In this episode of AMERICALUS, we dive into the innovative world of Zack Mahoney, the founder of IndeeHub, a platform that merges the realms of Bitcoin and filmmaking. Zack shares his journey into the crypto space, starting from the ICO craze of 2017, and how it led him to envision a new financial infrastructure for the film industry. He discusses the inefficiencies of the traditional financial system and how Bitcoin's ability to stream money like data can revolutionize movie distribution. The conversation also touches on the cultural impact of cinema, the evolution of storytelling, and the potential for Bitcoin technology to reshape the entertainment landscape.
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[00:00:00]
Cole McCormick:
Alright, dude. Zach Mahoney, dude. Thank you for being here. You're on America Plus. You are an innovator in America. I love your website. I love IndieHub. I think you're innovating in the movie realm. And, dude, just, like, tell me about, like, how did Indie Hub come about? Like, how did this whole situation with Bitcoin like, combining Bitcoin and movies come about for you? Man, I
[00:00:29] Zach Mahoney:
I'm just this is gonna be all over the place. So at any point, just, you know, interject, ask a question, get more specific. Go for it. I I mean, it's kind of a simple idea. You know, I'll try to start simple, and we can sort of expand on it, but, I I personally sort of fell into the crypto rabbit hole in early 2017. And for those of us that came around were either around then or came around then, we'll you'll remember that that was the ICO craze. And so, you you had you've always had the Bitcoin Maxis, but at that point, we had all of these, these other l ones and and and tokens that were raising money in order to solve every problem known to mankind. It was like, we're gonna literally solve every single thing that there is. Every problem that's ever been had been a problem is now solvable on a blockchain. It was it was madness.
Mhmm. Like, there was literally a coin Scams are called scams. They were all scam. Like, there was one called Denticoin. They were, like, dentists on a blockchain, and it it had volume, like, if people were buying this thing. Anyway, I totally digress. The it was madness at that time, and it took me a while to, like, suss out Bitcoin and what Bitcoin is how Bitcoin is unique. But the key idea for me was that we can now start to stream money in the same way that we stream data. We can break it up into little packets, and we can route them, and we can find more efficient ways for them to move. And anybody who's had any experience with the legacy financial system, which is literally everybody, it's it's it's a total disaster, and you cannot do that.
And the key the key issue here is, essentially who is the arbiter of truth? Who gets to decide what is true and what is not true with regards to a particular ledger? So if I send money to you from my bank, there's 4 people involved, my bank, me, your bank, and you. Our banks have a relationship with each other. My bank does not have a relationship with you. You do not have a relationship with my bank and necessitates 4 parties in a transaction that really should just be 2 people, like, cash settlement would just be you and I. So it was my point is is that it's the the old system is incredibly slow, and it's incredibly inefficient.
[00:02:53] Cole McCormick:
Banks suck. Exactly.
[00:02:56] Zach Mahoney:
You know? And Bitcoin fixes it. It does. It does. In a lot of ways, it it it it, yeah, it fixes at least half of the problems. You know, the biggest problem that human beings have really is trust. But I digress. The point is is if you can stream money the way that we stream data, movies are uniquely suited for that use case. It's not like a blog, even podcast to some extent can be nonlinear. You can chop them up. You know, people use little bits to promo, but a movie is intended every, you know, moment a connects to moment b connects to moment c, almost like a blockchain. Yeah. You know, like like, moment c is dependent on moment b. If you don't have the context of b, you don't understand what c is. I can just play a movie Mhmm. Without context, and you'd be like, I have no idea what the fuck is going on, and this doesn't mean anything to me. Mhmm. Anyway, we we we consume movies linearly. And if you can tie payments to that linear distribution of data, which is what Netflix solved for Mhmm.
It starts to to fundamentally change the the architecture of the business Mhmm. Side of the industry, which part of the reason that film suffers part of the reason that film is having the problems that it's having right now is that the business side of it is still tied to a world in which unit sales reign supreme, like licensing deals and union contracts and performers deals and and music rights. All of this stuff sort of was built up around a totally different financial technology, that was predicated on unit sales, on ticket sales, on box office receipts. Netflix changed the deal. Now we are streaming data. We're not buying tickets anymore, but the business side hasn't really caught up.
So I once those ideas connected in my mind, I I realized or at least that I I had the sneaking suspicion that it would solve a lot of the problems that I had had both in front of and behind the camera. Mhmm. So I that's it. That's really it. Data, money, streaming.
[00:05:10] Cole McCormick:
When did you start figuring that out? So that was, like, 2018, 2019, or during the pandemic? Or 17. It was all 2017. You started thinking about this all right there. Yeah. I mean, you know, it it what the the
[00:05:22] Zach Mahoney:
streaming money was not a unique idea. Like, I did not come up with that. Right? That was that was one of the main points of a lot of these other l ones that existed back then that were really popular. The biggest one would have been the XRP Ledger. Mhmm. You know, fast, cheap, you you know, Bitcoin can do, what, about 8 transactions a second, 8 to 10 on average, whatever it is. You know, the XRP ledger even back then, you had the ability to open up payment channels on the ledger, and you could do 50,000 transactions a second back and forth, which is kinda how lightning works right now. But the problem is is the l one was not as distributed and secure as lightning's l one, Bitcoin.
So that wasn't a unique idea that we can start to route money like we route packets of data like TCPIP, But I was just my whole world was films and movies and production and entertainment, and so it just was like, doink. And that sound is the idea connecting. Doink.
[00:06:30] Cole McCormick:
Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding
[00:06:33] Zach Mahoney:
ding ding. And and a lot of these other ICOs, there were a lot of ICOs, and and there still are to some extent, you know, this whole web 3 thing, which I you know, it's I don't I I don't subscribe to, but Sort of bullshit. Yeah. It's it's it's essentially the idea that we need to create a token in order to solve a given problem, which is just not that's just not true. I think you just saw you're creating a new problem. Yeah. Yeah. And and like a regulatory nightmare. So you had a lot of, like, you had a lot of people who understood how to build, an l one or build a blockchain or build this technology, and they're like, oh, well, we're gonna put this on movies, but they didn't understand anything about the industry. They didn't understand anything about the movie business. Mhmm. All the people who were in the movie business were far too busy actually doing shit to care about what you know, you know, an l one, you know, like, they didn't it was like, no. We're actually doing work. Yeah. Hollywood's not technical. Like, it took them forever to figure out like, 2019 Disney plus comes out. Netflix had been around since, what, 20 like, streaming on Netflix. What? 28, 2009? Like, when did Netflix start streaming? Really, really yeah. It started in earnest. I you know, roughly 2,008, 2009.
