Inside the Unseen Struggles of Indie Filmmaking: Josh Folan Reveals Shocking Truths on SYS Podcast Episode 547
This is a transcript of SYS Podcast Episode 547 – Harsh Reality Of Indie Film with Josh Folan.
Welcome to episode 547 to the Selling Your Screenplay podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Myers, screenwriter and blogger over at sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today, I am interviewing filmmaker Josh Folan. He was on podcast episode 247 many moons ago, but he’s back to talk about a new documentary he put together about the infamous film, The Room, and we talk about indie film in general and what he’s seeing change over the last few years. So, stay tuned for that interview.
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 Instagram 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 mention 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 547.
If you want my free guide, How to Sell a Screenplay in Five Weeks, you can pick that up by going to 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 and how to find agents, managers, and producers who are looking for material. Really, it’s everything you need to know to sell your screenplay. Just go to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide.
So, a few quick words about what I’m working on. I’m still editing away on the indie rom-com that I’ve been working on now for a couple of years. It’s slow going since my time is so limited, but slowly I’m working through the edit, getting close to another cut, but it’s probably another month. For me, this is actually the most fun part. You’re sort of putting… You know, you get to play around with the footage and just sort of play around with all the pieces and try and get them, you know, in a sequence that sort of helps you realize your initial vision. So this is sort of feels, I guess, where the rubber meets the road. But I find it, you know, just a fun, interesting, creative process. So, I’m really enjoying it, and I’m not rushing through it. I’m really trying to take my time, enjoy it, and also do a good job, and I’m learning a ton. I mean, I’ve used Adobe Premiere before Years ago, I did a lot of editing on Adobe Premiere, and I’ve used CapCut. I did a bunch of videos recently for TikTok, on CapCut, so I’m familiar with CapCut. CapCut is definitely a little easier. If you’re looking to make TikTok videos or just simple videos, I would recommend CapCut before Adobe Premiere. But obviously, Adobe Premiere is just a lot more girth. So, if you’re going to do a feature film, you probably want to use Adobe Premiere.
I guess you could probably do it in CapCut, but, I’m not sure I would recommend that. But in any event, the other thing I’m working on is the, SYS Screenplay Contest. That is winding down. Our final deadline was August 30th. So I’ll be reviewing a ton of scripts, and I’ll start sending those out to our industry judges and getting feedback, and then we’ll be making our announcements on that in early October. Anyway, those are some of the things that I have been working on. Now let’s get into the main segment. Today, I’m interviewing filmmaker Josh Folan. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome back, Josh, to the Selling Your Screenplay podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Josh Folan
I’m glad to be back. Like we were saying, it’s over a half decade, so long overdue.
Ashely
It’s been a while. So. it was episode number 247 which you were on before, so I recommend that episode to all the listeners if they just want to hear more about sort of your origin story and sort of how you got your start. Today, we’re going to be talking about sort of everything from that point up, till today. So again, that’s episode 247.
Josh Folan
Since COVID, and that has been quite the shift, I would say.
Ashely
Yeah. Yes.
Josh Folan
Tectonically.
Ashely
Yeah, exactly. So, you’ve been at this, you know, for a lot of years now, and maybe you can just talk… You’ve produced a number of films, both shorts and features, since we last talked. Maybe you can just talk a little bit about what you’re seeing in the indie space. Maybe start out, I’m always curious to see about just raising money. Are you seeing any changes in that? But just in general, as a producer of indie films, what are you seeing? What has changed over these last six years?
Josh Folan
Absolutely. You know, it’s no question, gotten harder, and I think my personal perspective has shifted a lot, too, about how I don’t know if it’s optimism, but, or lack thereof maybe more aptly put, but, you know, I am a lot more careful, I guess, or delicate maybe, or, again, maybe just less optimistic about the feasibility of profitability in the independent space, you know? Whenever… I just had a call last week with a filmmaker that was looking for some line producing help and, you know, I pretty casually dropped that there’s, I don’t think there’s any hope this makes money back, so you need… I hope you’re being careful about who you’re raising financing from and what you’re telling them, you know? Talking to a guy who hadn’t… It was his first feature basically, and, you know, I just very blunt about that and like it throws people off. The idea that it’s bleak out there. And I think it, I really do think it is. There’s… I always cite, I think, I want to say it was a 2023, which is a few years old now, but I think it’s every bit as applicable. Sundance put out a study of 100 of their films, right? And I can certainly send over the citation for this. You can include it in the show notes so everyone can look at the actual material. But it was 100 films that are Sundance films, and, I mean, I don’t think it needs to be said that a Sundance film is as glowing of an endorsement as you can give an independent film that is looking to market off quality and not cast, which, you know, those, I think those are the two diametrically … Well, they’re not diametrically opposed. You can obviously have a good film with cast and vice versa. But the hope that you are going to make money off this little thing that you made with tender loving care and made a great film. The idea that you can make money from that reliably, I think is almost nullified entirely by the study in that it cites that it’s basically a black hole between $50,000 and a million, so the space between those. So, either really, really, really small films that spend next to no money, or seven figures and above where you’re spending real money, is how I would term that as a longtime independent filmmaker myself, you know? And it’s just a black hole. It’s literally not a single one had recouped, let alone made money in the Sundance study, you know?
Ashely
So, you’re talking, like, $300,000 films, $500,000 films.
Josh Folan
Correct.
Ashely
They’re the ones that are-
Josh Folan
Like, basically the EPA, the LPA, the MPA, the low-budget contracts that, I mean, again, I mean, it’s my specialty. That, that’s the funny thing. You know, this perspective is self-defeating in some regard because it’s what I’m good at and it’s what I want to work in. I’ve made films above that number of times now, and it’s just not as fun. I don’t enjoy it, and I think the quality of what we get at the end is both something I care less about and something I am less excited to have been part of. The exciting shit that we can do in these smaller budget spaces is just more interesting to me, and often I’m working with filmmakers in those cases that are more excited to get this early career stage thing into existence. And helping them do that is something that I really, is very rewarding for me as a producer. So yeah, it’s contradictive to my entire existence professionally probably… to have this perspective. But again, the numbers are the numbers, and those are Sundance films. So, the idea that not a single one in that data set, with the Sundance endorsement no less, is not recouping, let alone making a profit, is a very damning thing, I think, you know? And yeah, I mean, for my own personal films that I am producing where I am involved in the decision-making on financing and who that’s coming from and what we’re saying to them and yada, yada, yada, like, I am, I’ve always been this way probably, but I’m even more adamant about it now, that you need to be selling something other than financial, even recoupment, let alone profitability, when you are raising financing, I think. You need to be finding people that are investing in your idea, in your, and the purpose for the film in the hope that it is something that is elevated above just telling a story, you know, that has some sort of real world social cause or whatever the impetus might be.
Ashely
And just, and again, I just, as a practical matter, doesn’t that really mean you find an actor that has money and wants to be in a movie? Like, so many producers that, no one really wants to talk about that, but so many of these indie films are-
Josh Folan
Oh, no, I’ll talk about it
Ashely
… again, are finding-
Josh Folan
I watched it happen, I watched it happen this year-
Ashely
Yeah
Josh Folan
… for just a narrative-driven film that I would not-
Ashely
I’m just trying to take what you’re saying, like, you need to offer something other than just an ROI. Like, what does that actually mean? And it means taking, if there’s some rich guy and his daughter’s an actress, wants to be in a film, that, you know, he’s willing to invest in the project because he wants to invest in his daughter.
