Other Pieces in the Filmmaking Puzzle

This is Movie Meltdown with Jeffrey Reddick and the awesome Brian. This is Jeffrey Reddick with Brian, and we are freaking rocking it out in Louisville, Kentucky. Fighting people off. Yep, left and right. We are so busy.

Swinging elbows and kicking crotches. Even lady crotches. Well, that was last night. That was at the after party. Stuff at the hotel.

Anyway, man. Alrighty. Me and the Russian hookers. It's showtime. The following feature has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America.

It is intended for mature audiences and parental discretion is advised. Our nuclear reactor. Pumping out one million kilowatts of power. Five more cooling in the containment chamber. To your stations, we have a movie meltdown.

Hey, antsy! No running in the hallway. What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown. I'm Brian. I am Misty.

And we are coming to you live via digital recording from here at Fright Night Film Fest in Louisville, Kentucky. Hells yeah we are. So this week we're going to be talking to a couple of different people. And over the years we've talked to a lot of different actors and directors. But I was thinking there are a lot of other really interesting and important people working behind the scenes that put these movies together.

So this week I thought we would talk with two of those people who are coming from different areas of the process but are essential pieces to the filmmaking puzzle. One a successful writer working in Hollywood and actually launched a very popular franchise. No less. And the other, well now technically Leslie Hoffman is an actress. And if you know her on screen, it's possibly as the infamous hall monitor in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street.

But once you look a little deeper into her career, you find out she worked for years as a stuntwoman. And that I was fascinated with and I wanted to learn a little bit more about that. So now let's go talk with Leslie and find out more about her life working in movies. All right, we're here with Leslie Hoffman. I've talked to a lot of people in film, but I haven't talked to many that have done much in the stunt world.

So I guess I wanted to start off with, you know, what, How you got into that, what was your beginnings getting into movies overall? Was it in stunts to begin with? Well, actually, I wanted to be an actress all of my life. I can't remember a time that I didn't want to be, I'll say, in the entertainment industry. But then in 12th grade, I discovered stunt work.

You could get to act, but you got to roll on the ground and fire the guns and all that kind of stuff. Where were you based out of at that point? Was it California? I'm from Saranac Lake, New York, which is way upstate New York. I mean, it's almost Canada.

So I guess what were those first, once you got into it, was it independent productions or how did you get into the stunt work? And then I guess how did you then spiral that into getting some acting roles? Actually, that's an interesting question. I was very, very lucky. The first movie I did was Two Minute Warning, and it was a SAG film.

So I got into the union immediately, and all my work has been union films and television as well. I mean, that's a big thing. part of it too with any of the filmmaking is whether or not you get into a union and how you go about all those. So I guess that's a huge thing to figure out once you're up and coming in that system. I think early on I'd seen you were in the car. That seems like a really...

We just recently watched that on the show. You remember that I was. In the car? And I was like, that seems like you might have almost gotten killed. Those kids were out there in the field with a car tearing around.

I was like, how close to getting run over were you? Well, actually, it wasn't the car that almost got me. It was the horses. That's true. There were a lot of horses.

We were leading horses down the track. And they stampeded the horses, and the saddle caught my elbow, and it spun me around to the ground. I mean, it was just dust everywhere. You couldn't see anything. And all I could do was cover up my head and hope that I didn't get trampled by a horse.

Good Lord. So that... That's not good at all. No, that wasn't good at all. Well, another stuntman, the horse ran straight into his body.

I mean, the horses were more dangerous. They should have called it the horse, not the car. Horses, you don't mess around with. But another funny story, because you've brought up the car, is that I was brought in for an audition, and it was really funny because There was a second stuntwoman with me. And we're in our 20s by then.

And he looks to the assistant director and he says, Now, do they look like high school students? I mean. On TV and in movies, usually you're pushing 30 and they still cast you in high schools. Right. You can get away with that.

Right, right. But I just found it so funny to... Now, do they look like high school students? Yeah, they have to ask. Well, don't you know what high school students look like?

It's best not to ask at that point. Well, I mean, he said yes, and we were both hired for the job. That's awesome. When you got in... pretty early on working with Robert Zemeckis on some of his stuff, too. It's like a Wendy Jo double.

Oh, his first. He said, I want to hold your hand, or before that. Boy, you know more than I do. Wait, here, let me ask you. I haven't done anything.

Robert Zemeckis, I believe, wrote I Want to Hold Your Hand, and I stunt double Wendy Jo Sperber jumping out of the car they're having a contest on the radio, and she knows the answer, and she's begging them to stop the car. And, you know, if you don't stop the car, I'll jump. And you jump. Yeah, the car was going about 30, 35 miles an hour, and I jumped out of the car and ran to the phone booth. And then there was other.

I. Didn't... double her but but they actually used me in a couple different other scenes in the movie uh um bobby duchico had a wig had a beatles wig and they were in a limousine they were actually in a hearse but you know a limousine it's still sort of a limousine yeah and he waves the wig out the window and he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to hold your hand. And the crowd that's been held back by the police just go nuts and they run and they jump on the car and then the car takes off. And I'm one of the people that fall off the car.

Then, uh, the last scene that I was in, um, was actually at the Ed Sullivan show. And, uh, I fainted and rolled down the stairs, but, uh, Yeah, yeah, I mean, and interestingly enough, in the movie 1941... Early Spielberg there. Well, it was Spielberg, but I did the motorcycle sidecar jump. And, I don't know, Steven Spielberg was busy directing some other part of the movie...

And Robert Zemeckis was the director that night. So, I mean, he directed the car jump or the motorcycle side car jump. Well, I guess you at this point get a lot of notoriety for the Nightmare on Elm Street. How did you get involved with Wes Craven? I think he's one of the best directors I've ever worked with.

