Lessons in Filmmaking with What Went Wrong Podcast

The What Went Wrong podcast series brings you behind-the-scenes of films from massive flops to record-breaking blockbusters to shed a light on what it really takes to make a film. The show’s hosts, Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer speak with Tara Jabbari about what they learned about what it really takes to make a film, why James Cameron punched his diver in the face, the long road to get the voice of Shrek, and other fun anecdotes. They also discuss how important it is to have more people of color and female-led films and why they should be given a chance.

What Went Wrong Podcast:
https://www.whatwentwrongpod.com/

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Transcript

00:10 - VO (Host)
Welcome to Media Maker Spotlight from Women in Film and Video in Washington DC. We bring you conversations with industry professionals for behind-the-screens insight and inspiration inspiration. 

00:26 - Tara (Host)
Hello and welcome to Media Maker Spotlight. I'm your host for this episode, tara Jabari, and today we have the hosts for what Went Wrong podcast. It covers Hollywood's most notoriously disastrous movie productions, digging to the behind the scenes insanity of everything from massive flops to record-breaking blockbusters. Speaking with me are Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Lizzie, when she's not researching why James Cameron punched his safety driver in the face, she's working as a senior producer at Wondery, and Chris is from Seattle Washington. He studied economics at Stanford, worked in corporate finance for Intel, then threw it all away to go to film school. His thesis film, worm, played at Sundance in 2018. His debut feature, also called Worm, featured at Fantastic Fest in 2019 and is now available on Hulu. He directed the 2022 film Moonshot and is currently writing the Mole People for Universal under their Universal Monsters banner, and he also has a moderately successful podcast, which I would say is very successful. 

01:41 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
Wow, chris, you put me to shame with your bio, your bio. 

01:46 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
Didn't, didn't know it would be read verbatim. But that's good, I'm still. I stand by it. I appreciate it. Thank you for having us. 

01:53 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
It was a real biopic there. 

01:56 - Tara (Host)
So I I found out about you guys through a different podcast Um uh, chelsea Devante devantes's podcast, which talks about celebrity memoir book clubs, and um uh books, and lizzie was on it to talk about um tippy hendron and the wacky roar movie. So fun fact about me, I love to. After every movie I watch, I go to imdb to look at the trivia. I want like read everything. I can find out about it and I was like what is this podcast? Why didn't I ever think of this? 

02:32
and it's like my go-to, it's my favorite thing ever um so it was so exciting, and I have been binge listening since I found out, um, not too long ago. Uh, so my first question Media Maker Spotlight is about screen-based media and people who work in screen-based media. We talk to all the different facets of it location managers, actors, editors, music composers, all that stuff and one of the things that we're starting to do is talk to podcasters that do concentrate on screen-based media as well, but you both have been involved behind the scenes as well. So, first, what did you guys? How did you guys decide to make this podcast? 

03:16 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
I believe it came into being at the Veggie Grill next to the now defunct Arclight in Hollywood. I think it just came from a place of we both really not only enjoy being involved in productions but enjoy really talking about them. And you know, chris comes from a place of such experience that I found it very interesting to talk to him in particular about movie productions and just how crazy they were. And I used to work for IMDb, actually, and sort of just have absorbed so much movie history and trivia over time that it felt like kind of a natural pairing. Chris, anything you want to add to our veggie grill meetup. 

03:57 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
No, I think when you work in film or around film, the first thing you realize is how insanely hard it is to make anything and to get anything made. And I know I used to be like this. I think most people tend to think I could do that. 

04:12 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
Yeah. 

04:13 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
Or I could do that better and I've been there, but I think a big part of the podcast we wanted to celebrate the fact that every movie is a miracle, even the bad ones. Celebrate the fact that every movie is a miracle, even the bad ones. It's attempting to land a jumbo jet, you know, on the top of a dime, and so it's. We don't want to bring movies down. We want to reveal to people how insanely difficult it is to actually get them off the ground. 

04:37 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
Yes, and I think I'm also sort of endlessly fascinated by the kinds of personalities that do actually succeed in this field, because they tend to be, uh, eccentric at the very least with some other, um, you know, qualities mixed in, but yeah how did you guys meet in the first place? 

