Micro-Budget Films (under $100k) | Episode 14

Micro-Budget Pt. 1

Adam: Welcome back. Yeah. Welcome back to the latest episode of Per Damage. Per Damage. Here we are again. Well, we have something special this week. We do. 

Charlotte: I'm pretty excited about this one. 

Adam: Sure. You're, you're excited. . 

Charlotte: That's the voice of our special guest who is one of my coworkers,

Jeff: ah, you let the cow outta the bag. I guess I did. I do work with you. Why don't you introduce, We 

Adam: work on, We 

Charlotte: work on them old movies. 

Jeff: Yeah. We restore old movies. Yeah. Stuff. 1980s and earlier. 

Charlotte: Yeah. Jeff, so way back to the silent film mirror. Tell the folks a little bit about yourself.

Jeff: Well, I'm from Chicago. I restore movies and I also make them . 

Jeff: I worked at a video store, video active. Was that your first job? Not, no, my very first, first job.

Jeff: Yeah. What's your first job? You mean non, 

Adam: non movie stuff? 

Jeff: first Yeah.

Jeff: My most famous job is being the Pony Boy, or I was taking a pony around East LA trying to get kids to sit on it and take That sounds really creepy. a pony boy. Yeah. Yeah. He was wearing a sombrero.

Jeff: I made a whole film about it actually. I made a micro budget film about it. 

Adam: I know. Which, 

Charlotte: Oh, speaking of spoiler alert leads into 

Adam: our topic. Yes, 

Jeff: it does. Yes. It's near and dear to my heart. That's why I mentioned it. It's the only films I know how to make, cuz I never have any money. Yeah. . 

Charlotte: Well, but you've always wanted to be a filmmaker.

Charlotte: You went to 

Adam: usc, right? Yeah, I mean, I'm a 

Jeff: filmmaker. I'm not a successful filmmaker. I don't have anything out in the multiplex right now, hey, we 

Adam: saw one of your movies. We saw Pony Boy actually in a theater. Theater at actual theater Burbank 

Charlotte: International Film 

Adam: Fuss . Yes, 

Jeff: we did. And actually one best retrospective film.

Jeff: Wow. Retrospective. It was old at that point. Yeah, right. 

Charlotte: But I feel like we still skipped over your whole backstory 

Jeff: back. Oh, back story. So I'm from Chicago. I grew up there. I didn't think it was even possible for kids from Chicago to actually even make films, 

Jeff: I mean there's what the news? I don't know, like sports sporting events. I could work in media, tv. I mean, maybe there was something shot there, but 

Adam: There Had John 

Jeff: Hughes. There was some film shot there, but just I didn't know anybody who worked in the film.

Charlotte: You had 

Jeff: Oprah look. That's true. But for instance Lizzie, my girlfriend, she grew up out here and so she went to school with all these celebrities and people were in the film industry, so it seems much 

Charlotte: more attainable.

Jeff: Yeah, I was there. Everyone, you know, worked, , UPS or something. . Well, 

Adam: I mean, we were in the same boat. I think all three of us have kind of a. Story that way. Yeah. We're all just so far away from here. Yeah. That we thought that it would never be possible. Ever. Really make it possible.

Adam: Yeah. 

Jeff: And I brought it up. It's all I ever wanted to do, actually. Mm-hmm. . But it didn't seem possible and even my parents kind of discouraged me early on until they finally did encourage me I had good mind for mathematics, shockingly. And they're like, Oh, we want you to be an engineer and say, I don't wanna build bridges, I wanna make movies.

Jeff: I wanna be a pony boy. Born in Chicago. Came out here, went to usc, US Film School. Yeah. Made movies there.

Jeff: That's where all the big ones went. Yeah. Well I wouldn't call myself a big one. You, you and Lucas together. I wanted to go to NYU actually at the time. I got into both, but I got more financial aid at usc. And then I graduated there, first industry job was at Vid film.

Jeff: It was a tape house. Mm-hmm. , so did a lot of tape dubbing and film prep for Tosin and then went to tech other And what, what's that for anyone that doesn't, Tosin is just a transferring film to video basically. Basically.

Jeff: It's 

Adam: just a recording of a film that's being projected. Yeah, yeah, yeah. . 

Jeff: So I worked there I quit there cause I wanted to go to South by South Festival in Austin.

Jeff: My boss wouldn't let me. And I said I had the whole thing cover the whole shift. Still wouldn't let me. It's like every, bought my plane ticket. He's like, You're not going. I was like, Yeah, I am. So I went, Wow. I got fired. . 

Jeff: That's a love of music. Yeah. And Austin ties into something I'll be talking about later. And there's Ah, 

Charlotte: right. Little teaser there. Yeah. So you got fired and then 

Adam: what? 

Jeff: Six months lived on my friend's couch. , and he had a great record collection. He was on tour all the time.

Jeff: He was in this band called The Lazy Cowgirls, and they were always playing over in Spain and France and stuff. So I would just sit there and listen to all his records. 

Charlotte: Did you sleep? On his bed when he wasn't there. 

Jeff: Well, I wasn't like a Goldilocks thing. It was . . But, but no, no, no. I did have my own mattress.

Jeff: So after that I got a job at Technol, the film lab. Mm-hmm. . And then 12 years there, that's where I learned a lot of my film restoration skills. All chemically. What all did you do there? I printed film, I inspected film, I repaired film.

Jeff: I projected film. I did some Hazel team timing, color, timing of film. Everything that was done there I did except for develop, never developed film there. And that was 12 years. A union film lab until close down. 2010 after, you know, the avatar revolution, the digital revolution. Yeah. There skills 

Adam: you can't 

Charlotte: really get anymore.

Jeff: No, no. So I had a huge photochemical background and I was shooting a lot of things digitally, so I had some digital right background as well. And those two things were married together when I got to my current employer. Yeah. And 

Charlotte: that really helps with your restoration job now. 

Charlotte: I, We all come to you with photochemical 

Adam: questions. Yeah. It's kind of interesting too, being on the cusp of a big revolution like that the move from film to digital. 

Jeff: I remember When I started there in 1998, the film lab was thriving. There was, 24 7 just pumping out film, you know, truckloads of film going all across the country.

Jeff: And then 12 years later it was a ghost town. 

Adam: Yeah. When it died, it died very quickly. 

Jeff: Very quickly. Yeah. It was like a museum basically. Yeah. And I was like the last generation of undergraduates USC, to even shoot on film. We shot super eight and 16 millimeter and edited on the violas. I have a old moola in my office right now.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah. And I, I did all my first films on that, so that was my education. Like only the graduate students worked on Abbott and stuff. Yeah. Not the undergraduate. And then slowly they. After, sometime after I graduated. 

Charlotte: So let's just talk about what our concept is today. Our concept is the micro budget film, which Jeff actually suggested. So Adam, explain to us what a micro budget film is. 

Adam: This is our 

Charlotte: definition. Yeah. You always hear low budget film. Yes. So this isn't low budget. This is micro budget. 

Adam: Yes. This is micro budget. And we set the caveat that they had to be under a hundred thousand dollars for our. Case right now, micro budget films are generally under a million. That is the actual definition.

Adam: Yeah. But we said under a hundred thousand, which limited our real much harder and made this kind of a challenge and a lot of fun, I think. But it actually made mine 50,000. Yeah. 

Charlotte: It, it made it a little simpler to pick too, cuz things were just automatically Yeah. Ruled out. Yeah. Yeah. Rolled 

Adam: out. Cause they were too much.

Charlotte: We also just wanted to do narrative, not documentaries. Right. Oh yeah. 

Jeff: Well there's a lot of experimental films that are under that and, Right, yeah. Document. Yeah. I did try to choose narrative pieces. Yeah. We didn't wanna 

Adam: come on and talk about br a feature 

Jeff: linkage or, Yeah.

Jeff: Bracket or, Yeah. 

Charlotte: We didn't wanna include the cost spent after a movie was picked. Oh, 

Adam: yes. Correct. Right. So, Right. So this is the production cost associated with it. Right. Not something that once it was picked up by a distributor that they oftentimes will pump in extra money for, or sound design or reshoots or things like that.

Adam: Yeah. There 

Jeff: was a film all used, you know, like videotape and iPhone stuff that was cost like $214 or the sound mix was 200,000. So it's Right. Yeah. It's those types of film. 

Adam: Oh, dude, Tangerine. I was just thinking 

Charlotte: that, 

Adam: Oh, we should have talked about Tanger. I will talk about Tangerine. Love Tangerine. I know.

Adam: Why did we think of that? 

Jeff: I don't know. Yeah, that was what the first feature all shot in the, on an iPhone. A Sean Baker. 

Adam: Yep. Fantastic film too. Yeah. And shot right around Hollywood. It was 

Jeff: all shot in Los 

Charlotte: Angeles, right? 

Jeff: I still not seen it, believe it or not. I've been mean to see it. I've seen, I've seen a couple red rocket. It's one of his, 

Adam: that was his one. Florida, Florida project. I didn't see Florida Project. Florida Project's amazing too. 

Charlotte: So Jeff, why did you pick this topic when we asked you what you wanted to talk about? Cause, 

Jeff: so I'm a film preservation is, that's my bread and butter. But I'm also a filmmaker, but I don't make any money from it. So it's the only type of film I can really do.

