As you've read by now, the director on our movie is Bob Gosse. Here is Bob's IMDB page and Wikipedia page.
Bob has officially been on board since March 1st, and I am very happy with the decision to pick him as a director. Bob is the perfect complement to me; highly abstract, extremely patient, very empathetic and intuitively understands his medium. And most importantly, Bob gets the vision of the script and understands how to make the words Nils and I wrote come alive in a visual medium. But just looking at his IMDB page and Wikipedia page won't make it obvious why we picked him, especially when you know we selected Bob over an Oscar winning director (among others). So I spent some time on this entry to really lay out our thinking and describe the process by which we attached Bob.
For the average movie, the single most important step is usually attaching a director. By attaching a director, you signal that the script is good enough that someone who has made a movie before wants to make it, and you let all the potential actors know who they are going to be working with. In theory, actors pick movies based almost exclusively on two things: The quality of the script and who the director is (in practice, they can pick it based on any number of other things). There is no defined process for picking a director, but generally speaking, you send the script out to directors, they read it, and then if they are interested in doing it, they take a meeting with the producers and discuss it.
Once we had a locked script--sometime around Christmas--me, Nils, Max and Karen sat down and came up with a list of the directors we thought had the most potential to do the movie right. This is basically a wish list, and you base if off who directed the comedies you like or think are well done. From that list, you send the script to the agents of the directors, or you use whatever connections you have to the directors to bypass the agents and get the scripts into their hands.
Our initial list had names like Ken Kwapis, Jake Kasden, Jason Reitman, Larry Charles, Greg Daniels, Danny Leiner and Neal Brennan on it. Obviously these are some of the biggest names in Hollywood in terms of comedy directors, and at any moment they basically have their pick of what scripts they want to do, in addition to very high fees. And even worse, all of them are hard to get to, and some of them can be a pain in the ass to work with. But because they are all big name A-List directors, they get movies financed and get actors attached, so we started down this route.
Sadly, you can't really send the script out to lots of big name directors at once (especially if you are a no one like me). You have to send it out to one at a time, because if more than one says yes, and then you turn them down because you decided to go with another guy who also said yes, you look like a fucking asshole and a liar no one wants to work with you again. So we decided to start with Danny Leiner, because he is a well-known, well-respected comedy director who we had heard was very easy to work with and an overall great guy. But we didn't send the script to his agent to pass on to him. A guy I kinda know knows Danny also, and had given my book to Danny a year ago, and told me that Danny liked it. He gave me Danny's email address and told me Danny knew the script was coming, so I sent it to him with a nice introduction email.
One week goes by. No response. Two weeks. No response. I email our mutual friend, he says Danny is wrapping up filming on another project, so maybe he hasn't had time, but he'll ask about it. In the meantime, one of the other producers tells me he had lunch with Danny's agent (about something else), who told him that Danny is booked up all summer and can't do the movie anyway. Then the mutual friend comes back to me and says that Danny never got the email with the script, and that I should send it again. As this is happening, three weird things go down:
1. By a confluence of circumstances that can only happen in Hollywood, I am friends with an A-List showrunner, and he looked at our script and gave us some notes. His wife is a director, and he passed it on to her to read. She loved it, and wanted to take a meeting.
2. By blind chance, a development guy who works for an Oscar winning director (not a guy on our list to that point) emailed me asking what I had going on. I sent him the script, and the director loved it and wanted to take a meeting.
3. Max and Karen sent the script out to a bunch of director friends of theirs, and a few were into it. One in particular flipped over it, Bob Gosse, who at the time neither Nils nor I had ever heard of.
So as the Danny Leiner drama unfolded, we took intro meeting with each of these three directors, and each was impressive in their own way. The woman, "Susan", was possibly the nicest person I've ever met. But more importantly, she had a razor sharp intelligence and really understood the material--it was like she had dated a "Tucker"-type in her life, and ended up marrying a guy just like one of the other characters, and got why these guys were such compelling characters and how to show that on the screen. Beyond that, I really liked the idea of having a female director. Even though we already had two female producers, I felt like she could add even more balance to material that by its nature is very masculine. I need a lot of balance, after all.
