Filmmaker and author, Dan Mirvish’s recent feature, 18½, starred Willa Fitzgerald, John Magaro and Bruce Campbell as the voice of Nixon. The award-winning film played in 25 festivals, had a 60-city theatrical release, played on 7 airlines and is now available on Starz.“The trick is to always know what your next shot is. You don’t have to know what your shot is two shots from now, but you have to know what your next shot is so that when you do say cut, check the gate print, moving on, people know that you have the confidence to say, okay, the next shot is this one. Even if you’re never even going to use that shot, you just you know, here’s the dirty little secret: you just make up something just to buy yourself some time until you figure out what the real shot is.”
~Dan Mirvish
Prior to that, Dan directed Bernard and Huey, scripted by Oscar and Pulitzer Prize-winner Jules Feiffer. It starred Oscar-winner Jim Rash and David Koechner.
Dan’s film Between Us, an adaptation of the hit Off-Broadway play, starred Julia Stiles, David Harbour, Taye Diggs, and Melissa George. He was mentored by Robert Altman on his first film, Omaha (the movie), which led him to co-found the upstart Slamdance Film Festival. And his film Open House prompted the Academy Awards to rewrite their rules on the Best Original Musical category.
Dan co-wrote the critically acclaimed novel I Am Martin Eisenstadt. And he wrote two editions and recorded an audiobook of his non-fiction book, The Cheerful Subversive’s Guide to Independent Filmmaking.
Dan is a graduate of USC’s renowned film school and is a member of the Director’s Guild of America.
Of note, he’s also worked as a speechwriter for U.S. Senator Tom Harkin.
WEBSITES:
DAN MIRVISH FILMS AND BOOKS:
- 18½
- Bernard and Huey
- Between Us
- Omaha (the movie)
- Open House
- I Am Martin Eisenstadt
- The Cheerful Subversive’s Guide to Independent Filmmaking
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Steve Cuden: On today’s StoryBeat…
Dan Mirvish: The trick is to always know what your next shot is. You don’t have to know what your shot two shots from now, but you have to know what your next shot is so that when you do say cut, check the Gate print. Moving on, people know that you have the confidence to say, okay, the next shot is this one. Even if you’re never even going to use that shot, you just you know, here’s the dirty little secret. You just make up something just to buy yourself some time until you figure out what the real shot is.
Announcer: This is StoryBeat with Steve Cuden. A podcast for the creative mind. Story Beat explores how masters of creativity. Develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds. Of imagination and Entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden.
Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on story. We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today is filmmaker and author Dan Mirvish, whose recent feature, 18 and a Half starred Willa Fitzgerald, John Magaro, and Bruce Campbell as the voice of Nixon. The award winning Film played in 25 festivals, had a 60 city theatrical release, played on seven airlines, and is now available on STARZ. Prior to that, Dan directed Bernard and Hughie. Scripted by Oscar and Pulitzer Prize winner Jules Pfeiffer, it starred Oscar winner Jim Rasch and David Kechner. Dan’s film Between Us, an adaptation of the hit off Broadway play, starred Julia Stiles, David Harbour, Tay Diggs, and Melissa George. He was mentored by the late, great Robert Altman on his first film. Omaha The Movie, which led him to co found the upstart Slam Dance Film Festival and his Film Open House prompted the Academy Awards to rewrite their rules on the best original musical category. Dan co wrote the critically acclaimed novel I am Martin Eisenstadt, and he wrote two editions and recorded an audiobook of his nonfiction book, The Cheerful Subversives Guide to Independent Filmmaking. Dan is a graduate of USC’s renowned Film school and is a member of the Directors Guild of America. Of note, he’s also worked as a US Senate speech writer. So for all those reasons and many more, it’s a truly great pleasure for me to welcome the multitalented Dan Mirvich to StoryBeat today. Dan, welcome to the show.
Dan Mirvish: Thanks, Steve. Thanks for having me on.
Steve Cuden: Oh, it’s a great privilege for me to have you here, believe me. So let’s go back in time just a little bit. How old were you when you first started to think about movies and theater and plays and writing and all these wonderful things.
Dan Mirvish: Sure. well, I was the senior in high school and I got suckered into auditioning for the school play, Fiddler on the roof. And how suckered were you? Well, yeah, because my friends needed a ride home after auditions and so they said, well, Dan, you’re driving the carpool today, so if you say and audition, too, then we can get a ride home. They wouldn’t have to take the bus. Yeah. Thus became my theatrical career. That was also the beginning and pretty much the end of my acting career, which is probably just as well for all concerned. But, but anyway. But that was, but it was a lot of fun doing that. And, then when I went to college the next year, I took a Film class. I’d always been kind of interested in Film, but growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, there wasn’t, you know, there wasn’t really a consistent art house. There would be odd screenings here and there of interesting films. But then that first semester in college in St. Louis, I took a super a class and really enjoyed that and started in through a poli sci class. Kind of dabbled a little bit in Film, theory stuff. But the school I went to, Washington University, didn’t have a Film program at all. So they, beyond that one super eight class, but I did realize I could take some summer classes at UCLA. So I did that. I took a couple cinematography classes at UCLA, which was great because it’s a real Film school, you know?
Steve Cuden: A real school, yes.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah. It smells like eucalyptus. And opportunity. And, you know, and I learned and had a really inspiring, czech slovakian cinematographer, there who, was just great and taught me how to use 16 millimeter. And, back in St. Louis, I was very involved with the student group that showed films every day on campus. And so because I knew how to use 16 millimeter, I was able to shoot like our coming soon and no smoking trailers, things like that. So that, so even though I majored in history and political science, you know, I kept doing as much film as I could while I was there.
Steve Cuden: But you obviously eventually went to USC. That was for grad school, I assume.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, exactly. And then, and then after college, I sort of took the gres, thinking I might at some point go to Film school. But then I sort of had the Washington bug a little bit. So I went, I moved out to DC and worked, a little bit as a journalist, and then, as you mentioned, worked, as a speech writer for Senator Tom Harkin.
Steve Cuden: Oh, for Tom Harkin?
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Steve Cuden: How long did you do that?
Dan Mirvish: it was about a year and a half. You know, I, realized if you. If you stay in DC long enough, by the time you hit 30, someone gives you a three piece suit and a law degree just by osmosis. And I was like, well, I’m not sure if I want that, so I thought I should apply to Film school.