Jeff: it's a micro budget film. Right. So that's why I draw all my inspiration, you can get pretty good imagery now with, these things we keep in our pockets. Mm-hmm. . So I'm not sure why there aren't more films being made. I know there are, but lots of films. But more films are being like, heralded and talked about being made, 

Adam: but the gateway to those films has been closed off.

Adam: Right. Yeah. Well, I 

Charlotte: appreciate good cinematography. I also, I love still photography and I always tell Adam, it could still be an amazing photo, even if it's not in focus. And I think the same kind of goes for films. You know, the production quality doesn't have to be spectacular for it to be amazing.

Jeff: I think for narrative films, if you're not gonna have good production qualities, then you have to have. Great characters. Yeah. And that's somewhat decent story, at least. Great. Like incredible writing, really watchable people dialogue. 

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jeff: People you care about. Yeah, just people who are fun to watch because, and you'll follow them anywhere.

Jeff: As long as Kevin Smith 

Adam: did not have great cinematography. Right. Can we not? But he did have great dialogue. So it's, 

Charlotte: you know, subject to personal opinion, . But anyways, so yeah, so we're gonna talk about micro budget films. That's how I shut Kevin Smith haw down. and . So we're gonna share a couple of our favorites, Couple ones we recommend.

Charlotte: So stay tuned. Okay. 

Adam: All. Well, Jeff, since you're the guest, it all out your 

Jeff: concepts, I suggested this whole idea, so I better deliver here.

Jeff: You start us 

Charlotte: off. 

Jeff: So during the pandemic, my girlfriend and fiance, Lizzie showed me this article one day and she was like, Have you heard this film? And it was about this Texan shit, kicker named Eagle. Who made a film in 1978 called the Whole Shoot Match. He made it in Austin. He made it with all his friends, all these guys who were in weird Texan bands at the time.

Jeff: And he raised money. $500 here, $5 there. They only shot on weekends for, probably over a year. 

Charlotte: Seems to be a common theme 

Jeff: with Micro a bunch of film. Yeah, absolutely. Shoot, Be can sc He did this, it took him two years to shoot his first micro budget. Who's that knocking at my door. Just cuz they had to shoot on weekends and how, how tell would get work for a while and then he couldn't do it.

Jeff: And yeah. So all that kind of stuff happens. So yeah, so he did this film, 1978 came out, it was seen at the USA Film Festival, which later became the Sundance Film Festival. What? I didn't know it had a different name before. Yeah, yeah. It,, inaugural event for that festival. It was called the USA Film Festival.

Jeff: Was it still star rubber rapper? Yeah. It was Utah. Well, no, he was, he had no part of it, but he went, but he went to that festival and they had Claudia Wild's girlfriends that also played there. And I believe George Romero Martin played there as well. I love that. Oh yeah, he was just talking about that.

Jeff: And then a whole shoot match played there and he saw whole shoot match Rob Redford, and he said, This is the future of what I want. Film festivals to be guys like this, need a forum, need a place to be able to play their films. So whole shoot matches. Like the One Film Redford constantly points to as the inspiration for starting Sundance.

Jeff: That's 

Charlotte: amazing. I never heard that before. Yeah. Tell us the synopsis for the film. For anyone that doesn't know about it.

Charlotte: I'll 

Adam: do the 

Jeff: whole thing. You guys do all the time with this? Yeah, do it. Cause I, I got letter box down here. Actually. Perf damage is responsible for making me all into letter box. Cause I wasn't really on it before. 

Adam: Hear that letter box. All right. Yeah. Not really. You're welcome. 

Jeff: So the whole shoot match came out in 1978 directed by Eagle Panel and the run time is 109 minutes. And here's the synopsis.

Jeff: Lloyd and Frank, two lifelong friends and self-styled entrepreneurs in Austin try to find the best get rich quick scheme that will actually get them.

Jeff: Rich Lloyd has developed a new invention that he sure will finally lead to the success he and Frank have been chasing their whole lives. Their golden ticket is a combination mo vacuum cleaner and floor polisher, but before prosperity arrives, reality intrudes on their plans. They're both like total losers. They're had a bunch of get rich, quick schemes in the past involved like a chinchilla farm, a frog farm, some flying squirrel thing they were doing. This is all in the film? Yeah, it's all in the film. Lloyd, he's the inventor. His inventions remind me of the father in gremlins.

Jeff: They're very similar types. Oh, the Pelzer? Yes, yes. They're very similar to that kind of stuff. He's always trying to sell these things and they go nowhere. 

Adam: Awesome. I mean, Ho Accident seems like somebody that would actually be in this photo. Oh, very much 

Jeff: so. Yeah. These are all like real Texans that Eagle grew up with and were friends with.

Jeff: The authenticity is just off the charts in this movie. It's so much fun to watch these people live in their own environment. The camaraderie they have, is as fun as like Butch and. Like these two guys, but , on a micro budget, . So what is the budget? Oh, I'm sorry. The budget. The whole film was shot for around $30,000.

Jeff: Wow. 30,000. And he raised that money here and there, $500, from this uncle, $500 from this guy. That's 

Charlotte: crazy. Have you seen this film, Adam? I have not, I have not seen, I haven't seen it either. So I'm looking forward to checking this one out. 

Jeff: 

Jeff: Yeah. I thought it was so much fun. Lizzie was like, Oh, it's totally up your alley. It's very much like a pony boy kind of thing, it's very ramshackle 

Jeff: It's very kind of similar vibe. A guy's down and out can't find work, can't pay his bills. Landlord's coming for him, , his wife's mad at him. This is Pony Boy by the way. It's both films actually I was describing whole shooting match, but, Well that's a common theme with a lot of micro budget films.

Jeff: Yeah. 

Charlotte: Disenfranchised for a 

Jeff: Reason down in trodden. The people who are making these films are having these lives. Yeah. So you actually get to see how most Americans are living. If you watch micro 

Charlotte: budget film. Yeah. Show me a micro budget that's about someone with money. Yeah, no, it's 

Jeff: true. It's rare and almost impossible cause you don't have access to those places.

Jeff: Right. 

Adam: And. They're not really strong narratively as far as telling a story. They're more character based. They're loose. 

Jeff: They're very loose. They're very episodic. But their characters are very rich. And I think there's a reason that there's a lot of micro budget films that I love that came from Texas.

Jeff: Texas is , the opposite of Los Angeles or New York, they're the ones who always want us to see They're the lone star state. They guild alone, they still got some confederate shit 

Adam: going on down there. Yeah.

Adam: Don't tread on them. Yeah. Don't, don't tread 

Charlotte: on us. 

Jeff: The 13th floor elevators, the but surfers, all 

Adam: these wait, 13th floor elevators are from there. .

Adam: Yeah. All these weirdos and High Fidelity soundtrack. Yeah. If you dunno, Okay, just check Nelson 

Jeff: Towns van San just, you know, so it's, it makes sense that that would be a breeding ground for this kind of thing because they probably feel like California and New York don't give a shit about them so it's probably the best place to have truly regional cinema in a lot of ways as a state like Texas.

Adam: Phantom 

Charlotte: of the Paradise was shot there. Yeah. 

Jeff: Yes it was. Yeah. And the last note about whole shoot match it was a very huge inspiration for Richard Linklater who made Slacker another great micro budget film that takes place in Austin.

Jeff: Yeah, he studied Eagle Pens films, Eagle Pen made one of their great film called Last. The Alamo. The Alamo was a bar, not the actual Elmo . 

Adam: He's all hanging outside the Alamo most production value last night. 

Jeff: Yeah. Most of Eagle's films take place in a Bar. Eagle was a very, very troubled alcoholic. And after those two films, he never made anything of note to ever again.

Jeff: Didn't he go to Hollywood? You were telling he did go to Hollywood. Yeah. He had a potential deal. Apparently he propositioned the executive who was trying to sign . 

Adam: Oh, that's 

Jeff: amazing. Yeah, he did a lot of cocaine. He really, he really spiraled. He lived it up apart and died about 15 years ago. Wow. But he has those two films, which were definitely, 

Jeff: micro budget Classic. But 

Adam: like you said, they, they spawn Sundance. Yeah. 

Jeff: Spa, Sundance 

Adam: Fire Link, which really kind of launched the whole indie movement. Yeah. That's incredible. Which also Richard Linkletter started the Austin film scene. Yeah, absolutely. Prior to him, there wasn't really one. No. And now a lot of great filmmakers 

Jeff: come out of it.

Jeff: Yeah. South by Southwest is there every year. 

Charlotte: Are there any particular scenes in the film that stand out to you? 

Jeff: I mean, a great introduction scene to that film. There's so many great ones, but early on that there's a truck ride that Lloyd and Frank take and they're talking to each other, Lloyd's telling about all his plans for them.

Jeff: And Frank is very skeptical. . 

Adam: And so you would say that that's probably very representative of these two characters?

Adam: Yeah, 

Jeff: absolutely. Through the whole film. Like one's optimistic, always like looking towards the next crazy invention.

Jeff: He just knows it's gonna make it and the other guy is very skeptical and drunk. 

Adam: And drunk being the operative words. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. 

Jeff: All right. So yeah, the whole shoot match, I recommend it highly. Right now I think it's only on YouTube for some reason, but Oh, it sucks. It was on Criterion for a while, along with the other Eagle Pen films.

Jeff: Have 

Charlotte: they released them on disk? 

Adam: Yeah, I believe so. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Welcome to streaming. Yes. It's there one month and not the next . I know. Don't you hate that? Every time I look for something specific, it's not available. Streaming. Yeah. Oh, it's been sitting on Netflix for like three months, four months or whatever, and I'm like, Okay, now I wanna watch it.

