How Matt Damon’s Surprising Lesson on Movie Scripts Changed Matt Kelsey’s Career Forever
This is a transcript of SYS Podcast Episode – 546 Matt Damon taught Matt Kelsey to hold onto his movie script..
Welcome to episode 546 of the Selling Your Screenplay podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Myers, screenwriter and blogger over at SellingYourScreenplay.com. Today I am interviewing writer, director and actor Matt Kelsey. He just completed a feature film called Above Ground. It’s an indie drama that explores devastating loss. So, stay tuned for that interview.
SYS’s six-figure screenplay contest is open for submissions. Just go to www.SellingYourScreenplay.com/contest. Our final deadline is August 31st. So if your script is ready, definitely submit now, as this will be your last chance this year. We’re looking for low budget shorts and features. I’m defining low budget as less than six figures. In other words, less than 1 million U.S. dollars. We’ve got lots of industry judges reading scripts in the later rounds. We’re giving away thousands of dollars in cash and prizes, along with a bunch of other exposure to the top scripts.
We have a short film script category, 30 pages or less. So, if you have a low budget short script, by all means, submit that as well. I’ve got a number of industry judge producers who are actually looking for short scripts. So, if you want to submit to the contest or learn more about it or see who some of our industry judges are, just go to www.SellingYourScreenplay.com/contest. If you find this episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a review on iTunes or leaving a comment on YouTube or retweeting the podcast on Twitter or liking or sharing it on Facebook. These social media shares really do help spread word about the podcast. So, they’re very much appreciated. Any websites or links that I mentioned in the podcast can be found on my blog in the show notes. I also publish a transcript with every episode in case you’d rather read the show or look at something later on. You can find all the podcast show notes at www.SellingYourScreenplay.com/podcast, and then just look for episode 546.
If you want my free guide, how to sell a screenplay in five weeks, you can pick that up by going to www.SellingYourScreenplay.com/guide. It’s completely free. You just put in your email address and I’ll send you a new lesson once per week for five weeks, along with a bunch of bonus lessons. I teach the whole process of how to sell your screenplay in that guide. I’ll teach you how to write a professional logline and query letter, how to find agents, managers, and producers who are looking for material really is everything you need to know to sell your screenplay. Just go to www.SellingYourScreenplay.com/guide.
So a quick few words about what I’ve been working on. We are in the editing stage with our indie rom-com that we shot last November. The editors put together a nice cut and I now have the Adobe Premiere file on my computer, literally the same computer that I’m creating this podcast on. I’m now going through it and tweaking some things. I’ve usually, I’ve usually worked with the editor by giving them notes and then he makes the changes. So, this is a little bit of a different workflow. I’ve done a good bit of editing over the years, but never a feature film like this. And it is pretty complicated. So. there’s a little bit of a learning curve. I’m starting to get into it. I’ve been working on it now about a month and I’m getting more familiar with Adobe Premiere and just how to deal with eight tracks of audio and five tracks of video. It’s just got a lot going on in it. There’s a lot of files. So just kind of getting used to that and learning how to sort of manipulate the commands. It’s been a little bit of learning curve, but I feel like I’m getting up and running. So things should start to go a little bit quicker. This probably isn’t the most efficient way of doing a film in terms of time. I mean, we could probably knock it out quicker. Just keeping the editors doing the editing and me sending them notes, just because, as I said, there’s been such a steep learning curve and me sort of trying to learn Adobe Premiere and some of that nuance of how-to kind of navigate the timeline, that sort of stuff. But I do think this is going to give a, give us a film that is very, very much in my vision. It’s going to be exactly what I want. I’ll be able to be much more precise with the final product. So that’s the good news. And it’s interesting to go through this process, as I said, doing some of the actual editing, cutting clips, finding clips, going through the footage, importing them in and that sort of stuff. It’s just going to give us a much more precise product at the end in terms of what I had initially envisioned. The cut is pretty solid now. And we have a movie, we’ve got, you know, some great songs that we’ve added. We’ve we’re starting to license some songs from various recording artists and put those in. So, I think it’s coming along nicely but it’s definitely going to take a little while yet. So that’s what I’ve been working on.