Steve Cuden: Okay, so let’s talk about that for a moment. How was that experience? Because I’ve never talked to anyone that has been a Senate speechwriter or worked for a senator.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah. And at the time, there were not many of us that were designated speech writers a lot. Most Senate offices, just if you were like the farm aide, you would write the farm speeches, or the foreign policy aide, you’d write the foreign policy. We were one of the few offices actually had two designated, speechwriters. And a lot of what I was doing initially as the junior speechwriter, was supervising video shoots, because we would do, you know, if the Kiwanis club in Des Moines needed a speech. This is in there, you know, like 1980, 919, 90, you would go to the basement of the Capitol, where there are recording studios and video, recording studios, and you’d record the senator giving a speech on a teleprompter, you know, just basically speaking the camera. These were not creative videos of any, but we would do a lot of those, ah, like once a week, do a whole round of those. But that sort of got me talking to the guys in the booth on a consistent basis and playing around with cameras a little bit and, just kind of seeing how, you know, little videos are made. But, But that kind of kept my Film interest going a little bit. And the guys in the booth would be like, yeah, you should go to Film school. You should apply, you know, but what was fun and the kind of the relevant thing to that I later figured out was the relevant thing was that it really taught you to write in the voice of a, ah, character of somebody else. You know, in this case, it was a real person, who had a particular and unique speaking style. And to get in, to put your head into the head of someone else and your voice coming out of their voice, I think that was really helpful. Then later in, screenwriting, would Harkin vet the speeches? Oh, yeah, of course, yeah. You know, and I also learned while I was there, you know, there are some senators who are. And other politicians who are very good at reading speeches and can make them feel like they. They are truly their own Harkin was, and, you know, still is very good at that. He knew when to kind of improvise, when to go off script and then how to come back in, which is not an easy thing to do, especially if there’s a moving teleprompter or something like that, or even a written speech. He was very nimble at that, and a lot of politicians aren’t. Yeah, it was very easy to write for him.
Steve Cuden: Your political experience in Washington said to you, I better go to Los Angeles and become a movie maker.
Dan Mirvish: Exactly. Yeah.
Steve Cuden: So you go to USC for grad school, right?
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, for grad school, yeah. The graduate production program. Yeah.
Steve Cuden: And how long was that?
Dan Mirvish: Was that two years, program and I mean, or three to five for time off with time off for good behavior. You know, not everybody finished in three. and some people left early. I mean, a third of our class drop out the first year, another third dropped out the second year, but I stuck with it. And then I was able to find the one loophole, where I could actually do a full length feature as my thesis film. No one had ever done that before. And. But this was, you know, early, nineties. This was when Richard Linklater, Robert Rodriguez were making these little indie films in Texas. And I was like, well, I want to do that. I’m from Omaha. How hard can it be? Be, you know? And then the summer after my first year there, I really learned how to make a film from beginning to end because I got, I interned, wound up interning and getting hired on a, on a kickboxing movie in the Philippines. You know, the old adage, you learn more from working on a bad Film than you do from working on a good Film.
Steve Cuden: 100%.
Dan Mirvish: I learned a lot on that kickboxing movie. And, but really was able to see a Film getting made from. Straight from pre production and the writing stage, through production and into post, which is, which is kind of rare to get that full experience from beginning to end of a film. But that kind of gave me the confidence that then, you know, I wanted to do a feature length thesis Film and then went back, wrote it for friends back in Nebraska. Actor friends. ah, some of them had been in that first high school Musical. I was in, and locations, back in Nebraska. And then we went back there, raised money, and then teamed up with a local producer. And coincidentally, his grandfather was Robert Altman. So I was like, yeah, that’s cool. Oh, well, yeah. so we had the great benefit of Robert Altman as our mentor on that.
Steve Cuden: And so what did you learn from him that has held you in good stead all these years?
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, a couple key things. One, I mean, this is a thing he was known to say as other directors happen, which is 90% of directing is casting. It’s taken me 30 years to figure out what the other 10% is. I’m still figuring that out. But that was definitely something he adhered to, and imparted to us. The other big thing from him was a couple things. Number, one, really talking to him in depth about how and why he would record sound. He was known and was instrumental in sort of having actors be lavaliered with individual, lavalier mics, each actor going to a separate audio track. And it was really fascinating watching him do that. I was on the set of Kansas City for a few days and watched that. And the why of the process, too. you get better performance from the actors. You never have ADR. But also he said, you know, you’re not relying on the lowest paid member of the crew, the boom operator, to make the creative decisions for you. He says, you’re the artist, you’re the director, you should be able to do that. And the only way to do that is record everyone and then make those decisions in post. And that was something I’ve kind of done in every Film since then. But then the other big thing was sort of how you make these films production, wise, which is to say, you set a start date and you tell everyone when the train’s leaving the station and you’re either on or you’re off, and you just stick to that start date no matter what. And you cast and shoot the Film with whoever you have.
Steve Cuden: Is that true? Even if you don’t have all the financing?
Dan Mirvish: Oh, it’s even more so, yeah, yeah, no, exactly. yeah, I mean, I think the practical lesson is, you know, have enough financing to get through production one way or another. You know, enough to pay your cast and crew and feed people. but you certainly don’t need money for post production upfront, much more so now than at the time.
Steve Cuden: Why is that?
Dan Mirvish: Well, because worst case scenario, you can always edit the Film on your laptop for free, assuming you know something about editing, which you ought to, so you’re not. You can always cut a version of a Film together. It may not be the finished version, you may not be able to do the final sound mix, but you can get pretty far these days just on a laptop, for sure.
Steve Cuden: For sure. It’s become a whole lot cheaper to make, something akin to a professional looking movie these days.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, but getting through production, that is, you still need money.
Steve Cuden: Well, obviously, if you’re going to pay people anything. Yeah. And you’ve got to feed them and sometimes, transport them and sometimes house them and that sort of stuff.
Dan Mirvish: Right.
Steve Cuden: So, yes, that costs money, but it is a lot cheaper in terms of the footage itself, which is no longer in Film. It’s mostly in video. And that’s relatively inexpensive by comparison.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, absolutely.
Steve Cuden: So you started back in the day when you were actually shooting on Film.
Dan Mirvish: Exactly.
Steve Cuden: Yeah.
Dan Mirvish: My first Film, we were, you know, we shot on 35 millimeter, which meant using short ends that we would get, you know, leftover footage from Hollywood.
Steve Cuden: And, you have to realize nobody today that’s in Film school knows what short ends are.
Dan Mirvish: I know. Yeah. It’s crazy. It’s basically. It’s literally the leftover Film. You know, a big Hollywood production or a tv show would, if they’re doing an eight minute take, for example, for whatever reason, or they do two four minute takes and they’ve got two minutes leftover of footage. Because they would come in these 9000 or 10,000 foot cans, which would last ten minutes. They would just save those last two minutes worth of Film. And then there was this secondary market that developed where they would either give or donate or sell those extra little short ends to indie filmmakers. So then when we were making our films, we had to shoot on, like, footage that was less than two minutes long. So I could never do a take that was longer than two minutes or longer than a minute and a half. which I think did influence the way I shoot my Film sometimes. But. But that was how you would make films in the. In the nineties was with, leftover footage. I mean, we got Beverly Hills, 90210, God bless them, they gave us some of their short ends.
Steve Cuden: Well, I think in those days it was still relatively challenging to shoot long, long takes. Because Film is a much more cumbersome process. But if you have video today, you can shoot and shoot and shoot.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, so, I mean, there’s still a beauty to shooting on Film. And on my last Film, Bernard and Huey, we actually did shoot about 10% of it on 16 millimeter, on super 16, because we had some flashbacks. And that lent itself to it. And it was interesting going back and figuring, out how to shoot on Film again. Just the whole rhythm of the set is very different than a digital set. Everybody to be really rehearsed including all the crew. And where you put the slate and where you put the boom. You have someone mess that up and you’ve got to shoot the whole thing over again.
