Copeland, people I really like, and Jim Cameron. And these are people that I've

[00:16:40] know, or have had dealings with. A lot of them grew up very isolated. In the case of Francis,

[00:16:47] he had a loving family, but he was ill. And when you're ill as a child, you think you're going to

[00:16:54] die. If you're really ill, if you're in an oxygen tent, if you have a staph infection, if you can't

[00:16:59] touch anything unless they burn it. If you just, you're going in and out of, you know, whatever you're,

[00:17:04] you're, you're, you're going into surgeries, you're in a lot of pain. And it was hospitals are much more

[00:17:12] sophisticated now. You know, when all this happened to me many, many years ago, it was much

[00:17:18] more brutal and children were not, you know, that it wasn't a comforting, you know, you were, it was a

[00:17:26] survival of the fittest. And so I wanted to live. The reason I did stuff in military, I wanted to live,

[00:17:33] I wanted to experience life. And this is going to sound trite and self-serving. But I'm still

[00:17:40] concerned, and I'm doing things today, one of my new films is going to deal with it. I'm still concerned

[00:17:47] about starving children in Bangladesh and all over the world. And, you know, George Harrison made this

[00:17:54] movie, the concert for Bangladesh, which also changed my life. Movies changed my life. It's a wonderful

[00:18:01] life, changed my life. Watching people do good things in movies, and understand how life worked,

[00:18:10] gave me that spark. And I kept thinking, there's a world that I'm not in that I want to be in.

[00:18:17] There's people that I wanted to meet. There's people that, you know, I, to me, Hollywood was what I

[00:18:24] wanted. I wanted to go meet these people. I wanted to be part of this industry. And no one encouraged me

[00:18:30] ever. And if there's any lesson from our talk today, you don't need encouragement. I will encourage you.

[00:18:39] I don't know you, whoever's listening, but I'm on your side. Go live your dream.

[00:18:46] I agree with that. Oh, forward. And I think this guy that I'm talking to right here, Thomas,

[00:18:54] will support you. I will support you. And I love to empower people and help people. And I think once

[00:19:01] I got going in my life, it's kind of like, you know, I know you did a great show with Scott the

[00:19:08] Pont. We like to help people and we like to help each other. And a lot of people in Hollywood don't

[00:19:14] like that. And a lot of people in the world don't like that. You know, people used to say,

[00:19:19] why are you wising up chumps? Or why are you helping people? Don't let other people in the

[00:19:22] industry. But don't you feel that they're missing the point of life? Oh, yeah. I mean,

[00:19:28] absolutely. You know, if you're so self-servant, then you're missing the whole point of the

[00:19:34] relationships. I mean, you know, we live basically for relationships, at least in my opinion.

[00:19:39] And by not serving others, by not helping others. I mean, all you're doing is just enriching

[00:19:44] yourself. But what are you taking with you? Well, exactly. And you're living unfulfilled,

[00:19:49] which is why the suicide rate and addiction rates are an all time high. Because people are,

[00:19:56] you know, there's something missing in their life. It's not about money or fame or power or influence.

[00:20:05] You know, and I've fallen for some of that. You know, I've been I, you know, I went to Hollywood,

[00:20:10] I wasn't a saint. I lived the Hollywood life. You know, I liked women. I liked money. You know,

[00:20:18] I liked a lot of the things that glitter. But, you know, now I'm older, I've lived through that.

[00:20:25] And I, I'm, you know, I don't, I'm not interested in those things. I'm still interested in the things

[00:20:30] I was interested in when I was 15, 16 and 17. And here, here's my message. Go ahead. If you've lost

[00:20:36] touch with who you were at 15, 16 and 17, go back and get in touch with that person. Because that's

[00:20:42] who you're supposed to be. The world corrupts you. The world brainwashes you. The world will try to

[00:20:49] make you what they want you to be or exploit you or make money off you. The world tries to buy you

[00:20:57] for wholesale and sell you for retail. Think about that.

[00:21:02] I mean, I agree with you completely. But I'm going to ask you your opinion. And I mean, I have mine.

[00:21:09] How do you turn that around? It's one thing to say, go be the person that you were at 15. Albeit,

[00:21:15] I probably shouldn't be maybe going to 15, maybe a little bit later, but not too much later.

[00:21:20] And in some respects, I haven't left that age. But how do you, how should someone go about

[00:21:28] reversing that course and going back to that person that they should be?

[00:21:33] Well, a lot of people, a lot of people can't do it. I don't think that they could find the way.

[00:21:37] That's a great question. And you're going to be shocked. I have three quick answers.

[00:21:41] I love it.

[00:21:42] Number one, you got to develop a skill set.

[00:21:45] You do not get traction in this world if you do not have a skill set. If you don't have something

[00:21:51] you can monetize, you're going nowhere. You're going to go work for other people who, as I just said,

[00:21:57] are going to buy you wholesale and sell you retail, and they're going to make the profits off your work.

[00:22:03] And it took me a while to figure that out. Number one, develop the skill set.

[00:22:07] Number two, get experience. I worked on movies as an extra, as an extra. I held the boom,

[00:22:15] you know, a whole day. I went home at night. I couldn't even lower my arms. I was like this.

[00:22:20] I've been a production assistant. I've done, I've been a location scout. Any job that was offered to

[00:22:26] me, I took. I didn't care what the money was. I worked on a film with a very famous director,

[00:22:32] with a lot of movie stars, all of them rich. And the pay was $100 a week. I worked six days a week,

[00:22:40] about 18 hours a day. It was $100 a week and all the food I could steal off the craft services table.

[00:22:46] But the experience was life-changing. The relationships and the lessons I learned were

[00:22:52] invaluable. And so this was, again, before the internet, before podcast. You can get this stuff

[00:22:58] now. I love podcasts. I love the internet. I love Twitter. I love all this stuff, YouTube,

[00:23:06] all of it. Educate yourself to go along with your skill set. And the third thing, be independent.