Adam: And then it's always gone. This 

Charlotte: is just his justification for buying so many blueray. 

Adam: True. Then then I don't have to worry about Adam. How 

Charlotte: many Blue Rays have you bought in the last two months? Probably close to a hundred. 

Adam: Yeah, 

Jeff: exactly. Just think of the micro budget film you could make with that type of money.

Jeff: Oh yeah. 

Adam: Oh, wow. That's true. Yeah. 

Charlotte: Could be some film. Pony Boy too. You could 

Adam: finance. Oh yeah, you could pony. Yeah. I'll be your executive producer for Po 

Jeff: Boy too. Well, I script, I have a part of, I have a synopsis. Honestly, I mean, I don't even barely work with the script with these kind of things, so it's just, yeah, it's very loose. It's all, It's all I 

Adam: improvised. This leads into my next one. Oh, you got one? Yeah. All right. It's I'm gonna do Bad Taste 1987 directed by the one and only Peter Jackson.

Adam: So the budget on this was only $25,000. And the reason that I was leading in here is cuz he never had a script for this at all. Oh really? He had a crumpled piece of paper with notes on it, basically. That's what everybody said. It's so crumpled cuz he kept it 

Charlotte: in his pocket. 

Adam: So over the course of four years, he shot this film on weekends. That seems to be only on Sundays, a 

Charlotte: common theme with 

Adam: micro budget films. Four years. He works six days a week Yep. Only on Sundays. Four 

Jeff: years is longer than most of them, though. 

Jeff: 

Jeff: Wasn't a film called the Manson family. Did you ever see that that was shot over 12 years? No. Yeah. And the actors were significantly aging.

Jeff: You can't mention the Manson family around here. The wind chime story. , 

Adam: the spirit of Manson blowing over. Yeah. You know that a racer head took five years to shoot. So Bad taste, so bad. Taste. 1987, directed by Peter Jackson, t r t 92 Minutes. The population of a small town disappears and is replaced by aliens that chase human flesh for their intergalactic fast food chain.

Adam: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That 

Jeff: cuts right to the chase. It 

Charlotte: does sums up the insanity that is bad taste.

Adam: So this started out as a short it was called Roast of the Day. Did he shoot the short? He started out shooting the short Yes. He shot it and it was about 45 minutes of footage, . So he's like, Why don't I just round this out into a feature 

Charlotte: film? Oh, okay. I was making sure there wasn't like a short, that 

I 

Adam: hadn't seen no.

Adam: So, Roast of the Day, which had a different plot. It actually had a plot. It was about an aid worker who was attacked by psychotic cannibals. . Jeff, have you 

Jeff: seen this one? I actually have not seen Bad taste, which is kinda shocking cause I have seen Peter, there's so many films, Peter Jackson's other films of that era.

Jeff: Yeah, I think this Dead Alive and Meet the Feebles and I've seen the images from it for a long time and always wanted to see it. Perhaps I need to come over here. Well, 

Charlotte: Dead Alive and Meet the Feebles are definitely the superior films in my opinion. 

Adam: So this film is the film that he met both Fran Walsh and Richard Taylor on. That's awesome. And those are his two collaborators that really created Peter Jackson as we know. So they worked on the film? No, they did not. Okay, so he did all by him. So what do you mean he met them? He met them they heard that there was this guy shooting a splatter film in town and they had to meet him.

Adam: So he met Fran Walsh on the set of a TV show that he was doing special effects for and, and she was a writer on. He met her there, but that was where he first met her. That's not where they became collaborators. She came to his house with her then boyfriend to see a screening of his movie. So, who's Fran 

Charlotte: Walsh?

Charlotte: For? Anyone that doesn't know 

Adam: Fran Walsh is his major collaborator. She co-wrote everything he's done since Bad Days. Lord of the Rings. Yes. Lord of the Rings. Heavenly creatures. Heavenly Creatures. 

Charlotte: Her photo is actually in Lord of the Rings up above the mantle. In Fellowship of the Ring, there's a photo of Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh.

Charlotte: Right. And they have kids together, right? Yep. 

Adam: I don't know if they're, Their kids are in the movie too. They are, Yeah. Yeah. And then Richard Taylor. So Richard Taylor is the guy that runs Weta Workshop, which is their special effects. Which was created after Meet the Feebles during Dead Alive, because they realized that they needed to create a special effects workshop that was dedicated to doing the project that they were doing, but could also take outside work.

Adam: Right. Dead 

Charlotte: alive. Meet the Feebles. Were his subsequent films follow 

Adam: ups? Yeah. Yeah. They both went to screenings at his house to see the film before it was released, , because, it's very small, especially back then. Right. And if you're, It wasn't Wellwood like it is now, Right?

Adam: Yeah. Back then it was like, there's a guy making a splatter film. Right. It was like a little club. Yeah. All the film geeks wanted to be a part of it, and so they saw it. They were massively impressed because he did everything on this film. 

Charlotte: Like another common theme with micro 

Adam: budget films.

Adam: He did the writing, which it didn't really have much of a script. It had notes on a crumpled piece of paper. He did prosthetics, which he baked in his mom's oven

Adam: So the aliens in this have a specific look. Their heads are kind of tilted back, and that was only because he had to tilt them back to actually them oven fit in there. No way to cook in the oven. Yeah. Which is pretty awesome. That's amazing. Continuity. Yeah. He did all, all the special effects on set. He did all the miniatures, which there's amazing miniatures of this.

Adam: They're so incredibly detailed. You can't even tell they're miniatures. Yeah. He blows up a house and you're like, How did he do that on this budget was actually a miniature thing. So 

Jeff: he must have spent his whole childhood doing this kind of stuff, I'm assuming. Well, he's really 

Adam: into model making.

Adam: Yeah. Like he loves models. I see. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like Giermo del Toro. Yeah. If you follow Giermo del Toro, he'll actually post stuff on Twitter when he's doing a model and he showed you his paint job from beginning to end. It's amazing. Yeah. So cool. Yeah. You've shown me this. He did all the props.

Adam: He did all the stunts. He acted as two characters in the film. Yeah. He was on the film. He did the camera, and when I said he did the camera, he built his own steady rig for $15. What? Wow. Yeah. Out of pipes or We did that 

Charlotte: once. Yeah, we did that. Yeah, we did that 

Adam: for with weights and pipes for our moon night adaptation.

Adam: That never came out. Yeah. We never edited it 15 years ago. Yeah. footage is so where is it? Footage is we still have uh, DV tape on it. No, 

Jeff: but that is a common, the whole do it yourself thing. I mean, even the whole shoot match, the actors had to set up a lot of the lights, the actors.

Jeff: If someone was not in a particular shy to go get food for everybody, it's like that's just, that's how you do it in micro 

Adam: budget films. I mean, you have to, you have to take on multiple hats, especially as directors don't have Yeah. 

Jeff: Anything. Yeah. The director was also doing the camera work 

Adam: labor of love.

Adam: Yeah. He also designed a dolly track this guy was doing stuff above and beyond, and plus he had the time to do it. That's another thing. Thing. 

Charlotte: Yeah. I think microbus are like hobbies that get shown somewhere, , 

Adam: prior to this movie, he didn't even wanna be a director.

Adam: What? Yeah, he just wanted to do special effects. That was, he saw his place in film as a special effects artist. 

Jeff: So bad taste was received well enough that made him, 

Adam: Yes. He gave him the confidence to become a 

Jeff: director and was dead alive his next film? No. Oh, it was Meet the Feebles, Meet the Feebles First.

Adam: So Peter Jackson did a stunt where he hung himself off of a cliff side. He tied his leg to a post and he was suspending, Doesn't sound good. He suspended himself from a post by a rope and he destroyed all the nerves in his. And didn't have any feeling for six months in his foot. Wow.

Adam: Yeah. 

Jeff: That, that happens. Yeah. I have a story like that with Smither Rains, I'll tell you later. He also 

Adam: He also didn't know if any of his friends were gonna pull him up after he hung himself off the cliff. He was just hoping they weren't gonna let him dangle.

Adam: Wow. Yeah. One day his parents dropped him off with all of his props and things to go and shoot and he sat there for 10 hours and no one showed up. Aww. I know. Isn't that sad? Poor Peter. 

Charlotte: Nothing's worked out 

Adam: for him. Yeah. And his parents gave him the $2,500 to buy the Bolex 16 millimeter that he shot this on.

Adam: Good investment. Yeah. All the blood and guts in the film were real. He made a deal with a butcher who gave him all his castoffs. So that smelled great. So what, what was the trade off for the butcher? He didn't have to get rid of them.

Adam: He didn't have to throw 'em away. So he just was like, Here I'm tossing these out. You can get rid of them however you 

Jeff: want to. I got live chicken from a butcher once for a film. Yeah. . Yeah. 

Adam: Why, 

Jeff: what? You were doing like a, weird voodoo Santa Maria kind of sacrifice scene. We did not kill the chicken, but it was, implied.

Jeff: So afterwards we shot the film. I had this chicken there and so I kept it in my dorm room for about two or three months. I had a cardboard box with mash over it and named Ram Martha and took her on walks around the 

Adam: campus. . Wow. 

Jeff: So, yeah, that's what happens sometimes if you get, you know, these micro budget films, you get an animal, you end up with a chicken.