So. now let’s get into the main segment today. I’m interviewing filmmaker, Matt Kelsey. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome Matt to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Matt Kelsey
I appreciate you having me. Thanks for having me.
Ashley
So, to start out, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background. Where’d you grow up and how did you get interested in the entertainment business?
Matt Kelsey
I grew up in Pasadena. San Gabriel, Pasadena area. My mom worked at ABC when I was really little. She was Head of the Engineering Department for the morning show and news and things like that. My stepdad was in IATSE local 33. My mom, you know, when she was working late or something, my dad would have to take me with him to the Mark Taper. That’s kind of where I got introduced to the whole entertainment thing, period. I’d get taken on set for my mom. But I remember one night I got taken to the Taper and they stuck me in a booth, gave me a set of headphones, and I got to watch the whole play from the sound booth, the abandoned sound booth, because they moved sound and lights into the same booth at that time. And I got to watch Our Country’s Good and kind of worked for my mom growing up as I did pre-production, post-production. I got the acting bug, went to Citrus College and did some acting there. While I was there, I did a summer program with London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, went to Lambda later on in London, came home, and I was in the acting thing. And then, you know, my mom had a company that were making commercials and PSAs. And she kept saying, you know, I need a sound guy, I need a light guy, I need a camera guy. And I’d send her friends of mine that I knew who did it all. And then one day she called and said, “Well, I just fired a director and I don’t have anyone to run the set. So, do you want to come do that?” So, I spent about eight years, went from just directing to then writing some of the promos and some of the PSAs and things like that, little educational films. Kind of gave me more of a solid base, you know, because I had directed theater and been in a lot of theater and then did the acting thing for a while. And I had to leave the business in about, God, I don’t remember what year it was.
My first wife was diagnosed with cancer and I kind of had to get away from everything and just basically be full-time caregiver there. And then after cancer, she got pregnant. I was a stay-at-home dad for like five years and wanted to get back into doing something in the entertainment industry. And my now wife was like, why don’t you make that short film that you wrote a long time ago that’s just sitting on your desktop? And so, we did the short, wasn’t really expecting anything from it. It got into 50 film festivals. We wanted 25 of them. And then someone said, why don’t you develop this into a feature? And so the short was called “Her Place” and we developed it into the feature, which is “Above Ground.”
Ashley
Okay, perfect. Well, that’s a great summation and a really solid background. You know, it sounds like you have just sort of in a lot of different fields. So, what’s your view on something like film school? I mean, you’re a guy that was in the trenches and actually, you know, working in the business. So, what is your opinion of film school and the people that want to go to film school?
Matt Kelsey
You know, I don’t know. Look, I was able to do pre-production, post-production, ended up writing this stuff, ended up doing this stuff. I even worked for IATSE for a year because I just kind of wanted to get a feel for what all that was like. Because, you know, when I was on set, when I got my SAG card and I was on set, I was so curious with what everyone was doing. And IATSE was a really solid sort of background thing for me because, you know, I learned different departments don’t touch different people’s equipment. You know, coming from the theater world, I was working electric. I went to grab some gaff equipment for someone because they asked for it and I got yelled at. So, I learned very early, everyone has their own lane to stay in. You know, I have friends who are directors and showrunners and things like that. And I’ve said in the past before I did any of this, maybe I should have gone to film school. And they all say, you don’t need to go to film school. So, I mean, I don’t know.
I mean, do you really need to go to drama school to be an actor? I mean, I guess it’s really kind of depends on what you think you need. You know what I mean? I felt I needed the background and the classics to do any sort of acting. That’s just me. I want to know everything about everything. But I mean, I don’t know. I think they teach you to speak the language, which I think is a really good thing. You know, they teach you about the line and things like that, which I still have no idea what it is as I, the DP would make fun of me for. I don’t know. I think it’s, you know, kind of a personal thing on whether or not you think you need it.
Ashley
That’s a fascinating answer. Because as I said, you did the education and you did without education. And I think that’s a good answer. There’s no one size fits all really. It probably does come down to the individual person. So, let’s dig into your latest feature film Above Ground. Maybe to start out, you can pitch that film to us. What’s the log line. What’s this film all about?