Steve Cuden: So did you get to work with Jules Pfeiffer?
Dan Mirvish: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He was, Yeah, worked closely with him. I mean, he was in his late eighties when we started the production. But it took us a while, you know, we kind of rediscovered this script. Bernard and Huey, that he had written in 1986, had been commissioned by Showtime to write it. And it’s based on characters that actually go back to 1957, from his comic strips that had been the Village Voice and Playboy magazine. And then he. He’d been commissioned to write the script for Showtime. But the week he turned it in, they changed their ownership and their business model. And they said, we’re not doing features anymore. So they never paid him for it. And then it basically disappeared for 30 years. And we tracked it down. I’d read this interview with him where he said he had several unproduced, screenplays. And then I got in touch with him, and he couldn’t remember what they were. And everything was in storage. And he’d been divorced so many times, he couldn’t find anything. Anyway, then eventually I tracked down a copy of the script at the academy library. They. It had been published in a magazine. Scenario magazine. And in, 19. Like 96 or something like that. And, anyway, we found a copy. And Jules said, oh, yeah, that’s the one. Bernard and Huey, you know. but that. What you read may have been an abridged version. I said, well, let’s. Let’s find your old assistant. Maybe she has an old floppy disk of it. No, she’s dead, you know? Oh, well, that’s regrettable. And I go, what about your old agent? No, he is dead. Well, all right. What about your old lawyer? No longer among the county. He is dead. And, so finally we found an old producing partner of his, who, thankfully, was still alive, still married, still had his archives, and he had a copy of the full script. And then we actually tracked down the original handwritten copy of the script on yellow legal pads at the Library of Congress.
Steve Cuden: Holy mackerel.
Dan Mirvish: Jules had donated, some of his work there. and then he’s like, I’m 87. When are we making this thing already? So, yeah, it was great working, with him. And, I mean, he had so many stories of working with Kubrick and Alton.
Steve Cuden: He’s one of the great comic geniuses of all time. I mean, really?
Dan Mirvish: Yeah. Yeah. And for those who don’t know, you know, he was as a screenwriter. He wrote Carl knowledge and worked with Alan Arkin on little, murders and. But, you know, of course, had this comic strip that he won the Pulitzer for, you know, and worked with Mike Nichols and Elaine May and, Yeah, I mean, an incredible guy. So.
Steve Cuden: Well, that’s amazing that you were able to not only contact him, but actually start to work with him. Because at that point, why would he bother with someone he doesn’t really know, you know?
Dan Mirvish: Exactly. Well, I bribed him with, With bagels and locks from.
Steve Cuden: Is that all it takes?
Dan Mirvish: Apparently, yeah. Yeah.
Steve Cuden: I gotta remember.
Dan Mirvish: That’s the. That’s the trick is you have to find the soft spot for anyone that you’re working with. Yeah.
Steve Cuden: So what attracts you to stories? I know that you have a little bit of a political bent. You obviously have a poli side background in history. Is that what attracts you as things that have some kind of a political undertone to them?
Dan Mirvish: I think more so recently. Yeah, definitely. You know, that’s kind of what, largely attracted me to coming up with 18 and a half, the last film we did.
Steve Cuden: Tell us about it. What is 18 and a half?
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, 18 and a half. Which kind of evolved out of conversations with Pfeiffer kind of as we were finishing up. It’s fictional, historical fiction. It’s about the missing 18 and a half minute gap in the Nixon Watergate tapes. And it’s about a young woman who works in the Nixon White House as a transcriber who gets a hold, stumbles into the missing 18 half minute gap and wants to leak it to a reporter. And they meet at a seaside, motel and naturally run afoul of hippies, swingers and nefarious people out to get them, naturally, as one does. so it all takes place in 1974. And it was really inspired in large part because my friend Terry, Terry Keefe, who had been an indie film producer but was running, had kind of inherited a motel in Greenport, New York, on the tip of Long island. That was, a vintage looking motel that his grandparents had built in the fifties and sixties. And kind of stopped renovating it in around 1974. And he had really done a great job preserving the vintage look and feel of it. And it had been used. I mean, it was a real working motel at the time, but had been used as a location for, music videos and commercials, and that sort of thing. But no one had ever shot a feature there. And Terry was actually with me talking to Jules. because this was on the tip of Long Island. Jules lived on, shelter island at the time. We had just taken the ferry back and forth, and it was the day after Trump got elected in 2016. And so the conversation that the three of us were having was very much comparisons between Trump and Nixon. And, you know, because Pfeiffer was, you know, he won the Pulitzer for his Nixon cartoons, essentially. And so, you know, we were like, well, how many impeachments could we possibly have in the next four years? And then with that kind of in the back of our minds, Terry and I went back to his motel, and I was like, oh, my God, this looks like 1974. Let’s make a Watergate Film. But it didn’t look like the Watergate hotel. it looked like a seaside motel. So the trick and the challenge was, first of all, we figured out, well, okay, we’ll just tell people it’s in Maryland, that’s on the Chesapeake, and that’s at least geographically closer to Washington. but then crafting a story that would work with that location, because Terry said, hey, if we shoot it, we can, you know, he was closed in the winter, we can have the whole cast and crew stay there. And then I teamed up, we teamed up with a riding partner of mine, Daniel Moya. And coincidentally, he had an aunt and uncle who, owned a period looking diner that was just down the Street from Terry’s motel. and so now we had two locations. Now you got two locations of Film. Gods say the rule is you have to make the movie. so then it was a matter of just kind of coming up with interesting and compelling characters, that we could stick in this world. and, you know, because the hard part is for indie filmmakers especially, people always say, oh, my God, don’t do a period Film. It’s so expensive, it’s so challenging. It’s not never going to look right. And really, that experience with Bernard and Huey shooting some of the flashbacks, even though we were shooting in Film, it kind of demystified making a period Film for me. so we’re like, yeah, let’s just embrace it.
Steve Cuden: So you took a well known era and lots of characters that were well known and put it into a completely whole cloth, original work.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And really, most of the main characters are all fictional characters, but, at some point, they do listen to our version of the 18 and a half minute gap. And so we had, we have Bruce Campbell as Nixon, as the voice of Nixon. So we had to cast people as known entities. So, Bruce as Nixon, John Cryer as Haldeman, his first chief of staff. And then Ted, Ramey as, General Al Haig, who was Nixon’s second chief of staff. And then all the live action characters are all fictional.
Steve Cuden: When you’re dealing with famous people like that, you don’t really need to clear anything, do you?
Dan Mirvish: No, no. If they’re. The secret is if they’re dead.
Steve Cuden: If they’re dead.
Dan Mirvish: If they’re dead, that’s the surest bet at all. the other thing is, if they’re a public figure, then you have pretty much free reign as well. but if they’re a public figure and they’re dead, and it’s a comedy, you can do whatever you want.