[00:23:14] You must think for yourself. If everybody says to you, take a vaccine for a disease that has a 98.6%,

[00:23:26] you know, cure rate. You know, do you want to take an experimental vaccine? Because 1.4% of the people

[00:23:34] are going to die from it, who may have challenged. Make that decision. Do not care what anybody says.

[00:23:42] Investigate it and make that decision. As I've gotten older, the food we eat, the hours we sleep.

[00:23:49] You better listen to my last podcast. If you do what they tell you to do, they own you.

[00:23:55] You cannot let big anything own you. I'm going to turn this around again because A, I agree with you

[00:24:06] 100%. I think that people in society today, especially the youth, and I'm not trying to trash talk the youth,

[00:24:12] but I do believe that they want to skip number two. I'm like you. I got my start. I busted my butt.

[00:24:21] I took pay cuts to grow my career because I knew that if I would do the work, if I'd put in the effort,

[00:24:26] something good would happen from that. And I didn't know what it was going to be. I thought

[00:24:30] I knew what it was going to be. I had no idea. And the blessings that have affected my life because

[00:24:37] I was willing to cut my teeth on things and do the dirty work and the not so fun work and the

[00:24:43] definitely not glamorous work, it makes a difference. But then you said, be independent.

[00:24:48] Man, how can people be independent in this world? Now, again, I have my opinion,

[00:24:53] and a lot of it comes from just being bold and wanting things bad enough. But if you look at society

[00:24:59] where we're at, you have Hollywood, you've got big education, you have everything pointing towards

[00:25:05] live within this box, live within what we tell you. You've got politicians, you've got leaders,

[00:25:11] you've got everybody saying, do what we say. And it's so hard to break out of that. You've broken

[00:25:17] out of that. I've broken out of that. You've been doing this a lot longer. You've worked with people

[00:25:22] who, I mean, listen, the last film you just did, I mean, all star, I mean, big star in his last film,

[00:25:31] but yet you broke free. How would you recommend people break free to be independent? That's a tough one.

[00:25:40] Well, I think you have to stay true to yourself. And there's only one voice that matters. And that's

[00:25:46] the voice in your head or your heart. And, you know, I've been very blessed to been able to know Jim

[00:25:53] Gameron. And I knew Jim at the beginning of his career and was involved in a screening

[00:26:00] at University of Southern California, where I was teaching at the time of Terminator and to know his

[00:26:07] story and to be involved in a couple of things. And in my movie, I did a movie called Michael

[00:26:12] Winslow Live. And Jim had directed this $12 million Terminator scene that they used at Universal Studios,

[00:26:19] which Michael Winslow had done the effect. So I was able to get out of the gym when he was shooting

[00:26:27] Titanic in Mexico. And he gave me the clip for free. I was unbelievable. I mean, so what happens is you

[00:26:35] network with very great people. And you find people that can help your career. You find people

[00:26:43] that later on will come back into your life. And, you know, it was interesting when I went to

[00:26:50] Hollywood, the first place I went was the Lee Strasberg Institute. And it was all about the

[00:26:56] method acting and artistry and Stanislavski and the brooding James Dean and Marlon Brando and all of

[00:27:05] you know, and I was kind of taught to be kind of a difficult, surly person. And it was really a

[00:27:12] disservice to my career. And as my career evolved, I found out that my real personality is more like a

[00:27:19] John Madden, like, hey, come on, let's put on a movie. And I was a positive person. But I was trying to fit

[00:27:26] in. I was trying to be like the people at the Strasberg Institute. I was trying to be difficult

[00:27:34] like Marlon Brando, or, you know, James Dean. And you can't, you have to be yourself. You have to find

[00:27:41] who you are. And that evolved over time. You know, I was an actor for a couple of years, I did some big

[00:27:48] movies. And I was in some scenes with people like Dustin Hoffman, Rod Steiger, all Oscar winners.

[00:27:54] And, but I didn't like it. And I just knew I wasn't an actor. I did it for about two years.

[00:28:00] I probably did about 50 projects, either as an extra or what they call under five, you know, where you

[00:28:06] have under five lines. I did some TV shows, you know, I worked with, you know, some really great people,

[00:28:12] Buddy Epson and different people, Judd Hirsch, you know, great people. But I realized I want to control it.

[00:28:20] I want to write it. I want to direct it. You know, I want, I want to make it. So it's, it's, it goes back to

[00:28:25] the thing I said earlier, experience. If I wouldn't have tried to be an actor for two years, then I probably

[00:28:31] wouldn't be a very good director. But then when Ernest Borgnine shows up Academy Award winner on my set and

[00:28:37] says, all right, what are we doing kid? And I start directing him. I kind of know what I'm doing enough that he

[00:28:43] respects me. And, you know, I've worked, like you said, with some really big talent. Michael Winslow

[00:28:49] was great for Police Academy. Ernest Borgnine, I directed Roseanne Cash and her first and I think

[00:28:55] only film. You know, and I've worked with some really great people, Burt Reynolds, Salma Hayek.

[00:29:01] Well, Salma was an interview with someone else, but she's in my most recent movie, but Burt Reynolds.

[00:29:05] And I just recently for my new movie I'm doing interviewed Quentin Tarantino, which was

[00:29:10] really interesting. And Quentin really fits into this whole thing we're talking about. There's the,

[00:29:16] you know, I was doing some research. Here's a guy who's made nine movies. Eight of them were

[00:29:21] completely independent. Those nine movies at North American box office theatrical, a billion and a

[00:29:29] half dollars. All right. But he, nobody's more independent than Quentin Tarantino. This guy has a

[00:29:37] vision. He makes his own movies. He doesn't care. And my point is he fit that mold. I think Jim Cameron

[00:29:45] fit that mold. You know, Jim drove a truck and delivered textbooks in Orange County. Jim worked for

[00:29:53] Roger Corman at a special effects studio in Venice, which was a barn. And I think Jim made a hundred,

[00:29:59] hundred, $125 a week, slept on the floor. You know, when, when I first met Jim, he had been sleeping on

[00:30:06] people's couches. I mean, he, he, but he was, he made a film for about a hundred thousand dollars

[00:30:13] and it was okay. And then he created this monster called Terminator. And I think he waited five years

[00:30:21] till he could get the funding and have control. So one time I called up Jim and I said, Hey Jim,

[00:30:25] I'm teaching screenwriting at the time. I said, I'd love to get a copy of the script for Terminator.