Matt Kelsey
It’s really about loss and recovering from loss. How one, you know, I think on the poster, the tagline is the only way out. The Only Way Out Is Through, you know, having to get through your life and get through your sorrow and get through your, your challenge, whatever it may be. It’s very much a hero’s journey. Not, not in the, not in the odyssey kind of way, but it is still very much a hero’s journey and a romance story. Yeah. That that’d be how I describe it to someone. Cause otherwise I give too much away.
Ashley
Perfect. And so where did this idea come from? It sounds like it’s very much character, you know, there’s a lot of character in this. Did character come to you first? Did story come to you first? Maybe you can sort of describe the genesis of this story.
Matt Kelsey
Story definitely came first. When my first wife almost died of cancer, like she was, you know, last legs on a breathing machine incubator. And I just remember I’d never had anyone that close to be died before. And so I started thinking, are you going to handle this? What are you going to do with this? And when all that was over, I sat down and I wrote the short, a nine-page short in about two hours. And it’s really just, that was just about dealing with loss. And obviously you can’t do that in a feature. But in the feature, I think when I went back and looked at it, I think I was listening to Cameron Crowe when he was talking about can’t hardly wait. And, you know, when he was trying to pitch it and people were saying, not can’t hardly wait, I’m dazed and confused. And people were saying at the studio, what happens? And he was like, well, nothing happens. But he can’t say, well, nothing happens. But I was listening to, you know, a book or a podcast with him. And he said, you know, what, what really happens in Chekhov? Nothing, like nothing you can really talk about. And it kind of struck me like, I basically wrote my own version of a Chekhov play and we put it on film.
Ashley
Gotcha. So, let’s talk about your writing process a little bit. On this one, you collaborated with Marianne Kerr. So maybe you can describe that writing process. What was that like? Were you guys in the same room? Did you do Zoom meetings? Did you write scenes and then she would look at them? Did she write scenes and you would look up? Maybe you can just describe what did that collaboration look like and how did it actually work?
Matt Kelsey
Well, Marianne played the lead in this as well and also played the female lead and also played the female lead in the short. What we did was we put it together. We outlined it, you know, in person together. And then we would Zoom and kind of map out what the next one was going to be. And if I was still finishing a last section, I’d say, why don’t you take a whack at this and then send it to me and I’ll sort of rewrite what I think needs changing around. In fairness to her, she’s very patient because I don’t write that way. I’m much more like jazz. I kind of sit down and kind of see where the story goes. So, there are a couple little deviations that I took. Like there was one scene and character that I created and she called me one day and said, “The hell is this? This wasn’t even in our outline. What did you write?” And I said, “Well, I wrote.” And then she said, “I just have to tell you that the character of Rocky is like my favorite character that you’ve ever written or anyone’s ever written.” So, that was really nice. But what I found since trying to write with other people, the great thing about writing with Marianne is she can write in my voice. Like I don’t write in her voice. She very much writes in my voice which is really crazy to me because I go back now and I read the screenplay or as we were getting ready to shoot and I can’t remember who wrote what, very honestly.
Ashley
And so, what is your typical writing schedule look like? Did you guys spend a lot of time outlining? And really, I want to get sort of a sense of the scope. How much time do you spend like outlining, creating index cards, mapping it out versus how much time do you spend actually in final draft writing out script pages?