And then 10 years later, Disney finally comes out with a streaming service. So it's like they're late they're always late to the game. Exactly. And it and it makes sense. Right? Like, they they've got real money. They've got real business. Mhmm. They can't turn on a dime. They shouldn't turn on a dime. That's not how you know, they have moats. They've got lawyers. Like, they don't need to move quickly in a lot of ways. We kind of ride in their wake. But in the same way that Netflix in 2,008 started to change the structure of the industry, and it took 15 years for them to go from mailing DVDs to people to spending more money on production than every other studio combined.
Which is insane. Insane. That's billions. Right? Billions upon billions. Many, many. And I I fundamentally believe that we're on the verge of another paradigm shift that'll take another 15 years or so, and I fundamentally believe that the business of filmmaking will be impacted. Netflix changed the the exhibition and the delivery, and that's great, and that's important. It does it's not as profound of a change as the as the financial infrastructure of the industry. In my opinion, that will be a much, much, much larger change. And, you know, as far as, like, you know, as far as the as far as the Internet, like, we're in the bottom of the third. You know? Like, it's been let's just call it 25 years. Let's just call it a generation for sake of con like, this not that's nothing. Even if it's 40 years, it's nothing in terms of its impact on society.
So, again, like, Netflix is a big deal. I'm not saying it's not a big deal, but I think that the biggest changes are yet to come. Mhmm.
[00:09:10] Cole McCormick:
I I think I agree because just me as a consumer, I'm 27. I've been around I'll just say I'm as old as the the Internet. I'm a little bit older. I grew up on YouTube. I grew up, like, just scrolling on my parents' computer and just seeing the entire situation just change in terms of what I'm watching, where the news is. Like, at a very young age, I knew that there was a difference between, like, what was on the TV and what was on the Internet. These two things were not connected. Mhmm. And I was always just more gravitated towards towards the Internet clearly, because I'm just a young person. What what do you what do you think that that was? What do you think you you gravitate more towards YouTube than, say, like, a movie theater or something? Well, I was always going to the movies. I was always into movies. Like, I mean, I was, I mean, I was obsessed with toy story when I was a toddler, and then I was I remember just loving movies in with in, like, the 4th 5th grade, and wanted to, like, perform and stuff. And then 2,008, you get Iron Man and The Dark Knight, and that is actually, like, for me personally, I'm 11 years old in 0 8, and I see Heath Ledger's Joker, and that, like that's, like, my cinematic awakening. I'm, like, holy shit, dude. This is possible with movies? Yeah. Well, yeah. And, like, and then I'm, I'm impersonating Heath Ledger. I'm doing the Joker for Halloween, and then I'm, like and then I get into, like, woah. Like, who made this movie? And then it's Chris Nolan, and it's Jon Favreau. It's, like, oh, directing. Oh, like, behind the scenes. And then I'm watching behind the scenes of everything. And so and I was watching those behind the scenes on YouTube. And the DVDs, of course, but, like, I'm looking for the information about the movies on YouTube.
And then there was, like, a whole culture on YouTube when I was in high school of, there's a show called, like, AMC Movie Talk, Collider Movie Talk, and, like, there I was just, I was consuming the information around cinema online more, and that made me wanna get into it a lot more. So and everything else was just, like, the normal TV was just not doing that. Like, I would watch a movie. I would watch, like there was always movie on FX. Remember that little theme song? So there was a bifurcation for you Yeah. Between
[00:11:17] Zach Mahoney:
television, the Internet, and the movie theater, in terms of an exhibition format. Absolutely. And TV, it was, like, there was no place for it in your mind. I don't understand the point of this. Yeah. Like, I would just That's fascinating. I'd be scrolling through it and may like, there'd be some movies, like, I I remember seeing
[00:11:32] Cole McCormick:
I knew that, like, we so grow growing up, we had DIRECTV, and I knew that DIRECTV had video on demand. Like, we would be able to rent a movie on DIRECTV. But I hated watching movies on TV because of the commercials and because of, like, just that specifically. I hated the commercials, and I knew from a very young age they were editing shit out. Yep. I said, I don't watch TV. What he said? Literally. Literally. And I remember being, like, really pissed off and, like, and my dad telling me about, like, censorship, or or just, like, general, like, oh, yeah. Well, they have to if if there's, like, a live, football game, they have a 7 second delay, and they need a sensor. I'm, like, why? Like, I was always, like, so confused about that, and so I just didn't like it. I was never into it, and I was, just I would sneak my parents money to to buy a movie on iTunes or to to buy the South Park movie or to or to get a few episodes of, of Modern Family or I remember, renting John Wick when it was on VOD, and that's that was, like, the first wave of John Wick when, like, John Wick was getting super popular.
To my memory, I think that's how it got popular. But I would always just I was always looking for no commercials. Yeah. That's really what it was. And if I had to pay for it, I would just use my parents' money. And then growing up, I'm the I would I would usually buy the DVD, but then I see DVDs, like, decreasing and things. And when it when it comes to streaming, my consumption has been different because a a part of me feels like Netflix and a lot of, like, things that go straight to streaming are almost, like, made for DVD movies, or they're, like, made like, they're lower quality. Yep. And I was and and I've been, like, upset within, like, the last 10 years of, like like, the movies in the movie theater are still, like, high quality, but that financial model, like, they're going for the sequels, they're going for the IP. Yeah. And I'm, like, okay. Well, maybe there's an opportunity to, like, have better entertainment, different types of stories, online, and some movies are quality. Like, some straight to Netflix movies are are good, but a lot of them Most of them are misses.
