Indie Film Craft 1 | Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz (The Peanut Butter Falcon, Los Frikis) Discuss Authentic Collaboration

WATCH LOS FRIKIS: https://www.primevideo.com/detail/Los-Frikis/0H49M436MMS223JUKJ26Q95EKJ

Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz are the first to admit "they're not the cool kids." Their widely celebrated debut THE PEANUT BUTTER FALCON was bootstrapped by grit, hard work, and a ferocious commitment to making something authentic, and that same spirit fills every frame of their follow-up film, LOS FRIKIS. Like the filmmakers themselves, the movie follows a group of lovable outsiders finding their own way to make beautiful art in a system that opposes it. In today's conversation with Jeffrey Crane Graham, they discuss how filmmaking is like building a house: pre-production is a blueprint, production is about "collecting lumber," and post-production is an act of construction.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Jeff: Welcome to Indie Film Craft, a show hosted by me, Jeffrey Crane Graham. We're a spinoff show of the Screenwriting Life Podcast, which I produce alongside Oscar nominated Inside out writer Meg LeFauve and Emmy nominated showrunner, Lorien McKenna. So if you're just discovering our feed through this episode, welcome.

We have hundreds of episodes dedicated to the craft of writing. But we know that we have listeners who also aspire to direct, so once a month we'll be devoting one episode of our feed to a filmmaker conversation, aiming for a 360 degree view of the entire filmmaking process.

I'm a filmmaker myself. I recently sold my debut feature, Always, Lola so I'm particularly excited to learn from some of Hollywood's most exciting indie writer/directors. One of my goals with the show is to drop my conversations on or near the release dates for the movies we're talking about so you can also watch them with the specific context that these filmmakers are speaking from, kind of like a mini film club with our listeners.

But that said, I'll try to keep things relatively spoiler free, so you can also go in blind. Speaking of, I'm thrilled to be interviewing two filmmakers whose work I've loved for a number of years, Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz. Together they wrote and directed The Peanut Butter Falcon, a heartwarming road movie starring Shia LaBeouf and Dakota Johnson.

The movie won the Audience Award at SXSW when it premiered, and it remains one of my favorites of 2019. It's great, if you haven't seen it you can watch it on Netflix right now. But they're joining me today to talk about their new feature, Los Frikis. I love the movie. It's a deeply moving, coming of age story set against the backdrop of post-communist Cuba in the nineties.

The movie, entirely in Spanish, features an incredible ensemble of emerging Cuban actors, in addition to a never better Adria Arjona, who produces alongside Phil Lord and Chris Miller known for the Spider Verse series. The movie's actually based on a true story of outcast punk rockers who, seeking artistic freedom, security, and an escape from poverty purposefully inject themselves with HIV so they can gain refuge from their war torn life at a state-sponsored sanatorium with other HIV positive patients. I started by asking the filmmakers why they were specifically interested in telling this story and the first voice you'll hear is Michael's.

Michael: I think Tyler and I came across this story when we were traveling through Cuba and met Cuban artists. Who told us this story, we'd never heard anything like it. And coming off of Peanut Butter Falcon, we're really interested in stories that we haven't heard before. There's so many movies that are a variation of something that I've seen before or heard before, and this seemed like a really fresh story.

And it was a story that involved people that we're not really seeing featured in movies. The job of a filmmaker I think is to kind of translate the story for an audience, or at least Tyler and I see it that way. So there's also like, why are we the ones to tell this story? I think the way that we collaborate is we invite people in that know the story better than us, but we know filmmaking and we know story structure.

And there's that collaboration. Like we worked on the script with Héctor Medina for six months. He was actually not cast as an actor yet. He was a friend of Phil Lord's cousin. And we would just zoom with him and he would get into the tiniest details like, in Cuba it would be guava not strawberry and we don't say just in case we say if there are mosquitoes, like that's just a colloquialism. And at the end of that process, six months, we got to a script we were all happy with he goes, I want to be in the movie.

And we're like, cool man. We'll find you a, like a line or two, like of course. And he goes, I want to be Paco. And we were like, okay, okay. 'Cause this dude in real life is the most polite, chill dude that is not like a punk rocker at all. And and we said, okay, do that final scene, do a self tape on that final scene where-

Tyler: Which is, as you guys know, it's the, even as a writer I remember being like, no one will ever be able to perform this. There's no actors that could, this is a fucking insane scene.

Michael: A few hours later, Héctor sends this iPhone self tape. And it's perfect. It's like the performance that's in the movie. There's not even another actor that he's doing, he's just doing the lines against a blue wall. We're like, I guess that's our guy.

Jeff: It's an astounding scene. I guess speaking of the writing, the thing about that scene is it demands every emotional frequency that an actor can access. It's funny, it's familial, it's reflective, it's urgent, and it's heartbreaking. And I, it's hard enough to do one of those in a scene, but it's written in such a way as to need to tap into all of those emotions.

Tyler: Yeah.

Jeff: Can you all talk about writing that scene even before you knew Héctor was gonna play the part?

Tyler: Yeah. I mean, I remember riding it on the back porch here and I remember my landlord came and he was like, hey, Tyler. And I was like, hey, you gotta go. I was finishing it. I was like, you gotta go away. Like you just got, this is a moment for Mike and I and please leave. And he was like, okay.

Mike and I, I mean, I think about this a fair bit. Sometimes films have this sort of like 30 minute wrapping things up slowly, and I don't disagree. And I'm saying this, I heard it on a podcast once, but the quicker you end, the quicker you just get to the thing and we're out oftentimes the more emotionally poignant it can be. And I remember just we got there and I was just like, this is it. Mike and I usually know the last scene in the movie, and what we like to do is we pick out this last really emotionally resonant scene. And we just talk about it and we feel it. And then what we like to do is we sort of bullet point our way to that space, but everything is in service to that last scene oftentimes. Like even with Peanut Butter Falcon like, Zak in the car. He's free, he finally gets what he wants and he needs, and the audience is cheering for him, and everything was in service to that scene. That moment where he's just in a car being like, oh, I'm free. Like everything.