Matt Kelsey
There were no index cards. We just wrote out an outline of what it was we wanted. We made a very concerted effort to make it a movie that we wanted, that we liked, not to try to please everybody, because like my favorite movies are movies that maybe other people might not like. Like I love Clerks. That’s one of my favorite movies of all time. Then there’s others which everyone does like, like Good Will Hunting. But, you know, then you look at like, there’s certain movies where I think half the people I know go, oh, I hate that movie. And it’s my favorite movie. And then kind of just went back and forth writing it. I mean, I’d write and she’d write. We didn’t put a timeline on it for us because we didn’t have any idea of money or anything at that point. So, I think it took us about a month back and forth to do the first draft. And then, you know, because we, from completing that first draft until actually finally securing the money was about two and a half years, we had all that time to go back, change, play with, I’d open up my desktop a year later and read through and go, ‘ah, I don’t like this.’ And I’d restructure and reconfigure. And then, you know, in the last three months before we did actually shoot, trying to put it all together in a more clear way so we didn’t waste money on the shoot. You know, I was able to go, ‘oh, we don’t need that scene. It’s redundant.’ And also the great thing about Marianne is there’s a very pivotal scene. And I had my director producer hat on and I said, “We don’t need the scene, right? I can just pull that. We don’t need to actually go to a restaurant and do a thing and spend all that money. Right?” And she was like, “Yes, we do. It’s one of those pivotal scenes, like nothing. That’s what sets everything in motion for act three.” And I was like, “Oh, now that’s a good point.” Okay. I guess we’ll spend the money there. So honestly, like she’s, she was probably the best writing partner I’ve ever had. And she was amazing.
Ashley
So, what does your development process look like? I mean, you guys are both actors, so I’m sure you guys are doing some of this back and forth as you’re writing, but when you had a draft that you were ready to show to people, did you have other actors, other writers? Do you go out to them? Do you get notes? And then how did you guys interpret those notes?
Matt Kelsey
No, we pretty much stuck to just us only because again, I didn’t want outside influence on this. So, what I ended up doing was I went to the Blacklist and I put it up there and we did the whole you know, you guys give us your, your views. And to the point of some people are going to get it and some people aren’t, we ended up getting two sixes, two sevens, and then finally an eight. And I thought, okay, well that eight, she got what it was we were trying to do. And then after that, it pretty much just, I also sent it off to a bunch of film festivals. And when it started winning awards at festivals, I thought, ‘Okay, between the eight on blacklist and the laurels, maybe we actually have something here.’ We didn’t show it to anyone. I think until we were pretty set on how it was going to be.
Ashley
So, at the beginning, you mentioned the hero’s journey and that you sort of felt like this guy went on a hero’s journey, even though it was sort of a smaller, you know, modern American. So how do you approach screenplay structure just with the act breaks, the midpoint, the inciting incident, like how did you approach screenplay structure with something like this?
Matt Kelsey
What we kind of did was, cause I felt that the short was so in its arc, not because of me, just in its arc, perfect for storytelling. We tried to emulate that pretty much as much as we possibly could, except going from nine pages to 90 pages. You know, it also helps that instead of three characters, four characters, sorry, in the short, all of a sudden, we had 12 characters. But the interesting part is, you know, I didn’t realize until we were actually ready to shoot. The main character that I play is in just about every single scene. So, you’re really watching him go through the entire thing, much like you do in the Odyssey, much like you do very much. I based it a lot on Rocky as well.
Ashley
Gotcha. Now what about like genre requirements for something like this? Is there something you’re going for? Are there other films out there that you can compare this to?
Matt Kelsey
In writing it, I’d say, yes, there were other films that we definitely compared it to. I took as my template, I took Rocky, I took Good Will Hunting, I took Clerks, I took Swingers. I took, I can’t even remember the last one, but we’d use these five films as sort of a template. And the nice thing has been since I’ve been showing it, you know, cast and crew have seen it. A few close friends have seen it. Christian Zuber, who’s in the cast, when we screened it for him and he turned and he said, I wanted to turn and tell you what movie this reminded me of, but I don’t have anything. It doesn’t remind me of anything. Like it’s its own thing. I can’t do it. And I’ve had two or three people say that. So, you know, we weren’t even out to create, it’s not a new genre in any way, shape, or form. It’s very much a romance. I mean, in a lot of ways, it’s sort of a more downer version of Friends. You know, it’s about people trying to pull someone through their grief and through their sorrow. So yeah, I mean, like I said, we use those five films for template, but we didn’t stick to it religiously. We kind of, like I said, when I write, usually I like to see where things go. So, I know where I want to end. I know where we’re beginning. I know I have a few points I have to hit. And other than that, let’s just see where it goes.
