A pleasure…

A challenge…

A non-stop revelation…

And a mission.  A mission that goes beyond this podcast.

It's because of this podcast that I ended up plunging completely into podcasting. Costard and Touchstone makes this podcast and three others currently available wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts - with a dozen or so more on the way!

There's THE DONOR: A DNA HORROR STORY, THE HALL CLOSET and SAGE WELLNESS WITHIIN.

In the months ahead, please look out for more Costard & Touchstone podcasts including "JUST THE PHOTOGRAPHER" (where photojournalist DAVID SWANSON puts you right beside him in war zones, 9-11 and at the Oscars), "A SECRET WAR" (journalist MANILA CHAN'S deep dive into a story she's fought to tell for 25 years about America's Secret War on Laos, "I NEED TO TELL YOU", journalist TOM LOWENSTEIN's explorations into stories like criminal mastermind JOHN HALL and "JOHN KIRIAKOU'S DEAD DROP" (a deep, under cover look at life deep under cover by a former CIA officer).

Please stay in touch via our PATREON PAGE -

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SHOW NOTES:

One of the things I love talking about in this podcast is the creative process. And what it takes to make the process process. It’s not like there’s this giant switch creative people throw to turn on their creative process.

The way I see it, each and every creative person has a kind of prism inside their heads. Life and life experience filter in through their eyes and ears and all their other senses. They pass through that prism inside the creative’s head. And whatever refracts out – that’s their art. Their craft. Their content.  

Now, for this to happen, the creative person has to be in contact with that prism in some fashion. The creative stuff isn’t going to create itself.

There is work involved.

Serious, hard work. The creative process – what it takes for a creative to create – can, in fact, be arduous, challenging as fuck and downright deadly.

On his website – Paul Trammell dot com – here’s how Paul describes himself – and I’m using it here because I can’t improve upon it:

Paul Trammell is a nomadic author who lives on a sailboat, seeking adventure, solitude, and creativity, soaking up natural beauty outside the boat, and delving into the mysterious world of words when inside.

Paul’s written or co-written twelve books and a lot of short stories and poetry. He’s a podcaster, too – which is how we first encountered each other.

And, like me, he’s a man keenly aware of the actual Life’s Journey he’s on.

As you’ll hear, it took Paul a while to find his most productive creative self.  

I can relate.

There were long roads that led to dead ends. There was alcoholism and a little too much partying. And then, Paul more or less stumbled onto the thing that ultimately brought him true happiness.

It’s not like Paul found a shortcut to something. That wasn’t the case at all.

He’s always been a creative hell bent on creating. Before it was podcasting and writing, he poured himself into music.

All the way.

But, I don’t think it brought him anything like his present happiness.

It wasn’t until adventure – a life of surfing and sailing and truly living off the grid because you’re in the middle of the ocean – took hold of Paul.

His life became the necessary component the prism inside his head needed to switch on. In a weird way, in addition to being a writer, a poet and a podcaster, Paul’s a performance artist, too.

How else would you describe a creative whose adventurous life is the source of his art? If he’s not adventuring, he’s not creating. 

Sometimes – maybe oftentimes – in a creative life, the creative has to risk literally everything to create their best art. That’s Paul Trammel.

Sailing to the edge.

Please support us via our PATREON PAGE - patreon.com/TheHowNOTToMakeAMoviePodcastFanPage

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SHOW NOTES:

My longtime friend – and former agent – Nick Mechanic is back for another visit.

Nick really has seen the very best and the very worst aspects of show business. He’s made great deals and deals that weren’t so great. He’s had great clients… and clients who weren’t. He’s dealt with great studio executives. And executives who were nothing more than giant wastes of otherwise good carbon. He’s had bosses and co-workers in the agenting business who were really good and plenty who were so bad at it, you’d be complementing them by saying “they sucked”.

If you’ve already experienced Nick Mechanic on this podcast, you know: he’s been to the wars. Not only was Nick a successful Hollywood agent, he was a successful Hollywood drug dealer, too. Well, that is, until he got caught - and got sentenced to 12 years in prison (Nick being Nick, he got out after six months - a story unto itself!).

Nick really has seen the best of it and the worst of it. As you’re about to experience…

For access to AD-FREE EPISODES, BONUS MATERIAL and lots of extras - visit our PATREON PAGE -

patreon.com/TheHowNOTToMakeAMoviePodcastFanPage

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SHOW NOTES:

I met Wes Iseli via podcasting connections, but we have another connection, too. We’ve both worked with Penn & Teller. Teller co-wrote a superb episode of Tales From The Crypt with recent guest Colman DeKay called Staired In Horror.