I mean, I've never... I worked with him on three films. Nightmare on Elm Street Deadly Friend and Scream 2. And he's the only director that comes up to you afterwards and says, you did a really great job. I really appreciate it.

And I've never had any other director that's done that. And did you just get... You were already doing stunts, so you got to be the hall monitor in Nightmare? Well. The way you get stunt work is through a stunt coordinator.

And the stunt coordinator called me up and said, how would you like, it was a low-budget film. He said, you know, I have a day on this horror film. Would you like to work? Oh, well, let me check my calendar. No.

Okay, I'll tell you. I'll think about it. No, of course I said yes. And it was kind of interesting. You go into this high school, and there's this slime trail down the middle of the floor, and you're just kind of going, okay, okay.

Slime trail. I wonder what this is supposed to be. I mean, but again, as a stunt woman, you, you, you rarely get a script. So, you know, uh, um, Wes came up to me and he said, okay, she's Nancy or, or Heather's good around the corner and bump into you and you fall to the ground and you're supposed to say, where's your past? Um, Now, I'm the one that goes, it was my own, where's your pass?

I mean, I don't know. That just came out of my mouth that way. Screw your pass. And then, so that was one scene. And now they're filming the next scene, and I have the Freddy sweater and the claws.

And Wes comes up to me and he says, okay, I'm letting you know right now, your voice isn't going to be in the movie for this scene. Your voice is not going to be in the movie. Robert Englund's voice, he's going to dub over your voice. But I still need you to say, hey, Nancy, no running in the hallway, he, he, he. So, you know, I mean, if I just stood there with my mouth closed, it'd be even stranger.

But again, I just stood there with that smile, and I said, hey, Nancy, no running in the hallway, he. He, he. And actually, it. Several conventions ago, Robert Englund, I don't know how the question came up, but he didn't actually dub my voice in until he was in New York City. So for the first time, you know, he saw this scene, and like I say, in a little whatever sound studio...

He said that line, and I'm told that it's just such an iconic scene that it freaks out. When people see that scene, it just freaks them out. And I don't know. I guess I never thought about it. That's one of the weird dream sequences.

So, yeah, that should do. Of the scenes that freak people out, you worked on Deadly Friend. Were you there when they did the basketball stunt? That was more effective than stunt, but I didn't know if you saw that going on. Yeah, that was a strange one.

I mean, they had me stunt double Annie Potts, but I mean, I'm not going to stand there and let a basketball hit me in the head. So, I mean, it was more that I stood there and they started to throw the basketball at me, but I ducked out of the way, but then I... I mean, in all honesty, I'm not even sure why they had me there. They could have just had the dummy with the exploding head. That's an amazing effect.

I don't think I've recovered from it since. Yeah, yeah. Well, and the only other one I was going to ask, this is sort of a thing I try to ask everybody, because filmmaking, you get yourself in such weird situations. I would think doing stunts, you're probably getting even weirder. So, I mean, what is one of the most.

Just like you're in the middle of it and be like, how did I get myself into like dangerous or just weird or like one of the weirdest stories of something you ended up doing? I'd rather say it this way is that, uh, the most dangerous that there are two most dangerous stunts is that I actually fell off the love boat and it was 78 feet to water. Uh, I don't think I'm going to do that ever again. Was that a plan to stunt? Yeah.

Well, what's interesting was the stunt coordinator, he looks over the edge of the boat. You know, you believe the stunt coordinator. He goes, oh, it's only 40 feet. After I did the stunt, they measured it, and it was 78 feet. People probably fall off those boats all the time.

That's just drunken parties, though. You never see them again. Right. The memory that I have of it, though, is that this young actor came up to me afterwards and said, that was a really great thing you did. And then later that night I went home and this new show called Three's Company is on.

And. It was John Ritter that said, you know, you did such a wonderful stunt. I had no idea who he was. That's crazy. So it's a fond memory.

Yeah. The other, I'll call it most dangerous stunt, was the motorcycle sidecar. Yeah. Because, well, I'll give it away right away. The mechanics put the gas line... over the metal bar that had the wooden seat on it.

So every time we drove up this ramp, we'd run out of gas. And no one knew what... Yeah, they thought the engine was broken or something. But then the stuntman would get out of the seat and they'd push the sidecar back to the beginning and it would start up. And we'd try again and we'd run out of gas and, you know, we couldn't...

We couldn't hit the ramp. Finally, finally, I don't know, maybe he just got disgusted. The stuntman just went for it, and we ran out of gas on the ramp. We went off the ramp, and we hit the back end of the stake bed truck. Now, his car, now, I don't know what they could have done for me, but they had padding down below for the stuntman.

The car flipped over, and luckily, you know, he landed on the pad, so he didn't hit his head on the street. But just pure dumb luck. I slid onto the back of the steak bed truck. Had we hit any lower, I probably would have been decapitated. I mean, so again, that's not a stunt I.

It's a dangerous job you have. Yeah, because you never know. I mean, you sort of know what your body can do when you're doing a stunt. It's those outside, yeah. Oh, I worked on Falcon Crest, and this beam was supposed to fall down from the ceiling.

And the first time. I. Don't remember if we were filming it or they were practicing it, But the beam hits the floor and it breaks in half, which it wasn't supposed to do. And then the prop guys, you know, they, I don't know, they glued or whatever extra pieces of wood to the beam and they put it up and they said, oh, you know, it's really strong now. It's not going to break in half.

Well, at this point, I don't trust anything. And so I left. A little earlier than I would have if I had trusted the beam. And by gum, if that beam didn't break in half again. I mean, so is it intuition?