Jeff: Saw that for two months. And finally my friend's mother was a teacher and knew of a petting zoo that needed a chicken . So that's where Martha went to. That's amazing. , 

Adam: You know those fetal pigs that you dissect in high school? Oh, I never 

Jeff: dissected 

Adam: a pig. Just a fry. Yeah, you didn't either. So I did and I asked if I could have several people's dissected pigs afterwards, cuz I was gonna shoot a horror film called Osis Override it,

Adam: so I took them home, put 'em in the freezer and my mom didn't know that I put '

Jeff: em in there. No, What, what happened? She, she cooked them? 

Adam: No, she went in there . Oh God. Nobody wanted to cook those. But she went in there and she had no clue what it was. She unwrapped it and I heard screaming coming from the garage where our freezer was.

Adam: You 

Charlotte: should have done a short film where she 

Adam: cooked it. Oh, it would've been great. No, but we did shoot that short film. If you kept 'em on ice, they lasted forever, and they just smelled briny, they were kind of gross, but we tossed 'em at each other. I also got fresh guts intestines from a butcher in town for that same shoot.

Adam: So this is disgusting. No, Tri is override is pretty good. I don't even even know if I have a copy of that one. I've never seen that one. Yeah, it's on VHS only. I don't, I never digitized that one cuz I don't think I could find it because you don't want to. I think my friend had it. Hmm. Anyway. Back to, we like to see it.

Adam: Bad taste. So, Peter Jackson originally planned to do two sequels where Derek's in space, 

Charlotte: would it be like batter taste. Baddest 

Adam: taste. And this is where he got his idea to shoot films back to back was when he was planning this out. Oh right. He was gonna shoot bad taste two and three back to back to save money.

Adam: So in this sequel Derickson space, and he gets eaten by a giant Weta, they're these big yellow and brown crickets that are in New Zealand. They're called wees. That's what their workshop is named after. So there was gonna be a giant inter intergalactic Weta that eats Derek and then poops him out.

Adam: That was one of their big set pieces that was gonna be in the sequel. I could see Peter Jackson shooting that though, him, , battling to get out of the inside of the Weta. I could totally see that. 

Charlotte: Yeah. I'm not sad. I didn't see that. I'm just saying I'm not sad that it didn't 

Adam: happen. I'm sad it didn't happen. . But had this happened, maybe he would always be a horror guy, right? Pigeon hold himself. 

Adam: This was the film that Peter Jackson went to the Cans Film Festival for the first time on. 

Charlotte: No way. He took this 

Adam: to Con Yeah, they took it to Con to Play in festival. Played out a festival, but he made a lot of really close connections there.

Adam: Most people were really impressed and he sold it to 10 territories, which is pretty good. 

Charlotte: Not the kind of film you'd think 

Adam: would go to Con Well, there's a lot of stuff at Con out of Festival it's a huge film Market Out outside of the actual film festival. 

Jeff: I remember when I first heard of that film, Bad Taste.

Jeff: I saw subscription to video review. Remember that magazine the late eighties? I don't, Yeah, they review like all the newest video tapes and I remember seeing the imagery from it in there. Bad taste. Oh, this is perfect. 

Adam: The original VHS box features an alien flipping you off, right?

Adam: Yep. Right. And I remember seeing that and that for the American territory shipped with a sticker finger that you could stick on the box so that he's making the peace sign at you instead of flipping you off. Okay, that's cool. Yeah. The DVD originally released here was lenticular, so that if you moved it, it was the finger and then it changed it to the peace sign.

Adam: That's cool. Which was kind of cool. It's 

Charlotte: sort of the backwards peace sign though, which in the UK 

Adam: is Yeah. Is the up yours? Yeah. Yeah. It's not really peace sign. 

Jeff: So he's flipping me off twice. Yeah. 

Adam: pretty much. That's bad taste. Yeah. Amazing that he would go on. Just 

Charlotte: such a claim. Hobbits. All right. So I got one for, probably the first one that we've all seen. Female Trouble. John Waters, 1974. 

Adam: I've seen most of it. Yeah. How's the theme song go?

Adam: Female, Female. Trouble. You know, John Waters wrote that. Did he? I did not know that. Yeah. 

Adam: 

Adam: Female, Female Trouble. 

Jeff: 

Jeff: Chacha heels. 

Adam: Oh, those Chacha heels. So 

Charlotte: it's from 19 74, 98 minutes and the synopsis, The Life and Times of Dawn Davenport showing her progression from bratty school child to crazed mass murderer, all of which stems from her parents' refusal to buy her chacha heels for Christmas.

Adam: Man, they should have bought those chacha heels. They, that's all I gotta say. 

They, 

Charlotte: Yeah. even, They solved a lot of 

Adam: problems. . 

Charlotte: So the budget for this one was $25,000.

Charlotte: They shot it over five months because a lot of the actors could only shoot one two days a week. Which I think is also a common theme. Very common because you know, everybody's got their day job and do anything. Especially 

Adam: the 

Jeff: actors, almost every Exactly. Micro budget films. 

Charlotte: Yeah. It was about 20 days total was the shoot days on 

Adam: this one.

Adam: Yeah. Well he lucked out though cuz he had his group of repertory people. Yeah. The dream land. So yeah. The dream landers on this one. Yeah. 

Charlotte: Which I've never heard are John Water's group of misfits that appear in most of his films. 

Adam: Edith Massey. I know. Yeah. . I don't even know what to say about her.

Adam: I just love her so much. I don't even know what, She's literally the worst actress I've ever seen on film. Yeah. But I love her for it. 

Charlotte: How do we explain edith Massey. I'll let you guys take that one on. Yeah. So she owned a clothing store in Baltimore, 

Adam: right? Yep. Which is where John Waters met her. 

Charlotte: Yeah. It's 

Adam: called and she's, she's Divine trash is what it was called, right? 

Charlotte: Yep. And she's got a famously snaggle tooth grin and morbidly obese and wears leather fetish gear.

Charlotte: Yeah. On the regular, just 

Adam: out shopping. That's where a lot of the Dreamlands met was in that shop. Right. So that's where David Lockie, it was a used clothing store Right. Or a secondhand shop. There was other stuff too, but mainly she was into used clothing. Yeah. That's where Divine also met everybody.

Charlotte: Glen Milstead so if you don't know Glen Mill Stud is the man behind Divine.

Charlotte: Divine was a drag queen, He was sort of making fun of drag queens. Yeah. Like a 

Adam: lacoon 

Charlotte: of drag queens. Yes. Hated by drag queens at the time. Yes. 

Adam: Cuz they were thought of in a specific way actually trying to look like women. Yeah. 

Charlotte: And, and Divine is, a little overweight and very made his makeup break garish Yeah.

Charlotte: For task. Yeah. Um, And that was the thing. It was all about being disgusting and, , getting a reaction out of people rather than just being 

Jeff: Yeah. Almost drag queens. A lady didn't 

Adam: eat poodle shit. . That's true. That's 

Charlotte: a reference to Pink Flamingos, which was John Water's film just before he did Female Trouble.

Adam: Yeah. So had drag was kind of created by him, honestly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which you see a lot of now, like that's Oh yeah. I would say that's the predominant absolutely. Drag that most people do now. Mm-hmm. . 

Charlotte: Yeah. When you think of drag queens, you think of more of the Divine style. Right. Drag, Queen and Divine was actually, the name was given to him by John Waters.

Charlotte: Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, he called him Divine 

Adam: one day. 

Charlotte: So this film was John Waters Follow Up to Pink Flamingos, which was a huge hit for him for being just completely outlandish 

Charlotte: mm-hmm. . 

Jeff: Yeah. One of the big midnight movies of the seventies. Yeah. You know, that led straight into like the Rho Picture show. 

Adam: Yeah, yeah. That El Topo and, and 

Jeff: Eraser, right? Yeah. Yeah. Those four, those were the Absolutely Were like the four big midnight movies. 

Adam: Yeah. The Holy Trinity movie. 

Charlotte: Yeah. So the film famous for Divine's character actually eating dog shit on.

Adam: Yeah. 

Charlotte: So that happened. My mom loves that film. Really? No. Painful. 

Adam: I 

Jeff: was gonna say No, no, no, no. My mom's favorite film is The Sound of Music. Oh, really? Dude, my 

Adam: parents watched all of the John Waters 

Jeff: movies. That's amazing. My parents were not so open.

Jeff: Oh, 

Charlotte: my mom loved John Waters. But the, the more Hollywood version, 

Adam: the sellout John Waters, it's always make jokes. 

Charlotte: The sellout. No, it's not the sell. No. I'm glad you brought that up though, because Pink Flamingos really kind of pigeonholed him into this sort of exploitation shock cinema.

Charlotte: And for this film, he really reigned that back. So they made more of a melodrama, a comedy, a extremely black comedy with this one. Like most micro budget films, John Waters was producer, director, screenwriter, cinematographer, and co-editor. And he even wrote the lyrics for the theme song that you were Female

Adam: Female 

Charlotte: Travel. Nice. Yeah, that one. This film, 

Adam: is awesome. Cha shot heels. Highly quotable. Yeah. Like a lot of his dialogue. It's so quotable. There's, there's so many great moments in it. 

Charlotte: It is. So this film was shot in Baltimore, like a lot of John Water's films, all of them up to this point.

Charlotte: Yeah. And he liked to famously quote that in Baltimore they could make a dollar holler so, Don Davenport, who's Divine's character in the film, they shot this in a condemned apartment building. So they just picked one of the rooms and they, decorated it garishly and 

Jeff: Well, that's usually a theme too in these films like shooting in condemned places, places where you don't need permits.