Jeff: That's so great. It seems like emotionally authentic storytelling is a really important part of the way you two work. When you think about breaking a script and kind of structuring your movie, would you say that that's kind of like the barometer for you as you're working through like the beats of the movie? Like how does that actually look as you're breaking it?

Michael: I think it's, we're super not trained. Like we went to the library and checked out books. The first thing we ever really wrote was Peanut Butter Falcon. Like we made a short film before that, that we didn't have a script for and we just went and shot a bunch of stuff and it didn't cut together. And we're like, gosh, you should probably write first. And then we went and we checked out like Save the Cat! and all the screenwriting books. And it's not to be too simplistic, but like those, those beat sheets work.

Jeff: We talk about that on the show. The job of a writer is to take any tool they can and fill their toolkit. Some things will work for you and some things won't. Overly arrogant writers might be like, that method is bullshit, or blah blah blah, and we're kind of like, who cares? Mm-hmm. If anything can push you to make something better, great. Use it and like, figure out how it works for you.

Michael: Yeah. And then I do think that the cool thing about being in a writing team, in a directing team is, we have sort of a built-in notes process where we can pitch ideas. And if it's like, oh my God, that's awesome. Yeah, let's do that, you know you're onto something. And if their response is sort of like, I don't know, I think we could do better. Then you're like, yeah, let's, let's keep beating it up. It's usually not the first idea that comes. We'll take long walks or do long zoom calls as we're sitting in traffic and continue to talk through story over and over again before we start writing it. And then by the time we write it, we sort of know what's happening in the next 10 pages. And then we arc through that like, okay this scene's gonna be about three and a half pages, this one's gonna be about two pages, that's gonna be about half a page. And then we reassess. But we do like little arcs.

Not even full acts, 10 minutes, 10 minutes at a time, and then leave a lot of space to change. I think we always start out with what we think it's gonna be but when the characters start talking and you listen to 'em, you go, I guess that thing we planned isn't right. Let's do something else.

Tyler: Oh, like the wedding scene in Frikis. There's an interesting sort of like midpoint choice where it's not the lead actors. I still cry at that wedding scene. I still like, the singing with Las Negras and it was such a weird choice for a midpoint. Like, why would you do it? But it just really worked, it worked for us emotionally.

That also being said, I wanna point out that I like the beats too. So we'll be like, it's three and a half page, two pages, but hey, by page-- used to be 15-- but by 12 let's really hit an inciting incident. Let's really look for this love story on page 25, 26. Let's really start looking at how we can get to these spots. So I personally really look for form and then within that form I like to color and paint and be messy. But I do, I do love form. And I also could talk about for a long, long time, it's so funny 'cause people are always like, oh, but there's plenty of films without form. And I'm like, okay, name one. And they're always like, Pulp Fiction. And I'm like, that has form. Has tons of form. There's something about that form that I think really helps us. You can break form and break structure.

Phil Lord and Chris Miller, we talked about this endlessly with them and we really pull tricks from those guys. They always talk about the audience has expectations, which are, you have to pay attention to that somewhat. There, there are expectations within a film. Break and subvert their expectations and do it better than they expected.

Michael: Delivering what the audience wants you're not doing the greatest thing you can do. And at a certain point they'll be bored and disengaged. But if you do it, like just basically what Tyler's saying, if you can think of a way to surprise them, then they're like, okay, I don't know what's coming next. Great. That this is what I expected.

Jeff: It's like you want to do what the audience doesn't yet know that they want and it's your job to show them what they didn't know they wanted.

Michael: Right.

Jeff: That's so smart. I'm glad you mentioned Phil Lord and Chris Miller. It's so interesting. My context for their work was like really smart, quirky, animated movies and like hilarious comedies and like the Spider Verse movies. And so I'm fascinated that they came on to this, and as a lot of emerging filmmakers will be listening to this, it's not uncommon to see like a really exciting emerging indie with a cool sort of A-list name on it.

I just saw a movie last night Sorry, Baby, which won the Waldo Award at Sundance this year and Barry Jenkins is a producer on that movie, which I feel like is an interesting comparison to having Phil Lord and Chris Miller on yours. How did you get them on and what is the role of this type of producer on a movie like yours?

Michael: It's interesting with this one, Tyler and I were really thoughtful about who we wanted to bring on. One, I think we think Phil and Chris are next level storytellers. And everything they've ever done is like it should be bad, but they make it excellent. Like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Should be bad, they made it excellent. 21 Jump Street should have been bad. They made it excellent. Lego, should have been bad. They made it-- like they're just, everything they touch, there is an attention to detail that they have.

And then there is a conversation about who gets to tell what stories. And we wanted to be very thoughtful about the Cuban artists involved with this story. Phil Lord is Cuban American. So we were like, basically if Phil doesn't make this movie, we won't make this movie. There is a collaboration that we feel needs to happen. With Peanut Butter Falcon, it was Zak and the Down Syndrome community and we really enjoyed that relationship of please, let us create the dance floor for you to shine on. But I don't think we can do it without the collaboration. And so Phil was like, okay, I'll do this and you've gotta hire all my cousins. So we, not only did he introduce us to Héctor Medina, but...

Tyler: And not like in a shitty way, you have to hire my cousins. In a very like, you have to hire Cubans, which all my cousins are, to help you learn this stuff. Not like in a, you have to hire my cousins.

Jeff: Oh, of course.

Michael: It was, it was really positive. And it's, we had a choice, and it's been really interesting as the movie's rolled out. To get the movie financed we needed a movie star so Adria really came on and she became a producer with us, and her participation allowed us to hire the rest of the cast as Cubans.

So there's, of the speaking roles, Adria is from Puerto Rico, but playing a Cuban and everybody else is Cuban, playing Cuban, which I think we were really excited about. On the day, every scene to have the authenticities czars, just a team of them there for every moment was really helpful for this movie.