Steve Cuden: I assume if someone’s alive and a public figure, you still have to avoid slandering them. Yes.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, but it’s harder to slander someone who’s a public figure. So the slanderer has a lot protection. First, amendment protection.
Steve Cuden: Did your time working for Tom Harkin help you make in terms of the StoryBeat? Did it help you with that StoryBeat?
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I knew even before I met Harkin when I was in college, my. One of my professors and mentors was former, ah, Senator Thomas Eagleton, who had just retired and was then teaching. And he had been McGovern’s running mate until he got kicked off the ticket, which may or may not have come out of Nixon’s shenanigans. so sort of having known him. And then. And then Harkin was the Watergate class, or the post Watergate class. And he got elected in 1974 to the house, you know, and just sort of being in Washington, and you would run into these tangential figures to Watergate, I think Elliot Richardson I spoke to on the phone briefly once. But also a, big part of the plot of the story and the characters really, is that they are these young 20 something people caught up in this bigger world. And that was something that I experienced firsthand, you know, being a 20 something person in Washington that you like, because people forget that most of Washington is really run by 20 year olds.
Steve Cuden: You know, I didn’t know that it’s run by 20 year olds because they’re all pages and assistants and so on.
Dan Mirvish: And assistants and interns and young staffers. And it was interesting then when the January 6 hearings came out, this is now after we shot the Film and Cassie Hutchinson became the big witness, and we were like, oh, my gosh, that is just like our character. Somebody literally she almost looks like Willa Fitzgerald, who plays our character, but a young 20 something woman working in the White House who nobody else is paying attention to but has access to great information and power that could potentially bring down a president. And we were like that, thematically, at least. Right on the money for what our Film was.
Steve Cuden: All right, so let’s talk about your process a little bit in terms of when you’re making the movie. You’ve obviously sat down, you came up with a story. You sat down and wrote the story, I’m just curious, have you ever worked on someone else’s script? I guess Jules Pfeiffer counts well.
Dan Mirvish: The Pfeiffer one. Yeah. I mean, there was a little bit of tweaking that we did because we had to move. We had to adjust the era up 30 years, because originally it was written contemporaneously in 1986 with flashbacks to 1960. And so we moved everything up 30 years. So it was 2017 were the contemporary scenes, and then 1988 was, the flashback scenes. and what was interesting was how little work. I mean, Jules kind of gave me free reign to kind of tweak it just to get the periods right. But remarkably, it didn’t really need that much work to do. There was just a few references. but plot wise, it actually worked remarkably well.
Steve Cuden: So you have a script, and you have decided you want to make this script into a movie. Where, do you start? What’s the first thing that you do? Is it, do you decide that you’re going to cast it before you? Obviously you need money. So you’ve somehow figured out to get some kind of money.
Dan Mirvish: Well, yeah. So that is the interesting chicken and egg that most people wrestle with is you can’t get the money until you get the cast. You can’t get the cast without the money. And the way you kind of break that conundrum is through crowdfunding, largely. so on most of my films, I’ve done some version of crowdfunding. I’ve used Kickstarter a few times, seed and spark. and the reason for that is because it is cast agnostic financing. That’s ideally what you want to start with is anything that’s caste agnostic financing, whether that’s your family or your friends or a formal campaign, because those are the people that are giving you money because they believe in you, they believe in the script, they believe in giving away their money for whatever reason. And then once you have a little bit of that, you don’t need the full budget. But if you have ten or 15% of the budget through crowdfunding or other cash agnostic financing. That gives you then the confidence to set a start date. And that goes to what I mentioned. Altman would say, set that start date and tell everyone you’re making the movie and trains leaving the station. And then it’s much easier to then cast other people in the Film because actors and their agents, more importantly, are motivated by two things. One is money, but the other thing is insecurity. And so they abhor a vacuum in their schedule. Actors love to Act, certainly the good ones do. And agents love to book their actors in something, anything, just anything to keep them from bothering them and calling them on the phone. When’s my next gig? When’s my next gig? So if you have a firm start date, even if your budget’s super low, and as long as the parts are interesting and compelling parts for the actors, you’ll find a good cast. You don’t always know until the day before you’re shooting, or even sometimes the day of shooting who you’re going to get. But you’ll get someone, and you’ll get someone good.
Steve Cuden: That sounds nerve wracking to me.
Dan Mirvish: It’s incredibly nerve wracking. On 18 and a half, for example, we started the first week of shooting, with our two main actors, Willa, Fitzgerald and John Magaro, who are both great. But the second week of shooting, we were going to have introduced two new characters, our second two leads. And we were well into that first week, three or four days in, and we had no idea who was going to show up the next week because someone had dropped out. And so we were scrambling around. And then in the end, we got two amazing actors, Avondi, Curtis hall and Kathy Curtin. And they were terrific. And, we got lucky, I think.
Steve Cuden: All right, so you now have a script and you have something akin to a green light. You may not have all of your budget, and you may not have all of your actors. You at least have a crew line up.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, yeah, that’s helpful, I would say.
Steve Cuden: That’s very helpful.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah. At least for the first week, you should have your crew lined up. once you get into the second week, you can get new crew.
Steve Cuden: How do you break your script down before you even get into production? What do you do to break your script down?
Dan Mirvish: Well, I try to aim for ones that getting locations is actually the hardest thing, I think, on making these indie films, because it’s the ones variable that can either be really free, like my friend Terry essentially gave us this great location, which was great. And then we wrote the script around the location. So that’s great when that happens. or they can wind up being very expensive. And you don’t always know that until sometimes after you’ve shot there, when you realize, oh, hey, hang on a second. Your crew scratched our floor, and now it’s going to cost an extra $10,000, or you didn’t get the right permit from the right city, and that’s an extra $10,000. So that is the biggest, variable, really, because with cast, you kind of. You’re dealing with SaG scale, whichever, you know, you pick whatever scale you’re at. And with crew, you’re typically working with minimum wage. So those are kind of. And you know how much it costs to feed x number of people, x number of meals.
Steve Cuden: Sure.
Dan Mirvish: But locations tend to be the biggest unknown. Yeah. So which then, to answer your question, I mean, I’m always thinking about location, location, location when I’m reading.
Steve Cuden: So do you try to make scripts, write scripts, find scripts that are minimalized on terms of location or special effects or that kind of thing?