Jeff: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I'll talk more about that later. 

Charlotte: One of my favorite scenes in the film is it's Christmas time and Don Davenport is giving Christmas presents to her mom and her dad, and she's expecting these chacha heels, which is a big thing in the beginning of the film.

Charlotte: And she is expecting the Chacha heels and she doesn't get them for Christmas. And that really just sets her off and it really sets the whole film on this trajectory. 

Charlotte: That scene was actually shot in John Waters apartment. 

Charlotte: And a lot of the items that you see in the film are actually, his couch or his like cha keys and stuff like that. Which is kind of funny when you really look 

Adam: at it and No, you know what's amazing is that that wallpaper, it is that wallpaper's insane. Oh, you know, they didn't put new wallpaper up, You know, that's actually the wallpaper that was in that apartment.

Charlotte: You really can't stop staring 

Jeff: at it. That may be Lizzie's favorite scene in film history. Yeah. It's her not getting her chacha heels for Christmas . 

Charlotte: Yeah. I mean, that's a whole thing throughout the beginning of the film is she just keeps warning that if her parents don't get her those chacha heels, they're gonna pay and they're gonna be real sorry.

Charlotte: They don't get her those chacha 

Adam: heels and like they really are Sorry. They 

Jeff: really are. Sorry. Yeah. I was never like that with the ad at that I always wanted never got, I never got that either. 

Adam: Right. I wanted one of me too. See what would've happened if you, I should have pulled that, 

Charlotte: that Chacha. You would've went down the Don Davenport 

Adam: path.

Adam: You never would've made Pony boy. You never, If you had gotten it. Okay. Yeah. 

Jeff: Yeah. But yeah. So you never got it either? Nah, I wanted it really bad. Really bad, right? Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a big missing link with your Star Wars toys collection. 

Adam: I never even bought it when it got 

Jeff: re-released. So yeah. I mean, at that point, I wanted to have girlfriends and stuff.

Jeff: I wasn't gonna buy 

Adam: it outta that.

Charlotte: So another thing with this film, you might notice there's a lot of long takes He shot, really long takes because he didn't wanna have to edit a lot of it, because again, he was the co-editor on this. This was also the first time he shot without the sound being recorded on the film. So he shot them separately for the first time.

Charlotte: So that was Oh, sort of a step up for him. 

Adam: Oh yeah. Peter Jackson shot without sound on so. Oh, like an Italian.

Adam: It was all done. Yeah, it was all done in post. 

Jeff: Yeah, there's also limited setups in a lot of these micro budget films because of that reason. You're not gonna have like lots and lots and lots of cutting to all these different environments.

Charlotte: Nope. Limited locations. 

Adam: Verys, lots of masters. Well that's why Bad Taste stood out so much because it was all crazy setups. Oh yeah. All over the place. CRA and, and 

Jeff: Amazing editing. Yeah. Most of the whole shoot match. Most of those scenes are, Yeah. Just one take one take one master shot.

Charlotte: There's another scene that I love in this film with Mink Stole. She plays Don Davenport's daughter Taffy and Mink still is she's in her mid twenties and she's playing 14 year old , in the film, Don Davenport ends up having a daughter named Taffy, who is as much of a nightmare as Don Davenport was.

Charlotte: The whole story. You're following her from teenager to crazed criminal later on in life. And her daughter Taffy is such a bratty little child and there's one scene where they really kind of call out the fact that she looks a lot older than 14 

Charlotte: Yeah. I just love that . I think that really kind of sums up 

Adam: the film a lot. It also speaks to how wonderfully un pccy this entire film, Oh, this film is 

Charlotte: offensive to everyone.

Adam: Yeah. Equally, which makes it inoffensive to all right. 

Charlotte: in this film you laugh at child abuse, you laugh at mass murder, physical deformity. I mean, you laugh at everything in this film, and that's kind of what I love 

Adam: about it. Yeah. Oh, we didn't mention how Taffy was Sied too. 

Charlotte: Yeah. That's the other things.

Charlotte: So Don runs away from home after she doesn't get the Chacha heels and some guy driving a car pulls over and starts talking to her. And that guy is played 

Adam: by Divine 

Charlotte: so essentially Glen Milsted is playing two roles in the film Divine. And the guy that pulls over and rapes Divine. So essentially he's raping himself. , 

Adam: there you go. Yeah. Which, I mean, amazing. Only 

Charlotte: John Waters would be, We're laughing at it.

Charlotte: It's presented in a very funny way. And again, it's just something that only John Waters can do. You can laugh at all this 

Jeff: seventies. It's very transgressive and Yeah, and funny in a really dark, 

Adam: midnight way. Yeah. I do love that, that phone call she makes to him when she's pregnant almost. I need 

Charlotte: money.

Charlotte: I need money.

Charlotte: Yeah, if, if you haven't seen this one and you don't get offended too easily, definitely check it out. 

 All right, Jeff, what's your next one? Okay. Smithereens 1982, directed by Susan Settleman. 94 minutes t r t baby. That's a good one. Yeah. Okay. Here is the short synopsis. She was a legend in her own mind. A narcissistic runaway engages in a number of parasitic relationships amongst members of New York's waning punk scene.

That pretty much sums up the plot. of Smither Res. It's pretty much Weight Ghost synopsis. Yeah. That's pretty much everything that happens in the film. Variations of that. yeah. Susan Seman, she's mostly known for films like Desperately Seeking Susan, 1985. Wow. Lizzie's favorite movie perhaps.

Making Mr. Right Cookie. She did some Sex in the City stuff, but before that she wasn't, She directed the First Sex in the City episode, right? Yeah, the first one. Before that she was a true indie filmmaker. You know, she was obsessed with guitar who also made the micro budget film breathless, 1959.

Oh, that was micro budget. Micro budget. Like $40,000, $60,000. Wow. That and John Cave's shadows both came out that year. 59 maybe the birth of micro budget cinema, all the movies Adam will be adding to the letter box. Yeah, Yeah. Thanks. Oh, yeah, , John Cave's pretty much only worked in micro budget when he was directing,

absolutely. So yeah, she was very much inspired by that stuff. She was at nyu, she made a couple of short films, and they're kind of reminiscent to me of Scorsese's early films at that same school. Just really acute studies of human behavior and funny and kind of moving.

And so she translated that into making some of the Marines . So the original budget was, uh, $20,000 that she had, and then I, Adam, I was hearing that her grandmother passed away and she got an additional 50 $50,000.

Wow. That's a. , her grandmother left it to her. Yeah. So that she could spend it on her wedding. Oh yeah. But she had just broken up with her boyfriend at the time. Yeah. So there was gonna be no wedding. Yeah. She's a So no wedding punk, punk rocker. She wants to make her film.

Oh, that's perfect. Yeah. So she said, Hey, what better way to spend it than to put it into my film. Yeah, absolutely. Smart move. And she said that she thought her grandmother would love that she did that too. Yeah. That's great. My grandmother left me a thousand dollars, but I bought my first iMac with it, which I was doing some editing on.

Nice. So I wish I got $50,000. This is a parallel between you and Susan Susan. It kinda ends there. And that's her end. Yeah. . It's right there. But yeah, she shot this film in New York back when New York was very much like a ruin of itself.

It was, the city was totally bankrupt. It looked like a war zone. You know, very dangerous but also very free. There was, great creative explosion of music and art had Basquiat going out at the time, and the no wave artists in New York, which followed the original punk explosion like James Chance and the Contortions and all that kind of stuff.

So there's a great documentary called Downtown 81, which which chronicles that whole area. Oh, I've never seen that, that whole era. Oh, it's fantastic. And w Harry's in it, Basquiat everybody. So that this film is very much shock gorilla style, like a lot of micro budget films in a city that was in such disorder that you could film anywhere. You know, the reality of your situation allows micro budget films to really thrive in certain places.

 So, that allows for those types of artists to thrive and make stuff when you're not like, you know, hamstrung with like red tape and permits and all that kind of stuff. Right. Well, it brings the cost down, like from a Absolutely. A strictly budgetary sense.

If you don't have to pay for where you're shooting. Yeah. But it took a long time to film it. Just like most of these films Susan Berman was the actress lead in it, and early on they were doing a, a stunt and they didn't have proper stunt actors. , so they were doing the stunt on a fire escape. She broke her leg and they shut down the production for six months.

How'd she break her leg? Falling off of the, the fire escape and fall. Yeah. And doing, trying to do like a weird stunt. They were improving and she was having a fight with her boyfriend who was played by somebody else before they recast him, as with Richard. Oh wow. Yeah. Yeah. The blank generation guy.

Yeah. From television, mixing television. He was in television for a brief amount of time. He's also the guy that kind of defined the punk look with the Yes. The safety pins and the cut up t-shirts. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. His look was a model, even predating Sid Vicious, like 1976. Yeah. He wasn't television briefly until he was kicked out.

And then he has his own band, Richard Helen. The OIDs. Yeah, The OIDs. Yeah. I've always liked that name. Yeah. Yeah. OIDs is such a cool name. It's a good name. It's a cool word. Yeah. So, so he's in the film. He's one of the stars of the film, and so she's playing this, 

 Scrappy, she's trying to survive on the streets, trying to get ahead in the rock world. She's not really a musician, she's not really a manager. I'm not even really sure what talent this character has. Other than using people. So, yeah. So she's, So you're saying she's not very likable, Right.

but There's nothing noble that she does in the film. Everything is very self-serving and you're watching her wander New York, trying to, make it in the punk world somehow, even though she's not actually producing a piece of music.