Big misses. Yeah. Huge. Like, they just suck. Like Yeah. Every rock movie sucks. Like, there's this new movie coming out with The Rock and Chris Evans. It's gonna be in the movie theater, but it looks like a Netflix movie. Yep. It's like they're, like, kidnapping Santa or something. Yeah. Like I saw that I saw that commercial last night. I was, like, just turned him over to my wife. Like, what the fuck are they doing? Like, what is going on? It's absolutely atrocious. God. And so and it's almost like No offense to anybody who was on that movie. Yeah. But but regardless, like Except whoever whoever green lit it. Object objectively, the rock movies aren't really that good, Unless he's gonna do some of a 24, you know, unless there's, like, a real there's, like, a few handful of studios and companies that are actually trying to make quality Yeah. And are trying to have some sort of aesthetic or some sort of brand around that.
But that's, like, far and in between. And then if you have, like, a real filmmaker like Coppola, you know, he he he funds his own movie. You know, Hollywood doesn't respect that. And then, like, on the audience side, there's also this weird thing with the audience where audiences on Twitter might say, like, we want original stuff. I'm so tired of Marvel. I'm so tired of sequels. But then, like, when Coppola comes out, like, it doesn't make any money. Yeah. So it's like, you complained, and then and then you don't see it. Yep. So it's like, what the like, this whole thing is fucked. Yep. But then there's this other side where I saw and really begun with me with podcasting, streaming money for the content while you're consuming the content.
I saw the opportunity with podcasting in 2021, and I my mind immediately went to movies because my mind always goes to movies. Yep. And I didn't know how that could work. I didn't know how that could even be possible, or if, like, you know, just that that type sit situation. I'm not a technical person. I don't really know the details of the tech behind Bitcoin, but I know you can do a lot of things with Bitcoin. Like, there has to be a way. And I was I remember during the pandemic, I was, drawing up, like, these, like, I have these crazy diagrams of, like, of a token, like, streaming a token for a movie, and it's, like, I think I was coming up with some, like, movie theater casino, some bullshit like that. Like, you'd be able to gamble on a movie and then make more if it went better or something like that. It was some crazy I had some I had arrows going everywhere.
But I I I I've always had the sense that there's, like, something can change. Not that it should change, but it can change. Like, there's a real opportunity that it could change. And when I look at IndieHub, you're really going towards that new infrastructure of how a movie can be can come up and be consumed. And just because it's straight on your computer, you know, it doesn't mean that the quality is lower. It just brings a it brings more opportunity for the filmmaker to make something that they really want, and then the audience can actually see that and can engage with that in a more authentic way. I think so. Because when you pay for a ticket at the movie theater, it's a it's it's it's one price for the movie, but you don't know if that movie's gonna be good. Yep. And the opportunity with streaming money, you can stream if you'd like it. You can pay when you like it. Like and that's the model with the Internet. I've been thinking, like, there's this guy on Instagram I follow named producer Patrick. He he sort of he's documenting the downfall of Hollywood.
It's it's actually pretty hilarious. Yeah. If you're you've gotta get into follow IndieHub. We gotta get this going. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I I I I'm, like, I'm trying to, like, to get into that. I'm I'm trying to tell him tell him about it, but, that's, like, a a different thing. But he's documenting the downfall of Hollywood, and Hollywood is just not keeping up with technology and with the Internet. He was just at some, like, unscripted content convention or something. And, it was a bunch of studio heads and producers, and there's, like, a q and a section. And somebody asked, like, what is your response? Like, what are you guys thinking about, competing with TikTok or competing with social media?
And, like, the studio heads had nothing to say about that. Like, they had no response to the Internet. They don't know how to think about the Internet. Yeah. And so I think that that gives an opportunity for more independent people, more, independent mindset, artists and filmmakers like us who see an opportunity with Bitcoin, who see like, who still love movies. Because that's the other thing too. Like, people like, there's just, like, this drag on movies. Yep. And it's, like, no. Like, that's not real. Like, I refuse to believe that narrative. Like, that's that if anything is fake news, like, movies going movies going away is fake news. Yeah. I remember reading some interview with Brad Pitt. He was like it was like in 2019 when he was promoting Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, and they're like, what are you Brad, what's next? And he was like, oh, it's gonna be far and in between. We'll see if movies are even around in the future.
And I'm like, what the fuck, Brad? Like, you're the biggest fucking movie star ever. You really believe movies won't be around? And I just I can't fathom that. And so I have so much emotion with bringing movies, like, just keeping movies movies. Because I don't want it to be scrolling, and I see, like, just clips of something. Like, I don't I I want like, there's a value in sitting down and seeing that linear story or nonlinear. If it's some Chris Nolan at, like Yeah. The story's told back to you. Nonlinear. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But that singular event of a movie, like, that's super important, I believe. So even even think about memes. Right? Like,
[00:18:59] Zach Mahoney:
I've never heard any I've never heard anybody really describe what's going on with the meme, so I'll just throw my my hat in the ring. Give it to me. You you know, you usually and, again, this is generally speaking, like, someone will will pull a meme out of a movie. Right? Like, I just saw one the other day that was from, what was what was the name of the the one with, Matt Damon and their their building the Ford, the racing movie. Oh, yeah. Like, the first GT. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What the hell is that movie called? It's called Ford and Ferrari. Ford versus Ferrari. Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, whatever. This is, like, kind of a classic meme template where Matt Damon rolls out, you know, and he he puts the sign up for the guy coming around the the bend, and, you know, you the what movies part of what your job is as a filmmaker or a storyteller, particularly an actor, is to when you're setting up a moment, a scene, you're doing a superlative of that scene or of that moment. You're doing the most of that the essence of that vibe or that feeling, whether it's it's shame, it's disappointment, it's betrayal, it's love. Like, whatever is going on in that scene, it has to be the pinnacle of that frequency, of that vibration. The reason that meme templates are almost always movies is because filmmakers, their job is to make the most specific versions of those emotions. Yes. So those emotions are always true, which is why we like them. They're universal. They're universally applicable all of the time, which is why you can throw a meme template from a movie into any situation, not any situation, but there's other situations where you're like, oh, yeah. That totally works here too, because their their job is to translate a part of the human experience in a way that the most people can relate all of the time.