Josh Folan
That certainly one application of this idea. It’s not the optimal one because obviously in that case you’re going to make, almost certainly anyways unless you’re very fortunate, going to make some creative concessions that are going to probably kill your soul. And, you know, whatever. I mean, to, to pay the bills and make a film… that happens, and I’m not going to, whatever, I’m not going to turn my cheek to someone that wants to or has to do that. It’s certainly not what I’m looking to do. I’m speaking more as far as what I pursue. Again, things, you know, things materialize and you take films that are jobs. That’s part of the life of this, you know, gig to gig independent filmmaking space probably. But the things that I’m spearheading as a producer, I, for whatever reason, I’m a weirdo for one, and I’ve been working since I was 14 years old, and, like, I live very lean and have been smart with money. Especially for something I’m going to spend a long, you know, years, a feature film is years of… I have one that I’m incredibly passionate about that we’ve been, I mean, we’ve been working on in, from a development perspective for well over a half decade. I imagine it came to me not long after, if not around when we would’ve last spoke. So, this is something… And, and, you know, there’ve been starts and stops, and there’s a million reasons and not enough time to get into why that project has not come to exist yet in a film form, but, you know, that’s something I’m incredibly passionate about. And there’s all, I don’t know. If it, I mean, it’s a true story drama about a accomplished gay rights activist. Like, even though I think there’s some elements to that that are commercially viable, drama period, you know, a sales agent will tell you, “Don’t”. “Just don’t. It’s not, there’s not a home for it. Don’t do it.” So, well there’s brutal things about it commercially that are just very, very difficult right now, no matter what budget space you make it in at least sub-studio tier. And that, there’s a million reasons why that shouldn’t be something I have been devoting six years of my life to, but I want it to exist. I care about the filmmakers that are trying to make it. They’re passionate about doing so, and, like, that is what I get out of the job that I actually enjoy. Every now and again, I make a little bit of money. I’ve never made a ton. So, I don’t even think of that as, like, the end goal to doing this. Like, if I wanted to make money out of state and finance, I probably said that exact thing last time we spoke. If that was my focus, I wouldn’t be doing this at all, so.
Ashely
Hopefully you don’t come back on the podcast, in six years you’re working in finance.
Josh Folan
Saying how, “Hey, I work in finance.” Yeah.
Ashely
Yeah.
Josh Folan
Be smarter. Yeah.
Ashely
You’d have more money, exactly, so. I hope people are listening to this because, I mean, as an indie filmmaker myself, like, I just, I can’t tell you how what you rings so true. It’s like you have to offer people ROI that-
Josh Folan
Yeah, I guess I didn’t really, all that I gave was negative there. The positive to it, the point being is, you know, with that film we have the fortuitous, there’s the good fortune of it having that underlying social cause of this really, really well-renowned and, people love this guy, Vito Russo, that, that the film is about. So, you know, there is a very not small demographic of human beings that just would be excited for this story to be told in a narrative way that’s well done and, and, and, and champions what Vito was about as a human being. So, there is a built-in investor audience, and that’s obviously a very different thing than a built-in watch the damn movie at the end of the whole process audience, you know? And that is an asset we have going for us. But you know, those projects, the reason it needs to be said that that is a thing about it that’s a positive is because this is a hard thing to find. You know, as far as projects go. Most movie, most movies are just stories.
Ashely
Yeah, yeah.
Josh Folan
And that’s great. I wish just being a story was more valuable right now. But there’s a saturation of it, I suppose, is a big part of it. And it’s just hard, I guess.
Ashely
So, we’re going to get into The Room tone in a minute, and you did some animation-
Josh Folan
Maybe. You say that, you say that, Ashley, but I’ll just ramble about broad strokes and we’ll never, we’ll never get there.
Ashely
Well, no, this, this is going to sort of hopefully dovetail into that a little bit. You did some animation in that, so we’ll talk a little bit more about the animation when we get into room tone.
Josh Folan
That was fun. Another thing I would love to do more of that, and that is very expensive, very hard, and-
Ashely
But, okay, so just generally speaking, how do you feel about AI, and how do you think that’s going to change it? And I wonder, as I was just watching some of those clips, the animated clips that you’re talking about, I was thinking, you know, it seems to me AI is going to be able to do this cheaply and pretty well fairly soon.
Josh Folan
Oh, for sure I don’t know if there would’ve been, there’s a lot of things that were brilliant ideas by the animator and illustrator that I worked with that I don’t think AI ever could’ve come up with. The actual function of the animation, almost surely. Almost surely.
Ashely
But just in general, how do you feel about AI? I’ve had a lot of people on, and they don’t really want to talk about it because there’s such sort of a ground swell against it in the entertainment industry because it’s going to take jobs and this sort of thing. So, I think there’s definitely a lot of people not wanting to even really talk about it. I, as an indie filmmaker, I’m very pro AI. I think it’s, especially as a writer coming from a screenwriting background, I always just wanted to make my films. I wanted to write a script, I wanted to see it as a film, and I think AI will be a tool for me to help achieve-
Josh Folan
For sure
Ashely
… some of that, in the very near future, frankly. now this idea of being able to write a script, just, I don’t know if AI… It does not seem like AI can write jokes and write things, you know, that seems like a, a, a bridge too far, at least right now. Maybe we’ll get there eventually, but at least in the short term, I see, like, AI, it’s going to help us create movies in a whole variety of ways, from the poster to the trailer to music to sound to everything. But just what is your take on it? How do you feel about it? Are you starting to explore it as a producer?
Josh Folan
Not as a… I wouldn’t say no. I wouldn’t say I’m exploring it with any level of, like, concerted effort, but that is not to say that I don’t s-… I mean, you know, the biggest, broadest thing I think that is, I don’t know, everything in society is so, you know, it’s just taken to the absolute, how reactionary can we be and how extreme can we be and how whatever, how far can we take the response to something that, you know, whatever, to communicate how I feel in this really, really blown-up way. And the biggest thing about it, I think, is it’s just a tool. It’s just a tool, it’s just a tool. It’s present in everything we do all the time, filmmaking and otherwise. And the biggest, most comical thing I think about any of the responses to it is the suggestion that it’s, like, this new thing that we, you know, are now have to have an emotional whatever response to or, or need to have a reaction to or have an opinion about because it’s been present for a while now in everything. So that’s the biggest thought I have about it, is everyone should just simmer down a bit.