This is a quote from Susan Seman from the magazine, Dazed. This was written by Laura Jacobs, but this is an actual interview with Susan Seman and. , she says, I wanted to make Ren to be interesting and appealing. I didn't care about her being likable in the traditional sense of likability.

To me, one of the things I was bothered by was certainly the traditional Hollywood cinema in European cinema, they were a bit more complicated. The American industry was so much stronger that we had a predetermined idea of what a heroin should act like or be like. I wanted to make a character that reflected some of the people that I found interesting.

Some of those people were not necessarily good or bad, but they were interesting and I wasn't about putting them into categories. Yeah. And that sounds right. Yeah. She's a, kind of a strong character who knows what she wants. Feminist of sorts, but I mean, she's not like a noble feminist.

Yeah. She has two relationships in the film. One is with Richard Hell, and then one that's with this guy who lives in the van, who I feel bad about. Yeah. The guy in the Van's a total romantic and he's really in love with her.

He's the nice guy. He's the nice guy, , and she's like really kind of snooty and snappy with him, but Richard, hell, she's like a little girl all the time and she looks up to him and wants to like follow him to Los Angeles. Eventually he goes to Los Angeles and Ditcher, who was in a band called The Smithereens, right.

In the movie, he was a former member of the band. Right. The Smither Marines, which the movie is named out. Right. And there's a different band called The Smithereens, which has nothing to do with this . But yes, this movie also has the music of the Feelies throughout it. And I love The Feelies.

They have a great album, 1980 called Crazy Rhythms song titles like The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness and Forces of Nature and. and there are music's throughout it and it's fantastic.

And just a great slice of life of what life was like in 1981 living, you know, on the streets in New York, basically. They're time capsule. The filmmakers themselves are practically living on the streets, so it's a much more honest appraisal of something.

There's a really fun scene where Susan Berman, her character's name is Ren, she finds Richard hell in a cafe talking to a potential business partners gonna make his career really happen,

and she goes in there and messes it all up and they get into a big cat fight, like on the floor of the cafe. 

She sees him as the biggest entryway to this fantasy of punk rock wonderland that she has in her head. Right. is, the reality is, is that she's pretty much on a, in a one way ticket to being a prostitute. Yeah. Ouch. . Yeah. The reality of punk nobility though is such a fallacy.

There was no punk nobility. Those guys didn't make any money. No, they all lived in squalled. Tens, half of them. Yeah. And in Vans and they made these wonderful music and you never got to capitalize on it, actually. Yeah. I mean, punk rock, we think, aside from like The Clash, you know, there were very few people that actually made money in that.

We think of it as this movement to like swept the world. It didn't really at all, it was very underground and mm-hmm. , you know, had very limited fan base and they did not make a lot of money. It did not live well. The Clash had a few hits. Yeah. Yeah. But Well, most people said they sold out though to get those hits.

That they can't really be punk and be popular. Yeah. The every great band should be shot once they make their combat rock . Well, that's a great quote actually. Like combat rock. There's great. I do too. That's a great album. I know, I know. Yeah. 

Well, people's ideas of what punk was, was so small. It was very narrow and compartment fast, hard, aggressive, safety pin. And anything that went outside of that was like, Oh, you're selling out. You're selling. Yeah. Yeah. Punk for me, actually ceases to be interesting almost immediately.

 New York for me is like what punk really was. all those artists, Pay Smith Talking Heads, Ramones, Ramones. I mean, they're all so different from each other and they very different sounds, very different. Visions, Blondie, you know? Yeah. But I don't think that most people can see television of punk as that sound.

They conceive a punk. As the uk That's because they got codified. Yeah. Um, After the Sex Pistols success as being, the Sex Pistols look well, it just makes punk a fad. Right. So it is what it is for a bit until new people catch onto it and then they're like, No, that's not that. This is that. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's such a fad kind of music. No, that's true. That's true. A lot of people thought punk was the fashion.

Right. To a lot of people, punk is just that fashion. Right. And it's not even the music. Right. For me, punk is all about like freedom of expression, DIY aesthetics no concern whatsoever for, you know, the whims of the marketplace, right?

Versus this codified Mohawk safety pin that's gotta be loud, fast screaming guitars and music, right? The other side of that argument is that when you extrapolate that far, then you don't have a movement at all.

 So, yeah. Smithereens, Let's check it out. It's fun. It's on Criterion Channel right now. I need to see it along with her short films. 

All right. What's next? All right. I'm what you got? All right. It's your second micro budget film you'd like to, This one brings me to two other movements like this one. What do you mean? This one, this film that you're gonna talk about. that I'm about to talk about. All right. Right now you love to just draw it out.

Lift it Tetsuo with the Iron Man. 1989. Budget, $17,000. Ooh. The most expensive. Yes, this is , true homegrown masterpiece. It's out there. What's the, what's the synopsis of this one?

 So Teo the Ironman, t r t 67 minutes. Oh nice. That's like a republic pitcher's. Uh, Totally is a businessman accidentally kills the metal fetishist who gets his revenge by slowly turning the man into a grotesque hybrid of flesh and rusty metal.

And that's generous actually describing for synopsis. This synopsis. Yeah. This film is so metal. It is. I mean, well, no, it's industrial. Yeah. Directed by metal, metal shins, Komoto. He's all about, he's turning himself metal. So it was a joke. Oh yeah. It's, it's so metal. Pretty hilarious. Does it, does it have like a metal soundtrack?

No, it has an industrial soundtrack. No, that's why he was saying, I was saying metal as in he's actually turning himself metal, bro. This is so metal. But he didn't get it. Yeah, I didn't pick up on the, the joke. Yeah. The audience got it though. They're like,, Oh yeah. Cracking up. Oh, everybody's laughing

 Anyways, why do you like this one? This is an amazing movie for, What was the budget you already said in there, right? Yeah. The budget. $17,000.

Totally self finance entirely from Shin Suki. Motos Day job was as a director shooting commercials for an ad agency. Oh, cool. Do you know what kind of ads he directed? I don't, Yeah, I've never seen any of them. So this is really cools. Motos dad threw him out of the house when he decided he was going to make this film. And he said there are two types of human beings, those who are successful and those who fail. You are a failure and you shouldn't make this film.

I think I got the same speech a few times.

Well, this is to, to a guy who's literally has gone on and directed 30 films, defined the cyber punk film genre you showed him. Yeah, he did. He did. He definitely showed him. 

This film from the opening scene, you know, that you're in for an experience. This movie doesn't really have much of a plot. Really No plot. It's really hard to discern a plot. that, synopsis was very generous. Yeah. It's really more visual.

It's a good experience. , it's a driving soundtrack. No. Where was this a hit? Was it like a He didn't say night movie was, did you say it was a hit or some, I'm sure it has some sort of, it was a hit with Adam. It was huge. I mean, this guy actually got huge offered. No, he got offered to do films for Toho after. Right, right, right. This for Toho, the. Company, the one of the biggest studios in Japan. But where did it get, like it's acclaim?

Was it from film festivals? Okay. So this film was this 18 month passion project. Uhs Komoto. He worked a day job in ads and then would work in underground theater afterwards.

what's underground theater it's, you know, art installations where they would do plays, so he started his own theater group called the Kaju Theater that. Yeah. He started shooting fantastical short eight millimeter things to show as art installations or in the background of live event type of things that he was doing.

That makes so much sense. Yeah. It that it does for right, for this film. Yeah. It's very avant garde, this film. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And it's based on a play that they had put on that he wrote in Kaju Theater about a guy who was slowly turning into a metal machine. So his concept, he called Retro Future 

This was one of the first cyberpunk films, Right?

To actually show what the cyberpunk literary movement was doing at the time. . So you're asking about how this became popular? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It won best film at the Rome Fanta Festival. All right. In Rome? Yeah. In Rome. And that's how it came to the world's attention, right?

Right. Yeah. uh, Supermoto said that he originally conceived of the film not as a theatrical film at all, but as something that you would see on a video shelf and that people would pick up unbeknownst to them and go home and watch it, and then just experience it. That happened to me.

Did it really? Yes. Is that how you saw it? Yes. A blind rental? Yes. Yes. It was at the video store and someone asked if I'd watched it and I said, No. This is the video store that I worked at my very first job, and I brought it home and was. Shocked . Yeah. It's an experience. It really is. It has such energy and it's kind of like nothing you've ever seen before.

Honestly. No. No. I mean, You haven't even talked about the practical effects that are in the film. Yeah. So this film from the opening scene is really driven by energy and a soundtrack.

There's no synchronous sound in the film at all. Everything is post recorded. And the music of Ch Ishi Kawa he's the industrial artist that did the music for the film. And the music is a lot of found sounds, metal creaking, but then he'll throw beats over it periodically. , I feel like the soundtrack Mixed with the visuals makes this a real experience, Just the sound effects in general in this film. the opening scene is a guy, he comes in and he drops a burlap sack full of metal and he proceeds to cut a hole in his leg and then shove a giant pipe, which he runs through his teeth first, so you can hear it go along his teeth and then he shoves it into his leg.