Jeff: But like at a certain point you two are the writer directors and like you probably at hills you needed to die on. How do you navigate those and I guess for our listeners, like how do we do that elegantly?

Tyler: I mean, I'll say with Frikis I don't think there were any hills we needed to die on.

Michael: Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing.

Tyler: Yeah, everybody. I mean if somebody came in and wrote like a 10 page monologue for their character and was like, I'm doing this, I could see that being a tough thing to navigate. But that being said, like no, we don't. People would just come in and have ideas. Like even Héctor was like, there's so many little things and big things too where he was like, hey, I really feel like I would do this. And we would be like, do it then.

Michael: I'll just tag what you're talking about, Ty. I think there's, so this is sort of a writing focus podcast, so we try as hard as we can to get as much of the story right and as much of the words right, and to know the form and to give enough so that the producers know what movie we're making and the actors know what movie we're making. And we overwrite a little bit. Like just so that a character knows, like even if we're trying to do this without words, but this is what you're thinking. And we'll put that dialogue in.

Jeff: Yeah.

Michael: And then we do a lot of playing on set where it's, okay we've shot it as scripted, now let's try and find some magic. Now like room for input from everybody. If Phil's on set pitching a joke, oh my God, how lucky are we have Phil Lord pitching a joke. Of course we're gonna go shoot that. And then as an actor, you think they're gonna do something a little bit different. Let's try it. You're the expert on your character. And then knowing that we have edit to come back to. So my background is an editorial.

We talk about production as cutting down lumber and milling lumber. It's not really building anything. So script writing would be like making a blueprint. Production is, we're out cutting and milling lumber. And you might need a couple different versions of lumber.

So it's, yeah let's get an eight foot board, let's get a six foot board. Let's get this scene played as really loud and boisterous. Let's get one really quiet. Let's get one sad. Let's get one angry. You're like, we'll get all the different flavors on set and then in edit we'll come back and put 'em all together and see what feels best.

We're not writers and directors that are like, we have a vision and we know exactly what it's gonna be. I think we are collaborators and we are really, I'm really lucky that Tyler and I have the same taste, but we chase the magic. We chase the magic and we leave a lot of space for input. And then knowing that editorial is where the movie really comes together.

Jeff: That's so wise it like, it really shows in your movies too, because again, there's such a lived in quality to them. And even like thematically, I feel like you all are interested, like friendship feels like a really common through line for your first two movies. And that spirit of collaboration, even sort of like the ragtag weirdos coming together to make something is kind of also what your movies are about.

Michael: Yeah. I think it's what we know. Metaphorical storytelling is really interesting to us. And I think like we get to decide by the art we create what we sort of put into culture and the values we like to see in culture.

And some of the stuff that's really on the nose. Like I'll say my life doesn't deserve a movie. There should not be a movie about my life. But I have a lot of interesting things that I'd like to express. And it used to be that there was like the Greeks would write tragedies and there's biblical storytelling and there's journalistic storytelling and there is autobiographical storytelling but traditionally it's been a very small amount of storytelling. And only recently, in like the last five to 10 years has autobiographical storytelling become sort of the most safe form of storytelling. So it's, you've seen, I'm sure we could all google directors that made their autobiographical movie in the last two years. 'Cause it's what you can make without being attacked.

Tyler: That was a very safe answer, Michael. That was very cool.

Michael: Being able to tell different stories and imbue your worldview on maybe something journalistic is a really creative space when you can figure out how to do that collaboratively and include everybody.

Jeff: I agree. I do think our job as filmmakers is to tell people's stories, but I do think we also have to find our way in. Especially while we're writing, because we're gonna be glued to a page for however long it's needs to be. And I guess I'm curious for each of you if you wouldn't mind sharing, what did feel personal about this?

Obviously you're telling a story about a group of Cubans from the early nineties, but I'd have to imagine you needed some kind of emotional way in to do that.

Tyler: Yeah. I mean, the two biggest emotional points in our movies have been the death of a brother. And I think it's because I love Michael so much that the idea of losing him is just painful. And Mike had-- and Mike forgive me if I'm telling your story, but it's not autobiographical-- is Mike had kind of gone through some autoimmune stuff while we were getting ready to shoot Frikis. And I think that was really underlying with my best friend and my business partner and my like, number one homie was really, really sick at the time. Like really sick and that was in there too.

Emotionally I also think that Mike and I, well I'll speak for myself, but I think Mike too, is we're not the cool kids, man. We're not, we're not the anointed class in filmmaking, as much as I think people would maybe like, you guys make Peanut Butter Falcon. I'm like, we've yet to sell a film. We raised P&A ourselves for both movies. Nobody came in and said we, we really bootstrapped that thing on our own in both films. Were the outsiders and we've always been that way. Our careers didn't really get going until we were in our sort of like mid thirties. Like I had never, I was a hand model. Mike got me in a hand modeling for commercials and that was the most. We had no agents, no managers, no idea how to write scripts. We just fully, again, just went and checked out every Robert McKee. Every book we possibly could on screenwriting and along with Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey. And we write about I think these groups of people that are on the outside, the peripheries, because we are that.

Michael: And there's a understanding of the emotional feeling. I think we know, there's commonalities sort of worldwide, that people experience as humans. And even Phil and Chris on this story kept saying make it more specific. Make it more specific. Make it more specific. So we did a lot of research. Like a ton of research, traveled to Cuba, interviewed people, read every book, studied the history of Cuba.

And I think we did an annotated script at a certain point where even like everything that's in the script. Like what was skateboarding like in Cuba in 1991? What tattoo guns? You couldn't get access to a tattoo gun so you would have a Walkman motor hooked to a needle with pen ink and that's how tattoos were done. Like every detail, the cars were Russian ladas, the farming was done with oxen. Like so many of the things were researched, sort of braided together with the universal emotional themes that we've experienced that these characters also experience.

And what we've noticed with that movie is we've showed it in Poland and people are like, this is my, this is my childhood. We've showed it in LA and people are like, this is just like growing up in Ventura, like this is my childhood. Like it, it actually couldn't be more different than so many of these things but what I think what audiences are saying is this feels like my childhood. There's an emotional resonance. This is what I experienced, or it makes me think of what I experienced.