[00:30:31] So he sends me over a script and it's like about eight point font. And like, it's all pyro stuff.

[00:30:38] It's all like special effects and stuff. And I called him up and he said, Jim, I, I don't even,

[00:30:44] I can't even understand what you, he said, that's the point. He said, I don't want anybody to know

[00:30:49] what I'm doing. So I write it in such a way that no one can tell. Peter Bogdanovich used to do two

[00:30:55] scripts, one to show the money people and then the one he'd make. So, I mean, you have to figure

[00:31:01] out how to get your skillset at a certain level and then be able to monetize it, whatever you want

[00:31:07] to do. It works in any, it doesn't work just in show business. It works in life. And I've had to take

[00:31:14] some weird jobs along the way. I've done radio shows. I had two radio shows in Los Angeles.

[00:31:22] Um, one of which I was fired from the other, which was a hit. And then a bigger station bought me and

[00:31:28] then they tried to control what I said on the air. And, you know, I'm just not a big censorship fan.

[00:31:34] I like free speech. So I've been fired from most of my jobs. I was just going to ask, what do you

[00:31:39] normally get fired for? Uh, free speech. Okay. You know, the right, not conforming. Yeah. I'm not going to

[00:31:47] listen to people. I don't care. Yeah. I have things to say. I, you know, I, I don't want people

[00:31:51] messing with, I'm in the director's guild and all my contracts. Now I have final cut

[00:31:57] on movie money confidential, which has been my new movie that's out now. Nobody, everybody argued,

[00:32:04] the executive producer, our beloved friend, Scott DuPont, everybody wanted to change things,

[00:32:10] but I'm in the DGA. So I'm entitled to the first cut guaranteed, but my contract is I have final cut.

[00:32:18] So I just said, I don't care. And people say, well, I don't want, I don't like that scene.

[00:32:22] Or I don't like that scene. I don't like that. It doesn't matter to you. You got that final cut.

[00:32:25] I don't care. What do I care that we did a screening in Florida, about 400 people showed up

[00:32:31] and there's a big backer of mine, big executive producer guy. He he's in the movie,

[00:32:35] the guy with the cowboy hat. And he says, we got to go to lunch. It's really important. I said,

[00:32:40] well, I'm kind of big. No, no, we got to go to lunch. He goes, I will buy whatever that investor

[00:32:47] put in to make that scene where you sell their product. It ruins the movie. It's the worst thing

[00:32:52] I've ever seen in my life. And we went to lunch. My wife, who's also producer myself, his wife,

[00:32:59] he said, I'll write you a check right now. You've got to cut that scene out of the movie.

[00:33:03] I'll double the money they gave you. And I said, no, no, I'm not going to do it.

[00:33:09] So now the movie comes out. The first guy is I screen it for a lawyer, very successful lawyer

[00:33:15] in Hollywood, the top independent filmmaking lawyer there is. He asked if he can screen the movie

[00:33:22] because one of his clients is in the movie. I said, sure. He calls me up and he goes,

[00:33:27] I want to sign you as a client. It's a great movie. And he goes, you know what my favorite scene is?

[00:33:32] That scene where they're selling this product and you're making fun of them.

[00:33:37] And he said, it's art versus commerce. It's brilliant. So then the critics came out

[00:33:43] and this is the highest, best reviews I've ever had. 99% audience approval on Rotten Tomatoes,

[00:33:50] 80% of certified critics, real critics that love the movie. And there's more that aren't certified,

[00:33:58] but 80%. So the critics are like the genius, the brilliance of the movie is he shows you what

[00:34:06] he's doing to raise the money as he's making the movie. And there's these commercial thing and he

[00:34:10] makes fun. And so it's the most popular scene in the movie, but everybody wanted me to cut it out,

[00:34:17] including the editor, you know, including the executive producer. And, you know, I was just like,

[00:34:23] well, no. And now in critics that reviews it'll last forever, I'm a genius. And it's the best thing

[00:34:31] in the movie. So, you know, when I was interviewing Burt Reynolds, Burt said, you have to make the movie

[00:34:39] you want and you can't let other people tell you what to do and you have to own it. And that's kind

[00:34:48] of what I did. And then Scott was really funny because we're making the movie and he goes, well,

[00:34:51] you know, this is your Hail Mary pass. If this film doesn't work, you're washed up, you're done.

[00:34:56] You haven't made a movie in five years. And I was like, well, okay, maybe, you know, and I said,

[00:35:02] but when I knew what I wanted, I knew the picture was right. And it was very odd. I found my voice

[00:35:12] later in life. I used to have a literary agent named Mike Hamelberg. He passed away a couple of

[00:35:18] hills. He sold Taxi Driver. He produced a movie with Robert Mitchum and Sidney Pollack called The

[00:35:26] Yakuza about the Japanese mafia. Terrific guy. We used to go to lunch, breakfast. We worked on a

[00:35:32] bunch of projects together and he was my literary agent. And he said to me, you got to find your voice.

[00:35:38] He said, stop worrying about all these other filmmakers. Find your voice. Don't, you don't

[00:35:47] care. I don't care how long it takes. So I thought it was ironic that I really feel movie money

[00:35:52] confidential. And then in the new film, I'm, I'm actually final cutting now, which is coming out of

[00:35:57] March. They're pure Rick Pamplin films. They're because even when I worked on other films, I did this

[00:36:04] movie with Ernest Borgner. I had 70 crew people. I'm shooting in at Universal Studios. I had three or

[00:36:11] four labor unions I had to deal with. I mean, it was too much. I didn't like it. And what I learned,

[00:36:18] I like a smaller crew. I like young people. I love young people. When I put my crew together,

[00:36:25] only my wife and I and Scott had ever made a movie. Everybody, I think the average age of my crew was 29.