The Oscar winner, "Oscar", was very different. Without even seeing his movies, you could tell that this guy was an artistic genius just by the way he looked at you. I don't know how to explain it; with some people, you can just feel the energy of their talent. He is a very highly regarded director, to the point where I was a little shocked that he wanted to do this movie at first. But his explanation made perfect sense: He had never done a comedy and really wanted to do one, but couldn't find a good script. Even with an Oscar, no studio would give him a great comedy script because he had never done a comedy, so he was caught in a classic Catch 22 by the mainstream system (this sort of pigeonholing is VERY common). In order to be able to do a comedy, he had to find a great script on his own, and he had been looking for a long time, and this was the one he wanted to do. He went on and on about how great the script was--and he hadn't even read any of my stories or my book. Needless to say, I was seriously fucking flattered.
Bob's initial meeting was, to be perfectly honest, the least impressive of the three. The meeting went fine, but it was nothing exceptional. It was obvious that he was smart, and it was obvious that he understood the script and had real passion for the material, but well...nothing stood out. Susan had an energy about her that I clicked with immediately, and Oscar was a genius with a camera and had that all important golden statue, while Bob, well...Bob was just some indie director from New York I knew nothing about. Max had told us all kinds of stuff about him, like that actors who he had worked with raved about him, and that he had started a company called The Shooting Gallery that was very similar to what I wanted to do with Rudius Media, but he had only made two notable movies and neither made any money. He wasn't a bad choice, but to me, he was clearly a step below the other two.
After this, we had to decide if we were going to even go out to any more directors. To have three legit directors who want to do the movie is an amazing position to be in, and I felt like we needed to just strike while the iron was hot. Waiting around for some A-List comedy director to read our script, and then worry if we could work with him, and even if he would do an indie movie at all--that could take months. We had three birds in the hand. Fuck the bush.
This being said, we still had to pick one of the three. I wasn't worried about what I knew, I was worried about all the things I didn't know and couldn't know until shooting started--how do they really see the characters, what is their work ethic like, how are they to deal with, what kind of set will they run, etc-- and I realized that the information we had wasn't enough, so we asked each of the directors for a second meeting. Going into the second round of interviews I came up with this list of questions:
1. What are your casting ideas (for main roles and/or cameos), and what casting directors do you want to work with?
2. What scenes would you want to use for sides?
3. What below-the-line-people do you want to work with or have in mind for specific positions?
4. We want to know how you will handle the SlingBlade character. How do you think he should act, what do you think the actor who plays SlingBlade must do to make sure that comes across, which attributes an actor must have to pull SlingBlade off, etc?
5. How do you develop your storyboards and shotlists?
6. What are you like on set? What role do you like the producers to occupy?
7. What are your notes on the script?
The biggest concern I had was that we would pick a director who ended up being totally different on set than they sold themselves in the room, and this list would force them to drop the bullshit and spin and seduction and come up with specific answers to specific questions. In essence, I was making them show their cards.
The first meeting was with Susan. She was exactly what I expected she would be; nice, fun, prepared, smart, and easy to work with. After that meeting, I could have gone with her as the director and never looked back. The meeting with Oscar was something of a disappointment. Where Susan came in with a legal pads full of notes and ideas, he had nothing with him, had very few ideas thought out, and just kinda acted like he already had the movie. He wasn't an asshole or arrogant or anything like that; I just didn't get the feeling that it meant the same to him as it meant to me. I mean, if he isn't willing to put some thought and effort into a very basic series of questions, what will he be like when he has the job?
Then there was Bob.
We met with Bob at Dupar's in the Farmer's Market. I distinctly remember this conversation as we walked into the restaurant:
TM "I can't imagine Bob doing anything to get the job at this point. I love Susan, and Oscar has an Oscar. What could Bob do to beat either of them out?"
Nils "I don't know. Probably nothing."
I have said some really dumb shit in my life, but that comment may end up topping them all.