Ashley
Okay. So, once you guys had a version of the script that you were ready or you thought was ready to start showing people, what were those steps to start raising the money? And actually, taking even a step back, when you were writing this, was this something that you guys knew you were going to try and raise money and shoot? Or was it something you were going to try and get some, you know, a producer involved and go to the studios and that sort of thing? Did you know upfront you were going to shoot this yourself?
Matt Kelsey
I’d like to say yes. After having it for two years, I was at the point where someone had offered to just buy it and take it off my hands. It was a passion project. I wanted to keep it. Really crazy thing was I’d just been listening to a podcast that Matt Damon was on. And he was talking about the reason that they held on to Goodwill Hunting was because of Sylvester Stallone’s story with Rocky. I was at a Christmas party at a local restaurant here, sitting at the bar, at the end of the bar, watching a football game. And started talking to these two people at the end of the bar. And they both worked for Matt and Ben. And they worked for their production company. And they kind of asked what I did and I asked what they did. And I told them, ‘You know, I’m at this point where someone has offered to buy this thing from me. And it’s not for a lot of money, but at least it would finally get made.’ And I kind of told them the whole story of how I wrote it and how it even came to be. And then I told them about the fact that how weird it was. I was just listening to Matt Damon on a podcast that day talking about hold on to it. And they both looked at me and they said, “Keep it. Keep it. Don’t get rid of it. Keep it.” And that was, I was literally the next day probably going to sell it. Or, you know, not a whole lot of money, but it would have helped me get through Christmas. So, no, we wrote it to write it and hoped something would come of it. But we weren’t 100% sure we would ever get the money. But then after those people said, keep it and hold on to it, I went to some producer friends of mine and they started shopping it around to different people looking for independent people investors. We got an investor that we went and met with. She offered me everything I wanted, all the money that we were going to need. Now, granted, we were an indie at the time. We were on a $600,000 budget. Her only caveat was that her daughter was supposed to play one of the characters in the movie. And we went through a year and a half rigmarole with them. Like, the money’s coming next week. I swear it’s going to be wired. ‘Oh, we just have to move some gold bullion over here. Oh, we just have to move some crypto over here.’ And as I tell people the story of how we held on to these people for so long, everyone’s like, how did you not understand that they were kind of dicking you around? And I was like, well, because the day after I met with this woman, she sent my attorney a retainer, like a large retainer, the next day to draw up all the papers. And I thought, why would you throw that money away just to kind of give us a run around for a year and a half? She finally came back about three months before we actually shot the film and said, ‘I can give you half the money.’ And then I have another very good friend who loved the script and loved the short and believed in what it was we want to do. And he said, ‘I can give you the other half the money.’ And I was like, great. And then this woman once again disappeared. And my friend said, ‘if you still want to do it, I’ll give you the $300,000. We’ll still invest.’ And so we found a way to make it work instead of shooting in 20 days. We ended up shooting 10 days for 300,000.
Ashley
Okay. Well, perfect. That’s a great story. A great success story there. So, okay. So then once you got the film shot, what are your steps now finding distribution? Are you going to film festivals? What is the next steps?
Matt Kelsey
We actually, I showed a rough to one distributor and she has already said that she’d take it. If I want to go with her, it’s out at festivals, submitted to festivals right now. Still scrambling to cut, you know, color correction, everything’s done. We’re just doing the closed captions and different things like that. Getting the DCPs ready. We should start finding out from festivals in early to mid-August, and then we’ll ride, uh, festivals through the end of October. The distributor we have right now, if we do go with her, we’re talking about distributing in November, but I kind of want to see what’s going to happen at festivals as well and see what kind of reaction we get.
Ashley
So how do you time out the festivals? Because it seems like that’s always been an issue. Like when I finished a film, I mean, it’s almost like a year long process, the festivals, cause you have to submit three, four, five months ahead. You don’t hear, as you say, you don’t hear for things. So, by the time things have you guys already submitted now, these festivals that you’ve submitted to are going to start making decisions over the next three or four months, and that’s going to be your festival run. But maybe you can just give some tips. How do you time that? It just always seems like, like, I mean, as an LA filmmaker, like I want to apply to the LA film festivals. So, you know, but they’re not, they’re not all in the same three-month window. They’re spread out and stuff. So, maybe you can just give a little advice. How do you actually window that and figure out what festivals to go to and how do you have a calendar for all that?