I mean, you just. I think at that point it becomes experience of knowing once you do enough of that, I would think you know what not to trust or what to get. You pick up some sort of level of knowing when this doesn't seem right to me. It's a little bold, probably. Right.

I mean, I wasn't hurt, but the beam sure didn't stay in one piece either. Well, I think that was most of what we had. Did you have anything else you... I don't know. Are you still doing stunts at this point?

At this point, I'm retired out. My back is bad and... I mean, I've never been taken off the set in an ambulance or anything like that. But I guess... Well, think of any athlete.

I mean, you just have so many years in a career and your neck or your back or whatever start hurting and... I think. This job takes a toll on you. Right, right. But I'm glad I did it.

I'm glad I was a stuntwoman. I think the most amazing thing is to be here and Nightmare on Elm Street is a low-budget film. and yet it's probably one of the most iconic movies that I did other than but there's really I was in Naked Gun and I was Queen Elizabeth going down the banquet table and You know, usually people ask me, oh, have I seen you in anything? And you start naming off shows, Fantasy Island, Love Boat, whatever, Rockford Files. Well, I didn't really watch it, you know. Or they might just ask, you know, what movies have you been in?

And I said, well, do you love horror or do you love comedy? Because... You know, I've also had that. Oh, I don't watch horror films. Or I'm not into comedy.

But the minute I get an answer, then I'll say, well, did you see Naked Gun? Well, I was Queen Elizabeth going down the banquet table, you know, with the legs up in the air. And they remember that. I would think first and foremost, everybody knows you from the car. And then, you know, those other...

The most popular, the car. Yeah. Well, thank you for talking with us today. It's really interesting to hear. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. I wanna hold your hand Oh please, say to me Let me be your. Man We have just seen rushes direct from Hollywood of pictures being released in the coming weeks. And we are proud to announce that this theater will soon bring you the greatest array of pictures ever to reach our screen.

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If you enjoy being really scared, if you're not afraid of the unknown, if you've found a friend in fear, then we have a friend for you. Hi. Samantha The director who unleashed Freddy in Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven, now brings you his most frightening creation. Get out of my house! Hey, girl.

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Tweaked Audio. Sounds better. Aren't you something to admire? Cause you're shining something like a mirror. And I can't help but.

Notice You reflect in this heart of mine If you ever feel alone and The grand makes me hard to find This world and I'm always There and now on the other side Cause. With your hand in my hand In a pocket full of salt. I can tell you there's no. Place we couldn't go Just let your hand on the past I'll. Be trying to pull you through You just gotta.

Be strong Cause I. Don't wanna lose you now I'm looking right at the other half of me We finished watching movies at the drive-in. And that's the thing. We didn't really go into the final review because we were midway in last time we recorded. So do you want to finalize the deal here?

Should we talk about the one that was a plan when we started the show last time and how much it sucked? Well, I mean, you can hear us in the show looking up going, what's going on in this? It was an entire movie of what the hell is going on and i don't think us missing the first couple minutes made that much of. A difference that was why i chose that one because that was the one i didn't really i'd kind of seen the dvd cover i knew what it looked like but i didn't even know those people were in it truthfully. As we sat there i didn't know olivia munn was in it until i like five minutes before the movie started i'm like what the hell is this movie what is this and i looked it up and i'm like holy shit olivia munn oh my god joe mchale See, what.

The hell was he doing in it? Like, every time I'd look up and he'd have a baseball cap on backwards and I'd just be like, who is this guy in this movie? And spoiler alert, he dies horribly. He is the worst dying person I have ever seen. It's like one of those exaggerated.

That's a spoiler even for me because I wasn't paying attention enough to know he got killed. Joel McHale died. He got killed by that one guy. All I know is I... realized pretty early on I'd made the right call as to which one we were going to talk during. Because that was a Deliver Us From Evil.

I keep wanting to call it Deliver Us From Ava, which is a movie, like a really bad movie, with Leighton Gabriel Union and LL Cool J in Deliver Us From Ava. If you say so. Or Eva. Has nobody heard of this but me? Deliver Us From Ava.

I know it's a movie. Don't look at me like that. So let's move on from the movie that we talked through the whole time. And we spent most of the time trying to figure out what the hell is Eric Bana's actual voice? What is his actual accent?

Isn't he New Zealand-y? Or Australian? He's Australian. We had to look it up in the middle of the movie. And what the hell accent was Olivia Munn trying to pull off?

Because his boyfriend's like, is she Puerto Rican? I don't know. Because they're all in New York. Because she's like, the whitest Asian person I've ever seen. And yet, she was talking about this accent that was like, bad New York Puerto Rican.

Well, and that was what, like the Eric Vanna one. Like, first of all, I couldn't figure out what his real accent is supposed to be. And then, he was doing one that, I guess they're in Brooklyn, right? So, it was supposed to be a New York accent. But I swear, every once in a while, I'll be like, That was Boston.

That was a bastardized Boston word thrown in the middle of a bad New York accent. I'm like, what is he doing? So confusing. That movie was horrible. Well, that's the thing.

I just kind of ignored it, and we sat there and talked the whole rest of the time after we finished recording it. We ignored the whole rest of that movie. But moving on to the feature number three, I did pay attention to for good reason. It was awesome. What's the title on this one?

Oculus. Before I say it wrong. oculus i'm always like octopussy it might have been octopussy i don't know. It's oculus with the oh so adorable uh karen gillen it's kind of adorable i'm still pretty sure her hair was fake even though we proved that it probably wasn't fake but it looks fake the way she swings that damn ponytail was such sass sassy that's a sassy ass ponytail it kind of was Super sassy. That's the thing I even noticed. You're usually looking for that thing.