Now, yes, there are, it’s obviously advancing at incredible rates, and like, the effect and impact it’s going to have on everything we do, filmmaking included, is going to only exponentially increase. And there is no question going to be jobs put at risk, and there’s going to be processes completely overhauled. I think that’s already to some degree in process, you know? I don’t think that’s, whatever, hyperbole to say that. So, you know, I understand the fear because it is going to eliminate the need for human beings to some regard. Now, me as an actual creator and a filmmaker, like you’re saying, like, it’s going to allow me to do things at costs, maybe even zero or close to, that I used to have to pay a human being for, and for me as the filmmaker, that’s great. At least from a productivity standpoint. Obviously, there’s, like, the whatever ethical side of that we can discuss all we want, but ultimately, you know, I’ve always worked in a space where I’ve said, you know, I did, years ago I did a film, the, the one the, on the poster behind me, actually. When I released that film, I did a Reddit, AMA, and one of the big blow-ups of that AMA, it was on the front page of Reddit for a long time, it was, like, a huge thing that I publicly was willing to say then, that was 2017 I think, that I’ve, you know, I can’t pay standard industry rates for crew members for a film that I’m making for 50 grand. It’s not possible. So, when I reach out to potential crew members then and now if it’s a project where that’s still the case, I very calm, I very whatever, without emotion can say that, like, “This is how much we have. Obviously, you’re not going to offend me if you don’t take it, but that’s what the project, if it’s going to get done now, maybe ever.” And I don’t feel bad about that, and I don’t feel… I hope I explain to them that you know, I hope, “You don’t feel bad about me offering this because it’s what I have, and you certainly aren’t going to make me feel bad if you tell me to go **** myself.” Sorry, I hope that that’s okay to say here.
Ashely
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I totally get that, and I totally agree with you. It is what it is.
Josh Folan
And AI is just an exacerbation of that. It’s the extreme of that. You’re going to be able to type something into a computer in 13 seconds as a filmmaker that can do the job that a human being was going to do over whatever period of time that you would have to pay them. And that’s just the unstoppable march of technology, and I don’t see the point in getting up in arms about that because it’s inevitable, you know? And, you know, the things that are… I think I’m a believer that, like you were saying, there’s parts of the process, I was saying that about the animation, the creation of it. Like, yes, the actual, like, just key frame BS that’s, like, just typing stuff into a keyboard almost mindlessly to some degree or another, that can be eliminated. But I don’t think the idea that my illustrator had of using a Three Little Pigs and Big Bad Wolf motif, AI is not going to… There’s just not, it’s not. It’s way too creative. It’s way too specific of a pluck from one particular line that one of the subjects said in the documentary that sparked it in his head, and then he had the creativity to, like, design an entire visual style to, you know, seven minutes of animation in the final product that I just do not see AI ever getting there with that level of creativity. And that makes that level of creativity more valuable, and something that is going to be… I mean that both just, like, whatever to the person, but also commercially more valuable. Because everyone’s going to want to not spend money.
Ashely
Yeah.
Josh Folan
So, if you can offer something that is elevated above whatever that baseline budget version is, you are going to be a very valuable tradesman, and that is to me, again, how every industry has evolved over the history of humanity.
Ashely
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so with all of this information that you’ve just given us, you know, your years of experience producing these films, what do you, what recommendation would you give screenwriters here as we sit in the year 2026? What sort of scripts should they be writing? You know, do you have any advice, just general advice for what kind of scripts… What kind of scripts are you looking for as a producer to produce?
Josh Folan
Yeah, I am a probably a horrific producer to ask this question to, at least for a writer who wants to just be a writer, because I have never acquired a script. Like, I look for writers, writer-directors that want to own material, that are looking for help in DIY-ing their project into existence because they have the whole vision, you know, and they need someone to organize that for them and give them the apparatus necessary to execute it. Like, that’s what I am impassioned to help, you know? So, I’ve never been a producer that is looking for writers that just have, whatever, write something that’s commercial and I want to, I’m going to attach a bunch of stuff and find… Like, I’m not that kind of producer. I don’t want to be that kind of producer. So I’m a horrific person to ask probably what to, or to tell a writer what to write for, other than to say, like, write something that you’re passionate enough about that if you don’t already have the background and the skill set necessary to be the director as well, develop that and create something as a writer that you want to develop that with, because that’s what I’m looking for, but that’s probably not a industry-wide helpful suggestion.
Ashely
I think it actually is. I think there are, there are producers looking for that. I mean, that’s an honest answer. I think an honest answer is always helpful. So, I think that’s a great answer. So, let’s get into Room Tone, The Sound of the Room. this is a documentary, your latest film. Maybe to start out you can just give us a quick pitch, log line. What is this film all about?
Josh Folan
Sure. It is a short film where I spoke to the sound mixer and the boom op from Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, the infamous cult, classic. So, it came to exist, actually in 2020 I was reading Greg Sestero’s book, The Disaster Artist, which was… Greg Sestero was the producer if you’re unfamiliar with that, listeners. He was the producer on The Room and the other lead actor and Tommy’s secondhand man, and he’s still out there touring the film to this day, if not more so than Tommy, at least as much as. So, he has always been heavily involved with the project. He wrote this book as a recounting of the experience of shooting the film. That’s what the James Franco film acquired and was produced from. And so he wrote that book. I was reading that in 2020. A filmmaker friend of mine sent it to me and was like, “You got to read this.” And I am not, again, at this time I have never seen The Room. I have no interest in The Room. I hate movies that are so bad that they’re good. I don’t want to see Leprechaun 2. I don’t want to watch Samurai Cop. I don’t want to watch any of these films that are so bad they’re good. That does not appeal. Watching people fail or whatever, not achieve, not have their work received the way they intended it to, is not something that excites me or makes me feel good as an artist or anything I want to, whatever, indulge in. So, this is not something I had anything more than just a cursory knowledge of. And I read the book and it’s fascinating. It is, like, the most insane production story and I’ve, you know, made 40-something independent features with all sorts of crazy parameters, nothing even that even is in conceives on the horizon. So incredible story, and I’m reading the book, and there’s pictures in it that are Greg, the, that producer. I would guess, I’ve never asked him, but I would guess they’re just, like, disposable camera photos that he took himself. They didn’t have a photographer for sure. So, you know, they’re just candid photos of production that he put in the book. And early on in the book there’s a picture of the sound mixer, with his head in his hands in the parking lot at, like, his little table of equipment. And you can’t see his face, but it says, the caption says, “Zolt, the sound mixer, is having a bad day,” or something. And one of the first films I worked on out here in LA when I moved in ’18 was Glenn Danzig’s, what was that called? Death Rider, I think. And Zolt was the sound mixer, or a, a sound mixer named Zolt was the sound mixer on that. And I was like, you know, I mean, it’s a big town. There’s a lot of people in it, a lot of people working in the same… I’m like, “How many sound guys in LA could be named Zolt? That’s a wild coincidence.” But whatever. I couldn’t see his face. I didn’t… There’s just no way, and this is obviously 2002 maybe is when The Room was shot, won’t even perhaps. So, 20 years, you know. Like, there’s just no way it’s him. Whatever. Read the rest of the book and at the end, there’s a picture.
They went up to San Francisco for a, a couple of days to do a satellite shooting for The Room, and that’s where they shot the infamous football scene that, if you’ve seen the film, you will certainly remember. And they took their third DP that worked in production up for that, and then the sound mixer Zolt, and it’s a picture of the four of them in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. And you can see Zolt’s face very plainly, and I was like, “Holy shit . That’s the Zolt I know.” And I’m on my phone seconds later, texting Zolt, like, “Oh my God, man. Why didn’t you tell me this?” Why is this not the first thing you say to people that you meet on a film set? “Hi, I’m Zolt. I worked on The Room.” It’s like, I don’t know, it should be the first thing out of your mouth. Like, it’s going to be the most interesting thing anyone hears all day anytime you ever work with anyone. And, you know, he’s like, “Yeah, it was one of my first job,” and whatever.