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, definitely, definitely. but on the other hand, you also shouldn’t be afraid of things, too. So, for example, in Bernard and Huey the Pfeiffer script, there’s a short scene in there that takes. And it’s one of our flashback scenes. So it takes place on a New York City subway from 1988. And we were shooting most of the Film in Los Angeles. So how do you find a New York City subway in 1988? We’re kind of racking our brains. And then finally, I had been watching panic, in needle park, from 1972. It’s, Al Pacino’s first breakout film. But the opening shot of that is a woman in the Film. I forget her name, but it’s kind of a close up of her on a New York City subway that they really shot on New York City subway in 1972, and then just kind of holding a pole and surrounded by a bunch of people. And I realized all you need to sell a New York City subway is a pole and a bunch of other people. And so we wound up shooting it in my garage in Culver City in LA with one pole. And all of our crew just jammed up, next to our main characters and with lights and sound and, sound design, we sold it. everybody thinks we shot that on a subway. So on the one hand, you need to be very cognizant of locations. On the other hand, you also can be creative about them, too, and not be afraid of locations. And same thing with visual effects now, because there are so many inexpensive ways to do visual effects if you need to. most of my films don’t have a lot of visual effects, but every now and again, there’s a couple little. Little things that we have to clean up or change or do, and they’re not. It’s not that expensive.
Steve Cuden: There are lots of, packages that help with that now, video packages of one kind or another.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, yeah. But we had on, 18 and a half, we had a great little team. I mean, one guy was our effects supervisor, was my neighbor, but he was kind of between Marvel projects and, you know, and this was at the height of the pandemic, so I would trade sourdough for effects shots, and he had a couple guys in Guadalajara and Mexico that were sitting around with nothing to do. They would work on these shots.
Steve Cuden: And you’re saying the guys in Guadalajara and Mexico liked sourdough?
Dan Mirvish: Well, no, the guy who lived near me, he liked sourdough. He was colombian, but he liked the sourdough. I feel bad the guys in Guadalajara never got the sourdough, so I’m not.
Steve Cuden: Really sure how that they got ripped off.
Dan Mirvish: They did. Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Cuden: So do you continue to work on the script in production? Do you allow the actors to do what they feel like they’re doing?
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, that’s a great question. yeah, I mean, there’s the old adage that you write a script three times and, you know, in screenplay form, and then while you’re directing on set, and then in post production as well. I think that adage is true. so the way I like to work, and it’s been a little different on each Film, depending on the circumstances. I like to do rehearsal when we have the time, but on 18 and a half, we didn’t have the time because we were getting the actors at the last minute. So we made that work for us. but, yeah, I I really like to trust my actors, and, I make a point of hiring smart actors who, you know, who are good filmmakers themselves, usually. You know, in the case of Bernard and Huey, we had, Jim Rasche as one of the leads, who’s an Oscar winning screenwriter, you know, and I would say, hey, Oscar, do you want to rewrite this thing or improvise? And, you know, thankfully, Pfeiffer himself came from a bit of an improv background at Second City, working with Nichols, and May. So he didn’t mind that we were doing that and, yeah, really letting the actors, you know, make the words feel natural to them. with whatever kind of improvisation that takes either on set or in rehearsal.
Steve Cuden: Are you a very well planned person going into production, or are you more freeform?
Dan Mirvish: Oh, I would say more freeform.
Steve Cuden: More free form.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I don’t do a lot of, storyboarding, except when there’s, like, an action sequence or we have, you know, we have one last day and we have to get this element in this shot and this shot, and we’re trying to fill in gaps from what we’ve already edited. but, no, I tend not to be, ah, overly planned.
Steve Cuden: Do you ever get stumped?
Dan Mirvish: Yes, I do.
Steve Cuden: And what do you do? How do you solve that?
Dan Mirvish: The trick is, is to always know what your next shot is. You don’t have to know what your shot two shots from now. but you have to know what your next shot is so that when you do say, cut, check the Gate print. Moving on, people know that you have the confidence to say, okay, the next shot is this one. Even if you’re never even going to use that shot, you just m. You know, here’s the dirty little secret. You just make up something just to buy yourself some time until you figure out what the real shot is. That you really.
Steve Cuden: Wow, that’s a, I’ve never heard anybody say that before.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah. Well, that’s good. No one will admit it, but. But, yeah, because as long as you can keep the crew and the cast moving around and thinking that they’re creating great art, that’s the important thing. As soon as they’re, like, standing around twiddling their thumbs, that’s when it’s a real problem. Yeah.
Steve Cuden: Oh, that’s a huge problem. It’s. Everybody knows time is money on a set, and.
Dan Mirvish: Exactly.
Steve Cuden: You’re really burning.
Dan Mirvish: It’s always better to shoot something than to be wondering what you’re going to shoot. The challenge is when there are these other circumstances, like, oh, a cloud just came over or it started raining or, or we’re losing, you know, where a neighbor starts their, you know, leaf blower or something like that, and then you’ve got to figure out, but there’s always a way to shoot something, you know? And when in doubt, just shoot something.
Steve Cuden: Most people that I know that directly are pretty well planned out so that they can figure out how to make a pivot when they have to or punt when they have to, but you go at it free form. Do you find that to be stimulating in some way? Is that, like, really get your juices flowing.
Dan Mirvish: Well, it always drives the first ad Crazy. And the rest of it.
Steve Cuden: No kidding.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah. So now the trick is to have a plan. You know, I mean, to have some kind of a shot list at least going in or know, okay, tomorrow we’re at this location. So we have to, therefore, we have to shoot this scene because we’re gonna lose our location the next day. and that really will force you to get those scenes done. So the trick is really then, in working with the individual actors or the team of actors. And this is one reason I like to do rehearsal. And this is another little secret, too, that I think not too many people know about, is that once you’ve either rehearsed or shot a few days of footage and you’ve started to work with the actors, you can kind of tell which pairs or teams of actors are really good together in terms of chemistry and pacing and know their lines. And so if you see that there’s a team of two actors or three actors that are really, you’re like, oh, wow, these guys are all on the same wavelength. I can probably then shoot oners with them, shoot longer takes with them, as opposed to if there’s two or three or four actors who, and one’s struggling with their lines, or just one has a slower pacing to their rhythm of speaking and one has a faster pacing. or you just cast someone late in the game, and so they just don’t know. They haven’t had time to memorize all their lines, then you have to think, okay, I’m going to shoot them in a different style. I’m going to shoot them more with traditional coverage or jump cutting style or something like that. so I think that’s something that’s unique that I do, is I pay attention to the actors that we have and play to their strengths. So you’re not forcing someone to do a long shot, and it’s two actors, and their rhythm is just never going to be perfect or they can’t remember their lines or something like that. And you’re all getting frustrated that, oh, my gosh, this is not going to work in this long shot. Like, no, just shoot it in a different style, and then you don’t have that problem. Whereas if you’ve got two actors and they can sustain a long five minute Warner, then shoot it in a long five minute wanner. It’s not about, showing off for your Film school friends. It’s about taking advantage of the actors and the team that you have. And likewise with the crew, if you’ve got a first assistant camera who’s not good at holding focus or not good at racking focus in the middle of a shot, but they’re good at holding, then you adjust your style to that. You know, I don’t know, something like that. Or a boom operator who can’t hold a boom for more than three minutes because, you know, they have a strange shoulder.
Steve Cuden: It’s hard to do. It’s hard to do. So you’re saying that your philosophy and your technique in terms of the crew and actors and so on, is to sort of go to their strengths.
Dan Mirvish: Exactly.