And why would he wanna do that? Exactly. No, that's what you're thinking when you're walking. Well, yeah. You're like, What the hell is happening happened? What is going on? And then the camera pans around the room and it's this room filled with metal, debris, basically stuff that cast away metal, it's all over the room, but intermixed with it are images of athletes cut out of magazines and they're pasted to the wall and you're like, What is going on?

And you have to infer what is happening at this point. It's never made explicit at all. The guy. I think it's trying to become extra human. He's trying to become more than human, Like an athlete human than more human. That, Yeah. I mean does he wanna succeed at something with all this, this metal he's in inserting into his body?

Oh, no, no, no. There's no be like, incredible athlete. An incredible lover, an incredible warrior. What is trying to be an incredible lover? Speaking of lover, that's different. That's the one scene I remember in that film. Oh, what happens? Yeah. Well, no, before that though, do you remember the scene where the lead character, which is played by Shin Supermoto, by the way?

The director. The director, Yeah. He's calling his girlfriend and they go mush, mush, mushy, mushy, mushy, mushy, muy, muy mushy. And what's mushy, mushy mean? I don't know. Said hello's. Like, Hello. Hello. I think it's , hello. But they do it for a long time, Right. And. For a long time after I saw this.

It's such a quotable scene because it's super weird and it goes on for a really long time. It does, it does. It's almost like an audition. Remember yeah, yeah, yeah. Anytime anybody brings that movie up, that's what yous what you, you think of, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so Jeff's looking us like the

You guys are such fucking weirdos. Why are you, So you vice her over and what? He has like a metal penis. Oh yes. Oh yeah. I figured that must be, Yeah. Yeah. The synopsis said the guy that shoves the metal in his leg is running outside and he runs in front of a car. He's hit by our main character and he dies.

That's in quotes. Those are air quotes dies. I see him. And so he's kind of cursed then at that point. And he slowly starts to turn metal. , the next scene is him in the mirror getting ready for work. He's a businessman of some sort, something clerical. Mm-hmm. . It's never defined what he is.

Yeah. It's very Kafkas that way. He does something in an office building. He has to wear a suit, but he's looking into the mirror and he has this weird metal stud growing out of his face as if it were a piece of stub, like a wire that's kind of sticking through. And he squeezes it and spurts blood and it's shocking.

But he's done this to himself. No, he's kind of cursed. Yeah. That's the thing. Yeah. But then the guy slowly starts to turn into a machine. And this is where a sax machine.

Well, he does turn into a sex machine. Probably the most shocking sequence in the film where his girlfriend comes over and they're gonna have a date. He gets excited and he looks down at his pants and through his pants, a drill emerges. It shreds his pants.

Like a twisting drill. It's a drill. Yeah, An actual drill. Like a, A twisting drill. Yeah. Like giant drill where his stuff is supposed to be. 

It's very dreamlike. So it's not a very good date. No, but it's not played like grotesque like that. He's in and out of dream-like states and you never know if this is actually reality. Right. Or not. Reality. I never thought of it that way.

You right. Yeah. We don't know that this actually happened because when he is talking to the girl on the phone, Moshi, Moshi, he is thinking to himself about having sex with her on a tree. 

So these are Adam's film suggestions. . Everyone. . 

Yeah. I'll have to watch it. I've not seen it. So this was actually followed by SQL two Tasso oh two Body Hammer in 1992. But that one had a budget six to 10 times. So it was between 102 hundred K. That one's in color. I heard that it's, Oh yeah, that's the other thing. This films in black and white. This is all in black and white. And so when he is talking about blood everywhere, it's all Yeah, it's black. Black, it's all black's, black and white.

So white drill bit blood. Yeah. And then there's a third one, there's a third film too 

anyway, that's Teo. Okay. So you recommend the film. I absolutely recommend the film. It's an experience to what audience? Anybody who likes drill boots likes to be disturbed. Yeah. That's, This is the film for you.

Yeah, that's the one. All right, Charlotte. I feel like there's a musical later Lose that happens on, On Penis trauma. What's your next film? ? So my next one is actually a little bit of a newer film. It was hard, I, after we talked about all those William Castle films, all of those are $70,000 or under, at least A lot of them were.

And then you got qualify. Yeah. And then you've got all the Republic Pictures films. There's some really good ones in there. And those were all super micro budget, but, And it was kind of felt like it had to be really hard for you not to talk about Roy Rogers. It really was. But I felt like that's kind of its own thing.

Right. That's, You heard it here first. Roy Rogers the episode coming with it. coming. Oh yeah. So tough . Anyways, so you actually reminded me of this one. There was a lofi sci-fi that I fell in love with about 10 years ago called Coherence came out in 2013. Wow. The only contemporary film that we're talking about.

Yeah. Which, hey, and the budget for this one $50,000. Wow. By today's standards, That's very low. That's 2013. Yeah. So in some ways this is more micro budget than the films I talked about. Possibly with inflation, we could do inflation. It's a whole nother situation. Yeah, it really is. Yeah. So, and part of the reason why this is so cheap, it was shot in five days with the director's friends, and there were only five crew members on set.

Oh, wow. Yeah. So before we get into anything else, I'll do the synopsis really quick. Trt 89 minutes and the synopsis on the night of an astronomical anomaly, eight friends at a dinner party experience a troubling chain of reality bending events. 

I'm looking on letterbox and seeing all my friends that want to watch this and I'm thinking, You know what guys?

You should really watch this . Yeah. It's on Amazon Prime for free. Watch it. So this film, like I said it was shot in five days with friends. The director shot it in his living room and he shot it in five days because his wife, who originally was gonna appear in it she was eight and a half months pregnant by the time they actually filmed the film.

And she said, You have five days to shoot this film at home. And then that's it. Cuz you know, we're about to have baby, she's gonna have the baby home. You know, like you have days guys having Bebes. Yeah. You have five days to shoot us . So he did. And, and the film, it ended up grossing over a hundred thousand.

So, hey, double who's, who's the director? The director thank you very much is James Ward Bet. so what's great about this film, they spent about a year working on the script. There is a co-writer who actually appears as one of the actors in the film.

There's eight people that go to a dinner party and there's this come that's flying over. It's sort of like a Ha's or Hall's, sorry, I always wanna say ha's, ha's it's hall's. It's it's hall's, yeah. Oh, it's hall's. It's hall's too. He kept saying Hall's earlier and I looked it up on a podcast. He, I just grew up always saying that, that No, it felt like Hall's.

That's why it's Hall's Hall. It's Hallie's comment. 

Yeah. Well that's i's kind of remember that Night of the comment movie? Yeah. Night of the Comment. Yeah. I think they called it Haleigh's comment in that actually, right? , yeah, yeah. Is that what it is? That's the old school way of saying it. Haleigh's comment. Haley's. Now it's All Hat. We all said Haley's in the eighties for sure.

It's like the Serious tower versus the Rolls Tower. It's a serious tower. It's ha's comment. Yeah. Hallie's ha's, It's the h comment. Let's just play it safe. This film only had uh, five crew members on it. There were two sound guys. A dp, the director and the producer.

It's three too many. That was . Yeah. And it was all shot in the director's living room, this is one of those films that you watch and as you're watching it, you're thinking, Why didn't I think of this? It's one location. Occasionally they go outside of the house. Sort of looking in the living room, but basically it's all one room .

But it's a brilliant version of lofi sci-fi. Yeah. What you can do with a really good concept it's one of those films that has real re watchability . You watch it once and by the end you get what the concept is, and then you go back and you watch it again and you notice all these other things that sort of lead into the end. So the basic concept is complicated. It's like a multiverse thing. Now that everybody's. Competent with the concept of Multiverses, but because of Marvel. Yeah, the, When Hallie's comment passes or the comment passes over, it kind of it makes the membranes between different dimensions.

Uh,. So it's based on sort of shorting air's cat . the shorting air's cat theory is while a cat's in the box, it can be both alive and dead. And so the theory is that de coherence allows these two realities to exist at the same time, but when you open the box, they collapse in together and they don't know the other exists.

And only. Exist. So pre predetermination doesn't exist until the box is open. Right? So that's when determination happens. So the whole point of this film is that as the comics going over, this is sort of what's happening at the time. There's all these different realities that are around at the same time.

And at the very beginning of the film, all the friends are coming over for dinner and they set up all the little things that are gonna happen in the film. know,

 Usually when we talk about films here, if you haven't seen it, apologies, we sort of spoil the ending, but we just wanna talk about films as if we've all seen them. This one I really don't wanna spoil because I think a lot of people haven't seen it and it's such a fun experience to go into.

Yeah, I agree. And it is a movie that you can watch over and over again and get new things from. The whole concept really is, there's all these dimensions that are existing at the same time, but they're overlapping. So people leave a house and then those people come back in the house, but it's not the house that they originally left.

So you're constantly trying to figure out, are these the original characters that we were at dinner with, or are they not? Or is this even the original house that, Or is this even the original house? Yeah. So that's the whole thing. So they're copies of them, but slightly different. That's the thing. They're not really copies.

They're the same. They're just in different, They're people from a different dimension. Dimension. So they might not have the same memory that another person had. Right. And that's the only clue that you get that that's not the same person that you were introduced to at the beginning. Right.

There's little things like someone's phone broke and. This person that you meet again, their phone isn't broken, or hey, they had a glow stick that was a certain color and now their glow stick is a different color. So there's similar things that happened at the beginning of the night because again, it was all sort of the same until the comet flew over and then that's when things sort of broke and got different.