My point is is that even the memes themselves are harkening back to the master art form of doing that, which is cinema. Mhmm. Like, that is the master art form that encompasses all of it. Mhmm. I think side note. I think music is the foundation upon which all of that is built. But it's combined. But but the the the masterpiece is the whole Yeah. Enchilada. And, you know, really, what I I think what you're saying, and I would agree with you. I think you can correct me if I'm wrong here. But what what we're presupposing is that storytelling is not going away. Correct. And as far as we're aware right now, filmmaking is still the primary successful effective methodology for storytelling. Mhmm. TikTok is not gonna change that. YouTube does not change that. These aren't those aren't stories. They're little they're little vignettes. Sometimes they're like a point that you're making, but to to have a whole complete, you know, actual story, which is fundamental to the evolution of consciousness, particularly for human beings and has been since the dawn of time, It's not going away. It's gonna change. Mhmm. It's gonna adapt. It's gonna evolve, but storytelling is not going away. This is ludicrous. It's completely insane. It and it's certainly not gonna be around in a way that that, like, these a list legends, you know, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, George Clooney, these guys,
[00:22:14] Cole McCormick:
The Hollywood that they that their stardom was born into, that's that's gone. Yeah. That's never coming back. And that might be what he was even speaking to. Yeah. Because those types of movies were, like, the starring Brad Pitt. It's, like, he has the volume of movies to for me to say like, okay, I'll assume this new movie with him is good. Mhmm. But that's no longer the driving force, you know? And, like, Tom Cruise is like the very, very, very last guy to even do that because we all know how crazy he is for movies. Like, he loves he's gonna literally put everything he can, and he's also gonna try his best to inspire his all the young people around him to try to put everything in they can for that movie. And it and they always come out of it. It was, like, it was a wild experience. And, like, they're always like I always see all these, like, interviews with people talking about, like, what Tom Cruise gave them or, like, the it's always like some old Hollywood advice. Like, he I I forget who it was, but, he told some actor to, like, you need to learn to dance or, like, you need to learn like, you need to learn it yourself if you want this to be authentic. In the old days, they would have paid for the studios would have paid for this type of training for this movie, but you that's not a thing anymore. You need to do that, and that's such a old way of thinking. And it's very romantic, but Yeah. Things are evolving.
And there's this you know, technology is eating everything, And it's up to the filmmaker to figure out what tools are like, what tools do they want to use to make their movie, and what's the best version of it? That's really what it is. Like, what's the best version of this scene? What's the best version of this story? And that's why you do get, like, gems of of, like, big movies. You know? It's like the, that's why, like, when it comes to, like, avengers, like avengers endgame and infinity war, like, everyone saw those movies because those filmmakers really have a a storytelling driving driving them. Like, they don't wanna just make a movie. They don't wanna just do something for money. Like, they actually wanna tell a story. Like, what's the biggest impact that this character can go through? Yeah. And then it's like, oh, fuck. Spider Man's gone. Like, you know, like, we get these we get these crazy moments, and that's, like, on the big scale of pop culture.
But then on the smaller scale, I can't really think of any movies right now, but, like, there are smaller movies that have a big, like like, incredible emotion, and they can freeze frame an emotion. Think about, like, Breakfast Club right now. At the end of Breakfast Club, like, it it like, it it the freeze frame has become a meme, but Breakfast Club ends on a freeze frame of this guy being victorious. He got the girl's kiss. He he has, her earring or something, and, like, he changed.
[00:24:53] Zach Mahoney:
And it's sort of, like, when you watch that, it's, like, hell, yeah. Like like, I vibe with that. I love that. Yeah. And They're taking universality. Right? They're they're taking a universal human experience, which is true across time and space. Mhmm. You know, what? There's 7 movies or whatever we can make. They're all it's all just different iterations of the same stories over and over and over and over again. Mhmm. The context always changes, of course, but that timeless human experience of betrayal or of loss or of revenge or of fear, you know, these superlative human experiences, the context changes, but the frequency doesn't. And the and the storytellers that are really, really concerned about doing their jobs correctly are the ones who are worried about communicating that universal theme to them.
It it's not to the most people. It's not it's not, like, quantitative. It's qualitative. Mhmm. If you if you get to the superlative thing, it is, like, almost by definition going to resonate with the most amount of people. Mhmm.
[00:25:47] Cole McCormick:
What what are your favorite movies? Like, what do you think like, what's, like, the peak versions of these things for you? Like like, you just think the movie just hits it every time. I
[00:25:57] Zach Mahoney:
I think that there's a few. There's a few. I mean, this is not an exhaustive list, but I think what what you mentioned, earlier, I thought it was really interesting. You're talking about, Dark Knight Mhmm. Which was your generation's, you know, kind of the film that woke you up to what's possible with cinema. Mhmm. For me, that movie was American History X. Mhmm. That movie destroyed me. That's with Edward Norton. Right? That's when he's a Nazi? Ed Norton and Edward Furlong Yeah. Destroyed me. I was way too young to have watched that movie. I I don't know how old I was. 12 or something. 11, 10. I don't know. But I hadn't experienced like, it it it it it literally dove into my consciousness, into my soul, and just ripped me inside out. I was balling at the end of that movie for probably 15 minutes after I saw it. And I realized what the the medium was capable of in that moment through that movie.
None of them have had a bigger impact on me in the way that that movie did. It was like the first time you do anything, you know, the first time you drink, the first time you do drugs, the first time you do this, first time you do that, like, you you almost never get back to that, like, how intense that first time was. Mhmm. American history x was that for me for sure. But there were other movies that, I mean, like the matrix. Like, the the matrix is is an absolute fucking masterpiece. Like, to say that it's sci fi is like It doesn't work. Is like, No. It's this is a universal, this is a universal universal exploration of consciousness of waking up, and it just happened to be told, like, with a sci fi, you know, key in a sci fi note. Mhmm. You know, but then there's other ones that, like, every time I watch it, it gets funnier, like The Big Lebowski. I've seen that movie Oh, that's one of my favorite. 45 times.