Steve Cuden: Not to have them try to come to your vision.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, definitely. I mean, look, it would be great if everybody came to my vision and did exactly what I wanted. I just know that on an indie Film, I don’t have the budget to pay for everybody, that I want to build the sets, that I absolutely want to cast all the actors that I absolutely want, all at the same time. I know that’s never going to happen when you’re making a film for a couple hundred thousand dollars or something, so. Okay. But you can still make a film, and there are ways to do it. So the way to do it is you play to the strengths of the people you do have.
Steve Cuden: Mm I think that that’s quite wise. Do you ever run into, and you don’t need to mention any names, but do you ever run into, an issue where the acting just isn’t there? How do you solve that?
Dan Mirvish: Yes. You find a way to film the reactions of the other actors. Wow. And part of it is also, because I do do a lot of my own editing. On 18 and a half, I was, I was my own editor on all my other films. I’ve at least edited at least part of the movie. That’s the other thing, too, is knowing how you’re going to edit a scene or knowing the ways that you can edit a scene. You’re like, you know, what? If this one extra who just has three lines, if they’re not perfect, that’s fine. We’ll just play the scene off of the other actors, and it’ll just be audio. And I know if they’ve got weird pauses or something, I know I can change that, you know, in post, and I know how to do it, you know, with audio editing.
Steve Cuden: Can you sense that as you’re on the set while you’re shooting?
Dan Mirvish: Yeah.
Steve Cuden: Hey, I know I’m going to have to work this in post, but, yeah.
Dan Mirvish: Again, goes to the idea of sort of being flexible in the way you’re going to shoot a scene and the way you’re going to do coverage based on the elements that you have. So. Exactly. If you have one actor and they show up and you’re like, oh, my gosh. They just have a weird timing to their phrasing or they’re singing to the rafters or whatever it is they’re doing that’s not quite consistent with everything else you’re doing. You need to know, okay, how do I shoot that in a way that we can move forward and we’re not wasting a lot of time changing an actor who can’t be changed or changing, the position of the sun that can’t be changed, or whatever that element is that you can’t change. You just need to adapt to it.
Steve Cuden: So there’s a big theme going on in here about you being flexible.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, exactly.
Steve Cuden: As opposed to being, no, this is my way or the highway.
Dan Mirvish: No. I mean, look, if I had an unlimited budget, I could do that. an unlimited time. But I know that we never do. I mean, these films are made in 15 days. You have to shoot ten pages a day. And, you’re never going to get through that if you were waiting for the Perfect take. that’s the other thing that kind of the lesson from Altman when he was talking about sound, and knowing that you could and, get overlapping dialogue. But the real advantage of that is then, as a director, you can make those choices in post production. I take that and apply it also now to the visual side. So, for example, the nice thing about shooting digitally these days is that you can shoot on four k and finish in two k or shoot on six k or eight k now and finish on 4k. Whatever it is, it changes every year. What that allows you to do is if you don’t get the Perfect framing, you know, because that’s another thing that you’re trusting your operator to get the Perfect framing every time. Well, you’re not going to get the Perfect frame and exact framing every time. But if you know that you’re shooting at six k and you’re finishing in 4k, you also know that in editing, you can move things around. You can do a little bit of panning and scanning and zooming and. And it’ll be fine. And so, you know, great. Three takes in, we’re done. Oh, was the fray the, you know, I bumped the framing a little bit. Don’t worry about it. We will adjust it in post and that’s fine. And everybody has to kind of know that that is what the plan is. Your DP has to know that going in.
Steve Cuden: And you can easily do things like undercrank and overcrank and easily in post, you can do it. You can speed up and slow down.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, well, that’s not something I do because that still isn’t going to look great. But in theory, yeah, it is easier to do that now than.
Steve Cuden: It’s certainly easier to color correct in post.
Dan Mirvish: Oh, color correct. Yeah, for sure. Although. But even then, I see a lot of new filmmakers who are like, oh, we can just completely change everything in color. And the problem is you can’t. Now, technically, you probably can, but in reality, you’re paying your colorist for an x number of days, and it’s maybe only seven days or five days or whatever it is. So the kinds of things you could do on a 32nd commercial, for example, you get DP’s who are like, oh, I can change anything in a 32nd, 32nd spot. Like, this isn’t a commercial, this is a feature, and we have to pay our colorist. So in other words, get the color right as best as you can in production, as you say, you know? But if there’s one thing that you’re like, oh, my gosh, we’re three takes in and we realize this one window is too hot in the background. Yeah, that’s something that you’re like, you know what? We can change that in post. So let’s move on.
Steve Cuden: Tell us about the book.
Dan Mirvish: It’s really about how to shoot an indie Film from beginning to end. And it’s, you know, I had been writing a number of articles for, mainly for Filmmaker magazine, as well as some other places, over the years. And then I realized I kind of had enough for, well, it turned out to be half a book. And so then I had to keep writing more. But it really is kind of all these lessons that I’ve learned from other filmmakers and, co founder of Slamdance. So from, from other slamdance filmmakers, Christopher Nolan, the Russo brothers, Rian Johnson, people like that, all kind of shoved into this book, but it’s jam packed with real practical things like, how do you form an LLC? Where do you rent a camera? How do you do editing? How do you apply to Film festivals? How do you get distribution? How do you do self distribution? How do you do an awards campaign on no budget? And kind of all with the underlying theme that it is, is usually better to make the low budget Film than to wait for years and years and years. For all the circumstances to get Perfect to make the big budget Film and then ultimately maybe never do that. And it’s really kind of designed for people that have some background in Film. Either they went to Film school, they’ve done a number of shorts, and now they’re trying to get their first feature off the ground. Or maybe they’ve done one feature and they want to do the second one and, okay, well, great, now how do I get, you know, sort of a list or b list actors in a micro budget Film? And so it’s kind of designed for folks like that. So the book, the publisher is focal press or Rutledge, and we’ve yelled, we’ve had two editions. And one of the editions was translated into Chinese by the dean of the, Beijing Film Academy.
Steve Cuden: That’s cool.
Dan Mirvish: Which is pretty cool. Yeah.
Steve Cuden: So how did you then get to start? Slam dance. Slam dance Film festival in Park City, Utah.
Dan Mirvish: In Park City, Utah. So we started because that first Film I did, Omaha, the movie didn’t get into Sundance. And so, and this was at a time in the mid nineties, which was kind of a pivotal time in independent Film. It was right when Miramax had just become part of Disney Fine line, become part of Warner, brothers Fox was launching Fox Searchlight. And it was kind of the era of the Hollywoodization of independent Film. And Sundance was like, woohoo, we’re going on that Hollywood ride. And they started showing more films with bigger budgets and second time directors and bigger stars and films that already have distribution and hey, Harvey, come on in and do your horrible things. And so they kind of left behind the niche of the real first time indie filmmaker. And it was also a time when there were a lot more films being made at, that level. So I got together with a bunch of other filmmakers and we, and meanwhile we had distributors telling us point blank, oh, we love your Film, but, we’re not going to pick it up for distribution unless it gets into Sundance. So we realized we really had to be in Park City. We had to be there. That’s where the distributors were. That’s where people with checkbooks were. That’s where the agents were. So, Yeah, showed up in Park City, Utah. literally some of our screenings were 30ft down the hall from some of Sundance’s screenings. And we, you know, set our start times for 15 minutes after theirs. And their overflow crowd just went into our screening rooms. And we’d been doing this that first year in, January 95. And by the end of that week, we were like, you know, I think we’re onto something. I think we’re kind of serving a niche here, so why don’t we put down a credit card and reserve it for the next year? So we’ve been doing it for 30 years. We actually just last week announced that next year we’re not going to be in Park City. We’re going to, do the whole festival in LA. Most of us are based in LA anyway, and we’ve done events in LA most years anyway, so it’s not actually a huge change as far as we’re concerned. But, yeah, for everyone else, it’ll be a big change. And Sundance is possibly changing their venue in the next year or two anyway.