Tyler: I think that's what like great movies do. I've never been the lead character of a movie. Or a TV show. I've never been Rue from Euphoria. But I can watch this young woman in her experience completely empathizing and be there with her. I can watch so many things like, oh wow, like that, that really hits me. I'm not that person but that really emotionally resonates with me.

Michael: It's interesting because we, we wrote a draft before the illness that I had that Tyler was talking about where I thought I was gonna die. I thought I had six months to live. Went to the hospital, kidneys, liver, blood, like everything shutting down. And it was really perspective shifting.

I think I'd always been a person that looked at long-term goals and like maybe 20 years I could buy a house if I start saving up now and maybe it'll have fruit trees and maybe I'll do this, but none of this is really accessible to me now. Like I don't have the money for that right now. But I was always living a little bit 10, 20, 30 years off. And when I was faced with you might have six months. Like what do you wanna do in this six months?

It was, yeah, let's go, let's go make this movie. And if that's my last six months, that's what I did. And if it's not my last six months, cool. But even now, like I do not think about the future far off. Everything is really day to day, really immediate for me. And I think I brought a lot of that to the set of Frikis. A lot of times I was just sitting under an umbrella and Tyler was off with the actors.

I just didn't even have the strength to show up in, in a lot of ways. But I think the sort of the cloud hanging over me brought something and took something from this set that was even separate from the writing process. The writing process was a little bit more journalistic and the directing process was more parallel, because my life had changed in between.

Jeff: Well it's, it's all over the movie. I mean, like the fact that your final scene is two like codependent brothers and best friends navigating someone's health and someone's sickness, like I'm sure that the autobiography of what you two are going through is really in that scene. It feels clear watching it.

Tyler: I just had my fucking hair stand up by the way, Jeff. I'm like, I ain't no codependent fucking.

Jeff: HA!

Tyler: Easy with that verbiage. Just like these narcissistic, but whatever your therapy speak is buddy ain't working on me.

Jeff: The problem is I'm codependent. And so when you talk about people bringing their own shit to a movie, that's what I'm bringing when I watch it. So I'm probably getting too personal.

Michael: Speaking of our own shit I will say this. So we're working on, and I'm, I kind of want to speak it into existence like I'm not even trying to keep it secret, but like we're working on Treasure Island for Disney. And our whole crack on it is these buddies who like vowed to never get a serious girlfriend 'cause they just wanted to keep surfing and stay on this surf trip, as they mature come to a realization that maybe life could be better with a partner. Or you could want to have a kid or you could want to have money. And these very wild and free ideals of individualism that usually come in the twenties, sometimes mature.

Like we wrote a whole adventure movie about it for Disney. It's so fun, but it's so deeply personal. Hope we get to go make that movie.

Jeff: God, I do too. You two feel like the perfect filmmakers for that movie. I hope it gets made.

Michael: Yeah.

Jeff: Talking about set just a little bit, it feels so ambitious to me to be like, okay, our first feature's done, we crushed it. Now we're gonna go do a shoot in a foreign country with an entire crew and actors who don't speak the same language we do. Like movie number two, game on.

Michael: First I'll say it was so scary. So scary that we actually learned to speak Spanish.

Jeff: Wow.

Michael: It was like a year. I think we had a year because of the pandemic from when we got the money to when we were gonna shoot and it was like, okay, there's actually time to become Spanish speaking.

So it was like six to eight hours a day of studying Spanish. Starting with Duolingo, going to different intensive classes that like business people go to 'cause they're gonna be traveling to Argentina and need to know how to do business in Spanish. To I got like a tutor on Zoom. And we would just talk for three hours every day.

And by the time I showed up to set the Cubans were sort of making fun of me. They're like, you sound like a computer. But it was like loving.

Jeff: Of course.

Michael: We never met any of the cast other than Adria and the Héctor we met on Zoom. Because during the pandemic, the airports in Cuba were closed you couldn't go there. And so we had somebody there, we cast everybody off of WhatsApp. Sometimes they'd get on and the connections were so spotty that. Like even the guy with the curly hair that plays the bass, he just came on, he stood in front of the phone, didn't say anything and we just cast him off of that.

We're like, that's our guy. And he just showed up in the Dominican Republic a few months later. And there was a really cool process where a lot of these Cubans have been through a lot, like politically, where they weren't so sure of if they were being taken advantage of or not. And they showed up and the first couple days they were sort of like, what's going on with these guys? Is this gonna be cool? Is this not gonna be cool? And then, some of them warmed up really quickly. Some of the younger ones warmed up really quickly.

They were really excited. And then there was this guy Rocket, who sort of took three weeks. He had come mostly so that he could pack his bags with Tylenol and Advil and return to Cuba with medications that you can't get there. And that was his whole reason for being there. And he was like, I don't trust any of these Americans. Fuck 'em. And by the end he was like crying and grateful and he like thank you so much, this is one of the best experiences in my life.

Tyler: And to take it even deeper, by the end meaning when he watched the cut of the movie.

Michael: Yeah.

Tyler: He was still like, okay, cool yeah, you guys made a movie. Cute. And then he watched the cut of the movie in Miami and he sat in the movie theater by himself, like an extra 15 minutes. He was like, I just have to digest this. This is really, really special.

Jeff: That's also so parallel with the themes of the movie. Kind of softening the heart of these like jaded punk rockers, trying to make connections.

Michael: It's meta in so many levels. If you think about it, these punk rockers were not allowed to make art in a different language. So it is an interesting, there's a lot of interesting parallels in it.

Jeff: Yeah. It's that detail that, that fills the movie in. Our listeners who are emerging filmmakers, I know this is like a very general question, but when it comes to this set specifically, were there any like new takeaways or lessons that you learned as directors that you'll be excited to bring to your next feature? That maybe felt different from your first time on Peanut Butter Falcon?