He just didn’t, he didn’t think much of it, but he was more than great- more than happy and gracious enough to, uh, sit down and talk about it. And it took us a while, because COVID was, uh, going on, and he actually went back to Hungary during COVID for various reasons, and some obvious, some not. And the, it took a while, but we eventually sat down. And yeah, I mean, you know, Zolt basically, other than Greg and Tommy, because every department head, they went through three DPs, art team got fired. There were firings all across that shoot. So Zolt worked on the whole thing, all of production, and then also went up and did that satellite shooting in San Francisco. And the DP on that, remember, is the third one, so he didn’t see all of production. So Zolt is the only crew member that saw everything, you know. Which, needless to say, is a very unique perspective. And there’s also a lot of interesting things, I think, sound-wise, because they shot on both a digital and film camera, so you got two frame rates to work with. So, sound had, you know, dealing with 29.97 and 24. Like, it was just, it was a mess sound-wise as a result. It’s Zolt’s first job, so he doesn’t know everything. It was Tim’s first professional sound job as boom op too, so just, you know, there’s a lot of things about their perspective that is really interesting, and certainly untold. And then on top of that, Zolt worked with Tommy on a small documentary project in Santa Monica after The Room.
So he has even beyond The Room perspective to add, and he tells a beautiful story at the end of the film, actually, that is about that project that kind of paints Tommy in this light that no one, the reason he’s the big, bad wolf in these illustrations that we did for the film is because that’s how he’s perceived. Like this monster, you know, that did all these, whatever, things that maybe weren’t so great in the way he treated people and the way he behaved and yada, yada, yada on set. But Zolt tells this beautiful story that is the antithesis of that. So, the idea that we could kind of paint Tommy in this humanistic light, I think is a really beautiful thing, one, as just the ending to a film, but also as, like, a more reasonable assessment and, and portrayal of the human being that everyone thinks they know so much about just from this one specific project and how it went and what’s been publicized about it.
Ashely
So where do you think Tommy got the money to do The Room?
Josh Folan
I don’t know that. I read the book. I’ve… And that’s, well, you know, that’s the funny thing too. Like, this, like I said, I hadn’t watched the film, and I didn’t end up watching the film before I did the interview. A lot of research, and I, whatever, I’m, I’m not, uh, you know, I’ve done a reasonable amount of documentary interview work before. So, I have a workflow for that, so it’s not like I walked in completely uneducated. But I hadn’t seen the film, because I wanted to, whatever, it kinda sprung up. Because he was in Hungary, it kinda came out of nowhere that, that Zolt came back and we were able to schedule the interview, on like, a day’s notice or something, and I just didn’t have time to watch it. And honestly, in hindsight, I’m glad I did. No one, let me say this disclaimer. Ashley, I don’t know, you said you’ve seen the film?
Ashely
Yeah, I’ve seen it. Oh, yeah.
Josh Folan
Did you see it in the theater, or did you watch it at home?
Ashely
I went to a screening, actually, at a theater once.
Josh Folan
Oh. That’s, the only… Watching it, for the first time anyways.
Ashely
Yeah.
Josh Folan
I mean, if you want to appreciate it after the fact at home, whatever. I don’t think that’s a detriment. But the first time you see it, it must happen in a theater full of human beings who know how to watch The Room, because this is an experience.
Ashely
Yeah.
Josh Folan
It is not meant to be just watched purely on its artistic merit. You need to watch this with people that have, that know the flowchart.
Ashely
Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
Josh Folan
You know, that know all the things, the spoons, all the Rocky Horror Picture elements that are part of viewing this in public with people who know how to watch it. And yeah, I mean, I went and saw it over at the Howard Hughes out here in West LA, and I walked out of that theater feel, feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. Like, it was an amazing experience. And again, I don’t… The idea that there’s a whole theater full of people talking during a film. Like, I go see movies at 10:00 AM on a day I know no one else is going to be in the theater. That is my optimal theater-going environment. Like, literally, I’m going to sit in the middle handicap row chair, not a single other person in the theater. That is my optimal theater-going experience. And the idea, though, of being in a theater full of people that are running around, throwing things, getting up, going and picking their spoons up, going back to their seat, talking while they’re doing it, everyone’s yelling, screaming. Like, the idea that that would be something I would enjoy was not within my expectation.
Ashely
Yeah. But I think that’s a good summation. If you just take this movie and watch it at home by yourself, you’re going to be like “What is going on?”
Josh Folan
Yeah, I cannot- imagine that’s a good experience.
Ashely
Yeah.
Josh Folan
You know, I can’t.
Ashely
So, let’s talk about the writing. this is a podcast for writers, so I’m always curious, what, what do you… You had the idea. You, you knew this sound guy, so you sort of had an idea. But what do you go into? What do you write up beforehand in terms of just a script questions? Do you have an idea sort of the overflow, uh, the sort of the whole arc of it? and then ultimately is the writing really in the editing bay? But maybe you can speak to that just in general. How are documentaries written? How was this one written?
Josh Folan
Sure. I wish I did more documentary work, because I think oftentimes it’s more compelling. Real life is infinitely more compelling than stories we cook up, I find. But I don’t have a ton of experience doing documentary work. Like I said, I’ve done a lot of, like, interview-based stuff that’s just kind of the interview and I’m talking about a certain thing. I do a lot of, like, nostalgia-based toy makers and game makers and stuff, because I’m a nerd about that stuff. So, I’ve done a lot of interviews for that, but nothing that I would say is, like, telling this, like, broader story even at 27 minutes, let alone, whatever a feature length documentary would, would be like. But anyways, as far as the writing goes, yes, I had… You know, I read… It was born entirely out of my own curiosity. That’s another beautiful thing about it. Like, I was not a Room head prior to this, I read the book. I saw an opportunity to, to get more information about something that I found fascinating in the immediate, and just basically wrote questions that I wanted to know from, that were not answered in the book. You know what I mean? And then also obviously gave Zolt and Tim the freedom to tell me more and expound upon these ideas I might have had and the question sets I devised prior to, and that’s how the beautiful story about Tommy at the end came to be. Like, Zolt literally asked me at we, after we finished my whole question set. I maybe prompted it with like, “Do you have anything else?” But he’s like, “I have a story that’s about not The Room. Is it okay if I tell that?” I’m like, “Yes, Zolt. Please tell me all the stories that you think maybe I want to hear.” Like, that’s why we’re here, man. You know? So yeah, the interview was, like, probably two hours, so we talked a lot of stuff that didn’t make it, or got, you know, chopped up in some way, shape, or form, and that is a shame. But even at 27 minutes, I feel like it’s been a struggle in some cases with, with festivals and stuff for just that very, you know, not creative reason. So, we made it at 27.
Ashely
And, and that’s actually a question I was going to have, is how did you decide on the 27-minute runtime? was it something distributors… does that fit into a time slot of 27 minutes?