05:01 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
uh, lizzie is married to my best friend oh, okay, see, I didn't get that. 

05:06 - Tara (Host)
Yeah, um, our producer david. 

05:08 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
I grew up with uh. 

05:09 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
We've known each other since we were about seven years old okay, and he's a composer also who's done the scores for chris's movies. 

05:17 - Tara (Host)
Yeah, and is he also that was one of my other questions is the the music? Your intro music is really cool and like old, timely and like a combination of all the different um, centuries and stuff in movies. Uh, did he compose that? 

05:34 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
yeah, that's all, david. 

05:35 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
Yeah, I don't, I don't think we had nothing to do with that. I was entirely. We had a single note he just sent it to us. 

05:42 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
Sent it to us one day, yeah, and we said great the wilhelm scream in there, which is one of my favorite parts, yeah oh fun. 

05:50 - Tara (Host)
Um, yeah, it's, but I didn't know that there was that all extra connection. It reminds me of like how did this get made? Podcasts and people are like if you didn't realize that paul sheer and june d Raffa are married. So every time he's like, how are you June? She's like I'm good, how are you Paul? 

06:08
the joke, because they're, they're married yeah they like drove to the studio together and all that stuff, um, so so that's why you guys so you guys had that friendship and personal connection, um, and then you guys had these like you know how difficult it was made and you guys decided to to make this podcast and, um, one of my favorite things is like learning all the different things that it took for, actually, which one is it that james cameron punched his driver? 

06:38 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
well, I have to give james cameron a little bit of credit here. It's not his driver, it's his safety diver, uh, and it was in the abyss, I do believe. Um, and it was because, uh, I can't remember exactly. I think it's that he, the guy, was trying to put a mask on him underwater because, he was trying to save his life. 

06:57 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
Trying to save his life? 

06:58 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
yeah sure, but unfortunately it was like upside down or not working. And so, uh, james cameron, just james cameron and um punched him in the face so that he could swim the rest of the way to the surface, and now he's alive. So you know, he wasn't, he wasn't like wrong, technically wrong, he didn't need to live. 

07:20 - Tara (Host)
All right. Did you ever have to interview him for IMDb? 

07:24 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
No, I would have been scared. I'm trying to think of like the most terrifying interviews I had. Almost everybody is very nice, but the only thing is we did like all of our well, most of our interviews, especially earlier on at press junkets, and people are just so tired and, like you learn to, just I felt so bad for them. They're doing like a hundred interviews over the course of two days and there you know they're getting asked the same questions over and over again. But yeah, for the most part everybody was lovely. 

07:53 - Tara (Host)
I wanted to see, like is there a film that you guys looked into? But you were like okay, so people want to know about this film, or we want to know about this one, and you're like, wow, this, actually everything went right for this film, so we can't really do it. 

08:09 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
So I am now pretty much full time in podcasting and this sort of format, which I have sort of been referring to as like unscripted narrative storytelling in terms of, like you know, we're not reading off of a script, but we are very much telling a story and telling a narrative arc. For me, the most important thing when we're looking at a movie to cover is that it has that narrative arc and then it has like a main character that you can really follow, that it has interesting twists and turns. If it's just sort of the same thing happening over and over again, if it's just financial failure stuff like that, I'm not as interested in. But, Chris, I don't know what you think. 

08:45 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
Yeah, no, I agree there are instances where people assume a lot of things must have gone wrong. Speed Racer was an example that I had looked into. Speed Racer, relatively speaking, seems like it was a pretty smooth production. I mean, it's become kind of a cult classic. The only thing that's really interesting about the making of is the release. So if it's limited to one angle or aspect of the movie, you know not dissimilar idiocracy people talk about because the release was botched so badly. 