Subsequent to that I developed a show at HBO with Penn And Teller that died in development – as most projects do.

Wes Iseli introduced himself to P&T via their show Fool Us where magicians are invited to confound these two master illusionists with tricks they can’t figure out.

Wes did that. Fooled Penn & Teller. And not only did Wes get the prize money promised, P&T paid Wes directly for the knowledge of how he’d fooled them.

As Wes will tell you, there’s no “magic” involved. There’s a ton of craft though. Which is why we’re talking about it here.

Now, Wes insists – as you’ll hear – that there’s nothing supernatural about magic. In fact, he hates the idea of supernatural magic. But there’s something about magic and creating the illusions of it that can spark a little – let’s call it “transcendent” – kind of magic.

There’s a ton of love in this story. Wes AND his wife NATHALIE sat and talked to me.

What Wes and Nathalie have created – along with their three kids – is a kind of great magic trick.

And that’s with the caveat that there’s no magic. There’s craft. Hard work and lots of repetition. But, I think you’ll find that the effect – the story itself - is magical. 

SOCIAL MEDIA:

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SHOW NOTES:

If you ask me what I am today, I’d tell you unequivocally: I’m a podcaster, dude. I may have come out of movies and TV but these days? It’s all about podcasting for me.

I love this medium. I love its intimacy. Okay… I love the idea of being a voice in the dark.

Peter Anthony Holder also came out of TV – news and public affairs and interviews. And, in fact, he was an actual overnight broadcaster. A literal voice in the dark. And while he still thinks of his show – THE STUPH FILE – as a radio show rather than a podcast, it’s got lots of podcast dynamism to it.

That’s why I appeared on Peter’s show The Stuph File. He’s a great interviewer with a huge track record of great interviews of everyone from actors like Karl Malden and Ed Asner to politicians and trendsetters to Apollo astronaut Alan Bean who walked on the moon.

Anthony grew up in Montreal, Canada, the son of immigrants from Barbados. We talk about what the immigrant experience was like compared to what growing up Black in America is like where every traffic stop can suddenly become a fatal flashpoint.

We also talk about Barbados – one of the best places I’ve ever gotten to visit.

Hey, Barbados Tourist Board – we should talk!

Visit Barbados!

Like me, Peter grokked what he wanted to be when he was a kid. Like me, he walks around in a state of semi-bliss because he gets to do the thing he loves pretty much every day.

After all these years doing what he does, Peter’s got almost 2500 interviews under his belt. Clearly, I’ve got some catching up to do! Well, let’s get this started then!

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SHOW NOTES

I tackled the paranormal more than a few times while I was making Tales From The Crypt and The Outer Limits and various other TV and movie projects. But I never went at it from the perspective of Paranormal Investigator Kyle Yates. Though a skeptic by nature, and despite coming to paranormal investigation as a kind of second career, as you’ll hear, Kyle may well have been born to it.

To be honest, I’m a little agnostic about things paranormal. I want everything rooted in what we can verifiably know. But, alas, we don’t verifiably know everything.

Consciousness, for instance, remains mostly a mystery to us. As you’ll hear, an awful lot of what we think is “paranormal” is absolutely explainable by organic means. Electricity and the magnetism electricity produces can create effects that do seem genuinely “ghostly” under the right circumstances.

But those ghostly effects are just electricity and magnetism. Or something else with a simple, logical explanation.

But, then stuff happens that can’t be explained. At all.

You start running out of “well, it could be this” or “it could be that’s” that sound like they maybe could be.

And that’s where people like Kyle step in - and explain it paranormally. Like the episode’s title says: there’s something paranormal happening here!

Catch Kyle's terrific podcast - The Vibes Broadcast Network - here!

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SHOW NOTES:

So – why do I say my friend Colman DeKay knows everybody? Because, as you’ll hear, HE KNOWS EVERYBODY! And, he’s so used to knowing everybody that he doesn’t even realize that he knows everybody.

As you’ll also hear, Colman doesn’t drop names. But names - ones you recognize cos lots and lots of people know who they are - they come up in conversation because Colman was having a conversation with that person just last week. You know, like he’s having a conversation with you right now.

An A List Literary Salon

It’s been like that since Colman was a kid. His family was involved in publishing in New York. His family’s Manhattan living room was a non-stop, A-List literary salon.

A very, very, VERY scant sampling of the people Colman's rubbed elbows with since he was a kid: Donald Westlake, James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Penn & Teller, Ken Kwapis, Steven Soderbergh.

Colman became a talented writer himself - of screens small and large and of the stage. I first got to know Colman when he wrote a handful of episodes for us at Tales From The Crypt.