Josh Folan
No. Well, no, just generally shorter is better, so that’s obviously what I’m striving for the entire time, but I’m fighting against the fact that I find X amount of content within the interview worth sharing with a very specific audience. That’s the thing, too, is, like, I’ve never worked on something perhaps with a more defined audience. You know? Like, I can literally just go to Tommy Wiseau’s Instagram page and send this to people, and pretty good chance they’ll at least look at it, because it’s more of The Room, and people who love The Room can’t get enough of The Room, you know? So, I have this very defined audience that I’m, I’m going for with the project, and therefore, you know, anything that gives that audience more information, to me, belongs, you know? But yes, you’re fighting this, like, industry BS about a festival can only program up to 20 minutes maybe to pair it with a feature. If that’s how they do their, their programming blocks, yada, yada, yada. Or if they are in a shorts block, like 20-minute short eats up what they would rather be like three other films, because short blocks are basically, their audience is all the filmmakers and the people who like those filmmakers, that the au- the filmmaker’s talking to coming. There’s not a huge audience, I think, of the festival-goers that are just… I mean, you know, the bigger ones, there’s enough people there where, where there is. But I think, like, your mid-tier regionals and stuff, like those, they’re cognizant of maximizing the number of shorts that are going to go into this block, because that’s how they’re going to sell tickets for that particular block. So that is another thing you’re fighting against when letting runtime go up.
Ashely
And as someone who ran a film festival, you’re 100% spot on. I mean, if you see a film, even if it’s not that good, if it’s a local filmmaker, it’s only five minutes or four minutes, like why not program it and put them into things? It’s like, and people really need… Like, there are always practical considerations to everything, and, and that’s part of the, the mix that you’re dealing with.
Josh Folan
For sure. Yeah. I mean, the first, like, what I was thinking and hoping would be a finished cut was probably, like, 37 minutes might have been the first one, you know? And, like, clearly that is, like, wildly pro- problematic. It’s almost not a short. And, like, I also… So, there’s the, you know, there’s the, the practicality of the animation being a lot of work, which I don’t know if we’ll have time for it, but I had no experience with animation, so this was all a discovery process for me. And there are many examples talking to the my co-directors, and also one was the animator, one was the illustrator, where, you know, I maybe proposed something or had something in what I was initially talking about that was just, like, an unreasonable, not even expectation, but just, like, inclination to have about the way an animated project is going to work and the workflow for it, you know? So that’s all to say, like, at 37 minutes, I think we had probably, like, 10 minutes of animation, and this project took over five years to finish. A lot of reasons for that, you know, uh, we’re all doing this in our free time. No one’s really making any money, the three of us. They have real jobs and real lives, and, and we’re also depending on this ecosystem of three people lining up with each one of the deliverables, and the revisions of them and stuff. So, it just took forever to get done. So, on two instances, I went in with, like, a scalpel and just, like, hacked out runtime and in turn animation to give us a, like, light at the end of the tunnel on the animation post-workflow to ever finish the film at all, let alone within five years, you know.
Ashely
And let’s talk about that animation a little bit. I would describe it as sort of a very stylized pencil sketch animation.
Josh Folan
Yes.
Ashely
But maybe you can start there. Why that pencil sketch animation? Then you can talk a little bit about why the illustrator chose- or the artist chose the big bad wolf- … stuff and all that stuff. But just tell, talk about it a little bit.
Josh Folan
Sure. I don’t know if it was before I got it in the can or not, but at one point or another when because, you know, it’s a talking head interview. I went to reasonably great lengths to find a place with that crazy wallpaper you see behind the subjects that like, to make that talking head portion mildly interesting visually. But it’s still just talking heads on a couch, and I knew I wasn’t going to have archival footage, so I knew I needed something to help visually convey these incredible stories they were going to tell about this crazy filmmaking process, right? So, I saw a film at Sundance years ago by Brett Morgen that is called Montage of Heck. He’s a really accomplished, musical documentarian, and this particular one was on Kurt Cobain, I guess, for the most part, more so than Nirvana, and it was an extension of some audio recordings that Courtney Love had found in a storage facility or something at some point. And he, these audio files basically, and audio tapes, and because he had nothing to go on visually for them, he went with animation. And he used the animation because, you know, it’s early grunge rock that Kurt represents. So, he used this really punk rock, like, heavily stylized crude animation that he was able to both, like, give kind of almost just one-to-one visualizations of what’s happening in the tapes. They’re like slice of life tapes, so like Kurt’s sitting on a couch just jamming to himself, recording it, and the phone rings. He gets up and has a phone conversation, or you know, someone knocks at the door, he gets up, answers the door. It’s just a delivery or something. So, it’s like these just very slice of life, life moments that allowed him to do a lot of creative stuff with the animation, some of it kinda fantastical, some of it exaggerations, some of it just a one-to-one representation of what’s happening so we have a visual of it, you know? And you know, kind of just gave him this broad tool to execute a visual for something he had no visual for, and I thought that was a very one-to-one need case that I wanted to emulate and, and use for this. So yeah, so that’s how the idea came to be.
And the, as far as the animation style goes, you know, I hired, or called hire, I offered to pay him $500. He’s never let me give him the $500. So he basically did it unpaid, you know. He was just excited about it and, you know, he’s like a post-production manager by trade and a artist, uh, as a, you know, a hobby/something he would love to do more. So, it allowed him to really kind of exercise those muscles. And yeah, it was entirely his idea. I have no input at all. It was the first thing he brought to me. It was an extension. There’s a, in like the, the post-credit button, Tim says this line, one, the boom op says this line that the AD on the film would always say before they would do a take which is, “Let’s shoot this pig.” And, you know, from that one minute line that’s literally a throwaway after the credits, it gave him the idea or made the connection for him that, like, all the crew members were like these little piggies that would run around, and Tommy was just you know, going crazy, and, and doing crazy things, and yelling at everyone, and a big, bad wolf, you know? And it was entirely his idea. And yeah, I mean, the second he sent me the first whatever, a representation of it, I was like, “That is brilliant, Ted.” “Yes, let’s go,” you know? That’s why artists still have a place in the world.
Ashely
How did you meet these guys, that was… because it sounds exactly what you’re saying. This is the perfect guy. He wants to do more animation. It’s not his, like, nine-to-five job, so he’s excited to do it on the weekends at night. But how did you meet that, how did you meet him originally?
Josh Folan
Well, the animator- which is not the big, bad wolf idea guy, but the animator was a friend. I was look- again, I didn’t even have an illustrator yet. I didn’t know I needed an illustrator. I thought I could hire an animator or get an animator, and he would just be able to because I, in my mind, super crude illustrations. They don’t need to be good. Anyone can do them. It was my dumbass idea in my head, and was reaching out to filmmakers I knew that had done some documentary work. Actually again, going back to this poster behind me, funny enough, the connective tissue of this, but Jace Bartok, who runs, who has a production company with his wife, Tiffany, Vinyl Foot. They’re New York based. They’ve done a ton of great documentary work and narrative work. But I reached out to him, and he was like, “Actually, I know this guy in Brooklyn. He, you know, works for reality TV. He fucking hates it.” “He probably would be excited to, you know, do something that’s a little more creative.” So I reached out to him. He was excited about it. I convinced him to read the book. He read the book. He was also, like, you know, struck by how compelling the story was, and in turn, the interview footage I had a, as a result of it. So that’s how I got the animator on board, and actually, we had, you know, I told him I was, that idea I had. I was like, “Just do it. It’s going to, it’s going to be good, you know? Let’s just take a look.” And he sent me one mock-up and, and I was like, “You’re right. We do need to get an illustrator.”