Hell yeah. I should have been noticing other things, but I was noticing her sassy ponytail, so. I don't know what that means. She was pretty damn hot either way. She was swinging that shit.

She had some sass. That was one mighty sassy ponytail. Good lord. So, aside from the ponytail, what was your take on it? See, I'm surprised that I like her because she is a ginger and she is inherently soulless, but.

I don't know she makes it work she does Okay, whatever. But I really like this movie. I mean, it's hard for me to watch a movie and not be like, oh, well, this is exactly how it's going to end. Let me break it down for you. Oh, this is what they're doing.

I mean, you kind of get that with most, especially horror, because it's such a specific genre that like, everything's been done there have become a lot of things that are just contrived now and like everybody's just going for a thing that's popular and like this it seems like it's got a few ways it could be taking that and it doesn't like it does its own thing and it's kind of a different spin on all these you know there are you know the setting up cameras thing could turn out being like a cinema verite kind of thing or another paranormal activity because those they do nothing but set up cameras but like it doesn't go down that road it doesn't go down the normal ghost movie road. To me, it takes a very different path than I expected.

It's hard to surprise me in a movie. I've seen so many things and it's hard to not know exactly where it's going to end. It kept me guessing the entire time. I'm like, alright, is she fucking nuts? Am I nuts?

I don't even know at this point. I'm going with yes on that one. But yeah, it's like, Even at the end, I'm still like, okay, I'm still not entirely sure what the hell just happened, but I kind of like it. It keeps you guessing. It's like I didn't see the end coming, even though I kind of knew.

I kind of knew it probably wouldn't go well for people, but you didn't know who and where and exactly how and the way that it does it. You're like, yep, that's kind of a cool way to round things out in this movie. Yeah, I like that it kept me guessing and that it wasn't so... predictable as all fucking horror movies are today. You watch it and as soon as it starts, you're like, alright, we know exactly who's going to die and who's going to be the survivor and what's going to happen and how it's all going to play out. You can pretty much play it out in your head before it actually happens.

Whereas this one, you're like, oh, wait, hold on a second. Nope. And it takes a It doesn't take a traditional path to it because it keeps jumping back and forth in time. And it starts to do it almost more often as you get closer to the end of the movie. So it really does kind.

Of keep you on your toes. Because they're reaching their point where they're not sure what's going on. Because he's, like, convinced himself of certain things. And she's telling him he's wrong. And then by the end, she's, yeah.

I think of the basic premise of the movie. It's about, you know. a boy and his sister and their flashbacks say that a tragedy occurred in their past. Someone dies. A lot of people died. Several people died and it involves this mirror.

That's the most basic you can get. This is like years later they've tracked the mirror down. All the sister has because the brother's been in like a crazy house or something. Or a boarding school. You couldn't really tell.

He just went away and they did a lot of retraining his brain kind of stuff yeah brainwashing. Hell yeah but anyway so it's like it gets to the point where you're because you know he spent his entire life thinking that he made it up that he's crazy you know and then you get to the sister who's oh no it's really you're crazy now for thinking that's crazy. You know she's like they have brainwashed you and they made you forget all the stuff that really happened and then he's like no it never happened like that and so yeah it It's an interesting little dynamic they have going there because they still like normally if it was any other relationship you know they were just some person they didn't know they'd be like screw you I don't have to listen to this and leave but they are brother and sister and they do have this like bond that like they're gonna be there for each other even when they disagree with each other so it kind of forces them to be jammed into that house and to deal with all that stuff even when they don't want to deal with it.

So yeah I like that I like that it it was it was it seemed fresh to me the movie that it wasn't so incredibly predictable, and that I spend a lot of time not knowing what the hell's going on, or who the hell's crazy, or if it is all in her head, or is it not in her head? Well, and I like that it sort of grounds it in the real world for most of the movie, to the point where, like, you start to see, like, okay, yeah, it's this creepy thing going on, but there are also these somewhat normal reasons. Like, you know, once they start questioning what's going on with the father in the flashbacks, They're like, well, yeah, in most of these situations, this happens and this happens. So it's like, oh, well, maybe this is just a normal family disturbance going on, and it's not something paranormal or anything.

But it gives it just enough of a real-world spin that you're like, oh, I guess this stuff could actually happen in the real world. But now it's like, feel free. Fun. People don't want to talk to us. We were trying to flag down our neighbor, but she wandered off.

She wouldn't have known of our shenanigans. No one does, really. I know. But no, I kind of like that. I like any time it makes you, like, once it's, like, you know, the haunting and there's CGI ghosts in your face the whole time, you know, it's like, you immediately kind of write that off.

But when it starts questioning that thing you were saying, like, am I just crazy? You know, it gives it just enough of a real-world feel as to, like, a rational reason why maybe this happened in the backstory or why this happened when... I don't know. I always like that part when it gives you a little doubt in your mind as to what could actually happen versus weird paranormal things. And I like that there wasn't any CG that I noticed.

I mean. Not really. It was all completely practical effects, it seemed like, to me anyways. There wasn't a point where I'm like, oh, what the hell is that? That's so fake looking, you know?

Because there's, you know, there's not goosy ghouls jumping out at you or anything for the most part. For the most part. There's a little creepy glowing action. I really like the glowing action. It was kind of creepy.

I remember the glowing eyes. It's very brief, but when you meet the creepy characters, there's a little glowing. It's kind of creepy. I don't know that I remember. The glowing eyes.

Oh, the glowing eyes. Yeah. But it still wasn't... It wasn't distracting. But it wasn't ridiculous.