Every time, I'm just, like, these guys were on it. They are so good. This was so but that's what that's what like, that's how the truth is. Right? Like, a great piece of music, the Bible Mhmm. Really good wine, really good food. It doesn't get old. You don't get bored of it. The layers just keep unfolding and unfolding and unfolding and unfolding, and so it's it's like that's what makes it timeless. Jurassic Park, incredible. Gladiator, incredible. Saving Private Ryan, incredible. It's crazy how Spielberg like, you just listed Spielberg's, like, multiple times and Ledge. I mean, but he's a he was a master. He was a master at what he did. Mhmm. You know, again, not exhausted. There are so many other movies that just that I always forget, and I always get pissed at myself for forgetting.
But but I think, like, to stay on theme, American History X Yeah. Fundamentally changed my it altered the my perspective as a human being permanently, and it won't that that will never leave my consciousness. Mhmm. Did that wake you up to cinema or just, like, a bigger world in general? Both. Right? Like, the human condition, number 1, which is the point. Mhmm. The point is to is to have a human experience, and ideally one that brings us closer together, that gives us more empathy for our fellow human beings, whether they're making mistakes or whether they're succeeding or or whatever, that you see someone you can see someone who's in deep pain, and instead of having judgment and and pushing them away, you can figure out a way to address that pain. That's a human problem.
Mhmm. So, ideally, we have I mean, of course, if it's great, it gets us deeper into the cinema world, but the more important thing is the human part of it, which is the whole point of telling stories in the first place so we can relate to one another. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My opinion. I've never seen American History X. I need to watch it.
[00:30:05] Cole McCormick:
I mean While you were saying that, I was, thinking about I saw I just watched this, one of the newest, Joe Rogan episodes. Yesterday, he had JD Vance. The he's running for vice president. And out of the blue, this guy just mentions how he, he was in some hotel, and he was rewatching a movie he had seen a a 1000000000 times before. And he'd always loved it, Boyz in the Hood. Mhmm. And he realized that at like, somehow, Boys in the Hood influenced his political takes and his, like, economic takes. And I've I I haven't seen that movie either, but he's talking about, like, how that the movie is pretty much about, like, black nationalism. And now, like, here he is, like, running as a Republican, and it's literally influencing how he thinks about the world, influencing economics. It's like, that's that's movies. And I I I no one was ready for that. I didn't even, like I I was almost I was giggling when I was listening to it. I was like, what the fuck? Like, what that's incredible. This movie from I I think that came out in eighties. Right? Boyz n the Hood, that's with Ice Cube. Yeah? Yeah. Like, that's that's history, and that's like and they froze that moment in time. They froze they were able to capture that community and that mindset in that era.
And then all of a sudden, that that's influencing 20 20 4 politics, the 2024 reality. 91. Yeah. Poisonhood, 91. Dude, that's that's so, like, that's so wild. That's so wild to me.
[00:31:29] Zach Mahoney:
It it's crazy, and and but it illustrates how important good storytelling is to the structuring of our minds. Mhmm. And, you know, it it it just illustrates that it is invaluable that storytellers do their jobs for society
[00:31:50] Cole McCormick:
correctly with enthusiasm, and that we support them in doing that. So what's wrong with the system now? Like, are are studios just just old and tired and not paying attention, or are they really, like, running themselves into the ground and not even thinking? Like, what like, from your perspective, what is that? What's the real problem?
[00:32:08] Zach Mahoney:
The the the incentives are just misaligned. So so I I I guess that's a different way of saying the system is just dysfunctional. Mhmm. The system is locked up. The system is frozen. It it it needs to be dismantled because it doesn't function anymore. It no longer serves its purpose. Mhmm. So I you know, it this strike and the last couple of years, particularly in this industry, have been brutal. It's I don't I don't I'm not I'm not in I'm not, like, applauding people's pain and discomfort, but the industry needs to be burned to the ground, and it needs to be rebuilt Mhmm. For the betterment of everybody. And it was the same thing that happened in 2008.
You you know, this is more intense. There were more strikes, things are going on longer, things are extended. The the severity is maybe, like, the magnitude is a little higher, but it was the same vibe. You know, nobody knew if TV was ever gonna come back. Nobody knew if movies were gonna come back. The whole ladder completely shifted. I and I again, like I said earlier, I think that we're still in the we're we're in this transitionary phase, but it's going to get better. Mhmm. The system is going to to change.
Mhmm. But the issue is in how the system is currently designed. We have this rickety building that has elements of, like I was saying before, unit sales, licensing from a time that lit just doesn't exist anymore. Like, it doesn't exist. They still call it a box office. Like like Yeah. You go to the AMC in Burbank. There's literally no one there's no one in the box office. There isn't a box office. There aren't box seats. You know, like, back in the day, it was, like, free seats at the bottom. You paid for the ones at the top. That's where box office even comes from. Like, the whole we're in such a different paradigm now, that the system just needs to change. So more specifically, what happened part of the thing that's happened is that, you've had this so Fiat. Right? Like like, we can talk Bitcoin. We can talk money.
There's been a massive consolidation, and this is this is true across all industries. This isn't only, entertainment or media related. Mhmm. But you've got this huge consolidation across this industry. So public massive whales, publicly traded companies just keep buying smaller companies because they have this mandate as a publicly traded company that they have to increase shareholder value. And there's a point, but there's a logical point at which, like, there's no more customers left. Like, there's nothing to do. So they just go in and they'll buy all of these other companies, whether they're making money or they're not making money. And so what happens is is that, all of the risk in making a movie is they're trying to get rid of it. They're trying to minimize risk, because that's what you do when you're in a big company like that, in that in that financial structure. But but film is unique in its risk profile.
It is a very unique business, and it is, like, the intersection of you have to take a certain amount of risk, and you but you also have to be financially savvy, and you gotta figure out a way to make it economically viable. Mhmm. You know, if you're making buggy whips, you can make the same thing over and over and over and over again, and that's what the market expects. It wants consistency. It wants the product that it's buying to be the same every time it buys it. That is not movies. Mhmm. And, you know, we can talk a lot of shit about, you know, the movie mogul period, but there was a period in time when people's egos were on the line with their studios.