Michael: Yeah. I think it's cool, I think you get to learn something every time. This is actually really good for this writing specific podcast. We overshot Peanut Butter Falcon. Like not every scene, but most scenes had a beginning, middle, and an end.

And we got an edit and we had a great editor, Kevin Tent, who's cut Alexander Payne movies.

Jeff: Yeah, he's one of the best.

Michael: Legendary editor and he was like, guys, you have a great movie you just, you're showing too much of it. Pick two or one, like of the three, the beginning, middle, and end. Pick two. Gimme the middle and the end. Gimme the beginning and the middle. Gimme just the beginning. Don't gimme all three. Like when you conclude a tiny arc with a beginning, middle, and an end, you are allowing people to shut it off or like there, there is no question carried across. There's no tension.

Tyler: Yeah. He really pushed us on even ending on questions. He's said, there's a question at the midpoint and you guys can answer. He said don't answer. We were like, oh, okay. He was like, that question will be answered four scenes later and it will make the audience tune in. And you see it with Instagram videos: bet you're wondering how I became a famous podcaster, whatever. Well sit down 'cause I'm about to tell you, whatever that is. So, yeah.

Michael: So we learned a lot from Kevin Tent and even now on the page we'll be sitting there and we'll just be like, hey, let's give this a scene of Kevin Tent edit. Even just on the page before we ever get to set. And then on this one we really got to explore pacing out information to the audience in a way that's not based on movement. But really communicating within the first 15 minutes, that it makes sense that these characters would inject themselves with HIV on purpose for the worldwide audience.

That was really important. But what to omit was super important. And this is what Phil kept hammering on as well. He said you could go into the detail of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which caused $5 billion of aid that was going to Cuba to evaporate and this is why at this moment in 1991, there's, this extreme hunger. And you could get into the understanding of the medical system and like how Castro's laws are, that they're not. There's not like a law that it's illegal to be gay, but you'll go to jail for being gay.

You could spend so much time getting into the nuance of all of it. Or he's like, if you ask the audience to remember 20 things they might remember, they might forget 10 of them and remember the wrong 10. He 's like, If you can skate fast, right, you're talking about you're on a frozen pond. Skate fast on the thin ice and just get the feeling of it. And then be really careful about what you do ask them to remember so they're not spending time remembering things that they don't need to.

And as writers, we all do this, right? If this character is inconsequential you say cowboy number one. If it's an important character, you say Chance. There's these little cues that you give to the audience that I think we really learned a lot on Frikis that is secrets. When does one character know something that another character doesn't? 'Cause we're searching for tension. In a way that like. You guys have seen Frikis, our biggest problem was that we got into sort of Paradise Found. It's sort of a Paradise Lost, Paradise Found story, like The Beach. I love the first half of The Beach. The paradise lost-part of The Beach kind of lost me. I was like the first half of that thing's amazing. So we pushed our paradise found, to be more of a 70% of the movie. And Paradise lost to be like sort of 30%.

Tyler: We pushed our midpoints pretty far and then even stretched those midpoints. Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah, interesting.

Michael: Our recipe a little bit. And then we were searching for tension. So until we had Gustavo's lie, our acts two A into two B started to feel kind of flat. It was fun, but it was like lacking tension and conflict. And that was like to find it in different places like the Hitchcockian bomb under the table.

Jeff: Yeah.

Michael: Just colors everything a little bit different. If they understand that there is this lie that might come out, it buys you 20, 30 minutes of fun where everybody's wondering when is this shoe gonna drop? When is I, I can sit through this fun 'cause I know something's coming.

Jeff: That's so smart. Yeah. Meg, who is the host of the spinoff show that this is based on, talks a lot about how you want a protagonist who wants something, but the great thing about a character who's hiding something is they desperately want that to stay contained. So you're actually creating an active character in the sense that they're actively hiding something that will destroy their community or their world, or in this case, the brotherhood between your two main characters. So it's a really smart way to think about an active protagonist is how can we create something that they actively, that will, the stakes are high if the secret comes out.

The movie is loose in the way it feels, but it's tight in the way that it's plotted. Which I think is like a really elegant magic trick that you guys pulled off. Speaking of post, I've loved the idea of you get different textures of different takes and then you have the lumber you need and you need to build the house in post. Again, I can feel that the movie, it feels collaborative. You can tell that the actors are bringing their own spirit,. But then it does feel like in post your job is to create a coherent movie. What was that experience like for you all in the edit?

Michael: We try not to be indulgent. I think we really in edit try to look at it with audience eyes and not just, oh my gosh, this shot's so beautiful or this performance is great when it lingers.

Think we're really, especially as Tyler alluded to as the social media culture as younger audiences I think are used to a certain pace. And that pace is quickening. And we really don't want things to linger too long. You can get sort of the most value out of something usually within certain amount of time then you push it a little bit, but if you go over that it can kill the energy of the movie. I do think, so there's sort of two processes that make edit work and that's as loose as we are, we do prep the shit out of the movie. And references, like our first movie, we wanted it to feel like a storybook.

So it was all like dolly track and sticks and anamorphics and faded color grade. And this movie, we wanted it to feel immediate and real and punk rock. So it's spherical lenses, so it'd feel like a documentary. It's handheld. There is no dolly track there. Like every shot in this movie is handheld.

Jeff: Lot of closeups.

Michael: Lot of closeups to get the emotion. And this is the other thing that Phil said a lot, he said a movie is closeups and extreme wides and TV is mediums.

Tyler: Blew my mind, this blew my mind by the way, when he said that. So we immediately rescheduled, we went and reshot scenes in wides. We were like, go, let's go get wider.

Michael: Yeah. Let 's get extreme, extreme wides, because even just one extreme wide per scene. Or like even every three scenes, it really opens up the world, especially when you have a cool world.

Jeff: Yeah.