Among Colman’s episodes - “In The Groove” and “Fatal Caper” and an absolute classic - “Staired In Horror” - which Colman wrote with occasional writing partner Teller from Penn & Teller.

It’s a great episode because of the writing – and because we somehow put a whole Louisiana swamp on our stage in Los Angeles.

New Orleans

Something about that part of the world – southern Louisiana, the swamps around there, New Orleans especially – has a powerful hold on Colman. Along with the musician PAUL SANCHEZ, Colman put together "NINE LIVES: AN ORAL HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS", a 40 song cycle that tells The Big Easy's story via its music.

Personally? I think Colman's ripe for a podcast of his own. A conversation just with his friends would be, in essence, a conversation with everybody. Everybody interesting. 

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SHOW NOTES:

In addition to managing careers for clients, Jeff has also produced work for his clients. What that really means is vital. It means that, as a producer, Jeff was essential in putting his clients’ vision on the screen.

Even under the best of circumstances, getting anything made in Hollywood is stunningly hard. Having a producer who understands how creatives think can make a huge difference as they – the producer – navigates the minefield of production.

It demands tact and diplomacy when necessary, but also a good sense of when to be aggressive and how to recognize that you hold all the good cards in a negotiation. Taste is important, too. And emotional honesty.

It’s not an easy cocktail to make or maintain. That’s why only a handful of people have successfully travelled from agency to management to producer-of-quality. Lots of former agents are now producers. It’s the stop in between that’s handcuffing them.

If you like hearing how Hollywood Deal-Making Sausage gets made – at the grinder level – this episode is in your sweet spot! Jeff’s a terrific storyteller. And wait till you hear what some of these sausages became!

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But, before we get down to Oscars business, we have some catching up to do – and some more bitching and moaning about the entertainment business (such as it is).

Gil will take you behind the curtains to explain – as he does to a baffled friend – how exactly movies get made (or teeter toward getting made). There’s no formula. No how-to guide. As Gil explains from 50 years of experience, every single creative project is its own kind of monster.

Gil’s close on a couple of great feature film projects. He’ll take you deep inside the game and the gamesmanship. Want to know what exactly a movie producer does? Gil delivers (another) MASTER CLASS.

We also talk about our good friend, the late CHRISTOPHER REEVES, Gil’s relationship with him and the new documentary about Chris and the accident that altered the course of his life.

And we’ll celebrate the fact that (on the day we recorded this – February 14 – it was GIL’S BIRTHDAY!

At last we’ll get to this year’s NOMINATIONS. How is Gil going to vote (he hasn’t yet, but he’s about to!)? What, you think we’d ruin the ending for you?

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Ever, ever EVER!

SHOW NOTES:

As the production of "Bordello Of Blood" headed toward its climax, we knew we'd leave Vancouver with an unfinished movie in hand.

That was ironic because our unfinished movie had finished one relationship (between Sly Stallone and Angie Everhart) and was on its way to finishing another - the decade-long creative one (and its resulting friendship) between me and Gil.

Endings are never pretty. Ever, ever, ever.

In this episode, things don't so much go from bad to worse as settle into a soul-sucking certainty that this fucking movie is doomed. But - look out for a twist ending because - it turns out - some some endings aren't actually endings. They're beginnings...

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Never mind making a horror movie, we’re too busy living one!

Story Notes:

In this episode, we’ll take you on Bordello’s tortured journey from bad to worse and how our special effects struggled to be even remotely special.

It really sucks finding out that those giant-sized bite marks on your ass are yours! As Homer Simpson would put it: “D’oh!”

Indeed everything we did while trying to make “Tales From The Crypt Presents Bordello Of Blood” seemed to result in bad shit, stupid shit or stupider shit happening to us.

What’s worse than doing stupid shit relentlessly? Having all that stupid, relentless shit boomarang back at you.

Wouldn’t ya know it? Every single stupid decision bore stupid fruit.

From almost the moment he arrived in country – and despite the fact that, his wife at the time was from Vancouver – Dennis Miller seemed determined to make everyone Canadian hate him. He succeeded.

Erika Eleniak decided – now that she’d taken the role of an ex porn actress in a movie called Bordello Of Blood – that she didn’t want to play roles like that any more or movies like Bordello.

Angie would return from weekends in Seattle with Sly with all her scenes rewritten – and directed – by Sly.

But Sly, unbeknownst to Angie, was screwing around like crazy on the Assassins set. Their whole crew and our whole crew knew all about it!

There’s a story that Stallone’s never denied about a live wireless mic and a blow job. We tell it here cos we heard it in real time – from the Assassins set.

Then, to top it all off, my boss – Joel Silver – a person everyone thinks of as a monster – tells me my people skills are shit.