Ashely
I see, I see. So just talk about that workflow for a second. so, the animator would come at the end, like, do you would work with the illustrator? But just explain what the workflow looks like, how that goes back and forth and then ultimately gets finished.
Josh Folan
For sure. So yeah, and then Ted came onto the project. He was literally just a Mandy post, you know? He was probably, I don’t know how many there were. There probably weren’t a lot. Again, $500 was the offer, and probably it was, I don’t recall it, of course. It was so long ago, but it was probably poorly worded what I was even asking, because I didn’t know what I was asking. So, I just had the good fortune of him excitedly writing in, and we talked on the phone. I was like, “That’s the guy,” and yeah, that’s how he came in. So yes, the workflow would start, we created a, I’m a spreadsheet guy and a half, producer by trade, so, like, organization, it was critical to me, especially being aware that I didn’t know everything, maybe even anything about it. I needed to have, like, a backbone to work from. So, I went through, I did it very chapter based, the film. It allowed me to get from one story to the next with no transition, again, trying to run time’s already an issue. So, I made a spreadsheet that was chapter based that was basically like- … runtime, one minute and 13 seconds through one minute and 17 seconds, this is going on dialogue-wise, here’s what I’m thinking visually we should see in an animated form. And then I would bounce that over to Ted, the illustrator, and he would take my stupid, crude idea and kind of develop it into something that actually could work as an illustration-based idea that he was excited about and had a good idea for. And then we would send that over to Jonathan, and, you know, sometimes Ted would have very deliberate animation, I don’t know, instructions is probably an overstatement, but, like, ideas of how to put these things into motion. Sometimes it would be entirely on Jonathan’s plate to kind of just, “I have the assets. How do I make it all work and kind of accomplish what we’ve decided is going to happen or needs to be visually represented in these four seconds?” You know? And it would just all work off that spreadsheet, and they would color-code it when this was delivered, and then color-code it when the animation was delivered. And then we’d go to the next thing, and we did it chronologically, and that’s why the end of the film probably has, or not probably, does have a little more sporadic, uh, reliance on animation because that was where, you know, we’d already done this, and this, uh, when I would start bringing the scalpel in to, to hack things out, so.
Ashely
So, then they produce, like an MOV file, and then you drop it into the timeline.
Josh Folan
Yeah, sorry. So yeah, the functional deliverable would be a Photoshop, a layered Photoshop, deliverable for each chapter instance, or animation instance rather, that would come from Ted, the, the illustrator, and that would go over to Jonathan. And I actually, I don’t know if I’ve ever asked him what program he was using. So yeah, I don’t know that offhand. But the-
Ashely
I see. So, then he drops that Photoshop, and then he’s the one till he doesn’t, and he can animate that, and then he delivers the MOV file to you.
Josh Folan
As an MOV to me, correct. And then, yes, I’m the editor, so I’m dropping all these things into the edit as we go and making sure they work and then tweaking just, you know, handles and stuff, to make the timing, feel good. So yeah, that was kind of that.
Ashely
How was that workflow, you know, you get a clip, even if it’s only a six-second clip, if you don’t like it or want some changes, you know you’re not paying these guys. Like, is that hard to go back and say, “Can you tweak this?”
Josh Folan
It was a dance. And, and, you know, yes, for sure. And, and that was something, we just did another interview with the three of us not too long ago, and it was an opportunity, it was the first time we’d, like, really just kind of candidly spoken, where it wasn’t, like a work meeting of sorts, you know? So, we kind of get into that a little bit of, like, how I’m essentially adding nothing to the workflow. I’m taking the deliverable and dropping it into a timeline that I’ve already edited. So, you know, I have no place to, like, be cracking the whip of sorts, you know? So yes, it was a very, I was very happy to hear, actually, them say, even if it was only to be diplomatic in an interview context, that, like, it was eloquently done and I never made them feel like I was, like, whatever, like, being too domineering about getting things done. Because it did take us five years and very simply, it was not five years of work, it was, there were long lulls, sometimes months at a time, where, you know, I’m, like, reaching out, like, “Guys,” like, “what do you think about this?” Or like say Jonathan, like, “You’ve got the illustration, right? Do you need anything? Can I give you money?” Like, “What’s, what’s the thing that I can do and to help?” You know? And there was one point where we didn’t originally have delivery dates in the spreadsheet, and like, you know, we’re like three and a half years in or three years in or whatever it is, and I’m like, “Let’s start putting dates in, you know, and then that way I at least know when it’s okay to be annoying via email. Because we’ve at least collectively decided this is when this thing is going to happen, and if we’re past that, then I know we should at least talk about it.” You know what I mean? So that was a helpful thing to make me feel a little less, whatever, imposing probably, as well. But yeah, it w- it was a, it was no question a delicate walk because, you know, there just wasn’t obviously you got to keep the lights on and then also live your life. Like over the, all five of us, or all three of us rather, over five years had epic life events, like, to juggle and deal with like on top of just having to pay the bills on a month-to-month basis, you know? So yeah, it w- it was a delicate walk, for sure.
Ashely
So, what has your reception been from distributors? You mentioned with film festivals, 27 minutes just feels like a difficult time length to program. But what are you finding with distributors? Have you started to have some-
Josh Folan
Well, I’m not, I mean, it’s a 27-minute short. Like, what’s, I didn’t even… It’s not even relevant to me to even bother with a distributor, I don’t think. The way, so the way I’m releasing it is I house the film on Vimeo. I use Stripe to do the transaction component of it, and there is a delivery of a Vimeo URL and password. It’s downloadable, so people can download it, and I say flat out, like, it’s actually an idea I’ve stolen from Louis C.K. When he released an episodic years ago that was called, it was a bunch of guys in a bar. It had the guy from Mash, Alan, what’s his name? Alan…
Ashely
Alan Alda.
Josh Folan
Yes. So fantastic series, but he self-produced it and he’s like, “Listen, if you want to steal it and you want to pirate it, like, you’re going to do it anyways. Like, go ahead, I guess, if that’s what you want to do. I would appreciate it if you didn’t, but fuck it, what are you going to do?” You know? And so, I deliver the digital via Vimeo, and then I sell, I have it on Blu-ray as well, which I was not going to do. It was not my plan. I think physical media’s pretty dead like everyone else. But Tim, the Boom Op, was like, “It would be, you know, it’s the kind of thing…” He’s like, “This community, like- the kind of people who like The Room want Blu-rays of things too, I promise you.” And I was like, “You’re probably right.” You know? And sure enough, the Blu-ray sells more than the, the VOD does.
Ashely
Oh, really? Huh.
Josh Folan
Yeah, for that, I found this, and, you know, part of the reason I even did it was because I found this solution and I am kind of upset that I’ve went this long not knowing it exists. There’s a website called Kunaki. Are you familiar with this?
Ashely
No.