09:18
From the little light research I did in testing it out, it didn't feel like there was crazy stuff going on behind the scenes, as opposed to a movie we'll cover at some point, shrek, which was almost entirely voiced by Chris Farley and partially animated, and then he died. And then his brother decided not his brother can do an impression of his voice decided not to finish the film because he was too devastated. So then they brought in Mike Myers, who did it entirely normally, and then decided to do it with the Scottish accent, and so they basically recorded, slash, animated the movie multiple, multiple times and again, what becomes fun about that is like the unintended positive consequences are all of a sudden they're writing jokes about movies that were released only months before, you know, shrek comes out, and so it feels insanely relevant for an animated film. So it's like you want to find the movies and the shows that have a through line, like Lizzie's saying, that feel like, oh my gosh, this thing hit potholes every step of the way, and yet it still made it into the world. 

10:23 - Tara (Host)
Yeah, I was going to ask also that that are there any films that really stood out to you and surprised you the most, whether positively or negatively or just in a fun, factedly so like? For me I was thinking of the Mummy when you guys were sharing that Anne Rice actually wrote a version with Daniel Day-Lewis to play the mummy and I remember I was working out at the gym and I was like put the weight down. I had to text my best friend. It was like in the 80s it would have been Daniel Day-Lewis as the mummy. She's like oh man, I would have watched that and all that stuff. 

11:08 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
That and all that stuff I'm very interested in and I would like to be covering more women directors because I feel like a lot of the backstories there have been fascinating. Ishtar was really interesting and also it's good Like it's good, I don't know. I don't understand what the backlash was on that. It's a totally funny movie and I think maybe my favorite in that was Twilight, because I had spent, you know, so much of my early 20s with my college roommates just laughing at Twilight, slowly realizing that we all kind of loved it and it went from sort of an ironic love of it to a very sincere love. And I think that that was like deepened and solidified by the episode that we did on Twilight, because I just came to appreciate Catherine Hardwicke so much more. 

11:49
And that's what I love about the stories that we're telling is like I watched Twilight when I was like 19, 20 years old and I was like this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. It looks terrible. Why is it green? Why is everything a Dutch angle? What is Kristen Stewart doing? But then going back and like reading about the production, reading about how she had no money, she had no time, like she had to use these sort of no-name actors. They were, you know, pushing her to create this massive franchise and giving her zero support. And then you realize, like she actually did an amazing job and she created something that you know sort of founded this whole visual world and it was striking, it was campy and funny and it was great, and so I that's probably my favorite one, and in that vein, that is on my. 

12:34 - Tara (Host)
I downloaded it for one of these days. I fly a lot um, and so I was like that's gonna be on my one of my fly list so I hope you enjoy it. 

12:43 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
I really loved it and it's uh. I just you know I love twilight. 

12:46 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
Now, that's interesting chris any uh one stand out, I love all the stuff from the 80s and 90s that would never survive in the sanitized landscape of corporate produced film. Now I'm thinking of mario, of Super Mario Bros, the 1993 version versus the more recent version, or if you go back to something like Howard the Duck, which is technically a Marvel movie. I really love the weirdness that was allowed to be injected into these movies. And listen, they're not polished, they are definitely rough, but there was a lot of personality present that I appreciated. That has really been, I think, kind of sucked out of a lot of these really big tentpole movies which, by the way, are incredibly well made. There's no argument that more recent superhero video game adaptations have stepped up in terms of production value, probably by an order of magnitude. But I did like I, I really like seeing, yeah, and then the directors just arbitrarily decided to give the characters super small heads and have a machine that turns them into dinosaurs and it's like great, that sounds fun. 

13:59 - Tara (Host)
We need more of that have you guys noticed, because you also do older films like citizen kane and stuff yeah, I love those um it's. 

14:10
And what was really nice about citizen kane episode in particular was that you also give sometimes the backstory of the filmmakers too, right, um, and have you noticed there was a shift in how maybe laws were given to protect cast and crew and things to avoid more things to go wrong, like there were deaths that happened. I know that there's not a death on the set, but for the poltergeist and stuff like that, but I'm thinking I don't remember if you guys did Twilight Zone yes, we did, you did, okay, so then I haven't listened to it yet, but it's one of those that there was a death that happened on that. But all those things that, like children didn't have a lot of laws to protect child labor laws and things like that. As you guys are doing these research and stuff like that and you're seeing like, oh well, if this was made back in the 30s, this would have been completely a disaster, or something like that. 