Never mind making a horror movie, in this episode, we’re too busy living through one! Speaking of which, it’s never a good sign when your makeup special effects guy asks the producer if HE knows a recipe for making fake blood.

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Show Notes:

Vancouver is a fantastic place to shoot a movie. It's a fantastic place to visit and live. I can't recommend it highly enough!

But, we didn't go to Vancouver for any of the local scenery, culture or because of its movie-making chops; we didn't go for a film-making reason whatsoever. The reason we did go was so our executive producer Joel Silver could screw over the IA, the union that represented our film crew.

Joel was in a never-ending war with the union. Pretty much everyone on our crew was an IA member but they worked on Crypt under a non-union contract. A few months before, the IA had struck the set of "Weird World", a TV movie we did for Fox. Joel had been looking for payback.

And, so, we shot Bordello in Vancouver - with an unfamiliar Canadian crew - instead of back in LA, with the same crew who'd worked on our show (and, many on the Demon Knight feature film) for years. Whatever monies we saved by not paying our crew its union wages, we more than made up for between all the mistakes, miscalculations, poor planning and overall crap decision-making that flowed directly from making Bordello outside of LA.

Like the script for "Dead Easy", "Bordello of Blood" took place in the South. But, whereas "Dead Easy" mostly took place in and around New Orleans (incredibly atmospheric), "Bordello" took place in a South that was completely generic. Actually, the entire rationale for even thinking it takes place in the South is the word "Bordello" in the title.

There's nothing in the script that says the titular bordello has to be in Sarasota or Savannah. I suspect we made it the South out of deference to "Dead Easy", a project we were all still mourning. Our decision to keep the movie in a Southern location while deciding to shoot up north wasn't based on anything.

I guess we figured that doing something for a poor reason beat doing something for no reason. Even our stupid thinking was stupid.

Meanwhile, our production team can't find any of the southern US locations called for in the script in Vancouver. Strangely, a northern, Canadian city doesn't look anything like the American south.

Our gung-ho but inexperienced (local) special effects team suddenly made us nervous by asking us how to make fake blood.

Then our boss - executive producer Joel Silver, one of the biggest action movie producers in the whole history of Hollywood - flies across the border from Seattle (where he's shooting "Assassins" with Stallone and Antonio Banderas) to visit. Except he doesn't bring a passport or any ID whatsoever.

And an international incident nearly breaks out.

What was it Bette Davis says in "All About Eve" - ""Fasten your seat belts it's going to be a bumpy night."? Yeah, what Bette said!

And we're only up to Day Three!

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Sometimes one bad or difficult actor can hold more sway than all the good actors combined. That’s what happened on Bordello Of Blood.

We had an executive producer in Joel Silver whose fucked up priorities caused him to compromise his golden goose (The Tales From The Crypt franchise) just to service an actor on another movie set. That would be Sylvester Stallone. If there’s an asshole di tutti assholes in this story – it’s him. And there are quite a few assholes in this story. 

Slowly but surely, as Bordello Of Blood’s production picked up steam – which it had to quickly because we had only three weeks to rewrite, design, scout, prep and cast the movie – every day became stupider than the day before it.

Bordello quickly achieved a kind of “critical mass” of stupidity. And arrogance. And bad luck. And lots and lots of really bad behavior. But, hey – movie sets are bad behavior factories!

And Bordello Of Blood was just gearing up to be an uber factory of stupidity – and especially very bad behavior.

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SHOW NOTES:

I had been telling Bordello Of Blood stories since I did the movie. It really was a kind of personal Waterloo that marked the end of one period of m life and the beginning of another.

But, when Jason Stein, one of the members of Crypt fan group "DADS FROM THE CRYPT" approached me about appearing on his podcast, I said yes. The DADS FROM THE CRYPT review every episode of Crypt and gave parenting advice.

The first appearance went very well. We chatted about one of the episodes I wrote. A few weeks later, Jason reached out to me again. The Dads were going to review "Bordello Of Blood". Did I want to sit in again, Jason asked.

“Jason,” I said, “The story of Bordello is more than just a forty-five minute episode, it’s…” and right there, I had one of those “clouds parting” moments.

I continued, the revelation still rolling over me like a tsunami of inspiration, “…a whole podcast unto itself.”

One of the things I love about podcasting – aside from the absolute freedom it allows its creators – is the fact that literally anyone and everyone can do it. Doing it well is a whole other question. But, if you have an idea in your head, podcasting is a wonderful medium.

Let’s say I have an idea. To get that idea from inside my head all the way out into the world and in front of an audience – if I want to do it as a TV series or a movie? There are literally thousands of assholes standing in my.