Josh Folan
K-U-N-A-K-I. I should be getting paid to be putting this on here. They’ve been around forever, so they’re reputable. The website looks like a toddler made it. It looks like it is from 20 years ago, and it very well may be. But basically, you just, they do a bunch of stuff, actually. They do, they do Blu-rays in case, out of case. They have, they, you can do audio tapes via them. They have CD-ROMs, and then, like, shells for those, c- jewel cases they’ll do and stuff. So, like, there’s a range of, of products, but one of them is, is, is kind of full, you know, shrink-wrapped Blu-rays. And you upload a disc image, like an ISO of the Blu-ray. So, you have to have… There’s not a lot of software that even does this anymore. I have a copy of what’s it called? Our DVD Architect, I think it’s called. I’d have to look up the brand name. I can give you that after the fact if you want to drop that in there. Because even that, you have to buy, like, already existing copies from Vegas, the manufacturer that used to make it. It’s a whole thing. To even get software that can make your own Blu-ray. But I’ve done that before, one of the many DIY things I’ve done over the years, so I have some level of aptitude with the Blu-ray creation software. So, I was able to do that part of it myself. And then, you know, you just make a disc image, or … sorry, a disc label, and then the wraparound for the case. And they even let you do an insert, like a single card insert in the flap on the inside. So, I was able to kind of put, like, a nice little message with some illustration stuff on that as well, kind of thanking them for buying it. And you upload that all to their website, and then people can, they have a, like a really crude sales, interface that people can buy directly off their website if you want to direct them there. Or I still use Stripe to sell that so I can collect addresses and emails and stuff internally, and I think it’s also just cleaner to use Stripe than their website.
Ashely
Yeah, yeah.
Josh Folan
So, uh, basically, when someone buys a Blu-ray, I go to their website and I can punch in, basically deliver it manually to them within their interface. You can order, you know, bulk lots if you want to order a bunch yourself to sell at festivals or whatever it is. But you can do one-off Blu-rays, and it’s, like, $2 or something. There’s no startup cost. There’s no fixed blanket cost. It’s a per one-at-a-time cost, and it’s, like, $2 or something, plus whatever shipping if you’re having them ship it. and that, you can do anywhere in the all 50 US states for, like, $6. So incredibly inexpensive, I think. And like I said, to me, the idea that there’s no setup costs or anything is incredible, you know? And again, it’s reputable, and I mean, I’ve been using them for a couple of months now. It’s great. It’s, I mean, it’s, you know, it’s crude, and it requires my own personal level of effort to send them out, which is not great. It’d be great if it would be turnkey. And you know, maybe they even do. I don’t know, if you reach out to them, maybe they have an API thing they can do, and maybe that could happen via Stripe and it become automated. I don’t know. I don’t want to bother with that much effort. But yeah, that’s what I’m selling. Very DIY-ish, even the sales of it. And to me, it’s again, because it’s such a defined audience, and I just know, at times, I, it, it’s trying emotionally because I am, like, being… I know that people who watch this film or that watch The Room want to see this. I know they want it. So, like for that reason, I feel, like, I feel very bold about how brashly I’m willing to put it in front of people via tweets and, and Blue Sky posts and Instagram comments and whatever. And, you know, the, at times that’s emotionally draining, I suppose, to be really putting yourself out there that, whatever, strongly but it is something I know they want. So I ha- like, the marketing of it, I don’t need someone. No one’s going to do it as good as me. I know that I know exactly how to market it, like, both functionally and stylistically. Like, the, you know, I’m like, you know, posting com- using the, the lines I like from the film, the film, you know? “In a few minutes, bitch” is the best line. No one will, no one wants to say that out loud because it’s kind of, it uses the word bitch, and it’s kind of a little bit misogynistic. But it’s the funniest line in the movie, and if anyone tells you otherwise, they’re lying. You know? And so, like, I’m willing to use those things that I appreciate from The Room to sell this product, and there’s just no way a distributor would ever capture that the way I can. Again, it requires the work.
But it’s funny, like, of all the projects I’ve made over years and years of doing this, it’s so funny to me that a 27-minute short is one of the ones I’m most excited about getting out in the world because it’s just such a pure expression of my own, like, interest and infatuation with something, you know. So, it’s kind of, it’s, it’s poetic in that way, I think so.
Ashely
So, you mentioned that, you know, all you have to do is contact the people that are following Tommy Wiseau’s Instagram account.
Josh Folan
Right.
Ashely
Have you tried, you can do that through paid ads. Have you tried paid ads on Instagram or Facebook?
Josh Folan
I have. And honestly, the paid ads, it’s not, you know, it’s, it has not, the return on them is not as great. And you know, there’s could play with that more and stuff perhaps, and I’m not saying I’m totally walled off to it. But I mean, you know, basically what I do, you know, I find a half hour in a day, often while I’m doing something as a multitasking thing anyways, where I’m just popping over to Instagram, follow a few people, go through a few posts, either from Tommy or from The Room, or Greg’s out there touring constantly too. It wasn’t a plan, but I lucked into, there was the day … I released this film on June 27th, which was the, I think, 23rd anniversary of the first theatrical release of the film in 2003. So, the night before that, there is a Bob Odenkirk remake, they call it. It’s just a thing they did in one day. The whole point was, like, no effort, all green screen, but just great accomplished actors … playing the roles honestly to some degree or another, you know? And that is the premise of that, and that actually premiered at, or did a screening at Hollywood Forever the night before. There was this big, you know, LA-based screening of that, kind of real public release of it. So, there was a ton of press for that that I did not expect to be able to coattail off of. So, like, things like this, you know, I, I’ve actually expected… I keep waiting for Brando, the director of that, to reach out to me like, “Dude, like, get off our tip.”
Ashely
Did you ever contact, you- you, like, Tommy and Greg, did you ever talk to them?
Josh Folan
Yeah, I mean, yeah. The first thing I did, actually, was I sent Greg a, a Blu-ray. I got him to watch the film on digital, even before that. So the first thing, yeah, I was trying to send to Tommy and Greg to get kind of their… Well, I, I mean, these are the subjects, essentially. Like, Zoltan and Tim are the subject subjects, but it’s about Greg and Tommy, both of their kind of endorsements of it before I started taking this out into the world. So that was important to me. And yeah, I reached out to Greg and he was great, and he seemed very supportive of it when, when I pinged him and, and he said he liked it. I don’t know if he actually watched it or not, but he said he did and he liked it. Tommy has been unresponsive, and I guess that, you know, I’ve come to learn a lot of things since I started making this film, and even more so maybe putting it out there. I found out there, in 2016, it started its festival run, there was a kind of full-length documentary called Room Full of Spoons that was a Kickstarter-funded thing, and I guess Tommy tried to sue that into oblivion, ended up losing, having to pay them 700 grand- … and the film has never come out. So that is, like, another just an example of, like, there’s, like, a whole community of people who paid for this documentary that still… It took, like, forever. The litigation took forever. It was just a year or two ago that it finally wound up, and for whatever reason, I haven’t asked the filmmakers, but that film still hasn’t been released, and all the people that paid for it via Kickstarter are pissed that that’s the case, that they still don’t have it all these years later, and especially now that the litigation has wound down. So, there’s, like, also, like, this sect of human beings that are, like, starved for a documentary they already paid for.
So there’s just a lot of really interesting angles that, just by being immersed in that community myself and having an interest in it, you know, the subreddit, there’s a very robust subreddit for The Room where essentially everything said on the subreddit is just people speaking in quotes. Like, the whole thing- … no one really speaks from their own mind almost. It’s all in the vernacular of Room script dialogue slumps. So there’s just a lot of really fun things that I’ve found for the film, and that clearly is a product of having this concept that already has this defined audience, and it’s, like, maybe the most pure example of that being something you should seek as an independent filmmaker. Which clearly in- nearly impossible to do to this degree. But finding something that has this really defined community that you already want to be part of is obviously a really easy way to, if, if not make it easy, at least make it fun to market your film.