Steve Cuden: Where are they talking about going?
Dan Mirvish: Well, they’ve got bids out to, I think three or four different places. I, think, New Mexico. Santa Fe is a possibility. Colorado is a possibility. San Francisco. So maybe LA or they may stay in Utah, but maybe not in Park City. That’s something else that’s been floated in the last week. Somewhere warmer, well, hopefully somewhere that isn’t as expensive, somewhere cheaper. That’s the key problem for both Sundance and slamdance and all the filmmakers and the press and everybody is to throw a Film festival in the most expensive resort town in America is not a sustainable, idea.
Steve Cuden: When you set up shop, did Sundance do anything to try and stop you?
Dan Mirvish: They were not happy.
Steve Cuden: I can’t imagine. Because all of a sudden you’re coming in and competing with them.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, no, they were not thrilled with that idea.
Steve Cuden: And you used the word dance in your title.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah. Redford, in an interview in 96, called us parasites, which was the best street cred we could ever get, by the way. And he’s right. We were parasites. But I always liked to liken it to we were the nice, pretty green moss on the old oak tree that just made the whole forest look nicer, so. But over the years, I mean, I think Sundance begrudgingly acknowledged that we were serving a purpose that they were not able to fulfill anymore. And over the years, we saw so many slamdance filmmakers where we would show their first film because our focus is still on first time filmmakers. But then their second film would get into Sundance and they would do particularly well there because they had experience being in Park City. and I mentioned some of the alumni, but also Bong Joon ho, the late Lynn Shelton, Lena Dunham, Gina Prince Bywood, the Safdie brothers, Sean, Baker. I mean, it’s the list of slam dance alumni is pretty impressive. And you haven’t always heard of the Film that they had at slamdance, but you’ve heard of them.
Steve Cuden: Sure. How challenging is it to keep doing a festival every year? It’s got to be really challenging.
Dan Mirvish: It’s very challenging. I think one of the key things and smartest things we did is we kind of instituted this policy every year that the programming for the new festival is largely done by alumni from the previous festival. So filmmakers one year are picking films for the next year. And so that has allowed kind of fresh voices every year and allowed the old voices like me to kind of take a step back and say, good luck, guys. I’m working on my Film this year, you know, or whatever it is. and that has, I think, been a big sort, of unsung part of our longevity is, to keep that going.
Steve Cuden: How many films are submitted to slam dance every year?
Dan Mirvish: Something like 8000 or something.
Steve Cuden: 8000?
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, it’s a ton. I mean, most are shorts, but you know, there’s still like 2000 features in there and it’s narratives, it’s docs, it’s shorts, it’s international and it’s the filmmakers.
Steve Cuden: From the previous year that are going through those. 8000.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, or previous years, plural. So, I mean, for example, you know, Rian Johnson was on the committee that helped choose the Russo brothers. The Russo brothers were on the committee that helped choose Chris Nolan. you know, Nolan’s wife Emma is his producing partner, Emma Thomas. you know, she was a programmer for two years. so a lot of people do it for more than one year. But yeah, it’s all kind of alumni based.
Steve Cuden: Do they all still tip their hat to you over time?
Dan Mirvish: Most of them do, yeah. Yeah. I mean, the Russo brothers, I mean, this is actually a big reason we’re coming back to LA is because we’ve done events at their studio that they kind of have in downtown LA and we’re going to be doing some stuff with them next. And they write a $25,000 check to a filmmaker every year. That’s one of our awards. You know, in the Nolan’s we still run into them and Ryan and so, yeah, a lot of them have stayed involved in. In greater or lesser capacities, but it’s also just a nice little secret society we have. It’s not so secret, but, you know, in LA where it’s not like the Russos will write me a check for my Film. I know because I’ve asked them, but, you know, but if I’m casting someone, you know, like when I was casting Jim Rash and Bernard and Hughie, I know that he had worked on community with them and he’d been in one of the Marvel movies with them. And I could just text Joe on the set of Endgame, Avengers or whatever, like, hey, how’s Jim Rash to work with? And he very generously is like, hes great. Tell him hi. And thats enough to really help then smooth over that process. Then ten minutes later, im meeting Jim, like, hey, Joe and Anthony, say hi. What?
Steve Cuden: An interesting melange, I guess it would be, of low budget indie filmmakers with people whove gone on to really super high budget, big studios features.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah. And I think that you’ve hit on something I was just talking to someone about the other day, which is that not that many people appreciate, which is this interconnectivity. And between the studio system and indie Film and this kind of codependency that we have where, you know, I mean, I was editing my first film on the Paramount lot. They gave me a free edit suite. You know, there were a couple films where I would, I did a couple days of sound on the Sony lot where people would just kind of sneak me in and use it. There are so many people, vendors and crew who work studio films most of the year, but then when they have time off, they’ll work on an indie Film. So I think people don’t give Hollywood enough credit for being supportive of indie Film in sort of not flashy ways, but in real, meaningful, tangible ways.
Steve Cuden: Well, we’ve lost in Hollywood, the studio system actually backing lower budget, mid budget movies. They’re only backing the super high budget movies and maybe television series, but they’re not really backing the, forget about independence. I’m just talking about low budget studio features.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, the $30 million rom coms or.
Steve Cuden: Whatever, those are all gone.
Dan Mirvish: Gone. And forget about in the thirties and forties when they were making the b movies. You know that.
Steve Cuden: Yes, sure.
Dan Mirvish: That was the independent Film of that era.
Steve Cuden: But then along came Roger Corman, who recently passed and sort of changed that philosophy for a lot of people.
Dan Mirvish: Exactly. Yeah, no, and he was the king of indie Film. And it was, it was an honor to have met him briefly once. but yeah. And actually at slamdance, I just checked our program from our very first year. Our opening night Film was a corpsman Film.
Steve Cuden: Really?
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, he was the executive producer on. It was directed by a guy named John Purdy called reflections on a crime with, it was, probably not the most Corman esque Film. it was a little bit higher quality. But the point is, just, in organizing that first year, we had to get his approval, and we did. We had his blessing. And then later that year, a bunch of us ran into him at a festival in France. And he was incredibly generous and supportive of us. So, between his blessing and Robert Altman blessing us at slamdance, and then Stephen Soderbergh and Richard Linkletter, like when those kind of figures in the industry. And then later, Ava Duvernay has been a huge supporter of slam mans. That’s really given us the confidence to say, yeah, I think we’re onto something here.