[00:36:33] And I, their talent and their energy was unbelievable. And I did something that I want

[00:36:39] to recommend to everybody. I broke all the rules. I hired inexperienced crew guys. I hired young

[00:36:45] people. I hired people that would argue with me and we would fight about scenes, which made the film

[00:36:51] better. And I gave them a percentage of the movie. Wow. My camera department, my producers,

[00:37:00] my sound department and my composer all get a piece of the, of the action. I was shooting my new movie

[00:37:08] just recently. And I invited the Palm Beach County film commissioner and deputy film commissioner

[00:37:14] to come up and they spent a half a day with us. And we went to lunch and they said, where did you get

[00:37:21] this crew? These guys are amazing. I've never seen such a crew. And I said, oh, well, I got this one

[00:37:27] here and that one there. And then, you know, well, what other movies have they made? I said, none.

[00:37:32] And they're like, oh my God, I've never seen crew people. So into what they're doing. I said, well,

[00:37:38] they're owners. And they said, what do you mean? I said, well, they own a piece of the movie.

[00:37:43] They get back in money and they get a salary and I take care of them or doing the filming.

[00:37:47] And I just believe in like letting everybody get a piece of it.

[00:37:50] And so now the film is doing well. They will get money for hopefully the next 20 years

[00:37:57] off of their work on the film. And I gave them the same deal on the new film.

[00:38:01] Has anyone else been doing this? I'm curious. I mean, it's pun intended. Yes. You basically are

[00:38:06] saying that you flipped the script on production. Is anyone else doing this?

[00:38:11] Not that I know of. Wow. Most people that I know of, and I'm not going to name names,

[00:38:16] Steven Spielberg. I won't say anybody, but are notorious for not sharing profits or percentages

[00:38:23] with people. And when I was in Los Angeles, you know, it was very, very hard. And if you got points,

[00:38:29] you got net points, which don't ever materialize. I mean, you're doing it off the gross.

[00:38:35] Yeah. I don't believe in net points or a joke. So I do it. I do it off the gross. And when I start

[00:38:43] a film, I own a hundred percent and then it goes to 50% to get financing. And then I start giving away

[00:38:50] pieces and I can't. And this one, I think I gave away 30% of my equity to other people.

[00:38:58] And you're happy with the result. I mean, look at the result.

[00:39:01] You want to know a secret to life? The less greedy you are, the more money you'll make.

[00:39:06] That's biblical.

[00:39:07] It's true though. It's true. Greed is not good. Oliver Stone and Wall Street and Michael Douglas

[00:39:14] are full of it. Greed is bad. And I'm going to tell you one other thing. The more I help people

[00:39:20] in my career, the more it comes back to me. And I just, you know, I hear from people almost every day

[00:39:27] on LinkedIn and Twitter, young filmmakers all over the world. I saw your movie. I love it. Oh,

[00:39:34] I have some questions. Oh yeah. Let's do a zoom call. What? Let's do a zoom call. So I talked to

[00:39:40] these guys. I give them, you know, 30 minutes or 15 minutes. I love talking to them. I find the young

[00:39:47] people are just like I was when I was a kid in the hospital. Nobody's giving them a chance.

[00:39:54] And the rules are unfair and the deck is stacked against them. I think it's harder today to be a

[00:40:01] young person almost than any time in our history. And the economic situation is it takes so much

[00:40:08] money to survive. You know, how in the heck are they ever going to go out and fail? Because you have

[00:40:15] to fail to be successful. You have to fail a lot. You have to fail a lot to become successful. And that's

[00:40:20] something that I don't think a lot of people may want to recognize. I think people in your generation

[00:40:25] and my generation, I think do understand that a lot better. I don't think that the youth generally

[00:40:30] grasps that. And going back to something that you said just literally a few minutes ago, I mean,

[00:40:35] what you're basically talking about is a, it's a biblical principle. It's God's money moves.

[00:40:39] And I've experienced that in my life. There are times where I would hoard my money

[00:40:45] and seem to get nowhere. And then there are times where I would, I would give my money away to causes

[00:40:51] that I believed in. And, and it was amazing as to how much more money would come in. And, and so that

[00:40:59] goes back to that principle of, of just, you know, God's money moves and you're using it for, for a

[00:41:03] purpose. It's not just for selfishness. And, and I think that's something that I think the youth

[00:41:07] really needs to hear and needs to understand that said, as you know, you can't take care of people

[00:41:16] unless you can take care of yourself. I mean, how could you possibly do a lot and take care of people

[00:41:21] if you don't have the resources yourself? And that's another thing that I think a lot of people miss

[00:41:25] in the equation is, you know, being successful in life and managing your own life.

[00:41:30] Absolutely. I've been very well off. I've been broke. I've been homeless.

[00:41:36] Um, and I've come back a couple of times. I've had a couple of big setbacks, uh, and I've come back,

[00:41:42] but the older I get, the less I care about that because as you just hit on, there's also this

[00:41:47] thing called God's favor. Some reason God let me be alive and live a long life. And I feel a real

[00:41:56] sense of obligation to do something with that, which makes sense. I really believe I was destined to not

[00:42:01] live past 18 or 20. You know, I thought I would die on a sports field at military school because I

[00:42:08] wasn't supposed to be there. And I broke arms and, you know, fingers and, you know, things that I got

[00:42:14] injured. And, um, it was like, I was alive. You know, I walked around with my arm and a cap like,

[00:42:21] Hey, I'm here, but you were living. There's a difference between being alive and living.

[00:42:26] You were living.

[00:42:27] Well, I think so many people today, and I think this is what the government does.

[00:42:32] I think that with the media, they're trying to scare people to death. Yeah. They're trying to

[00:42:36] scare you to death to conform. I mean, we're living in 1984. We are living in it now it's here.

[00:42:42] So to me, you have to oppose it. And I'm not necessarily political either way. I'm an

[00:42:50] independent, you know, I like freedom. Uh, I want as much freedom as I can. And I want as much

[00:42:57] opportunity for everybody to share, to, I want everybody to have an opportunity.