Thousands of them.

And, at any point, any one of those assholes can kill my project dead for no other reason than that they’re an asshole! In podcasting however, there’s only ever one asshole standing in my way – and it’s me.

But, if I’m willing to get off my ass and do the work – I can put it out into the world – and put it out exactly the way I want. Now, I’m going to have to find the audience myself – or help them find my podcast – but, I’ll accept that challenge.

Telling the Bordello story in season one of The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast was a revelation.

In order to tell it as honestly as I could, I had to reach out to Gil Adler. Spoiler alert - that re-birthe both our friendship and our creative relationship. But, that honesty paid off. Entertainment Weekly called the podcast we’re about to share with you again “THE BEST MOVIE PODCAST OF 2022”.

I’m biased of course, but – some stories are timeless. Put another way, some monsters just won’t stay dead. Bordello Of Blood – it’s one of them.

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SHOW NOTES

For more great podcasts like The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast, please visit Costard And Touchstone Productions!

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SHOW NOTES

For more great podcasts like The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast, please visit Costard And Touchstone Productions!

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SHOW NOTES

For more great podcasts like The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast, please visit Costard And Touchstone Productions!

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SHOW NOTES

For more great podcasts like The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast, please visit Costard & Touchstone Productions!

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SHOW NOTES

For more great podcasts like The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast, please visit costardandtouchstone productions!

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SHOW NOTES

For more great podcasts like The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast, please visit Costard And Touchstone Productions!

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SHOW NOTES

For more great shows like The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast, please visit costardandtouchstone!

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SHOW NOTES

For more great podcasts like The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast, please visit costardandtouchstone productions!

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SHOW NOTES

For more great shows like The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast, please visit costardandtouchstone.com.

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SHOW NOTES

If you enjoy The How Not To Make a Movie Podcast, please sample our other podcasts at costardandtouchstone.com!

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SHOW NOTES

If you enjoy The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast, please check out all our other podcasts at costardandtouchstone.com!

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SHOW NOTES

The Cutting Room Floor is legendary in Hollywood. Whole careers have happened there. In fact, there's a whole weird history in Hollywood of scenes and actors who famously never made "the cut". Kevin Costner, for instance, was entirely cut out of "The Big Chill".

Video and DVD's changed everything. One could rent or buy the studio's cut or "The Director's Cut". Finally, the director could put out the extended movie they envisioned with all the scenes the studio cut out. Often that was great. Sometimes though you saw the studio's wisdom.

Film v Video

Back then, we shot on film, cut on digital then transferred back to film for the release. Digital editing began in 1985 when Quantel produced its limited "Harry" compositor. Things got rolling two years later (1987) when Avid released its Avid/1 Media Composer. Cutting on video was revolutionary of course. You could see dissolves and freeze frames in real time. Before, you'd see dissolves laid out in yellow grease paint drawn across the literal film.

Filming the movie gets all the attention. But, it won't be until we deliver all the filmed footage to the editing suite - and the editor performs their magic - that it will become "a movie". Or a TV show.

And it can blow your mind what exactly can happen in an editing suite. There's a story in this episode about executive producer Bob Zemeckis cobbling together a scene we never shot. He took scraps from the cutting room floor to imply a lesbian sexual encounter between Angie's character and Erika's. One pickup shot was all it took to marry it all together in the audience's head.

That simple cross (filmed using two extras instead of the actors) ties it together perfectly. It really is like seeing how magic tricks work. And at the hands of a magician - our boss Bob Zemeckis.

In a sense, this episode really is a monster made up of spare parts - rescued from the cutting room floor But, don't be afraid! It won't hurt you. Much..

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SHOW NOTES:

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SHOW NOTES:

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SHOW NOTES:

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SHOW NOTES:

The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast started as a story podcast - about (as its season on subtitle said) "the making of Bordello Of Blood". I had no battle plan - or plan to do a podcast beyond telling the Bordello story.

But, as most every podcaster will tell you, this medium is both addictive and deeply satisfying creatively. I didn't want to stop telling stories - and there were soooooo many show biz stories yet to tell that didn't make the cut into season one.

So, throwing lots of guests into the mix - with lots of Gil into the mix as well - I made three additional seasons. Some of those episodes have been brought forward here. What started with this podcast - with this very episode, in fact - mushroom clouded into (now) ten different podcasts covering a host of topics. It all started here with the telling of this deeply personal story told with total honesty.

How NOT to make a horror movie for sure. In fact, how NEVER to make a movie..

If you enjoy this podcast, check out some of our others! You can find them (and link to or listen to them) at www.costardandtouchstone.com.

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