Matt Kelsey
That was not even in consideration when it was time to shoot only because the person who did give us the money said, “I want the tax break this year. So, you’re shooting now.” So, we ended up shooting December 7th, through the 18th, we went five days on one day off five days on, and then called it. So, after that, I had to sort of put my head together with a lot of other director friends of mine and say, ‘What festivals am I looking at’? And we kind of put out feelers to a lot of filmmakers that I’m friends with throughout LA. And I put together, I didn’t want to do 50. I didn’t want to do a hundred. I didn’t want to spend the money from the budget on that. So, we picked 15 festivals, you know, one tier, one festival, pretty much the rest are tier two festivals all over the country. I stayed in the United States. Well, I stayed in North America, only cause I’d like to go to these festivals and, you know, it’s going to be a lot more expensive to go to Italy or go to London or something like that. So, I think the furthest away we would go if we did would be, Nashville. That’d be about it. But I mean, we looked at Nashville, New Mexico, Denver, and we have like five in California. We’re doing Mill Valley, Coronado Island, Newport, little ones like that, smaller ones like that. But yeah, no, my… look, I would have loved if we could have shot, waited and shot and held onto it. And then, you know, tried to do a Sundance, tried to do a can. I mean, that’s, you know, pie in the sky as far as hopes go, but I would have liked to have tried that.
The investor obviously wants us to get it out there because they’re going to want at least some of their money back. And so, I had this finite timeline of, we wrap in December or we wrap in, you know, December 18th or whatever it was. Everyone goes away for Christmas. No, one’s really working. Come back after new year, start the edit process. I know I wouldn’t have anything to even submit a rough until April or May. So, that really narrowed my window as far as things went.
Ashley
So perfect. Is there any advice with, especially with your shorts? Are there any just advice on how to vet the film festivals? How to choose them? Anything you see on FilmFreeWay, that’s maybe a red flag. Just any advice you have for filmmakers, especially with shorts or something like, well, what is your advice people going and submitting to festivals?
Matt Kelsey
I think stay away from personally. I think anyone who tries to send you the discount code and says, here’s 70% off. We really like your project. The monthly festivals, I think are also a red flag. That’s just, I don’t know. I don’t know how I know I’ve been to festivals. I know how much it takes to put the festival together. So to do the monthly ones to me, it’s just seems to me like, and maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there’s some awesome ones out there, but that seems like the money grab and just a way to be able to buy your Laurel, you know, to put it on your film.
I have a couple of them in there in my, to be completely honest, I do have two or three that I found out after I submitted, oh, those are monthly festivals. That’s great that we won at that monthly festival, but you know, it’s not, they’re taking everything and they have to give Laurels to someone. So yeah, I just stay away from the monthly ones. And I was just very wary of anyone who sent me discount codes 20% off 30% off because they claim that they saw it at a different festival. Awesome. But like 70% off and I can tell they just found me on FilmFreeWay. I stayed away from those.
Ashley
Okay. Yeah, that is probably good advice. So what advice do you have for people that are looking to break into the business? People that maybe they’re screenwriters, they’re actors. What are some of those first steps as we sit here in 2026, someone moves to LA or maybe not even moves to LA, but just what are your, what are your advice for new people in the business and how to get going?