15:13 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
It's not the progress you would hope for. In a lot of senses, I think that you could argue that folks are less economically taken advantage of in certain situations with the dissolution of this. You know the kind of vertical integration of the studio system and actors being on rosters and having exclusive contracts. You could argue that we're getting into the same sort of thing now with the way that actors have production companies that are set up with exclusive deals at a different streamer or studio and then the way that income inequality has hit the industry, kind of bifurcating the people that make a ton and the people who don't make very much. 

15:50
I think you still see plenty of issues with safety. Obviously Twilight Zone, three deaths on that film and then more recently something like Rust, helena Hutchins was killed. I think that the issue is that film will always be. It doesn't make economic sense, like making a movie is inherently taking a turn at the craps table. It may be a good volume business, it's a bad individual business, and so there will always be pressure to cut time and save money. And the only way to cut time is either to cut story people don't want to do or cut corners, and so there continue to be accidents. There continue to be stunt people badly wounded. A big issue that was talked about a few years ago but hasn't been brought up again since has been the lack of sleep because of what's called turnaround. 

16:40
So that's obviously the amount of time between when you wrap on one day and you return to set the next morning. That's obviously the amount of time between when you wrap on one day and you return to set the next morning. That's been helped a little bit because actors have minimum turnaround times that they can enforce and actually there have been good examples I think bob odenkirk's one of them recently who basically said like I am enforcing my turnaround not for me but to make sure that, like the electricians aren't driving on four hours of sleep tomorrow. And there have been a lot of deaths, of people falling asleep behind the wheel on their way home from set. So I certainly think it's gotten. The laws have gotten better in some sense, but a law is only as good as the enforcement mechanisms. So again, you need people at the top producers, actors, directors who are willing to put their foot down and say nope, it's okay, we're going to spend the extra money and we're going to be safe on this production. 

17:33 - Tara (Host)
Historically, like a lot of films have been made predominantly producer wise, director wise, certainly even writer wise by a certain demographic, typically white, straight men, and I know you guys have done a little bit outside of that. Are you hoping to do more and see, because I'm curious to see if you start to notice a difference on how a set or how production, pre-production and post happened and how it went about, what went right, what went wrong, all that kind of stuff how it went about, what went right, what went wrong, all that kind of stuff. 

18:16 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
Yeah, 100%, I mean that's definitely a goal for this next season is to cover more films that are written and directed by women and people of color, as you said like, unfortunately, there are not as many sort of big recognizable ones, which is a huge problem. But in terms of, is there a difference? I think there's certainly a difference in the way that those people are listened to and treated by the production companies and studios that have funded their movies, versus the you know straight white men who you mentioned. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's important to dig into. 

18:47
Like you know, that's part of the reason I really enjoyed the episode on Twilight and learning about Catherine Hardwicke because she got totally screwed and that's not an uncommon experience. But you know, you hear actors talking about this more and more. I think, particularly for women on set, the more women that we get behind the camera and on crews, the safer they feel, the more comfortable they feel flagging when something is off. Just the introduction of intimacy coordinators has been a huge advantage. Not to say that those are all women they're not but I do think that it's just so important to get women and people of color particularly behind the camera and also writing it just. It makes an enormous difference. 

19:34 - Tara (Host)
Yeah, I was just listening this morning to your episode on Blade Runner and I I had to write it for a sci-fi class and I didn't like it. And everyone's like, well, which version did you watch? And I was like, don't know guys. Um, I was like my biggest thing is that la drivers were fine with it raining so much. You guys freak out when there's a cloud in the sky. I'm from chicago, like we get every weather, and so I was just I was like that, that's, that's the biggest thing that I was like annoyed with. 

20:08
But one of the things that I had written and my teacher loves that movie I was like, wait, I'm sorry, if people are saying Brockie is a rapist, then what? And you guys kind of touch it briefly on it. And the interview that was conducted by the actress who was in the scene with harrison ford and it just sounded very technical, by two men, the director and her male co-star, and she was this young actress and came off to it was very technical for them. But when you watch it as a woman, I was like, oh my god, this, this is, he's forcing her, and all sorts of stuff. 