It was just, whoa, what was that? And then usually it moves on. It didn't take you out of it where you're like, oh, wait a second. Hold on now. That's just not right.

It's just creepy. They're convincingly creepy when they work all that stuff in. I liked it. And I was like, trying to figure out who everybody was. Because I'm like, hey, it's that one guy from that.

Or hey, it's that one guy from One Tree Hill. See, I immediately knew he was from One Tree Hill. I don't know if I should admit that out loud. I did too, but I wanted to double check. The first half of that series is pretty entertaining.

Until I got too soap opera-y. Until there wasn't enough Hillary in it. There should be way more Hillary. She married that dude. Yeah, she had his baby, didn't she?

What's his name? Jeffrey Dean Morgan. There you go, that guy. The Winchester dad. Odd couples.

What are you going to do? I don't get it. Whatever. I don't know where we're going. I really liked Oculus.

I would definitely recommend it. Two thumbs up. That's what I'm saying. So there's our horror movie recommendation for the episode. Hell yeah.

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Hey guys, it's the repeater from Tower of Technobabble and we're getting ready to do our next show and I thought it might be cool for you to look behind the scenes. And see how the magic happens. In fact, Conduit is getting Towerbot ready right now as we speak. Approaching Singularity. Avengers.

Bacon. Batman. Bigfoot. Cartoons. Catwoman.

Comics. Conspiracies. Doctor Who. Green Lantern. Hoaxes.

Mars. Monkeys. Movie Reviews. Myths. NASA.

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Star Wars prequels. Oh, God, no. Superman. Got it. Transformers.

Got it. Troll Hunter. Got it. Twilight. That.

UFOs. Got it. Urban legends. That's weird tales. Got it.

Weirdos. Got it. Tune in at www.toweroftechnobattle.com and see what happens. Hi, everybody. I'm Tony Todd.

You're listening to Movie Meltdown. Pay attention and enjoy the conversations, the unique conversations. It's part of your problem, you know. You haven't seen enough movies. All of life's riddles are answered in the movies.

And now, on with the show. Down in the graveyard, we'll have that frisk. The Esme's sweet, the Esme's sick. He never smiles, his mouth merely twists. The breath in my lungs.

Feels clanging and thick. But I know his name is called Mr. Big. And one of the things he's gonna. Say to you.

It is Jeffrey Reddick. So, okay. I try to talk to people and get like the inside track as to how, you know, you get into the business. I would say rule one, don't be from Kentucky. But I'm from Kentucky.

But you're from Kentucky. I'm from East and Kentucky. That's the question. How do you get out of the boonies of Kentucky and actually make it into the film industry? Well, there's one simple answer.

No, there's not a simple answer actually. Um, There are probably a couple things I would say. One, stay in school. Get an education. I mean, I went to Berea College in Kentucky, majored in theater.

I have a friend there right now. It's a great college. It really is. There's nothing around it from what I hear. Richmond.

She comes back home, she's just like, oh my God, there's nothing to do. Yeah, you can make crafts. Lots of crafts. But it's a really, they're actually a really great college. And I used, you know, I was a sophomore there and I went to New York for a summer internship studying acting.

And I got an internship at New Line Cinema and ended up staying in New York. But I wouldn't have had that opportunity if I hadn't gone on to college. So I always tell people, A, because I talk to so many people who just want to kind of get from point zero to 100 in like a year or two. And it's like, no, you've got to. Occasionally that happens.

Not very often. But it's such the rare exception that you should plan that it's not going to happen. So. Starting out, did you plan on getting into writing? I actually wanted to act.

That was my first dream. So I studied theater at Berea, moved to New York, lucked into getting an agent pretty much two weeks into being there. But this was back in the early 90s, and they didn't know what to do with me because I'm biracial. And the woman was like, well, you're kind of like an ethnic Michael J. Fox.

And I don't know how. Weirdest thing ever. Yeah. Michael j fox is cool but but then she's like but you know if you rap or play basketball i could cast you but i just don't know what to do with you weren't you practicing those i know i don't know writing and learning things. And then the cosby show went off the air and i was like well there was my only shot at acting so so i so i decided to get into writing after that um so you know i knew i always knew i wanted to be in the entertainment industry but That's one of the lessons you learn as you're muddling your way through life is you've got to roll with the punches.

Is it something that you've actually found suited you better in the long run anyway? I think sometimes people get into that and they have one thing in mind and then they get in there and go, oh, I don't really want to be a director. I want to be a cinematographer. And they realize they're really... They're taken more with that thing once they get in the middle of it and realize, oh, directing's a lot of trouble over here.

I want to do this. Yeah. You know what I know? I still have the acting bug. I think it's something you probably have the itch for or you don't.

You've turned up in several of your movies. Yeah. And I want to do that more. But I just directed my first short, and now I want to direct. And that stems from a lot of people butchering my...

Not a lot. I shouldn't say a lot of people. That's a horrible thing to say. But a lot of my scripts not turning out how I'd written them. And so the only way to really control that is to direct your own stuff, which at this.

Point we're getting to that. We're getting back to almost an artist feeling with film because everything can be done. So single, like once you go shoot the footage, everything from there on, you can do on your laptop at this point, including distribution to some extent. So it's, It's changed the rules. It's changed the rules a lot.

But it's also cluttered the market a lot, too. Massively. Because everybody thinks they can make a movie. And they can. And everybody can.

Whether or not it's watchable is a different story. That's the case. Yeah, definitely. Well, as you get into writing, because this is when I hear a lot of people working in the industry, and it's funny, people on the outside probably think they have some sort of feeling. But I think it's very different once you're on that side.