Steve Cuden: So while we have a little time, tell us quickly about what is. I am Martin Eisenstadt.
Dan Mirvish: Oh, yeah. So that was a project I did with another slam dance filmmaker, a, ah, guy named Eitan Gora. starting in 2000, I guess, kind of starting in 2007, we did a series of short films, which we were actually pitching as a tv series about a Washington based pundit. And then as we were kind of developing the character live, we gave him a real website and a blog. At the time, people in the media started to think he was real and quoted him. LA Times, Time magazine, Fox News, MSNBC thought he was a real Washington based pundit and an advisor to the McCain campaign. And so kind of played into that. And then it all kind of came to a head when, there was a rumor that Sarah Palin thought Africa was a country instead of a continent, and it was blamed on a real McCain advisor who had leaked it anonymously to Fox News. So we had our character, Martin Eisenstadt, take credit for being the source of that leak that, you know, that got a lot of news. Anyway, then we outed ourselves a couple days later to the New York Times as the filmmakers behind this character, and they put it on front page of their art section. And then the next day, we got a book deal. Wow. We’re like, book? What’s a book? You know? And, but this was also, this was in fall of 2008. It was, right, the economy had just collapsed. You couldn’t get, this was our little side project where we were trying to get, get features made. We couldn’t get our next features made to save our lives. So when presented with the option, do you get paid to write a book or not get paid to not direct a movie? Your wife says, write a book. And, so we did. It was a very prestigious publisher for R. Strauss Giro, which is part of Macmillan. And the book did great. It got better reviews than any of my films. Yeah, so that was. And the book is a memoir, as if this character thinks he still exists. And so it’s kind of, it’s a fun, weird meta book.
Steve Cuden: it’s still available, I assume?
Dan Mirvish: It is, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can still get it wherever. Find books or something.
Steve Cuden: Amazon, I’m sure.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, yeah, I think it’s still there. So.
Steve Cuden: So I’ve been having this really fascinating, wonderful conversation for the last hour, plus with Dan Mirvish. And we’re gonna wrap the show up just a little bit right now and just want in all of your experiences, can you share with us a story that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat, strange, or just plain funny weird.
Dan Mirvish: The weirdest. All my stories are weird, offbeat. You know, just one little thing was, I said, I worked on that kickboxing movie in the Philippines, and, always make sure you get a return ticket when you get a job on a strange movie in the Philippines. And so I’ve been out there, and finally the producer said, dan, you want to come back to LA? And I said, yes. He said, you know, do you want to be our post supervisor? I said, great. What’s a post supervisor? Well, you just have to find us an edit suite because, again, this was shooting 35 millimeter Film. So I tracked down a porn company called Miracle Films, and they were on, like, Santa Monica combined. And they were really sweet people. And they had an extra, edit suite that we could rent. And I remember the name of the company because their motto was, it’s a miracle films. If it’s a good film, it’s a miracle. And, anyway, and so we rented this suite. We had, you know, a flatbed and an upright moviel and we had three editors working. Twenty four seven and three and three assistants. And eventually the, the director and the producer got in their own kickboxing fight in the edit suite had to be broken up by two of the editors. That’s how, you know you’re done with post production, is when, oh, my director and the producer literally tearing each other’s hair. Anyway, all of which is to say, that was how I learned how to make a Film was, cryo by fire. Yeah, so that, and that was, you know, there were a lot of people involved with that Film that had worked on Corman films. even though I never got a chance to work on a Corman Film, this was about as close to a Corman Film as you could get. Like, all the crew at work, even in the Philippines, had worked on Corman.
Steve Cuden: Well, you know, I’ve long said that I love school. I think school is a great thing for a lot of people. I have, all admiration for teachers in schools, but the truth is, in the Film business, you’re going to learn more in the first, really, movie that you make than maybe in all four years of Film school if you go through undergrad.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, I mean, for some people, Film, school’s the right idea. It depends what you did as an undergrad. I mean, for me, I just, I hadn’t done Film as an undergrad, so for me, it made sense to go to grad school. But so many people now are getting, getting these pretty elaborate Film degrees as undergrads and then doesn’t make sense to go to grad school.
Steve Cuden: Unless you want to teach.
Dan Mirvish: Exactly. Yes. Which, strangely enough, is what I am doing a lot more of. Now, yesterday was my last class at, Chapman University, where I was teaching this semester. And I’ll be back there next semester as well.
Steve Cuden: That’s very nice. So last question for you today. You’ve already given us a huge amount of advice as we’ve come along throughout this show, but, I’m wondering, do you have a solid piece of advice or a tip that you like to share with those who are starting out in the business, or maybe they’re in a little bit trying to get to the next level?
Dan Mirvish: Two words, marry well. Yeah, if you can find a good partner in Life or a team of people, or if you’re into that sort of thing, that will help you emotionally, financially, physically, health insurance wise. more, more than anything. So, yeah, marry well.
Steve Cuden: Marry well. Of course, we know from society itself that that doesn’t always work.
Dan Mirvish: No, no. So you should also have a backup plan, which is to know a little. Do dabble in real estate.
Steve Cuden: Dabble in real estate.
Dan Mirvish: Yeah. That’s the dirty little secret also that I found, like anyone in, in Hollywood or indie Film, but also other art forms, you dig a little deeper and you realize, oh, wait, you bought your condo in 1978, and that’s why you have a roof over your head. Oh, or you flip Airbnbs or houses or something. Or in our case, we rent out our house to commercials and make money off our house that way. Yeah. I always tell Film students, if you take one class or one online class or course that isn’t Film related, learn a little something about real estate. This morning I ran into, big time tv writer, showrunner friend of ours, a neighbor, and she said, I wish we had bought a house instead of renting for the last few years. It affects people one way or the other.
Steve Cuden: Real estate, wonderful and interesting. And as I was expecting often beat advice that I don’t hear from anyone else, which is really no, it’s because it’s a secret.
Dan Mirvish: But you scratch, believe me, every person you scratch, they will either say they did something smart in real estate or suffered because they didn’t. Yeah, a roof over your head is a universal theme that everyone has to solve one way or another.
Steve Cuden: It almost reminds me of in the graduate when he says plastic plastics.
Dan Mirvish: Yep, exactly.
Steve Cuden: You got to have that. Good sideline. Dan Mervish. This has been a wonderful hour plus on story, and I can’t thank you enough for your time, your energy, and your wisdom that you shared with us today.
Dan Mirvish: Thank you, Steve. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. It was a lot of fun.
Steve Cuden: And so we’ve come to the end of today’s StoryBeat If you like this episode, won’t you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you’re listening to? Your support helps us bring more great StoryBeat episodes to you. Story beat is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Tunein, and many others. Until next time, I’m Steve Cuden, and may all your stories be unforgettable.
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