20:58
And I was. And then, um, chris, you pointed out and you're like well, if it was made today, they would have an intimacy coordinator there to kind of help them get the message across that they're trying to convey, because it it doesn't convey consensual really, and that's like one example that they're like to convey because it doesn't convey consensual really. And that's like one example that they're like well, if you had more voices or you know background people there, that you know a female producer, you know intimacy coordinator, be like you know that other audience members might not be able to quite understand what you're trying to say here. 

21:30 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
That's the thing is. I think there's an idea that, like you know, additional voices or additional, even safety precautions, sort of like water down the story or, like you know, water down the experience. It's in practice, that's one of the biggest things we've seen. It's not true. It ends up making a better product because, to your point, it helps more people understand what they're watching. And to your point about Blade Runner, I felt the exact same way when I was watching that. I was like, ugh, is this supposed to be hot or what is this? And, rethinking it, it's like, yeah, that maybe could have been better if they had a consulted her and be consulted an intimacy coordinator, because I don't think they necessarily intended that to come across as as rapey and an aggressive thing, but it does. So, yeah, I would just say, like more voices or prioritizing different kinds of voices does not make a worse product. 

22:34 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
Yeah, and I think you can see it. If you look at going to the on the race side of things, you know when we cover Do the Right Thing. Not much really went wrong from a production standpoint on that movie, certainly not by our standards. What was interesting and what I find so compelling about that story is, every step of the way, spike Lee trying to convince white people that no, there's an audience for this movie, it's not going to incite riots and people are ready to have this conversation and it's interesting. And he was obviously right. And what's interesting is that movie also has a scene that should have had an intimacy coordinator, so that you know that's right. 

23:13 - Tara (Host)
Cuts across. Talk about that, yeah. 

23:15 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
Yeah, the way that I've really come to think about it, as I look at these movies that get made, I think there is a risk element that cuts in two different directions. That's. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it's, I think, a driving factor One. Everybody that's at the very top looks a particular way and they're taking an incredible financial risk. And so they tend, they say I think on two axes. They say one well, a lot of white guys have made movies before, so I'll hire another white guy to make a movie. Because they assume past performance will dictate future performance. And then they also say I think I would imagine, well, I'm smart and this guy looks like me and he seems smart, so maybe we'll be smart together, and that also prevents people from coming in. But I think that's one element of movie making that's talked about a lot and needs to be improved upon. 

24:09
But I think the other risk element that's not spoken about is the fact that it takes an incredible amount of risk from the filmmaker to make a movie or even to get themselves in a position where a movie is able to be made. And so, yes, absolutely there needs to be a top-down effort to be more inclusive. But there also needs to be a better bottoms-up effort to mitigate risks for up and coming filmmakers, so that you don't have to mortgage your entire life with no safety net to try to get your first feature film made Because, candidly, I could go to film school and I would be okay if it didn't work out. That's not true for 90% of people in the world, and so we need to have a better system to bring people up from the bottom, be it like apprenticeship, et cetera. 

25:01
Spike Lee is obviously a prodigious talent who was able to finance some of his stuff through commercial work, but also like he had to take incredible risks and it still took him, you know, a while to overcome certain obstacles to to get to where he needed to be. Risks and it still took him, you know, a while to overcome certain obstacles to get to where he needed to be. So I just wanted to point out that element too. It's also it's easy to be like, oh yeah, this director is a risk taker, and it's like, yeah, also like he'll be fine if it doesn't work out. So it's a little easier to say I'm going to take a big swing on this project. 

25:30 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
Yes, or to say I'm going to take a big swing on this project. Yes or to say I'm going to dedicate my life and career to this industry even though I'm not making any income, like most people can't do that. 

25:40
Yes, I also have a theory about the reason why it has been slightly harder to find movies that are directed by women and people of color to cover for this podcast, which is that there may be a little more buttoned up in some ways. Because of that risk that Chris is talking about there. They are a bit less likely to take these big risks or big swings, sometimes not creatively, but in terms of flying by the seat of their pants. I think that is not afforded to them in the same way that it can be to other people. So know we'll, I'm sure we'll find them, but you know, as far as I can tell, they're doing a good job yeah, I keep. 