You get a private company, and you get some dude who's egocentric, and he's, like, no. I am going to make the greatest fucking movie that's ever been produced or whatever. That's a bad example, but you start to have this competition, and the risk goes up. The more risk we can take, the more boundaries we can push, the farther we can push consciousness forward. But that can't really happen in the structure where every where the whole thing is owned by publicly traded companies because in that situation, all of the responsibility is abdicated.
So it's this really perverse incentive system where somebody is a CEO of something, and they're like, well, I'm gonna get fired in 3 years anyway, so just wanna get my bonus. I wanna I wanna repeat the financial success, so I'm just gonna go into the data, and the data's gonna tell me do Spider Man 27 because I'm not gonna get fired sooner, and it'll probably get a bonus. They don't get a reward for taking responsibility and saying the movies that we've produced are garbage. There is no incentive for them to do that, and so they don't.
The idea behind Indie Hub is that we we we change that incentive system, and we say, you're gonna take all of the risk, you filmmaker or producer or team. You're going to get almost all of the reward. IndieHub is gonna work on on on on the infrastructure, on the financial plumbing, on on the legal foundations, but you get to go take the risk. We can't have these people abdicating all of the risk, minimizing all of the risk, and then hiring the people who should be getting all the reward for taking all of the risk, like, they're completely divorced, and so everybody's phoning it in. They you have no incentive to go do a good job on a movie, because they're, like, here's a flat rate. Take it or leave it. You have a bigger incentive to delete a movie.
[00:37:25] Cole McCormick:
Yeah. Dude, Warner Brothers deleting a Looney Tunes movie. Like, that's you know, Warner Brothers deleting Batgirl, which I mean, I wouldn't have seen, but it's still it's still, like, something that's it's still a movie people were making. Like, that's they had a tax incentive to delete it. Like, that's why Exactly.
[00:37:40] Zach Mahoney:
So the the that's a long way to try to answer it, which is this that the the incent the system is broken. The incentives are totally perverse and backwards. We need to we need to create a new system that puts us back in alignment with proper incentives that are appropriate for storytelling. Mhmm. That's very different than making an f 150 Mhmm. Or producing a syringe at a hospital. Like, these are it's a completely different phenomenon. Replica movies are not replicatable products. No. And we don't That's the problem. We don't want them to be. Right? We Yeah. We have this insatiable appetite for I want the same thing, but different. Mhmm. Want the same thing, but different. That's unique. That's super unique.
Music for sure, movies for sure. Mhmm. So we need to get the business we need to get the engine, the energetic engine underneath, like, rebuilt and oriented in the right direction. And that's Indie Hub. So you're rebuilding
[00:38:33] Cole McCormick:
the financial structure of how movies are sort of funded,
[00:38:38] Zach Mahoney:
and then also distributed. Is that right? Yeah. We're trying to change the whole pipe from where the money starts, the audience member, and where it ends, the filmmaker. And so this whole thing in between, we can just get as many people out of the way as humanly possible, create a direct energetic relationship from where it starts to where it ends, and and this thing should feed itself in a more proper cycle if if they're connected correctly. Mhmm. You know, if you got, you know it's like resistors in, you know, in it you got 15 people who are in the way between the payer and the receiver of the money, like, it the signal dies. Mhmm. It doesn't even get there, and then there's certainly not enough signal for these people to go continue to produce great work or to get better at their job. So just get as many people out of the way as possible, plug them into each other, and let the thing run. Yeah. Is Bitcoin really the the key to all that, or is it possible to stream dollars one day? Like, is that Bitcoin is not the key.
Bitcoin itself is not the key. The Bitcoin technology is the key. Mhmm.
[00:39:43] Cole McCormick:
Which is blockchain? Bitcoin technology. Is that blockchain? Or is that, like, how do we like, that's sort of evolving with this conversation of Bitcoin, and we got, social media like Nostr. They're trying to change the incentives of social media with Bitcoin technology. Like,
[00:40:00] Zach Mahoney:
you see how it's all changing? It's Well, okay. So I'll get this is my perspective. I'm sure some hyper nerds can tell me to fuck off or whatever. But from where I'm sitting, this is kinda how I see it. Yeah. Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. Bitcoin. Blockchain like, blockchains existed before bit came Bitcoin came around. Like like, companies have been using a blockchain for, you know, their their, you know, like, Toyota. I know this one who was producing blockchain working on blockchains for Toyota, like, you know, 30 years ago or 20 years ago. Interesting. The thing let let protocols. Okay? The the word I want to use here is protocols.
The Internet is a protocol. It is anyone can tap into it. Nobody controls the rules of it. It's something that we all use and agree on and is open source and openly usable. There's no one that can tell you you can't use it. There's no one that can tell you you have to use it. English is like that too. Right? English is a protocol. No one anyone can learn English. We all use it to communicate efficiently and effectively globally. No one can unilaterally change the rules of English. Like, if I say, hey, I'm gonna change the definition of this word. I have to go convince however many people speak English on the planet that this is the new definition of the word. Mhmm. Good luck with that.
So Bitcoin is a protocol. It's it's it's a communications protocol that happens to work really well as money. Lightning is a protocol that taps into the Bitcoin protocol. The reason I say this is because these protocols aren't permissioned. They're they're they're permissionless. The banking system of the United States is permissioned. Visa or PayPal is permissioned. You need their permission to be on that network. Mhmm. So Bitcoin IndiHub is using we're built on top of Lightning, which is to say that we're like Bitcoin native, but the important part is that there's this permissionless protocol, this permissionless payments protocol that we're using that anyone can build on top of and anyone can tap into.
We use a a payments provider on Lightning. If that payments provider goes out, we can just go find somebody else who runs that infrastructure also on top of Lightning. There's multiple companies that do it. We can anyone in the world can participate using that protocol. No one there no one can tell you you can't. Mhmm. So you can issue stable coins on top of that. It could be a dollar representation. It could be USDT or, you know, euro stable coin or a yen stable coin or whatever. Like, I it doesn't matter. But the point is is that you can you can use that protocol without having to have permission of the people who wrote the rules of it. Mhmm.