Michael: Like Cuba is the coolest looking world. Show it off a little bit. And you go back and you look at movies like Sicario and there's scenes where they play the whole thing in an extreme wide, and it lets you feel like, holy shit. I want to be a little bit closer to it, but I'm not. And then there's things that are really close and you're like, I'm there. I'm so, I'm so present in this. So we're constantly sharing references and pre-production. We're working, like Santiago Gonzalez this is the first movie he ever shot. And he was on the ground with us for a month before we shot. So we went to every location we basically shotlisted the scenes. And we wanted it to be handheld and rock and roll, but not to a point where it's nauseating.

We still, once we're in the meat of the dialogue, it's sort of standard coverage, but we like to get in into it and out of it with something unexpected. And so we'd do we'd cover the scene and then we'd do what we just call it the Santi special, where he just took the camera and walked through the scene and like unexpected angles and unexpected camera moves from one character to another that we could replace and edit with.

Tyler: Inserts got a lot out, which is a funny thing 'cause I think we really took that from Villeneuve. Villeneuve did Sicario, right?

Jeff: Yeah.

Michael: Yeah.

Tyler: Yeah. There was like inserts of a drain pipe with water running through it. And you're just like, for 10 seconds, and you're like slow pushing and you're like damn. Like you did not, I would've never thought to get that. Never thought to get that. Hands stuff, yeah. Look, to get outta edits with, and clean edits, with inserts.

Jeff: That great.

Michael: And then we had, we had a playlist. We'd play music on set that we think we're gonna score the scene with, or something like it. And we're sharing this with everybody constantly. So we're sharing it with the actors, we're bringing 'em into the edit room, we're showing them scenes so they know what movie they're in.

Jeff: During production?

Michael: During production.

Jeff: Wow.

Michael: Every day.

Jeff: Show them dailies? That is brave.

Tyler: Not, no, no. Not dailies.

Jeff: Edited scenes?

Michael: Cut scenes. Cut scenes.

Jeff: That makes sense, that makes sense.

Tyler: And a little more rare, I think I learned my lesson with this one. We showed Santi a scene that we were just goofing around on and I think it scared him a little bit.

Oh God, like there's no sound, there's no, there's. But the actors, like Eros who played Gustavo, I remember he didn't understand what edit was. He had no clue. And he stood up in the middle of the scene and he goes, I'm the king of the world. And we were just like, yeah, whatever, just cut it out.

And he came up to me that night and was like, hey man, I'm so sorry. And I was like, what, what's wrong? And he was like, I said, I'm the king of the world in the middle of this scene, and I think I ruined your movie 'cause Titanic came out in 1994, and this is 1991. I was like, do you not understand how edit works?

He was like, no. And we were like, come with us. We took him into the room, we showed him a cut scene and then he was like what the fuck is this?

Michael: He thought we just selected, like when we're doing takes.

Jeff: A take.

Michael: You just choose a take and cut it into a movie and there it is.

Jeff: Everything's a one shot for him. That's incredible.

Tyler: Which to be super real to him in some ways, we, I wish we had never told him because.

Jeff: Yeah.

Tyler: He showed up, man, that guy showed up and really, I mean all those actors prepped so well.

Jeff: I will say, I hope you all take this as a compliment. Of everything I loved about the movie. I did leave it being like, this is one of the best acted movies of the year. I was blown. And that a lot of that has to do with your direction and the authenticity of the writing, but it's pound for pound. Every performance is so lived in, I just really was like, these guys are really good directors of actors was kind of my takeaway seeing this movie.

Michael: We favor that, it's intentional. The audio is the most important thing and the performance is the most important thing.

Jeff: Yeah.

Michael: So like when we work with cinematographers we let 'em know, hey we're not doing marks. We're gonna light the scene, we're gonna sacrifice a little bit of a very specific cool shot and a little bit of a dramatic lighting, to chase the performance.

Tyler: And we liked the location. We'll just be like, like even Santi, we were like, so we might move over here, we might move over there and he was like, oh, you just want like the whole location? We're like, yeah. And he was like, okay, all right. We'll do that.

Jeff: I think it's why people go see movies. They want to see incredible performances. And of course all of that is supported by amazing writing and hard work and prep and amazing cinematography but most everyday film goers don't leave a movie being like, wow, that insert was so inspired. They're like, that performance was incredible. That's what we go see movies for.

Michael: And the vibe, I will say the place that we were shooting in the Dominican Republic was very similar to the place in the movie. And you have everybody in hotel rooms right next to each other, just like they were living in the sanatorium right next to each other.

There was a lot of mirroring between what was going on in real life and what was going on in the sanatoriums. My co-producer, Jonathan, had a great question. Jonathan, you can hop in.

Jonathan: We did a survey to see what our listeners are interested in learning more about, and a lot of them wrote back and we have a lot of folks who are writer directors, who would like to be.

And they wanted to know not only how you approach and start thinking about, a writing/directing career, but how do you do that now. Today in this climate when there's so much uncertainty all around us politically, economically? . What if you don't live in LA? What if you don't have money?

Tyler: I will tell you we have an answer. Go do this one thing and that one thing is a proof of concept. We wrote the script for Peanut Butter Falcon. We had it for two years. The problem with, and I'm speaking to like us so I'm projecting, Jeff, which I know you love to do. That's a good callback by the way for writers out there.

The thing about us is that we were coming, we had no managers, no agents, again we were just nobodies. We had written a script we thought was really special. Nobody would read it. It's really hard to get people to read things. It's more challenging to get people to read things now than, in my opinion, ever before.

So this was a time, and things are a little different now, but you could get people to watch like a five minute trailer or proof of concept. People will watch a good trailer. It's like a three minute thing, they'll watch it. So Mike and I went out with a friend, Dave, who ended up producing the film for us and took his camera and we shot like with just the three of us and another buddy. We wrote the film for what we had. We had, I had friends with boats. We had a marsh in my backyard. We had people that were letting us, would let us use old-- there was like things that we had that we wrote the film for so, we could have not been in LA. And we went and we shot a proof of concept and we really honed down on the edit of that proof of concept. I think two and a half weeks of shooting. I know people are like, that's two and a half weeks, but it was like five minutes a day. The best we could do.