26:20 - Tara (Host)
I don't know if I'm, if I'm gonna be spoiling things, but like I'm thinking, like steve mcqueen, uh, the director, for like 12 years a Slave, and then Patty, something, patty Jenkins. 

26:33 - VO (Host)
Thank you. 

26:34 - Tara (Host)
Jenkins. She proved everyone. Yes, they were like. You know you could make a profit in a superhero movie. 

26:40 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
Oh, and even go back like 20 years, like John Singleton Boys in the Hood, Antoine Fuqua Training Day, et cetera, Like they're wonderful and we're going to expand more. We need to do a better job, It's'll and we're going to expand more and we're we need to do a better job. It's not, we're not trying to make an excuse, but I, like you've said, there's a lot of people that are. 

26:59 - Tara (Host)
They've proven, you know what I mean like, like we can do this. Would you ever do foreign foreign films? 

27:09 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
yeah, we have not covered much. We covered some stuff with foreign financing. 

27:14 - Tara (Host)
Yeah, yeah because I'm thinking of um bong jun ho yes parasite, but also because the asian market is growing and we had everywhere, oh, that one all at once, everything All at once, everything, everywhere all at once, yeah. And all sorts of and this year most recently, which is, I think it's called Private Lives. 

27:40 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
Past Lives. 

27:41 - Tara (Host)
Thank you, past Lives. I am all over the place, but it's all these different stories. Or, for me personally, one of my favorite films of all time is called a separation, and it won best porn. 

27:55 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
The Iranian film Sure. 

27:56 - Tara (Host)
Iranian film and I was like. One of my reasons is you didn't have to be Iranian to love it. If you're a child or a parent you will love. You can relate to it Right. So you could be Dutch American and I think there's some crossovers to like. 

28:12 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
High on my list, John Woo, face off and mission impossible too but we can also go back and do like and we can also go back and do you know you could do hard boiled a better tomorrow. Some of his early like Hong Kong gun foo stuff, um and so, yes, there are certainly areas to cross over, I think, into foreign film and you could go even, you know, early Guillermo del Toro, early Alejandro Iñárritu, early Alfonso Cuarón, stuff like that as well. 

28:42 - Tara (Host)
So we could. I could talk to you guys all day about this stuff anyway, but I just have a couple more questions. Sure, because you all have lives, I don't? You guys, how much has your personal journeys and experiences in the industry shaped your thoughts as you watch any of these films and as you continue to do this podcast? And then how, since you've been doing these podcasts, how has it shaped your personal, professional lives. 

29:14 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
I'll go first because mine's probably quicker than Chris's, just because I am not actively making movies. 

29:23
I went to acting school in college thinking that that's what I wanted to do and very quickly realized that the lack of control that actors are afforded in their own careers was not something that I was comfortable with. 

29:36
You have to be really sure of yourself, you have to be really talented and you have to be willing to take major risks in that career, because so much is just not up to you and it's up to chance and I just that was not for me and I think the more that I learned from this podcast, the more grateful I am, to be honest, that I that I didn't pursue that, because I think it takes a very particular and very sort of extraordinary kind of person who actually is good at that and will be a successful actor. 

30:07
And I ended up going into sort of digital media, just kind of whatever I could do, where I would be writing and producing, and I found my way to podcasts through that and through this and I've found that audio storytelling is something that I'm really really passionate about. So I think that this podcast has changed the way that I look at pretty much everything, because it gives me so much respect for the people who make my favorite movies, people who are in my favorite movies. It also allows me to practice the skills that I want to use moving forward in the podcast industry and, yeah, it just gives me a lot of respect for people who are willing to try things and that's my favorite part, I think lot of respect for people who are willing to try things. 

30:53 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
Um and that's my favorite part, I think, yeah, I would say um, even when I watch something I don't like, I I can tell you 25 things that are impossibly hard, that they pulled off really truly. It could be anything. It could be tommy wasso's the room and I could be, like you guys don't understand. 