To put it succinctly: Bob blew us the fuck away. He came in and sat down with a huge 5-inch blue binder in his hand (pictured here) and a look of intensity and purpose in his eye that was not there the first time I met him. We started down the list of questions, and I quickly realized that the binder wasn't a binder for all his movies. It was ONLY FOR THIS ONE! He had extensive casting lists for each of the five main characters, with their IMDB pages printed out. He'd already pulled the sides for each character. He had a page of below the line suggestions for every department head--and half of them he knew or had previously worked with. He nailed the correct way to handle the SlingBlade character, and had written it all out. He had four notes on the script, each small but incisive and correct. We took them down and then integrated them into the script. He didn't tell us how he does story boards--he had already SCHEDULED OUT THE ENTIRE MOVIE AND STORY BOARDED THREE SCENES. People, this is an intense amount of work to do on a movie that you don't even have yet.
I was incredibly impressed. Here was a man who was going to put in the work, who was going to live and breathe and eat and shit this movie for the next year. I am a hard working driven motherfucker and I expect the same from the people around me, and this meeting showed me that he was a kindred spirit.
Then, with one answer, the dude eliminated any residual doubts I had lingering. I asked him question 6 last:
TM "What role do you like the producers to occupy?"
Bob "Well, I see myself as Eisenhower to your Roosevelt. I'm the general running a specific part of the war, but you are still in charge, you run the whole operation, and I answer to you. You make the big decisions and tell me what you need me to do, and then leave me alone to go do that, within the parameters you've set. It's my job to effectuate your vision."
I could not have said it better myself.
My movie isn't like a lot of movies. In most movies, an idea created by one person becomes a script written by another person, which is then sold to studio and directed by another person, produced by different people, and oversaw by more people. It is a massive process involving dozens of people having creative input, and I think that is why so much is lost in most movies from the original vision--everyone has to put their mark on it, and the original creator has no say or power and is left behind in that process.
With my movie, the vision is crystal clear, and has two solitary authors: Me and Nils Parker. We are basically of one mind on the creative aspects of the script, but we are not just the screenwriters. We are the producers as well, and this is an indie movie, so there is no studio to answer to. Thus, even though it is still a collaborative effort, the number of people collaborating and the degree to which they are collaborating is very different than the average film. Because of this, we needed a director who understood our vision for the film, liked it and had the humility and willingness to work within those confines, but still brought a lot of his own ability and talent to the mix. Bob fit this bill perfectly.
There is one last thing about Bob that really made me turn the corner on him. When Nils and I were doing research on him, we realized that Bob had started one of the biggest, best and most forward looking indie film companies ever, The Shooting Gallery. These two pieces do a great job explaining what it was (Village Voice and some other site), and what happened, but the important part was that he gets it--he understands why the art must come first in a movie, and why its important to respect the artist, and why you should treat people well, and what it means to really collaborate in a way that makes the movie better. Bob was one of us.
I have been working with Bob now for 6 weeks since we attached him, and in that time, I have become absolutely convinced we made the right call on him. I still think Susan would have done a great job, but I think Bob was the perfect selection. He has this energy about him that is calm and level and reassuring, which is a very good counter balance to mine, which can get manic and intense at times. And even though Bob can get long winded and pedantic at times--asking him a question will get you a tour of the history of cinema verite and a story about the building of the Long Island Expressway before you get an answer--he has this laser focus on the most important thing: Making this movie as great as it can be. That is the product by which we'll all be judged, and I think Bob is going to get us from script to movie as good or better than anyone else out there.
I'll tell you three more short anecdotes about Bob before I end this:
1. How I knew he was right, part 2: I have a question I use as a test of sorts when evaluating how wise a man is. It has to come in the proper conversational context, but I will ask him, "Why do you do anything?" and if he says anything other than the one correct word, I know he is either young or stupid or self-delusional in one way or another. I was VERY happy when I posed this question to Bob and without hesitation he said, "Pussy." Any man who understands that, understands the world.
2. Danny Leiner revisited: I had no idea about this until after we had attached Bob, but he and Danny are good friends. Danny was one of the first guys Bob called to tell about this movie, and Danny hadn't read the script at that point, but remembers his buddy calling him about it. Funny how things work out. If Danny had got that email I sent, the entire chain of events you just read about could have been completely different.
3. How fucking spooky is this: This is a real post on my messageboard, put up like two years ago. I didn't read it when it went up, but it freaked me out when I saw it now.
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