Michael: The perfect sunset, daylight. The perfect like, we're scouting for a cornfield in a proof of concept that maybe 10 people will ever see. We're like 15 cornfields in like, there's I heard there's another one two towns, two more towns away. Let's go check that one. So sort of the target was if this doesn't, like every frame of this needs to look like it could be in a movie that plays Sundance or a place like it. Like an independent movie theater. And if it doesn't look like that, we can't show it.

The deal we are making is we're trying to show that this is worth, that this can be a movie. So to hop on what Tyler was saying, most people don't do it.

Tyler: Most people are scared to do it 'cause they oftentimes know they can't deliver on colors. There's so many things I think they're scared of that they won't do it and therefore nobody reads their script 'cause they're like, I don't know what this is.

Michael: And then the other thing is when they do do it and they caveat it, it's like there is no caveats. So they're like, okay, so when I shoot this, it will be sunset. Why didn't you shoot it at Sunset? Like I had something else to do that day.

Then don't show it. Like I, I had a person go and shoot 10 minutes and then I was like I wouldn't show any of this. 'Cause it can take you in two directions. It can either prove that you can make this movie, that like some of the shots that we shot for the proof of concept are in the final movie. Or what Tyler was talking about it can take you in the wrong direction. If somebody watches it and they're like, that doesn't look like a movie, then it's then they're definitely not gonna read your script. And they're definitely gonna think you're not the person that can use their $10,000 to a million dollars to make a movie. So it is the thing of cool, you gotta do it or you can do it, it's one way to do it. And it has to be good.

Tyler: That's part of the game is you gotta go get your hands dirty. And you know, again and I say this very lovingly, but if you're listening to this podcast, make something. Make, go write the script, make sure the script is good. And then go shoot pieces. Think of it as a trailer, you might only need 30 sec, 15, 10 seconds of this one piece.

Michael: So most of what we shot for that Peanut Butter Falcon proof of concept did not hit the standard.

Tyler: 99.9.

Michael: It was an editing exercise of we just need to reshoot it or keep shooting it to hit the standard. But yeah, 99%. If we shot 10 hours of footage, yeah, we cut it down to four minutes and the rest of it did not hit the standard and would've hurt us. But it was like, it was that self-awareness of, shit, I was hoping that was gonna be a cool shot or a cool scene. And it's not.

Jeff: Was it a scene from the movie? Was it like a tone reel? What did the four minutes end up being?

We

Michael: shot 10 scenes and then we shot a bunch of shots for sort of a mood reel, montage, that you were able to track the story. There was a little bit of dialogue, but we ended up breaking it down. We also didn't wanna, like trailers, we talked about at the beginning of this podcast, are so specific we didn't want to trap ourselves into delivering at that level of polish 'cause it's not what we're delivering.

So we did like chapters, we did 45 seconds of this scene, 45 seconds of that scene, 45 seconds of that scene and a minute montage.

Jeff: What's so smart about it is I feel like it's proof that you have taste. I think producers are most worried do these directors have good taste? Because like ultimately that's something that kind of can't be taught and is really like the foundation for anything good.

And so it's like a litmus test. It's a three minute litmus test. Be like, okay, these filmmakers know what they're doing and they have a sense of artistry. And so I trust my own time to now read what they're making and maybe give them money.

Michael: Yeah. I mean, 'cause the other notes I'm sure a lot of your listeners get is like, when they do get a read and if people do like it, they're like, yeah, it's execution dependent, cast dependent of whether I'll give you money or not. So even if you do cross the barrier and you do have a script that people like, you still gotta probably show 'em something before you get it made. Shia LaBeouf didn't read the script when he agreed to our movie. He watched this reel and he said, I wanna make that. And we said, okay. And we sent him the script after that and he prepped and he like came in knowing every word, like he was incredible to see how he works. But he agreed to it just based off the five minutes of footage.

Tyler: I can sit here and name the amount of things that I'm like, okay, Bottle Rocket. Wes Anderson's first film, which they made, they shot a scene. They shot like a short film, essentially a short film.

Jeff: Whiplash.

Tyler: Whiplash. Great example. Whiplash is a great example of like, how do I get this made? Okay, I do it like this. Chazelle is Chazelle. He went and did La La Land. There's so many things where it's just do it. Just do it. And if it's bad, reshoot it.

Jonathan: Did you have actors in the, the four minutes? Like you hadn't cast Shia yet?

Michael: Zak played Zak.

Jeff: Oh, that makes sense.

Michael: We got a couple local fishermen to do local fishermen things. But it was mostly, it was also showcasing Zak. I mean, one of the roadblocks for that movie at that time disabled leads were scary to people. Like they wanted to see that it would be fun to watch this guy.

Jeff: So our next segment is called Scene Study, where we compare what was written on the page originally to what ended up making it into the final cut. Our goal with this segment is to show you all how our production evolves over time. The scene I chose for today is this really beautiful baseball scene in the movie.

The reason I chose this scene is because it feels so alive and improvisational in the movie, but of course all that work begins on the page. So Tyler and Michael have very generously provided both the English and Spanish language versions of that scene. I've included in the description below and I would love for you all watching to follow along.

For those of you who have the movie, it takes place around 42 minutes into the film.

Michael: We deviated a lot. There was a lot of discoveries on that day. It felt awesome. It was a far away location. This was like a location that we were really committed to and we shot only that baseball scene that day. And it gave us a ton of time to play. And it kept the other days, some other days had six scenes 'cause we were, in this, in a similar location. But we're like, we really want to sell that this is rural Cuba. And this was sort of the only baseball field that felt like that to us. And it was one of those Phil Lord cinematic moments.

Okay, we're gonna be able to get extreme wides here. We're gonna be able to get a sense of scope. We're gonna be able to sell mountains like they are in the Pinar del Río region of Cuba.

Tyler: We're gonna show that the lead characters is actually growing and it's a, it's not just a big, it's a plot piece too. It helps show that he's growing.