31:14
That was actually a tough shot. You know that they just did and uh, it worked. So I think what I've enjoyed most is that it's really raised the floor and the ceiling for my experience watching pretty much anything. You know there are some new shows. I was texting lizzie about that. I wasn't enjoying, but I can still appreciate so much about what they're doing well. And it's also, you know, working as a writer and a director. It gives you some good insight into things to look out for. 

31:47
And a lot of the things that go wrong in these movies are beyond anybody's control. They are effectively force majeures. You know there's a regime change at the studio, the budget gets cut at the last second, your lead actor dies. You know there's nothing you can do about some of these things, but there are some things that you can avoid, like not having a completed script when you start filming and sometimes that works out amazingly Gladiator but sometimes it doesn't. Town and Country. So you know it's. You learn a lot, I think, about some common. There's definitely common pitfalls and through lines with these movies there's definitely common pitfalls and through lines with these movies Um, hubris tends to be at the top a bit of a common thread, but for me it's just made. Watching a, you get a sense of like, ooh, I kind of think I know how they did that now, which is really fun. Um, and then B, it makes you, if you don't know how they did it, really want to figure out. Okay, how did they pull that off? How did they do that? 

32:50 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
It's kind of like a little film school. It is like you know, they call it movie magic. It is magic a lot of the time, like what they're able to pull off is truly, truly incredible. Yeah, plus one to everything Chris just said, it's made watching movies more fun. 

33:06 - Tara (Host)
Well, I was watching. Um, I watched moon shot and I watched warm the future before. Thanks for watching, yeah, and I'm like wow, I mean after all his research for the podcast at least for moonshot, cause it's after you did the podcast it was like I can't believe. He went all the way to spate Like I would be like. 

33:29 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
I want two sets. 

33:30 - Tara (Host)
Oh, no, no want I uh no, I had those thoughts. 

33:34 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
I was like, uh yeah, I don't know what we're doing. Guys, this is too big, we're making some mistakes here. 

33:41 - Tara (Host)
I'm like, oh, my god, this person's in it and this person, it was so cool. Um, and yeah, they were really sweet and I mean I was like, oh, if were. In particular, I was like, oh, that collar would have been on me for a long time. So, but it was an interesting um to see that you, you went through all of those different shots, like into your exterior and all these side characters that come in for like one scene and you're like, wow, you really went for it. It's a full feature kind of thing. But, um, so that was what I was curious to see. If you're like for your second feature, you're like, no, I can do this, we're going to go to Mars. 

34:28 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
No, that was just. I was hired as the director, so that was like the script says we go to Mars, so we're going to Mars. Yeah, I really enjoyed working on that movie. It probably wouldn't have been the one I would have written if they had just said here's some money. Maybe I would have kept it earthbound. But uh, that's not how the how the world works. 

34:52 - Tara (Host)
Well, um, I have one other question. Is a lot of podcasts um start going and doing live shows, touring things like that, even when it's more of similar podcasts like yours, where it's not interview based or you don't really have guests? You've had a couple of guests on your episodes but, um, and we've spoken to a few of them and they're like it has been really interesting to have an audience with us versus just having the studio. Have you guys ever thought about doing um live shows or touring? 

35:25 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
yeah, we, we've thought about it a little bit. I mean, I think, candidly, we would want to get a little bigger before we do that. But I've been to a couple of podcast live shows. I was actually just at one last night and I think that they can be very fun. I think my favorite ones that I have seen have not been a direct version of an episode, like they're not the same as what an audio episode would be. They've got an additional feature, whether it's they just do the same story for all their live shows and they have like a visual component that they're sort of working with behind them. I find those to be the most enjoyable because otherwise why wouldn't I just listen to an episode of the podcast? So that's sort of what I've been thinking about, but potentially in our future I think we'd need to figure out some movie rights issues. 

36:17 - Tara (Host)
Or a Q&A with the audience would be cool. Yeah, and the right guest you know, or? 

36:20 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
something Like if we could get someone really cool from the movie to come, you know like that would be fun really cool from the movie to come. 

