Our good friend Brandon Routh is one of those “thoughtful actors”. Some, by contrast, are more intuitive. They let their guts and gut instincts guide them and their creative choices. In most cases, their life choices, too. But, that’s another conversation for another day and another podcast. I’ve no doubt that had Brandon become anything else – a doctor, a teacher, a businessperson – he’d have been just as thoughtful. But he’s a storyteller by trade. Being “thoughtful” is part of the gig....

Today we’re talking about criticism – and why REAL movie critics really do matter. Here’s the thing about criticism. If you can’t take it, you have no business being in show business. Show business is all about getting and taking criticism. There WILL Be Criticism! From the moment you put any sort of creative idea on the table – whether in the form of a pitch or a script or a concept package – whether it’s the people you’re working with or the people you’re trying to sell it to – there will...

Don’t ya just hate it when soap gets in your eyes? Nothing burns quite like it. Today, we’re going to talk about ACTING – but a very specific kind of acting. The kind they do in SOAP OPERAS like THE GUIDING LIGHT, GENERAL HOSPITAL, ALL MY CHILDREN, AS THE WORLD TURNS. Or like in the one soap opera aimed at people like me, DARK SHADOWS. It really is a particular kind of acting. And it requires a particular skill set to pull it off. Not every actor can. They get self conscious about it. Or they...

It turns out starting The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast set a lot of things in motion and opened a lot of damned doors. The most exciting of those newly opened doors is the opportunity to tell some mind-blowing stories in this medium that I have truly come to love. So, I started a little podcasting company. Costard & Touchstone Productions. The first C&T original production is a podcast called “The Donor: A DNA Horror Story“. I really and truly hope that you’ll check it out. If...

How to write like a genius… sounds easy enough! And the way our guest CHARLES FLEISCHER writes, he makes writing like a genius seem easy. Spoiler alert: it’s not. You probably know Charlie as the voice of ROGER RABBIT. He’s also in the TALES FROM THE CRYPT feature film DEMON KNIGHT and a kajillion other movies and TV shows. Or, you may know Charlie as a stand up. Or an artist. or from his scientific work (he’s published actual scientific papers and done extensive research on MOLEEDS). But,...

If you’re a regular listener to this podcast – or, if you catch us regularly on our YouTube channel – and, by the way, we’ll never turn down a “like” there – you know that we’ve always got our finger on the movie and TV business’s pulse. Cos we always want to know. Is it alive? Is it dead? Is it dying? Between the pandemic and then the WGA and SAG strikes – on top of the financial impact of the streaming wars on everyone but Netflix and Disney – the movie and TV business in Los Angeles at...

How can you not love movies? I grew up a movie lover. Movies – and the people who make them and appear in them – have shaped my life and the directions my life’s taken. Hell, one of the greatest joys of working on TALES FROM THE CRYPT was getting to work with some of the very people whose movies I adored. Like MALCOLM MCDOWELL, TOM HANKS, BUCK HENRY, KIRK DOUGLASS, BOB ZEMECKIS, JOHN FRANKENHEIMER, MICHAEL J FOX and WALTER HILL to name but a very few. I really do love movies! There are some –...

One of the things we care about deeply here at the How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast is the future of movies and the MOVIE BUSINESS. Spoiler alert: it’s not in a very good way right this second. Nonetheless the next wave of filmmakers – like Leah N. H. Philpott and Jacob Leighton Burns, our guests in this episode – are looking for the swell that will bring them in – and bring them success in this insane business. The kid of hockey legend Ed Philpott, Leah’s from Newfoundland, Canada. She went...

Join Gil and I as we catch up! In fact, this episode’s pretty much Gil and I just shootin’ the shit. But, to be perfectly honest, it’s some pretty interesting shit we shot! As you’ll hear, Gil is working on some extremely compelling projects. In The Beginning… When we started this podcast – three years and a hundred twenty-five plus episodes ago – we wanted to tell the story of how making a dumb little horror movie – Bordello Of Blood – wrecked not just a great creative partnership, but a...

We’ve met a lot of talented film makers over the years. My friend ART SEVADA has made some remarkable shorts. His first was nominated at the CANNES FILM FESTIVAL! Art grew up outside of YEREVAN, ARMENIA as the Soviet Union wound down. Since moving to America (when he was a teenager), Art’s made movies, music, art and all sorts of artfully designed products. He really is a style meister! As I’ve detailed on this podcast, part of my story was a two decades-long writer’s block. I had convinced...

I have a confession: My freshman year of college, I was a bad roommate. I wasn’t trying to be one, I just was. My roommate – BRETT GOLDSTEIN – and I were both “dramaramas”. Drama majors. We came from similar backgrounds. We had a shit-ton in common. The one difference? I was very social and Brett was shy. Whereas I could have tried to help him cure his shyness by including him in my social life, I just went out and had my social life. In time – a couple of months – it created a wall between...

Forgive me if I plant an earworm in your head: Steely Dan’s “My Old School”. In honor of it being September (as this episode drops), I’ve chosen to haunt that part of my long distant past, back when I was a student at VASSAR COLLEGE. Or, as I think of it sometimes, “My Old S’Ghoul”. Actually, I enjoyed the hell out of college. It was the mid to late 1970s. Far simpler in a kajillion ways. For me, it was a very good time socially. Even better creatively. I was in the drama department – a few...