So. So it sounds like a film I had to pay a lot of attention to when I'm watching it. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean it's more rewarding the more attention you get, honestly. Yeah. But I think it's a film that, benefits from a second viewing or it increases your enjoyment level of it.

Right. It also is fun to watch with other people because it's a discussion worthy film. Yeah. Yeah. lofi sci-fi is something that really wasn't around until Shane Ruth . Did primer. Primer. Yeah. Which is funny you mentioned that because this director actually was going to direct the TV version of primer.

Oh, I didn't even know there's a TV version up primary. Well, that's because it dinga made, but it was in development for a long time. The director Jim Burett, he was working with someone to develop that for a really long time. Oh, cool. Because this film came out in 2013 and he really hasn't done much at least on his own between now and then.

He's worked a lot with Gore Verbinski. He was on the first three pirate of the Caribbean films. Should I list all of them? So you have to put them all on letter box? I mean No, no. If you just say the three, I'll put all three on there , I'm just trying to give you a hard time . He was a conceptual artist on those.

And then he also worked with Gore Verbinski again on Rango, which he co-wrote. So he's been doing things. Oh wow. He co-wrote Rango. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. So He co-wrote the film with a guy named Alex who plays a mirror in the film, and they spent about a year on the script. But I say script loosely because they wrote a script, but they didn't share it with the actors. So that's the way to do it. Yeah. Yeah. That's an interesting approach actually.

It, it really is. So what they did, they shot it over five days and they gave each of the actors a paragraph each night that kind of gave them, here's, sort of what you gotta do here are things that you need to do or things you're gonna react to. And they didn't share those notes.

So then they would get out. See, that's cool. So, And they would improv. Yeah. So it's basically like an improv exercise. They gave different people different pieces of information. Yes. So it's more like, it's kind of like a murder mystery party. I was gonna say a murder mystery. Yes. We're the, Yeah, we're on the same wave blank.

Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of like a murder mystery party if you've ever been to one where you kind of know what your character's gonna do and you know, if you're gonna interact with anybody else. But then that's sort of it. So Alex, who was one of the characters, Amir, he was the only one within the group of actors that knew what was going on.

Right. So he would help drive the story and you can kind of see that, cuz at times this character has a little bit of the exposition from time to time about what's going on or sort of a major plot point. 

The director set a, there were only a few times that he had to sort of intervene and tell the actors, No, you need to open this door and let these people in, or no, do not destroy this prop first. We only have one and it's not time to do that yet. Right. So, but otherwise, this film is mostly improv but it also does feel very real and authentic in that way.

 And you can tell they're all friends during that dinner scene. It definitely feels improv though. Yeah. It's got that looseness. It does. Which again, is common in micro budget films to have improv. Yeah. Because, , to have this dialogue, which, , requires, very meticulous setups, blocking all these things that allow micro budget film directors don't have time for.

So if you have a really good bunch of actors who can improv really well and you're kind of a flying the wall. You know the scene move a lot quicker, right? Yeah. Apparently a lot of the actors are really terrified of improv too. That wasn't something that they were used to. Cuz again, they're friends or people that they know.

Yeah. You had the guy from Buffy what's Yeah. Which they make fun of in the film cause he was on Roswell, right? Yeah. They say you're on Roswell. But the guy was actually on Buffy the vampires player. 

 This director nowadays, there's a series he's doing called Shatter Belt and it's all episodics that are based around the theme of consciousness. And I don't know how you can see 'em. I know there's a shatter belt.tv website.

Pat Oswald is in the third episode. I think there's four episodes that he is done so far. Coherence. See it, I've, I've not seen this film. See it? Yeah. You know, I, I've seen this Or a bad taste. Yeah. I don't wanna oversell it, but it's a fun little low fi sci-fi film that's better than it should be. And it's one of those films that you watch and you think, Why didn't I think of this?

This is such a sort of simple, yet complicated but simple plot at the same time, leaves you questioning too. It's all, it's all grounded in actual science too, which a lot of enjoy. Good. The good Lofi sci-fi is, Yeah, they, they'll take a concept and extrapolate it out in a way. Yeah.

 All right. So that's, our recommendations for the micro budget genre If anyone has a vision right now, go out to make your own film. Yeah, that's what I would say. I mean, what's stopping you? You probably all have iPhones. Yeah. I mean, hey, Tangerine. Yeah. That was made on an iPhone.

Yeah, that's another one we could have mentioned. Oh, Tangerine would be a good one. You know, I feel like this is a topic we could do another episode on at some point. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could even expand it and do a hundred thousand to 250,000. Yeah. Cause there were a lot of films that I was looking at.

Yeah. That were just over a hundred thousand. Yeah. That's too high for me. I have no chance of raising . I kept to 50,000 under, cuz it's like the one bracket where I might have a chance of raising that kind money. I'll watch coherence. You'll see you're talking like, that's like close encounters money for me.

 There were a lot of movies we didn't mention, like Paranormal activity, right? Oh yeah, yeah. I mentioned, I did mention a racer head a little bit, but yeah, that a detour the Egger film from 1950.

That's a micro budget film. That's an early case. One. There's many. I mean, if you went back in the fifties, there's pretty much, it just opens. There's a lot I anything done by monogram, anything done by Republic Pictures, public pictures.

Yeah. But that's what's great about cinema. everybody has their own budget, , but then it's all fair game when you're up on the screen. It's all the same viewing experience. I guess those are studios, like Monogram and all that though. Those are like still, whether they're poverty row or not, they're studios who have like an assembly line kind of infrastructure to make these kinds of things.

Yeah. We were talking, to me, micro budget is more like a guy who has kind of cosmos on his Oh, Mariachi or, Yeah. El Mariachi. Yeah. Oh yeah. We didn't even mention that. Right, Right. Yeah. There's a great book about that experience called Rebel, How to Pause, where he talks about, you know, he was a scientific experiment in a, in a lab to raise money.

He, offered himself as a Guinea pig for all these like scientific tests. To raise money for that movie. Yeah. When you live in Los Angeles too, and I'm sure anywhere you meet so many people that make micro budget films, so kinda holds a special place in your heart. Yeah, it does. And you want them all to succeed.

You do. You do. I think this micro budget might be a little harder in this new world of streaming though. Cuz they have to compete. They're on the same plane Right. As every big film that these companies produce now. Yeah. Cuz a lot of 'em are producing content directly for that. And they only wanna release their big, big, big ones in the theater.

Yeah. If they spend $200 million on something, they're gonna push that way harder Yeah. Than something that they acquired. It might be still old to get festival acclaim. To get some sort of buzz about it somewhere else. Yeah. Because you're right. Like when it's all just on the same platform, it's just lost in the sauce with everything else.

It's hard to think. like that though, because you are beholden to investors, if you're gonna take money from somebody, you wanna return their money. But no one ever gets money back investing in a film, in a small open film. Let's be honest. It's true. I mean, rarely you want to return their money.

Yeah, you wanna return their money. But ultimately, it's the formula now is kind of broken in that there's no way that you can recoup that money. Because if you make a small budget film and it does well at a festival you're probably still not gonna make money on distribution for that film because your only way to do that is through streaming now and that's never gonna pay you enough to Yeah.

Recoup that. So your first film is now a right off. and you hope that you make money on your second film. So many films are write offs. That's a rough pattern to follow though. Hollywood just uses these people up. So want a downer here? I'm sorry, I'm trying, I'm trying to like actually put it a positive, but I don't, Right, right.

Yeah. And here's the whole thing that you could make, be a micro budget filmmaker and never make a dime. Never have the type of, profitable living that you want, but you should still make stuff to, who cares if your audience is only 500 people? I mean, in the end, if you really care about your film, , those 500 people will care about it too.

And you'll have an audience and you'll wanna do the next one, cuz you'll have enough enthusiasm to do so. You just described this podcast in a nutshell, . Yeah. I mean, yeah. There's no guarantees in this world. You're gonna have some big audience for anything or making ton of money doing anything. Put, put things out there that you love and you hope other people love it too.

Yep. Well, you know, there are still success stories. 

So anyway. Awesome. This was great. I'm glad you came and joined us. Yeah, thanks for, It was fun. Come by. Thanks for stopping by. As if you just were driving by. You just drive by. You stopped by our house. I was, I just wanted to come pet the dog. But you here I have talk about micro budget film . Yeah. There's so much more to talk about.

All right. If you wanna talk to us, you can get ahold of us at perf damage podcast gmail.com. We're also on Twitter at Perf Damage. Can check out the letter box, which Adam's gonna update a lot of movies. Hey, it's up to date right now. Yeah, we'll see after this one. You get a lot of work to do. I do, Well, until next time. Thanks for joining us here on Damage.

I don't feel like we're gonna have any outtakes. 

It's out there. What's the, what's the synopsis of this one?

I actually have it up, so. Mm-hmm. , We're all waiting for Adam to get it up, guys. Oh, ow. Sorry. You said it. You said it. Not me. Actually, I don't like the one on Yeah, we're not gonna keep that in.

Jeff said the same thing earlier, but I felt like I couldn't make the joke. Did he? He did. Oh, I didn't hear it. Yeah. What about getting it up? Yeah. You could have . I mean, I think it could only come from you otherwise. It's a little weird. It's usually a dude joke. Yeah. You know, it's like you walk in a room and say, Boner check

You can't really do that. . I mean, I guess you can't. Anyways. Synopsis Tattoo of the Ironman Uh uh Is that in the, No, , Sorry. Stop . So Teo the Ironman,