So I'll ask you, like, what is... the process you go through as far as like actually making a living writing for film because i'm sure it's different than even writing for any other situation well it is because um you just never know what's going to happen with a project and you know you end up selling the copyright to your your work away so you don't have any ownership after after the first movie gets done so you know i've been fortunate enough to at least sell things you know and i've had you know a few things produced and thankfully they keep making final destination sequels so i Thank you, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Make more. But, you know, you just have to keep working. You just have to keep working.

My question is almost more the process itself. Are you constantly, like, selling treatments or doing rewrites? Or is it all of these things? It's kind of all of the above. I mean, I'm constantly, like, working on new projects.

I'm trying to move projects forward. You know, I have, like, probably four scripts right now that people have that they say they're going to finance and get off the ground. We'll see. Hollywood. You know, I'm doing a project now with some great people out of Jamaica.

And we just announced that. So that's kind of moving forward. And, you know, I just turned one of my scripts, did a novelization on one of my scripts. So I'm trying to just always keep myself busy. And that's what I think people don't realize is how many balls are in the air while you're doing this kind of a job.

The really bad joke is I've got like 20 balls in the air. I'm just waiting for a couple of them to land on my face is what I say. That can be taken so many ways. So many ways, I know. But you don't forget it, though.

You remember that phrase now. But it's, yeah, it's true. I mean, how many things you, because that's what I was going to say. What's the average of how many things you have in process at that point? Four, five, at any given moment?

For me, it's like five or six, usually. That's crazy. And a lot of them will never see the light of day. And a lot of it's doing work to get work. And, you know, it's, you know, because people do kind of have this ideal.

I mean, when I was little, I used to think, oh. If you write a good movie, somebody just comes in and buys it, and you become rich, and then they go shoot it, and then it comes out a year later, and then you get more rich, and then you just keep doing more. How's that working out? Yeah, that's not how it happens. Yeah, and that's when I'll hear writers talking.

They're somewhat successful writers. They're like, I've written 25 scripts. They've made two movies, but I've sold 25 scripts, most of which nobody ever touched, or they just got shelved, or whatever. So it's funny that they're still making a living and writing what were great ideas to them and nobody will ever see them. And a lot of it's like if you sell something to a studio and they change regimes, then the new people don't want to do anything that the old people were working on.

So they'll put all those projects on the shelf. It becomes an ego thing. I didn't find this, so I don't want anybody else getting credit for it. So I'm not doing it. It's frustrating when there are good projects that are sitting on shelves.

If they're bad projects, let them sit. Let them collect some dust. Well, then I guess from what I hear, Final Destination came based out of this wonderful state of ours that you were leaving here or going here? Oh, I was coming here and I read an article. Actually, Final Destination 2 is another Kentucky story, which is odd, but not odd, but awesome.

Death all revolves around Kentucky. No, I was coming home. I was flying home and I read an article about a woman on a plane who was on vacation in Hawaii and her mom called her and said, don't take that flight you're on tomorrow. I have a bad feeling about it. And so.

As I'm on a plane. On a plane. Yeah, I read it on a plane. And so that's where the, you know, and the plane she was supposed to be on crashed. So that kind of planted the seed.

But it was probably five years later before I actually wrote Final Destination. I just thought that was kind of an interesting thing. But, you know, for the second one, you know, I wrote the story for the second one and we were, originally the opening was a hotel fire. And, you know, the producer was kind of like, eh, I don't know, it's just not very exciting. And I'm like, yeah, I'll think of something.

I was coming home for Thanksgiving and I got behind one of those log trucks. I was like, Holy crap! And I pulled over to the side of the road. I called Bruce. I'm like, what about a log truck on a freeway?

And he's like, that's awesome. I'm like, yes. One of the most memorable scenes of any film. Of any film ever, I think. In my heart of hearts, I actually love the second movie more than the first one.

For me, it did what I think a good sequel should do. It kind of upped the ante, but it also.... Was a continuation of the first story. It brought character back from the first one. It tied into the first one, but kind of took the desk design out further.

Yeah. In those series of films, it is funny. Like that second one, a lot of times will be the best. And a lot, I feel like it's because you're getting the basics of the story mechanics out of the way that first time. And then you can just build on it.

And if you write a good script, yeah, then you can, on top of that, put this great movie together. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess that first time out though, how easy was it selling a, a, What at that point was still kind of floating around in the slasher world with a slasher that you can't see. No, it was really hard. And I worked at New Line and I had producers, uh warren zeid and craig perry um who were had done america done american pie and and had a deal at new line and i had them attached and we you know everybody's like i don't get it how can you can't fight death you can't see it doesn't make any sense does not compute um so it was really they didn't talk like that but almost they kind of some of them did but most of them yeah but they couldn't get their minds around it.

And at one point they actually had me show it in the very end, like at the very end, like this kind of figure shows up and like, it was an angel of death, angel, angel of death. But, um, but it wasn't until the producers finally are like, we're going to take this to Miramax. If you guys don't buy it. Nice. And, um, mail magically, they bought it.

That's what you need. Magically. They bought it right away after that, but they still had a hard time with, you know, and it wasn't until the movie came out. And then of course it's like, Hey, it's, That's the genius of it, is you never see it, and then everybody's like, yeah, that's what we loved about it all along. If you're going to cast it, though, William Sadler's the only way to go.

That's what. Can we get a super cut out there of somebody that you piece in William Sadler as death, killing off these kids? Because I kind of would be okay. That's the only way I could see a person in there. Maybe we'll do a six one where, yeah, it's just all scenes from the original, all the other movies, but we just have William Sadler in there actually.

He'd be on board with it. CGI him. I saw him a couple weeks ago, one of these. He's probably okay with that. He'll probably do that.