[00:42:44] Cole McCormick:
So so we just need a protocol for the dollar, and then, like, more people will, like, start to understand this system. Do you think so? Because every time when I talk about Bitcoin, people roll their eyes and people are just, like, they don't really care, or they sort of get that it's money. Even people in my generation, like, some people sort of understand crypto. And even when it comes to the conversation with podcasting 2.0 stuff, you know, people like, there's sort of been, like, a ceiling met when it comes to streaming sats and people using this this thing. And I feel like the only way to move forward is if we're sort of allowed to innovate with the dollar or the government itself innovates with the dollar implementing some sort of new protocol and not not it being stuck within a permission system with the Fed or with Visa.
[00:43:32] Zach Mahoney:
Something like that needs to happen, but Well, that that thing is Bitcoin. That thing The thing you're talking about is Bitcoin. Is Bitcoin. The reason that, the reason that, you you know, you say that the the government should create a protocol for the dollar. It it it doesn't it structurally can't possibly work that way because the dollars themselves are sourced from the central bank. Mhmm. The birthplace of the dollars are from a tightly controlled centralized entity. Even if you have a dollar stable coin, that's just a representation of somebody supposedly having that dollar deposit on a ledger somewhere.
Back to what we were talking about in the beginning of this is, who is the arbiter of truth? That's what all of this is about. Mhmm. Who gets to dictate the truth? Is it the people running the dollar ledger? Because you can't you can't verify that. You can't adjust it. You can't download the ledger and say, yes, there are 21,000,000 coins or however you you literally can't. We have to trust that they are the ones, that that that they are being honest about the ledger, and that they'll operate that ledger, you know, equally and and universally, and and they don't. Like, we know they don't. They they they turn people's bank accounts off that they don't like. It's a permission system. So I I'm trying to the protocol aspect is important Yeah. But but but a a dollar on a protocol is still permissioned in some sense. So even if we have Tether on top of Lightning, you know, the the US government is tapping on Tether's shoulder saying, hey, you have to you have to block this transaction because this is a terrorist, which is bullshit. I I mean, if it's terrorism.
This is our catch 22. Right? Like, we're, like, well, you know, I mean but the point of Bitcoin is that that is the thing. It's never going to be a sovereign currency that is actually a protocol that's actually open and permissionless. This is why Bitcoin is a big deal. It's the first time we have an an actual unit of account that cannot be duplicated digitally that is digitally native. So it's view I know this is all we can we can I'm I love we can talk about this. It's it fuses the physical world and the digital world, and the people that most peep the peep the reason that people, particularly in the United States, chuckle and laugh and get annoyed when you talk about Bitcoin is because they don't actually understand money as a technology at all. Yeah. They haven't really thought about it, and the reason they haven't thought about it is because we've been blessed that our financial system for the last 80 years has more or less been great.
We don't have to think about it. You go talk about this with anybody in any other country that's ever dealt with having with with a currency that's been destroyed or manipulated by a small group of people, and they get it immediately. Mhmm. They think about money more than anyone in the United States. Not anyone, but your average person, dollar for pound for pound. More than your average American. They think about money way more. It's way more important, and they realize how important the tool is. United States, we don't even most people don't understand how how a check works. They don't understand that how a credit card works or when you pay for something at a at a grocery store, like, you're not actually paying.
I'm not making a point, just an observation that it's an uphill battle to try and explain Bitcoin because you have to explain the protocol. There's so many things you have to explain for them to get it in the first place. Mhmm.
[00:47:05] Cole McCormick:
So how can we make that easy somehow? Like, because I'm aligned with Indie Hub. I'm aligned with Bitcoin, and, like, I will continue to push it. I'm gonna be using it. I've already I'm one of the first directors to use Bitcoin to fund my movies. Yes. So it's like like that's like, I'm I'm really proud of that, but then, like, my friends still don't get it. Like, I I literally get my friends paid who helped me make the movie, and they still don't get it. It's like, I there's some sort of glass ceiling. There's some sort of invisible threshold that we need to push through. We need to pierce the veil for it.
I don't know what that is. Do you? I mean, the abstract culture. You know? Maybe just culture and just talk continuing to talk about it, continuing to talk about how bad the money system is or It's I I unfortunately, I think that the answer is pain. Right.
[00:48:02] Zach Mahoney:
COVID and the and and the government's response to COVID has done more to wake people up than anything, any that you or I could have said screaming from the rooftops about, you know, decentralization. Like, no one gives a shit. They care and, you know, it's I understand. They care when they're in pain. Mhmm. And so we're in this, like, kind of unfortunate situation, which is, like, the the more people understand Bitcoin, it probably means that they were in significant amounts of pain. They were in more pain than they were previously before they understood Bitcoin. You know, Michael Saylor is a good example of this. Like, he he he poo pooed Bitcoin. He was talking shit on Bitcoin, and then he found himself in a in a situation. He was in significant amount of pain, financial pain, and it clicked.
A lot of people are gonna have to go through a lot more pain to really understand why the technology is important and why it's useful. And I'm honestly, I'm not convinced that that I'm not convinced that the retail public in the United States is going to be the entity that brings Bitcoin into its, you know, into its final form. I think that that's going to be probably 3rd world country. It's a bottom up situation. Mhmm. And I think that it's gonna it's so I guess my answer to you is pain and time. Mhmm. And it's why at IndieHub, like, we're not you can pay in anything you want. You don't have to pay in Bitcoin. You don't have to care about Bitcoin. You don't have to know anything about Bitcoin. It's that's not that's not crucial to understand, you know, with regards to using it. And I don't expect most audiences to care for quite some time.
But if we can use that technology to solve the payments problem and the pain point for filmmakers
[00:49:52] Cole McCormick:
Mhmm.
[00:49:53] Zach Mahoney:
That's really what matters. They're in the most pain, and so if we can try to solve that for them, we've done a good job. Now, like, for your friends on Indie Hub. Right? Like, for them to understand it, it has to be material. Yeah. They have to be, like, how much money did I make on YouTube last week? 45¢. How much money did I make on Indie Hub last week? $55. Mhmm. Like Yeah. It's it has to start getting that Clear. Obvious. Mhmm. But that just takes time. Yeah. Just time. Just time. Time and bottom up, and then it'll come into America when it's just when it just works. Yeah. Right. I and and I think that I think that Bitcoin will in the United States will will be a savings technology.