[00:43:03] You know, that, you know, the commercial from Apple computers, the 1984 commercial,

[00:43:09] right? The sledgehammers going through the screen. You know what most people don't recognize in that

[00:43:15] commercial at no point did the woman that threw the sledgehammer, did she ever say I'm with this

[00:43:20] political party? Yeah. Cause that part doesn't matter. You know, unfortunately I think it's in

[00:43:25] today's society, people really get wrapped up around party, but, um, that's, that's not the part

[00:43:30] that matters. It's the living that matters. Right. You know, you're absolutely right. And,

[00:43:34] and I think the thing is to help other people. Yeah. And, um, I, I do every little thing I can do,

[00:43:41] you know, I mean, I get people that ask me for money every day and that's a tough one

[00:43:45] because if I give all my money away, then, you know, how do I live? So, you know, I have,

[00:43:49] I have to be careful with that. Um, but I have no obsession with money. My obsession was with art.

[00:43:57] And I think you asked a question earlier and it sort of alluded to that. I mean,

[00:44:00] my driving force was to create art so that when I'm gone, there's something I did that I left behind.

[00:44:08] And I went to this college, very interesting college in Los Angeles, uh, which is Antioch

[00:44:13] university. I actually got a bachelor's and a master's degree and they, they were founded by a

[00:44:19] gentleman named Horace Mann. And he said, you should be ashamed to die until you've contributed something

[00:44:26] to humanity. Wow. And I gave up, I gave a graduation speech that went over very well,

[00:44:33] talking about that motto and about what the man who founded the college was about.

[00:44:39] So my idea is to leave and to give and to do things that make a better world. That's my thing. Let's make,

[00:44:49] let's all work together and anything you can do, let's make a better world. When we did the pandemic,

[00:44:55] I drive a big SUV because it works for production and I like them. And, um, I did have an Escalade.

[00:45:03] It got way too much attention. I got rid of it. Now I just have a Yukon. It's a little more,

[00:45:07] you know, anonymous, but we would go around where we live.

[00:45:12] I love the fact that you just made that analogy. I mean, I, I mean, come on. Yeah.

[00:45:17] It's a little bit smaller than me. People would come up and knock on the window and go,

[00:45:21] where did you get this? And my wife said they sell them, you know,

[00:45:23] but it was too much of a, it was too ostentatious or whatever you want to call it.

[00:45:29] But, uh, during the pandemic, uh, you know, we live in Florida and there are elderly people.

[00:45:36] Some people don't have automobiles. Some people are housebound. So we would go do food runs

[00:45:41] and we would pick up food and we would go and load up, you know, our SUV and bring food back to our

[00:45:48] neighbors. And it was, it felt great. It was like, wow, are we going to do any of the store today?

[00:45:54] Does anybody need anything? Oh, they need their prescriptions. Call in your prescriptions. We'll

[00:45:58] go to the store. We'll get them for you. And my wife and I would take an hour or two, sometimes three

[00:46:03] hours and we would drive around and then we would come back with our truckloader. And it was like

[00:46:08] Christmas giving these people food, medicine, water that were housebound or were afraid to go out in

[00:46:15] the pandemic. You know, a lot of people just sat, you know, they, they were afraid to go out. And, um,

[00:46:22] so every little thing you can do benefits you and that person. So that, that's the thing I find. I get

[00:46:29] more benefit out of helping people. We have one guy that's in the movie, the guy in the red polo shirt

[00:46:35] at the end of a movie money confidential. And he gets up and he starts talking. He's won all these

[00:46:41] awards and he wrote these screenplays, but he can't get anything going. And somebody said something

[00:46:46] at the end. And I kind of mouth off and I say, this guy will make a movie in this lifetime. He's got the

[00:46:52] drive. I believe in this guy. Well, I got a tweet from him. He's going to the Sundance film festival.

[00:46:59] He's already made one film and he's now shooting a second film. And, uh, it's all because of

[00:47:04] coming while we were filming our movie. There's a couple of other films that are being made right

[00:47:10] now that were inspired by our movie, telling people, go make your movie, raise your money.

[00:47:18] You don't need anybody's permission. And by the way, for anybody that's listening,

[00:47:23] movie money.com, you can go get a DVD. We're in Walmart, Barnes and Noble, Best Buy.

[00:47:29] You can go on a streaming site, Amazon, all of the top places, or you can go, if you have a library

[00:47:37] card to Hoopla and watch it commercial free, which is a great, great streaming site, by the way.

[00:47:44] And you can also go to Tubi, Freebie, Docurama for free. You might have to watch a couple of

[00:47:53] commercials, but they do it tastefully, but you can see the movie for free. You can see it anywhere.

[00:47:58] Just go to movie money.com. We've got it, everything listed there and you can read a

[00:48:02] little bit about it. And I'm really happy that around Christmas time and the end of the year,

[00:48:07] we can offer it for free to people. And it's worth watching. It was a, it was a very good film,

[00:48:12] actually. I appreciate that. And, and, uh, there's, there's actually one scene in there that I don't

[00:48:16] want to give it away because I think people do need to watch the movie, but it's what you do for kids.

[00:48:21] Kids and, and, and just the, the, the same advice that you offer for kids is it's, it's priceless

[00:48:28] really. And I didn't expect it. And I mean, you know, that, that was a bit of the movie as he,

[00:48:32] you know, I go through the trailer and then I watched the movie and I just didn't expect that.

[00:48:38] And it was to me, a beautiful scene. Yeah. And you know, what was interesting about that?

[00:48:42] Uh, they had just had the parkland shooting down the street where the kids were. And you can see

[00:48:50] when we're talking, there's sheriff's guys walking with automatic weapons behind us.

[00:48:54] And you can see in the zoom and the drone shot, you can see the police cars out front. So the school

[00:49:01] was on lockdown because of the parkland shooting and kids are terrified to go to school. They think

[00:49:07] they're going to get machine gunned down. So you have to deal with that issue to begin with.