Well, then I was going to ask, again, getting more into the way that the story world works, because yours changes as you go. It's like screenplay by, and then story by, and characters by. As the series goes on, it sort of waters itself down. Yeah, well, basically, because I created the original, I wrote the original script for the first movie, Um, the WGA has an arbitration process where they can, you know, determine who, who, who contributed what to what on the. Final shooting script.

From what I hear, very thorough too. Yeah, no, they're very, no, it's great though because it's really great to protect writers when douchebag people come in and want to take your credit away from your property. Yeah. So, um, so no, so I got sole story credit on the first one so that I'm technically the creator of it. So they always have to give me a credit on further ones, but I actually did write this story.

You know, they bought my story for the second one. Um, and then also, you know, they brought in these great screenwriters, Eric Bress and Jay Mackey Gruber to, who did the butterfly effect that they actually did the screenplay and, uh, did a wonderful job with it. You know, I thought, I just think it's a lot of fun, but. Do you take it personally when other people take your stories and redo it? No, no, no.

It's okay. You know, I, that's, I think a good thing to be starting at the studio when I was 19 is I saw, I saw how the business were, you know, my illusions of how the movie industry worked were, were crushed very early. just because I realized a lot of it was business and it's not personal. A great script would come in that got great coverage and everybody wanted to make it, but there was nobody attached to it. And then a really crappy script would come in. I keep not cursing because I don't know who your audience is.

I encourage people to curse. I don't usually curse a lot, but usually there would be a shit flying by now. There you go. Go to town. I keep saying crap because I'm like, I think I did that one time.

I did that once and somebody was like, we have a family audience. And I was like, dag nabbit. Our fan base is entirely six-year-olds. We're piped directly into a preschool. So I don't take it personally because we'd get a really shitty script in that had Jim Carrey attached.

And it's like, guess what script's going to get made? The one with Jim Carrey attached. So I learned very early. And I'm very collaborative, too. There's too many egos.

I mean, you really have to let go of your ego if you're going to work in this business. Or you're going to be miserable because people are going to rewrite your stuff. You're going to get a director on who's going to want to rewrite your stuff. You're going to get actors on. You know, you're going to want to rewrite your stuff and, you know, you got to suck it up if you're a writer.

Like if you try to, you know, I've got friends that try to, you know, buck the system and it's like, well, you're going to have to go out and make your own movies. Like you're not going to be able to sell your scripts to anybody else. You can do that, but it's definitely going to be, you know, you're not going to get the budget thrown at you. You're not going to get the lead roles you want. So it's a surprise.

A lot of it's like, you know, I'm working with these, again, these people out of Jamaica and we're doing a big franchise that we're really excited about based on a, White Witch Rose Hall which is a legend out there but you know you know we were talking about different deals and stuff like that and sometimes when you do an initial deal with a company and not on this project but on other things you know we've had to like you know take something like take a kind of a bad deal to kind of get in bed with these people you know. And then from there adjust things a little. Bit yeah so you're you know you're not gonna I have you know friends that I try to mentor and are younger people that I try to mentor and I talk to them you know they're like well am I gonna get like a $ 100, 000.

For my first script? No. Good luck with that. I'm going to be on set, right? No.

Can I be in the lottery too? Yeah. Well then, I guess getting into around that same time frame, it came out of that run with after the push of Scream and then I Know What You Did Last Summer. I Know What You Did Last Summer is already getting a reboot. Do you think they're going to carry on with Final Destination or has it come to the point where they feel like they have to reboot now?

You know what? I'm Craig Perry I still talk to a lot. He's a producer and a great, wonderful guy. Personally, I think it's time to reboot. Technically, spoiler alert, they kind of closed the circle.

It would be an interesting way to now turn around and do something else. It would be the perfect timing. It's like, had a really good run. Let's do something a little different. But I don't know.

People are very adverse to risk, so... I don't know if they're going to do that or not. Studios in particular. Safe is what sold before. Again, they're rebooting movies that are like five years old now.

It's crazy. My thing is it's Death. Death has a new design. It's a tagline. You just have a different kind of movie with the same basic premise.

I think definitely taking it. That was what I faulted mostly on the screen coming back a decade later and trying to not do things differently. I feel like they fell right into doing that same pattern again, which it felt just like 2 and 3. And I'm like, it just feels like another sequel when they kept trying to pretend like they were taking it in a new direction, but they didn't really want to because they knew what was going to sell. Right, right.

I think it's the same situation. But I still like it. I thought the motivation was kind of weak. I mean, it's got really good stuff in there, but I feel like they had potential to just really go somewhere else with it, and they kind of played it safe. Yeah.

In most places do that. Yeah. I was going to say new stuff coming up. I know you said you want to get into directing. Is that more of a focus?

Yeah, no, I just finished a short of mine called Good Samaritan. Look it up online. It's on Facebook and Twitter. It's got its own Twitter account. This internet, I tell you, it's catching on.

It's catching on, but no, we're doing the festival run right now. We actually showed here at Fright Night in Louisville, and that was a Kentucky debut of it, and we premiered in Fantasia. Cool. Yeah, Rainn Wilson's in it, Toby Hemingway, who's in The Covenant, and Black Swan's in it. I have a cameo from Jane Badler, who was the original Diana in V, the miniseries.

Nice. My V days. Oh, my God. I freaking geeked out when I met her. Literally got starstruck.

I've met Morgan Friedman and Brad... I've met all these... I didn't care. Big deal. Were you still a little bit afraid there was a lizard underneath there?

No, I was just like... I couldn't talk. I went to lunch with her, and I was just sitting there like. And then finally, I'm just like, I have to apologize. I'm just, I said, I've never known what being starstruck is like now, and I'm starstruck, and I just need a moment.