In the mood to get “Booped?” You’ve come to the right place! In this episode, we deep dive into all things FLEISCHER STUDIOS with our guest MARK FLEISCHER. While WALT DISNEY captured an idealized, orderly pastoral world that flowed from Disney’s Midwestern roots, Mark’s father MAX FLEISCHER and his uncle DAVE FLEISCHER reveled in the Urban America into which they emigrated – filled with oddballs and idiosyncrasies. Instead of MICKEY MOUSE, they created BETTY BOOP and KOKO and GRAMPY. And...

Here’s a stone cold fact: it is really, really, REALLY hard to create an iconic character like Tales From The Crypt’s iconic Crypt Keeper. For one thing, you can’t set out to create a character that will become iconic. That’s because it’s not up to the character’s creators, it’s up to you – the audience. It’s your embrace – how warm it is – how long it lasts – that determines whether a character can even enter the “iconic” conversation. With the Crypt Keeper, we ticked off all the...

When Gil Adler and I took over HBO‘s iconic TALES FROM THE CRYPT at the start of its third season, one of our tasks was to reignite the series – or see it get cancelled. Crypt was a strange, hybrid creature. Today, talent moves easily from film projects to streaming TV projects and back. That didn’t happen in the mid-1990’s, when we made Crypt. The feature film world and the TV world didn’t mingle much (except for JOHNNY CARSON doing THE OSCARS). It wasn’t easy, but Crypt broke that rule. We...

Our good friend Roger Nygard makes his bread and butter editing and directing TV. Shows like Grey’s Anatomy, The League, Who Is America, Veep and Curb Your Enthusiasm. But, Roger’s passion – the thing that drives him creatively – is making documentaries. That’s part of what motivated him to write his new book

Welcome to another in our series of “TALES FROM THE CRYPT” reunions. This episode’s guest – JOHN LEONETTI – isn’t just a great director of photography and director, he’s from one of HOLLYWOOD’S LEGACY FAMILIES. His dad FRANK LEONETTI was a sought after gaffer who helped light THE WIZARD OF OZ and SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN. John’s brother MATT LEONETTI DP’d movies like POLTERGEIST, FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, COMMANDO and JAGGED EDGE. While John would go on to DP and direct movies like THE...

Our guest today is both a friend and a co-worker. John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer. After 9-11, John was part of the CIA’s covert team tasked with tracking down Al Qaeda’s leadership. Abu Zubaydah In March 2002, Pakistani forces with CIA support captured the man we thought was Al Qaeda’s number three: a man with the nom de guerre ABU ZUBAYDAH. For the first 60 hours that we had Abu Zubaydah – as he recovered from severe wounds suffered during his capture, John Kiriakou was his...

We hereby call to order the first meeting of the How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast’s SHAUN OF THE DEAD FAN CLUB! How’s that for a SLICE OF FRIED GOLD? Leading today’s meeting will be our guest writer and entertainment journalist CLARK COLLIS author of the definitive (and only as far as we know) book about the making of Shaun Of The Dead, “YOU’VE GOT RED ON YOU“. While we’re on the subject, Clark’s book is terrific! It’s chock-a-block with incredible detail about not ju

The idea seemed so natural. Get WILLIAM FRIEDKIN – director of “THE EXORCIST” – to direct an episode of our little horror anthology TV show – “TALES FROM THE CRYPT“. It just so happened that RICHARD DONNER – director of another great contemporary horror classic, THE OMEN – was one of our illustrious executive producers. It made hiring Friedkin a no-brainer to us. But then, another of our EP’s – the mercurial JOEL SILVER – told us (or, rather, screamed at us) that we were crazy. “He’ll...

As we’ve said here before, one of the very best parts of doing Tales From The Crypt (and there were lots of best parts) was getting to work with incredibly talented people. This episode features another TALES FROM THE CRYPT reunion – this time with comedian RITA RUDNER who starred (alongside her friend RICHARD LEWIS in the episode WHIRLPOOL (directed by MICK GARRIS). Rita didn’t start out as a standup. She started out as a dancer (which she started doing at three). One of the things we...

You know how you meet someone – on the set of a movie – say TALES FROM THE CRYPT PRESENTS DEMON KNIGHT, and the first thought that hits you (after “wow, he’s a nice guy”) is “Wow – that guy is smart, too!”? That’s Charlie Fleischer! Being smart – especially that smart – has a lot of the same hallmarks as being nuts. Those kinda people tend to focus with manic intensity on things. And when they do, they kinda look like they know things no one else does. Yeah – that, too, is what it’s...

Dirty little secrets… Show biz is filled to the brim with em. And Tobe Hooper’s dirty little secret? It might just could blow your mind… One of the greatest things about doing TALES FROM THE CRYPT – and there were lots and lots of great things about it – was getting to work with all the talented people we got to work with. There were a lot of pinch me moments because of it. Kirk Douglass, Tom Hanks, Daniel Craig, Billy Friedkin, John Frankenheimer – our executive producers Dick Donner,...

Killer Klowns v Crypt Keeper In this one, we talk CREATIVE SYNERGY. In this case, the remarkable synergy between our guests THE CHIODA BROTHERS, creators of KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE (celebrating its 35TH ANNIVERSARY). The Chiodas also create lots of other great MOVIE & TV work including some brilliant stuff for TEAM AMERICA, the SIMPSONS and MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON. Synergy is a remarkable thing. It’s the spark that ignites when a collaboration between two people...