[00:49:11] Then you have to deal with what are these kids going through? And, and the school tried to cancel

[00:49:16] it. And the school is, um, somehow involved with the archbishop of Canterbury. And we had to get his

[00:49:25] permission and we had to go through so many hoops, but we went to interview these kids and what they're

[00:49:33] going through. And then I met this teacher. I did the segment was supposed to be six minutes. And this is

[00:49:38] why I always try to have final cut. Well, I do, I won't make a movie without final cut, but in our

[00:49:44] script, it was six minutes. And then Scott, your, your friend and mine, you got to interview this

[00:49:51] film. I don't want to interview this film teacher. No, you got to interview this film. I don't want

[00:49:55] to interview this film. So we do the segment and they're supposed to go to their classes. You know,

[00:50:01] the segment was supposed to be, you know, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. We keep going. We keep going.

[00:50:06] We keep going. The kids are just electrifying. They're soaking it in. They're soaking it in.

[00:50:10] Oh my God. They were terrific. And then, so we go out to interview the teacher and I just lose it.

[00:50:18] This woman is like this woman, Angela, people comment in the reviews, audiences, they love it.

[00:50:25] It connects. Oh my God. And so that segment is the longest segment in the movie. I have Salma Hyatt.

[00:50:32] I have Burt Reynolds. I have all my investors that gave money because they could be on camera,

[00:50:37] but it's that their segments are getting shorter. The kids are getting longer. Yeah. That segment

[00:50:41] runs 19 minutes. Again, everybody's terrible. You can't have that in there. Nobody cares about

[00:50:47] these damn kids. And that's probably the second most popular scene in the movie.

[00:50:53] It's, I connected to it. I mean, it was, it was, it was powerful. It, it, it had impact. Um,

[00:50:59] I mean, really one of the things that I was even going to ask you because of watching this movie,

[00:51:04] uh, was when you're filming, I mean, you're behind the camera and you, you obviously have a lot going

[00:51:11] on in your mind. You've you're, you're putting everything together. You're doing your job,

[00:51:15] right? I mean, you're in the zone, right? But do you ever just get emotional based on what's in

[00:51:20] front of you? And you just answered that. Yeah, I did. Yeah. I, and I said to her, I said, oh my

[00:51:25] God, you know, this is probably the most important interview in the movie. We did 60 interviews.

[00:51:32] Um, and I was very taken and one of the editors, I won't say who kept saying, you've got to cut that

[00:51:39] out. You've got, you can't say that. You can't say that. You can't. I think I said, I loved her.

[00:51:44] I said, I love you. I love what you're doing. Actually, I think you did. Yeah. Yeah. And he

[00:51:47] said, you can't say that. I said, why can't I? Well, you can't, but it's natural. I said, well,

[00:51:52] did you raise the money for the movie? No. Do you have final cut? No, it stays in and you have to

[00:51:58] fight. And I think it's part of the creative process. I don't, if you make a movie and everybody

[00:52:02] agrees about everything, you probably have a pretty awful movie. So if your editors arguing,

[00:52:07] your producers arguing, your investors are yelling at you, you're probably onto something.

[00:52:13] And I listened to them on a lot of things. We, we did a great sequence that on paper was brilliant.

[00:52:21] We put Scott the pond in an elevator in a very expensive oceanfront marina condo development

[00:52:30] in Palm beach. And he would get on at the top and he had the elevator ride to pitch them to invest in

[00:52:37] our movie. And we'd put Scott in again. And people have their dogs and their dogs are like

[00:52:43] nipping at Scott and people are like, ah, and we tried and we tried to make it work, but we,

[00:52:49] we actually wanted to film Scott trying to raise money for the film in an elevator. It didn't quite

[00:52:54] work out, but you know, so that's why you shoot. We shot a hundred hours of footage

[00:52:59] and the movie runs one hour and 41 minutes. And can, can we, I just want to get it on record

[00:53:07] because it was Scott that wanted you to interview this person. So do you want to go on record here

[00:53:14] for our friend Scott and say that he was right? Well, I'll put it this way. Even a blind squirrel

[00:53:20] finds a nut. I love Scott. We tease each other. He's a great guy. He was right. He was right about

[00:53:30] a lot of things. And that's what a producer should do. A producer should help you find things. And I'm

[00:53:36] old school. We set out, I had an outline of what I wanted to do and nothing in the final film matches

[00:53:43] anything that we did in the whole thing, the whole, you know, Bert, we chased Bert for months.

[00:53:50] And then the Monday we, we shot for five weeks. The last week we're shooting on a, we're shooting

[00:53:57] on a Friday. Scott's flying back to LA on Saturday and that's it. We're wrapping. So on Monday we get

[00:54:03] a call. Bert Reynolds will do the interview seven o'clock on Friday night. This is Bert Reynolds.

[00:54:10] You stop what you're doing. I mean, you do. Yeah. And I said, okay, great.

[00:54:13] We'll do it. And they said, well, he wants to do it at his school. I'm like, okay, we'll do it at

[00:54:18] his school. So then they're like, well, you have 30 minutes to set up. And I went, no, no, no, no,

[00:54:25] no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to shoot three cameras, two on sticks, a glider. It's Bert

[00:54:32] Reynolds. We're not doing a 30 minute setup and I've got booms and lobs. And so Scott says they're

[00:54:40] going to cancel the interview. They're not going to give you the hour setup. I said, I'm not doing it.

[00:54:45] And sometimes you got to, this is a calculated negotiation, but I wasn't going to have not

[00:54:50] great footage with Bert. I was going to have great footage. And I knew Bert as a filmmaker,

[00:54:54] I just knew in my head would say, well, he's right. You know, open the school 30 minutes early

[00:55:00] for him, let him get in there and set up. So my wife, who was the other producer is an artist by

[00:55:05] trade. And she was a production designer. So we go to Bert's school and there's this black banner

[00:55:12] and it's ugly and it's terrible. So I start tearing down Bert's set. I'm taking down the banner. I'm

[00:55:20] moving this over here. And this guy comes running up. What are you doing? What are you doing?