I contained myself when I sat there with Leah Thompson, and I'm really not sure how I did it. Teenage me would have died at that point. I composed myself. Yes, you did better than I did, because I was like. Well, I blurted out and told her that I was desperately in love with her.

Was that not cool? I was like, damn it. I thought I was playing it so cool. So yeah, directing, that's definitely something I'm looking to get more into. And, you know, we're working on a project called Superstition.

It's going to be like a franchise based around superstitions and hoping to direct the first one out of the gate on that one. So we're closing the deal on that and doing a book adaptation with this guy, Andrew Vandenhouten. He runs a company called Modern Cine. They do a lot of great independent horror films, like a lot of Jack Ketchum stuff, like The Girl Next Door. We're doing a franchise based off a book, young adult book called The Undertaker.

So, Again, a lot of balls in the air, so we'll see. I was going to ask, is Tent Square still something you're focusing on? Yeah, and I'll be writing the feature for that, and that's going to start at some point next year, early next year, but they just finished the short. The director and the cinematographer and the cast were all winners of the competition, and some of the people who filled out the smaller roles were people that were part of Tent Square but didn't win. So it's www.tentsquare.com and it's like a social site where you can upload a profile.

And we have a competition where we're basically making movies and picking the people that work on them from our membership. So it's a great networking place. It's really amazing when people can kind of come. Again, as much useless stuff as on the internet. I may be including myself on that.

But there's like so much out there that's just a mess. And then occasionally you will see people who really make the most of what you can do by like taking this Not even national. This global scale and being like, okay, let's find these people that want to work together. Kind of like the Hit Record was doing similar. Have you ever seen that one?

Joseph Gordon-Levitt does one. He has people send in ideas. He puts together people. If it's an animated project, he'll find the animators. They'll do voice auditions and bring in and have people.

By the end, they put together this final project. Oh, that's awesome. all just completely just people that want to be involved in something so it's yeah it sounds like this is along those lines and i think all of it's really impressive it's great. Because like i look at it like american idol you know yeah you know in a way where it gives people that normally wouldn't have an opportunity a chance and That was very important to Andrew when he came up with the idea for this because he's always been very fiercely independent and very filmmaker championing. He definitely champions the filmmaker over the money side of things, even though he ends up making his filmmakers money. But if it comes down to I have to screw the filmmaker over to get more money, he will not do that.

So he's a cool guy and really excited to work on that. Well, do you want to have people find you out in the internets? Is there ways that they should come track you down? Yeah, if you're going to stalk me, I guess it's probably best. First, loiter at your table over there.

Yeah, loiter at my table if you see me at a convention. It's so funny. I have to open my Twitter right now to Twitter. No, because my Facebook, not to sound like a total douchebag, but I just hit my 5,000 person limit. I don't have time for you people.

No, no, but it's pretty funny. But you can still look me up because I'm going through and I'm trying to delete, like, Well, there's so many fake ones. Yeah, and like these. Russian hookers and things like that. No, I added all my Russian.

Oh, wait, never mind. You're like, I'm totally friends with them. And you're marrying a couple of them, I'm sure. I mean, once I can afford to bring them in. I've got to send them a big check.

I'm not sure what that goes towards. Who knows? No, but it's Jeffrey A. Reddick is my Twitter thing. But actually, look for me on Facebook, too.

That's probably the best at this point. You need a fan page. You know, somebody made one for me, but apparently if you migrate all your fan pages over, then you lose all your. It doesn't work. It's not helping me.

Again, I make use of Facebook a lot, but it's got a lot of issues. Yeah, I like... And I like Facebook more than Twitter, just because. I can't contain things in 140 characters. Yeah.

I'm too wordy. I guess you have that problem, too. Yeah. Wait, what are you saying? I talk too much?

Writers. Oh, yeah. Writers and words. It's got to be all fancy. Yeah, so feel free to...

Feel free to stalk me. I'm very stalkable and, um, and, um, thanks for, thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on. So thanks once again to Jeff and Leslie for sitting in on this week's episode. They were both really great to talk with and gave us some new and different perspectives on the film world as it were.

And I want to say thanks once again to everyone here at Fright Night Film Fest for letting us be part of the show and, For more on what they have in the works, go to FrightNightFilmFest.com. All right, so with that, I think we're going to wrap things up, and we're going to go out Final Destination style here with Joe90 as we try to figure out what to do as we die. Otherwise, that about does it. We will return next time, same geek feed. Thanks for listening.

I'm not scared of dying And I don't really care If it's peace you find in dying With the time being near If it's peace you find in dying When the dying time is here Then bundle up my coffin Cause it's cold down there Yeah, it's cold down there Yeah, it's crazy cold down there And when I die And when I'm gone, there'll be one child born In the world to. Carry on, to carry on. My troubles are many They're as deep as a well I swear there ain't no heaven. And I pray there ain't no hell I. Swear there ain't no heaven And I pray there ain't no hell But I never know my living Only.

My dying will tell Only my dying will tell Yeah Only my dying will. Tell And when I die. When I'm gone There'll be one child born In the world to carry on To carry on . . the world to carry on carry on. To carry on. . . . . She took her shoes off.

Oh, now she's just a normal person. Now I barely want to go shove her over. I mean, I still kind of want to. A little bit, yeah. A little bit.

I want to make her run just because I'm betting she can't run in that dress. Go scare her. I picture flailing happening if that was to occur. And her wig falling off. I'm going to knock a damn wig right off her head.

This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and edited by The Oddity Studios, with opening music performed by The Empires. For more on how to sponsor or support the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com. Talk hard!