Michael: There's a lot of "therefore." I don't know if you guys have talked about this on the podcast, but it's therefore leading into the next scene, even if it's doesn't seem related at all. But to mature, the coming of age story that is the backbone of the story of Gustavo this was an important scene for him to be welcomed into the group and gain his confidence enough not only to have the love story that develops, but also to take the action that he takes in the bar. And it's you can't have the guy who was meek in Havana just all of a sudden take, take some of these actions. You've gotta build him up. And this was one of the, like the wins that therefore allowed him to do the other things.

Tyler: I will say when we were shooting it we literally let people play. That was one thing I remember talking about with Mike. I was like, this is, we're just playing, like we're just having fun, like everybody knew their role and nobody's trying to outshine anybody. And the catcher, the character of Rocket, well he's just playing. Talking shit, having fun.

Michael: And everybody was laughing on set and we're just like, oh my, keep doing that. Keep doing that.

Jeff: What I want our audience to see is on the page, the scene is a beautiful job of teaching the reader why the scene is there and like you said, how it's kind of an initiation for Gustavo. Like it's his, like he's in the club now moment. But the way it's shot is so alive and every phase of production has a purpose and we can feel that sense of play and freedom that was happening on set in the final cut.

Tyler: Adria was supposed to be just cutaways because we didn't want, she's our movie star. We didn't wanna have her on set, just doing sort of--

Michael: It was so hot. It was so hot that day.

Tyler: It was like a hundred. It was warm. And she came in and she was like, what am I doing? I was like, just sitting over there and we'll get some cutaways and you can go home. And she was like, no, I wanna do something. And I was like, what do you wanna do? And she was like, I dunno, I wanna tackle Héctor and Paco. And I was like, you wanna just spear tackle him? And she was like, yeah, spear tackle. And I was like, then do it. Go for it. I don't know, just have fun. We were really just we just want people to have fun and play.

Like I think there's a real energy to that. And so she was, even off camera I was watching her just. Camera's not on her camera's facing this direction and she's over here facing totally-- she was still doing it all day. Tackling him, having the time of her life. Yeah, it was we just let people have fun, man.

I think people find stuff in there when you let 'em. We're not script perfect directors. Like most of the time the mistakes are really good and the finger quotes mistakes are really special. And that's where a lot of your special moments come from. And so if I was giving any advice, which nobody asked me for so I don't know why Jeff, I even brought it up, I would just be like, man, don't get caught up in the like, it's not word perfect. It's not, I wrote an ellipses so therefore you need to pause there. You can really let actors, good actors and the great ones, you can really just let them inform, let them have some space.

Michael: We used to write a hundred fifteen, a hundred twenty five page scripts, but now it's give us a 95 page script. And omitting things that are added on set and do make the movie better, but are omitted for the read is sort of an art that we're curating right now. We have three scripts we're working on right now, and we just took two of 'em down from 120 to 98 pages and don't really miss much. It's that exercise of, oh there was some really good creative writing about what this island looked like and the color of the coral, but it didn't matter, the character didn't matter to the plot. It sort of informed the look of the landscape, but we'd already informed the look of the landscape three pages earlier so you're still, your audience is still there.

That's been our biggest thing right now. Even if we have reluctant executives on an 120 page script and they give us a bunch of notes and we just make it shorter but even push back on most of the major notes, they're just like, oh my God, it's 700% better. Now it's really singing, it fucking moves, it's a page turner. I cannot emphasize enough how many positive results we've seen delivering scripts under a hundred pages.

Tyler: Yeah, big movies too. Just trying to get 'em in at 99 pages. We got submitted a script the other day and Mike, I think it was 136 pages and I opened it up and I had a moment where I was like. I'm not saying 136 page movie is bad or. I just was like, holy shit, these guys really. 136 is a lot.

Jeff: It's so true. I mean, whether or not we wanna admit it, the first thing all of us do if we get sent material is scroll to the bottom, look at the PDF numbers on the top and look to see how many pages it is. That's what everyone does, whether or not we wanna admit it.

This has been so great. The last thing we ask is something that each of you have seen lately that you really loved and why.

Tyler: I felt like Severance is really good right now. The first four episodes of Severance, I was like, ooh, this kind of plays like a horror film in a weird way. And I feel like I've been watching a little more tv.

Michael: I really loved Sing Sing. I thought it was awesome. I'm always drawn toward things that are done outside, outside the system. I really love the way that movie came together. I had the privilege of meeting some of the filmmakers and actors. I really appreciated the way they approached making art. They tore that script up three times to page one-it, 'cause it wasn't good enough. They were really committed to it over time.

They all took, very low pay to make it happen in a very equal, really interesting way of filmmaking. And I just think all of that comes through and then the story is really emotional as well for me. Like I thought the performances were great. I thought, holy shit, they shot this in 16 days. It looks phenomenal. And then I've seen it three times in theaters now. It was just at different festivals where it was at and I was like, I'm gonna go see that again. And can't wait for the Q&A 'cause these guys are always dropping wisdom.

But there's a scene in there where this guy is talking about his dog that died, like he comes back. And I just fucking cry for 15 minutes, I like can't even focus on the rest of the movie 'cause I'm just like, this dog dying scene is so perfectly like not anything to do with the plot. It's just so perfectly done that I don't know, I love it.

Jeff: What an awesome conversation. Thank you so much to Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz for coming on our very first edition of Indie Film Craft with me, Jeffrey Crane Graham. Their movie Los Frikis Drops tomorrow on TVOD on all platforms. In case you couldn't tell from the interview, I really love the movie. It's really well made, it's emotionally deep and features a beautiful central relationship between these two brothers who are finding their way in a really turbulent time in Cuba.

Watch it with me. We're like a film club. I love it. In the meantime, I wanna thank my co-producer Jonathan, for helping me put this show together. I, of course, also want to thank Meg LeFauve and Lorien McKenna for giving me permission to do this show and drop it in our feed. And before we go, please remember your dreams don't require anyone else's permission.