[00:55:25] I said, I'm, I'm dressing the set. You can't touch all this. This is Bert. I said, I don't care.

[00:55:30] I'm a DGA director. Get out of my face. And we redesigned the whole set. And they said,

[00:55:36] Bert's going to come in. You're done. There'll be no interview. I said, well, I'm not filming him

[00:55:39] with a black banner over his head. This is Bert Reynolds school. It's ridiculous. I said,

[00:55:45] I'm not doing it. And this is ugly. And I want this painting in, I want this cardboard cut up.

[00:55:50] And we, so we put this whole set. So Bert comes in at seven o'clock and he's with a cane. He doesn't

[00:55:56] walk well. Scott's got his arm with him. Scott's walking him in and he looks around and he says, ah,

[00:56:04] I like what you've done with the place. Okay, great. You know, but as a director,

[00:56:11] you have to take chances and you have to be willing to lose things. And, and we had a big,

[00:56:17] big movie star that was going to do the movie and they canceled. And we still don't know why,

[00:56:26] but they kind of sent us a nasty letter and said, stop harassing us. We're not going to do your movie.

[00:56:31] And we had one day we had seven people canceled the day before filming. So I had like a whole empty

[00:56:39] day. I'm like, Oh, I've got a crew and I've got, I've got to shoot some. And what we found out was

[00:56:43] people don't like to talk about money. People don't like to talk about raising money. People don't

[00:56:49] want to share any secrets or knowledge. And what I set out to do, I said, we're going to be, when I

[00:56:56] made the movie, I said, we're going to be bold. We're going to reveal secrets and we're going to be

[00:57:02] fearless. And we're going to make a truthful movie. And it took us a hundred hours and 60 interviews

[00:57:10] to get it to where it is, where I think the film will help anybody in any walk of life.

[00:57:17] And I've gotten so many emails and DMs and messages from people like, I'm not in the movie business,

[00:57:24] but boy, this film really helped me. American airlines bought our film, God bless them.

[00:57:29] And we're on every American airlines flight, international and national domestic. And I hear

[00:57:36] from people all over the world, you know, some guys over in Europe getting on an airplane,

[00:57:41] he watches our movie and they're saying, I'm not in your business, but boy, was it inspiring.

[00:57:45] Boy, did it help me. So the other bottom line, before we run out of time,

[00:57:51] I like to be inspiring. And I finally got back in touch with the films that I loved when I was a kid.

[00:57:57] It's a wonderful life. Even though my new movie is kind of bittersweet, it's about a sad subject.

[00:58:04] It's about Burt Reynolds. And it's sad that Burt left, but it's an inspirational film.

[00:58:11] And I spent a year making it. And the other thing, there's two things here. Number one,

[00:58:16] take your time and do it right. If you don't, when are you going to have time to go back and fix it?

[00:58:21] Very true.

[00:58:22] Number two, why not be inspirational? There's enough depressing stuff out there.

[00:58:27] There's enough negative naysayers to fill up five earths. We don't need any more of that. What we

[00:58:33] need is somebody to stand up and say, you can do something. You can be something. You can go

[00:58:38] somewhere. And when I was teaching in Los Angeles, students of mine would go to Tony Robbins and do

[00:58:46] the firewalking. And one student came in and was so inspired, he told us about it. And he went off and

[00:58:54] wrote a script that he sold for a million dollars. And here's what Tony Robbins told him. The guy was

[00:59:00] like, I got a wife, I got kids, I got a mortgage, I got car payments, and I have a full-time job.

[00:59:04] I have no time to write, but I know if I could write, I could write a script that would sell.

[00:59:10] Tony said, all right, here's what you do. This is my student. He says, for three months,

[00:59:16] you do nothing but write. You don't go to work. Have you got enough money to keep your house,

[00:59:22] pay your bills for three months? Will you survive? The guy said, yes, but then I'll be totally broke.

[00:59:28] Tony said, good. You've got 90 days. I want you to quit your job on Monday. I want you to set up a

[00:59:36] room in your house where you do nothing but write. And I want you to write the absolute greatest

[00:59:41] screenplay you can. And he said, what if I fail? He said, if you fail, you're not a screenwriter.

[00:59:47] Wow. If you fail, you're not a screenwriter. If you succeed, all your dreams are going to come true.

[00:59:53] So he came and announced this in the class. Okay, we're all for you. Good luck. Call me if you need

[00:59:58] any advice. He writes a brilliant screenplay and he sells it for $1 million. And the next 12 months,

[01:00:07] he sold, I can't remember if it was six or seven scripts, a million dollars each.

[01:00:13] And there's his answer. There's his answer. Go for it. Go for it. Take chances. If you have the talent,

[01:00:21] if you don't have the talent, then don't go for it. So watch podcasts with people like us. I mean,

[01:00:28] you know, what can I say? Yeah. Go for it.

[01:00:29] Try and learn. But that's, I mean, take action, right? You're never going to get anywhere in life

[01:00:33] unless you take some action. Yeah. So I know that your time is short and there's definitely one thing

[01:00:40] I wanted to ask. All right. You are partners with your wife. Now I am partners with my wife

[01:00:47] in business. And this is not without discussion, I'm sure. So I got to ask if you guys disagree,

[01:00:57] as I know in my relationship and my businesses, we have disagreements. How do you work that one out?

[01:01:03] Well, first, I want to say one of the greatest joys of my life is working with my wife. I love it,

[01:01:11] love it, love it. When it comes to directing the film and finalizing the film, I have final say

[01:01:18] on everything else. I have no say. Happy wife, happy life. I haven't seen my wallet in 10 years.

[01:01:27] Uh, I, she whips out my driver's license if I happen to need it. I think we're together about

[01:01:33] 22 hours a day. You know, only when she walks the dog and hangs out with the neighbors or goes to

[01:01:39] lunch with some friend. And, um, I don't mind it. It's a great synergy. If you can work with your

[01:01:45] spouse and be happy and be creative. She was an artist. We started dating and she said, I don't like

[01:01:54] movies. I don't get movies. I'm not interested in movies. I was like, okay. So we got married.