Ashely
Yeah, yeah. When I’ve done my Kickstarters, I’ll go and look at what other Kickstarters are doing films, and I often see exactly what you’re describing. As an example, I saw someone making a movie, this was years ago, before the He-Man: Masters of the Universe movie came out. This was like five years ago. They were doing a documentary on He-Man: Masters of the Universe, and they were doing exactly that. There are all these people now, they’re in their 40s and 50s, that had those toys. They now have money, so-
Josh Folan
They’re just jazzed
Ashely
… exact- exactly. So-
Josh Folan
They’ll consume anything you give them.
Ashely
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Josh Folan
Yeah.
Ashely
Som plugging into some of those already existing communities is a great tip. Okay, so-
Josh Folan
But again, you have to do it from a place, I think, of earnestness, too, you know? If you try to interact with these people without the verbiage that they communicate with, that’s going to ring very false, and you’re going to have… It’s not going to be as successful, too, you know? So, you got to be careful that you’re not trying to exploit that. It’s actually something, uh, you, you know, you want to be part of.
Ashely
And so how can people see, Room Tone? What is the release schedule like on that? Do you have, like, a website?
Josh Folan
It’s a… Yeah, it came out in June. so it’s been out for a while now. You can go to shootthispig.com is the URL. Shootthispig.com. Which again, is literally a line that the AD would say on the set of The Room right before they did takes, and Tommy knew this. And it was not a, whatever, endearing emotion behind him saying that. So, even that is rooted in the film and the community, I suppose. But yeah, so you can get it on VOD there. It’s $250 for the, the VOD version, and that’s fully downloadable, 4K. You can do whatever you want with it. Pirate if you want, I guess. Uh, hopefully you don’t want to do that. But also the Blu-ray is available, and those are 20 bucks with shipping. So basically, anywhere in the domestic, anywhere in the 50 states, you can get it for 20 bucks on Blu-ray. And then internationally, the disc is region free. So, if you’re international and you want to buy it, it’s, you’ll be able to play it if you get it. You have to go through Kunaki, though, and they of course compensate for the shipping differential on their platform or wherever it’s going.
Ashely
So, what else have you seen recently that you thought was really great? Anything you’re watching on Netflix, Hulu, HBO, that you can recommend to our mostly screenwriting audience?
Josh Folan
I don’t watch a lot of Netflix stuff. I did… Uh, oh, wait, that’s not Netflix. Never mind. I was going to say that, that snake documentary, but that’s HBO, actually. The-
Ashely
Oh, yeah, that’s fine. Yeah. Anything you’re interested in.
Josh Folan
I’d say I just, I just watched the first episode of that, so that was, whatever, again, documentary stuff, crazy. It’s the Tiger King filmmaker and, like, it’s, of course, he found these insane subjects that are incredibly interesting. So, whatever, that’s kind of a one-off thing, that I just started watching. But I watched Silo. I read those books years ago, and I love… They’re doing such a good job, I think, with the onscreen iteration of that. So, I watched that pretty religiously. Rick and Morty I watch. You know, there were, they had a couple years that weren’t so great when the one guy got kicked off for, for BS. But the, or not, shouldn’t be BS, it was bad behavior. But the It’s kind of rebounded, and I, I actually suspect maybe that he’s back involved kind of behind the curtain, because it just feels so much like it used to. Well, that’s complete conjecture. I have no idea.
Ashely
Yeah, yeah.
Josh Folan
But that’s just my own hypothesis.
Ashely
Yeah, yeah.
Josh Folan
Anyways, the… Justin Rolland, I think his name is. Dan Harmon’s the other film- the other creator on that. But watch that. I watch Fallout when it’s… I mean, obviously that’s off right now, but that is something I watch. Severance is one I’m waiting pretty enthusiastically for. A lot of Apple TV stuff. I watched the new Vince Gilligan one. It was okay. I can’t think of the name. Pluribus maybe is, is the name of it.
Ashely
Okay.
Josh Folan
That was the one with the, the woman from Breaking Bad, the wife.
Ashely
What’s the best way for people to keep up with what you’re doing? Twitter, Facebook, Instagram? Anything you’re comfortable sharing, I will also put that in the round, uh-
Josh Folan
Sure. Instagram is probably the thing that’s … On Twitter and Bluesky as well. Bluesky definitely over Twitter.
Ashely
Okay.
Josh Folan
So, nyehentertainment.com, which is also my URL for my production company.
Ashely
And what’s that again?
Josh Folan
N-Y-E-Hentertainment.com is my username on Bluesky. Nyeh Entertainment, nyeh.entertainment is also the production company shingle, also has an Instagram presence as well, so either one of those.
Ashely
Perfect.
Josh Folan
And then actually @roomtonedoc is the Instagram for the film, and that’s the tool I’m using for all this stuff. So, there’s a lot of content there that you can watch little clips from the film. I’ve done, like, these little animation kind of dissections of where I’m showing the storyboard and the finished animation, and you can kind of see how those two things, line up and serve each other to some degree. So that’s an, a filmmaker animation in particular friendly little piece of content I keep dropping there, as well as, like I said, snippets from the film and stuff, so you can kind of hear some of the, well, the stories without having to buy the movie if you don’t want to. If you don’t want to spend the $250 you can get probably a good deal of the, the stories even there.
Ashely
Okay, perfect. Well, we’ll round all that up for the show notes. Josh, I really appreciate coming back on the show. I’m sure I’ll have you back on the show soon when you finish another project. this has been great catching up with you.
Josh Folan
Oh, man. Yeah, thank you so much. It’s been a blast.
Ashely
Well, thank you so much.
Josh Folan
I hope some of it was helpful and informative, amidst the rambling in between.
Ashely
Yeah, yeah. No, your transparency is exactly the kind of interviews I’m trying to highlight here. It’s like just an honest conversation with another filmmaker. People can take away a lot of great information from this, so.
Josh Folan
Love it. Honesty, never short on that. Maybe nothing else to add to the conversation, but honesty for sure.
Ashely
Exactly. Exactly. So cool, man. We’ll talk to you later.
Josh Folan
All right. Thanks, man. Take it easy.
Ashely
All right. Take it easy. Bye.
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On the next episode of the podcast, I have Darren Coyle on again. He is a filmmaker who works a lot in unscripted television, but he’s also an indie producer and director, and he comes on to talk about his latest film, Chasing Sunshine, which he actually shot back in 2018, but is still out there trying to market it. So we talk about sort of the long game of film distribution. Obviously, COVID came and went during that period, so that had something to do with it, but he’s still out there. As I said, he’s really passionate for this project. He’s still out there trying to push it, so a lot of great insight on distribution. And we talk about some other things. Again, he works in unscripted, so we talk a lot about just producing, you know, w- the changes he’s seen in the industry over the last couple years, and then we talk briefly about AI and sort of how that, you know, he sees that affecting the industry as well. So keep an eye out for that episode. He was on previously in episode 331, so if you want to get some background on him, go listen to that episode. we talk about sort of his origin story and how he got into the business. Anyway, that’s the show. Thanks for listening.
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