Matt Kelsey
I mean, I think, I don’t know that I can speak to that a hundred percent only because like, I didn’t just show up and just start writing. I didn’t just show up and just start acting. You know what I mean? Like, and as far as like getting into the acting window, it’s a different time and space. I mean, I got my SAG card from an old show on HBO called a Resurrection Boulevard. And I just happened to walk into an audition. The director liked me. They Taft heart lead me. And that’s how I got in because I’ve been running around, you know, trying to get the waivers from being an extra for about a year. But as I found when I went on the sets and my experience anyway, they usually give them to the prettiest girl in the room and that was not me. So, I spent a lot of wasted a lot of time trying to get those waivers. So yeah, as far as the acting goes, I got Taft heart lead. As far as the, the directing and the writing goes, I mean, I don’t know, like I never really considered myself a director until after doing a certain amount of commercials. And someone said, you know, we don’t have a director on set. You’ve never rehired a director. You claim you’re the producer, but you’re directing these things. So I learned from doing, so I don’t really know how to, I mean, I guess my advice would be go do something, go make something, even if it’s a short, even if it’s on your iPhone, like just go put something together. And you know, when I was going to do the short, I was really hemming and hawing about it because I had some Hollywood friends tell me that the screenplay for the short wasn’t good. It was too predictable. It wasn’t this, it wasn’t that. And my wife said, so go ‘Make the thing a, they could be wrong and be, if you screw it up, at least you’ll learn something along the way.’ So, I think just by going and doing it as the best way, especially in this day and age, when you can shoot anything on your phone, especially a short.
Ashley
Yeah. Yeah. Sound advice for sure. So, what’s next for you? What are you working on now?
Matt Kelsey
Well, right now I have a couple of projects, one that I really, really love. Um, it’s a working title, mind you, it’s called Growing Up White In The 90s. It’s sort of another hero’s journey and it’s about the two main characters in above ground, but when they met in high school and sort of a day in the life of high school in the 90s, only cause you know, my daughter who’s 16 years old is fascinated with the fact the way life existed in the 90s with no cell phones, with our parents kind of giving us free reign, you know, with keg parties, with stuff like that stuff that they could never do or get away with now. And I think there’s a lot of nostalgia about the 90s right now. And you know, it’s more of a, my own version of a stand by me of a can’t hardly wait of a dazed and confused that takes place in the 90s, but there’s a little bit more stuff thrown in, you know, these kids all had problems, whether you know, your friends have problems or not, everyone has problems. I mean, at home, at school with each other, I guess a lot of what I base my stuff on is mental health. And not in a, or me kind of way, just that we all have problems that we’re going through. And I think the more you can highlight that we all have problems that we’re going through, the more connected it can make us feel when we do get down.
Ashley
And just, I like to wrap up these interviews by just asking the guests, what have you seen recently that you can recommend to our mostly screenwriting audience?
Matt Kelsey
What have I seen? TV wise, film wise, what are we looking at?
Ashley
Anything you think is great. Anything on HBO, Netflix that you’ve been watching, um, TV or movies.
Matt Kelsey
I actually really got into Rooster, which was interesting because I watched episode one and said, yeah, I’m not feeling this. I don’t know that I’m going to go along with this one. And a bunch of friends of mine said, no, no, no stick with it. And it ended up being, I think my favorite thing that I’ve seen so far this year. I think the writing is masterful. You know, I love Corral is, is awesome as well. And the acting in it and John C. McGinley. And I like when … I love an ensemble, like that’s one thing, what I tried to do when I put together my own short is do an ensemble and maybe it’s for my theater days because I know you’re only as strong as your weakest link, but I love a good ensemble cast.
Ashley
That’s a great recommendation. I did see the trailer for that. I’ll have to check that out. So, it sounds like the release schedule for Above Ground, you’re going to release it hopefully sometime November, December, but towards the latter part of this year. So definitely circle back with me. Email me when it goes out, and I’ll send a little notice out to my users, anybody that’s listening to this podcast. What’s the best way for people to keep up with what you’re doing? Facebook, Instagram, a blog, anything you’re comfortable sharing, I will round up and put in the show notes.
Matt Kelsy
Yeah, sure. My Instagram is @thatmattkelsey. And if you want to go to my YouTube page, I have both the short film and the trailer for Above Ground are both on that, and that is thatmattkelseydude. Long story behind that, but yeah.
Ashley
Okay, gotcha. I’ll round those up and put them in the show notes. Well, Matt, I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today. Good luck with this film, and good luck with your next film. Hopefully we can have a chat about that in a year or so.
Matt Kelsey
Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. I appreciate it.
Ashley
Hey, thank you. We’ll talk to you later.
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