[01:01:59] We went on a cruise to the Caribbean. I think it was like 12 days. We came back. I had five offices

[01:02:06] at Universal. She had an art studio downtown Orlando and she had artwork that was in, you know,

[01:02:12] house of blues and the, uh, uh, the, uh, New York, uh, folk art museum. She had done an American flag

[01:02:18] after 9, 11 hand assembled with wood strips that was in the window of the folk art museum in New York.

[01:02:25] So she was actually a successful artist. And, uh, so we came back and said, I got to go to work.

[01:02:32] She said, I, I, I'm just going to come in the office today. I said, okay, you don't want to go to

[01:02:37] this. And I just wanted to stay together. I just, you know, the buzz of the honeymoon or whatever.

[01:02:41] Okay. She came in the office at the end of five days, she had fired 10 people taken over the

[01:02:49] checkbook, cut the budget. She came to me and she said, this is our money, right? You're wasting a lot

[01:02:56] of money. And she said, I'm taking over the checkbook. I said, well, what, what about the

[01:03:00] for six months we paid rent on an art studio in Orlando that she never set foot in. So after six

[01:03:10] months I said, why are we paying rent on the art studio? She said, you're right. I'm going to call

[01:03:16] my brother. I'm going to go rent a truck. And we had a garage where we live. We're going to put it

[01:03:21] on the garage and then slowly, but surely the art studio, the band saw, you know, all the heavy

[01:03:27] equipment eventually was sold or donated or given away. And, uh, so, and then she just came to work

[01:03:34] for me in the movie, but she can't, I think she came to work for me because she loved me and she

[01:03:39] didn't like people taking advantage of me. And she was an artist. And I said, well, you could be

[01:03:43] art director and you could start designing things. And then she had a background in finance and she

[01:03:50] had worked at a big brokerage house. So she knew she was good with numbers and which I'm not,

[01:03:55] you know, I'm like, I think up stuff. I know. That's like me. I, my wife does it. I'm the business

[01:04:01] guy. I can go out. I can, you know, hunt and gather with the, with the business, but heaven forbid,

[01:04:05] I have to be able to check book. It's, it's awful. Right. And we've been married for 20 years.

[01:04:10] Uh, my wife got the PGA mark, as you saw in our film and she's getting it on the next film.

[01:04:16] And so it was just, it was a wonderful thing. And I, and I have to tell you, her mother died

[01:04:21] right as we were finishing the film. And the PGA sent this wonderful letter to my wife. I'm in the

[01:04:27] director's guild that my wife could have the PGA mark on the film. And it's very few women had gotten

[01:04:33] it at the time. It was a very big and inviting my wife to join the producers guild of America,

[01:04:38] which is very prestigious. So she just sent a copy to her mother. And we found out that her

[01:04:46] mother was so proud. She took that letter everywhere and showed it right before she died to all of her

[01:04:51] friends. And she died. Um, it was very tragic. She was, she was like about 89 or 90, but a check

[01:05:01] showed up a couple of days after she died and we opened it up and it was from her mother and her

[01:05:07] mother wanted to pay the dues and the initiation fee for my wife to join the producers guild. Cause she

[01:05:14] was so proud of her. And that was like the last check she wrote in her life. Wow. That's beautiful.

[01:05:21] You know, it, it, it means a lot to a lot of people. My wife is an amazing person. She doesn't

[01:05:28] need movies. She could be an artist, but she brings a great artistic look to my product. And then we talk

[01:05:35] about art and we talk about what I want it to look like and what do I want. And so she's very involved

[01:05:39] in the editing, the post-production. And of course she's on set. And on this last movie, Scott was in LA.

[01:05:45] She ran the set, which was great on the, on the new movie. So she's come a long way and she's a

[01:05:51] production designer producer. If you can find someone, a partner, a wife, a lover that you really

[01:05:57] trust that has your back, it is the greatest working experience. You'll be a better person

[01:06:02] and you'll do better work. Truly. That is absolutely true. All right. Well, is there a,

[01:06:08] is there any projects that you want to mention or any final thoughts before we, uh, we end this?

[01:06:14] No, I, I just, if you go to movie money.com, uh, you'll see all the places you can go watch the

[01:06:20] film movie money confidential, and we'll be announcing a new film that I get submitted it

[01:06:26] to the distributor and they loved it. We have a release date of March of next year. So that'll

[01:06:32] be at movie money.com as well. We wanted to create a website where people could just go and kind of get

[01:06:37] updated. Also, you can follow me on Twitter. And if you follow me and you want to send me a question,

[01:06:43] I try to answer and I get a lot of stuff. So sometimes it might take, you know, and try to get

[01:06:49] my attention. So I notice it. Don't just say, hi, how are you? Because I get about, you know,

[01:06:54] 300 of those a day are also on LinkedIn. I've met some wonderful people on LinkedIn. I'm a huge

[01:07:00] believer in social media. I'm a huge believer in networking. So do that and check out his other

[01:07:06] podcasts. Cause they're, he's onto something. You've got something really good going on here.

[01:07:10] You got conversations going on here. This is great. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate

[01:07:15] that. I mean, as we talked before the interview really started, I'm very new to this and, you know,

[01:07:20] I'm learning on every one of these. I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with you. I find you to be

[01:07:26] incredibly inspirational and have to learn things like when to turn off my phone. That would make

[01:07:31] sense. But I find you to be very inspirational. Your movie was fabulous. I can't thank you enough

[01:07:38] for taking the opportunity to talk to me. Um, and I hope to be able to, uh, maybe speak

[01:07:42] to you again in the future and develop a relationship with you. I think you're an incredible

[01:07:46] person. Love to do that. Thank you very much. Uh, I appreciate it. And I hope I pass the

[01:07:50] audition. Yes. I think you did great. All right. All right. Thanks. You bet.

[01:07:55] All right.