36:30 - Tara (Host)
You know like that would be fun. What has been something, that unexpected thing that has come up from the podcast since it started for you guys? 

36:38 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
uh, someone told us norman lear listened to our episode on the princess bride yeah before he, before he passed, like very shortly before he passed actually. 

36:47 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
Oh wow, so that was probably the coolest thing yeah, that was really cool, um that and, I guess, finding out that the script supervisor from twilight also yeah, yeah, she listens to it did killers of the flower moon. 

37:01 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
She just finished that yeah and then you know just getting reviews from people who, uh. And then you know just getting reviews from people who, uh, hate you. It's like a very no, no, no very rarely, very rarely. 

37:14 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
But we, we do youtube, so that's not been a surprise to me at all. 

37:16 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
But no, no, it's true, and like getting a review on a movie is like way more crushing than than like your voice sucks, dude, um, but that's always. That is a funny part of the. It's wonderful getting positive feedback, but it takes a hundred good reviews to wash out the taste of one bad review, so you have to kind of really be careful with how often you're checking those things. No, but people by and large have been so kind and supportive. 

37:49 - Tara (Host)
I was listening to the Birds recently and I personally love Alfred Hitchcock. I know, I know he's controversial. He's a great director. Lizzie, you did the thing and you were telling the backstory and you were like everyone. You know he was an awful person. It doesn't mean you don't have to love the movie and stuff. 

38:09
And chris is like, oh, you're gonna get a lot of hitchcockians mad at you and I'm like yeah, we got a few yeah, so yeah we got a few like reviews or emails on that one um, and I was like, I mean ingrid, ingrid berman loved him, so she worked with him on Notorious and so many other stuff. But anyway, I know. 

38:32 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
People are complicated. People are complicated. They have complicated interactions. 

38:37 - Tara (Host)
And it's interesting. I would be curious if you guys ever did like a Sidney Lumet film, because he also has written like the go-to book about filmmaking. I've certainly read it and stuff it's a great book. 

38:53 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
Yeah, I mean. Well, if you read that book you also realize, like, how smooth his productions are. 

38:58
I think it's like part of the issue, I think, murder on the Orient express that he's talking about. On that one where they're they pull off the train, shot at the last minute, they like had two hours to talking about. On that one where they pull off the train, shot at the last minute, they like had two hours to. You know, shoot this one shot. I would love to cover a Sidney Lumet movie. I mean he's an incredible director. The good thing about him is he was a deeply decent director. He was very humane, wrapped on time, you know, didn't overwork people. 

39:21 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
Not a great fit for our podcast. Yeah, we'll just do one, one, one no no driver no, no, no no. 

39:28 - Chris Winterbauer (Guest)
This was like kind of you know, and we've covered. I guess we covered jurassic park, but spielberg is not a dissimilar operator like the guy just knows what he needs, knows what he wants, cruises through his movies. You know we'll cover more of his stuff just because he takes on such Herculean tasks, and it's changed cinema so many times. 

39:49
Yeah, but Jurassic Park really was more about the process of bringing that technology to the screen and that script etc. But I mean they wrapped with time to spare. Same with Raiders of the Lost Ark. I mean finished ahead of schedule on that movie. 

40:08 - Tara (Host)
Well, thank you guys. Is there anything you want to add that we haven't discussed yet? 

40:14 - Lizzie Bassett (Guest)
No, please listen to our podcast. If there's something you want to hear us cover, reach out to us. We do respond to Instagram DMs and emails, so just stay in touch and check out what went wrong. 

40:27 - VO (Host)
Thanks for listening to Media Maker Spotlight from Women in touch and check out what went wrong. Thanks for listening to Media Maker Spotlight from Women in Film and Video. To learn more about WIF, visit w-i-f-s-n-frank-v-s-n-victororg. This podcast is created by Sandra Abrams, Candice Block, Brandon Ferry, Tara Jabari and Jerry Reinhart and edited by Michelle Kim and Inez Perez, With audio production and mix by Steve Lack Audio Subscribe. To continue learning from more amazing media makers, Please visit mediummakerspotlightcom for more information. That's a wrap.