Mhmm. It doesn't a, the tax code does not incentivize people using Bitcoin to spend. Like, I'm not paying 20% extra for anything. I'm I'm not doing it. Like, I'm gonna owe tax on that, and I don't care. And, frankly, my credit card works just fine. But I don't have any tool in my arsenal that I can use to really protect myself from debasement. That's what the tool is useful for here in the United States. And we're even seeing this globally. Right? Like, stablecoins on other networks are becoming widely needed and requested as a payments technology. Mhmm. And so we're starting to see 2 different things happen. You've got payments technology, and you've got savings technology.
At some point, the savings technology becomes worth so much money that we say, well, why don't we just use it as the payments technology? But it has stages that it has to to to go through in order to get there. Mhmm.
[00:51:30] Cole McCormick:
It's very interesting. So we need more so pretty much long story short, we need a protocol for movies. Is that is that sort of what what it's all building up to instead of a instead of a platform? Because all these studios and the movie theater, you know, these are all sort of platforms
[00:51:45] Zach Mahoney:
the way I see it. Yes. I I think that it's a good I I think that I think that we need to plug we need to have a common in my opinion, the common protocol is money. Money is a communications protocol. Money communicates,
[00:52:05] Cole McCormick:
that Attention and energy. Exactly. Like, did this user
[00:52:08] Zach Mahoney:
actually liked this product? Mhmm. I don't get to I don't get to when I subscribe to Netflix, I don't get to dictate where that capital goes. I give them $20 a month. They get to decide who gets the money and where it goes. It makes more sense to say, hey, I am I am allocating that monetary energy on a on a per second basis of where my attention went. Mhmm. And then we can funnel resources to the people who are actually getting the attention. Mhmm. That's just a feedback in a market that should naturally be there, rather than this black box where who knows where the money goes at that point, even though we might have all been paying attention to this or whatever. Yeah. So I I think that there's always gonna be there has to be production companies. There has to be we have to decentralize all of the decision making, but we need to we need to clean up the the the the line of communication with regards to where the money is coming from and where the money is going. Mhmm. That makes a lot of sense.
[00:53:08] Cole McCormick:
It makes me wanna, like, just be the the prime example of it. Like, just me as a guy with an ego, like, I just wanna, like, let's just fucking woah. I did it. I just I just hit one of my buttons on accident. You didn't hear what you didn't hear what I just heard.
[00:53:22] Zach Mahoney:
His ears are bleeding. His ears are bleeding.
[00:53:25] Cole McCormick:
But, I don't know how hard I hit the table. That's funny. I want there to be, like, a prime example of a movie making this work because that is also, like if a filmmaker is able to see how much money do do I make on YouTube, how much money do I make on indie hub, I want the audience to see what the system is. Like, oh, look at these filmmakers over here doing this thing with this new system opposed to what's going on with Disney or Warner Brothers. Like, these are things that the audience needs to see Yeah. As well. And so, you know, we're so early. You know? Like, Indie Hub is still in beta. Yeah. You know? It's, like, it's wild to be a part of this conversation so early and be so inspired.
But, like, I'm telling you right now, Zach. Like, I am, like, I'm so deep into it. Like, I am, like, I'm literally thinking about making a movie every single day. I'm thinking about what to do. I'm thinking about how to do it. I'm thinking about the money. I'm thinking about the locations. I'm thinking about how we get if I wanna build a set, how the fuck am I gonna build this? Like, all these things. And then I'm thinking, how am I going to convince my friends who are helping me to actually be a part of this new system?
Because when I've made my short films in the past, specifically last year with Magic Mushroom Fun Time, my cinematographer, he was really wanting me to encouraging me to put it out into film festivals. And I just saw no zero value in that. Mhmm. You know? And Interesting. There's value in, I guess, the, the networking and just just, you know, just talking to people about my process or about myself and just engaging with that in that way. But the way that the way that I see it, the way that the industry works, it's not through film festivals. Like, I'm not Spike Jones. I'm not Tarantino. I'm not, like, you know, like, fucking 2019, Joker is the biggest movie at at Venice. What a joke. Right? Like, no. It is a joke. It's a joke. It is a joke. And then I I I did enjoy the second one. I'll just say that. Like, it was sort of I'm not sure if you saw what Tarantino said about Joker 2. It was like Tarantino said the Joker directed Joker 2. Like, he just it was a giant fuck you to the audience, fuck you to the studio. They used $200,000,000, and they made a fucking musical out of Joker. Like, the Joker made Joker 2.
But but but what I'm saying is, like, the big IPs, like, the big movies from the big like, it it it's not someone no one's breaking out within a film festival anymore. Yeah. And that's not I'm not even trying to get famous. I'm just I'm I'm I'm inspired to make movies. I'm inspired to make a living making movies. And this conversation of, like, how to make a living with producing things online, that thing is changing. And I also don't wanna do some I Love Lucy shit and that be like advertising baking soda or advertising some vaccine. Like, I don't wanna that's not my situation. I don't wanna do that. And so it's difficult. I find myself in a very difficult place, but but I'm so young, but I I'm so outside or I wanna be outside. I'm sort of, like, anti everything. I'm like the I'm like the ultimate
[00:56:40] Zach Mahoney:
anti guy. Yeah. Because because none of it works. Yeah. It doesn't. There's no you know, it when when I started in this industry, it's When was that, by the way? When did you start out? I started auditioning in 2,000 I wanna say 4 2003 or 2004. I moved down here, I think, in 2,005, and I came in right at the very very end of the old paradigm. Like, the end of what movies used to be that golden era from a from, like, a Like, 80 nineties? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Like, just the way that the industry was set up. There was there was a pretty clear ladder for any any you know, if you wanted to be an editor, there was a there was a clear way to make it in that line of work. If you wanted to be a gaffer, if you wanted to be an actor, if you wanted to be there were pretty, you know, you started here, you did this, you did that, you did that, if you had some persistence and some talent and some decent reps or whatever, you know, it was it was you you you had a decent shot.
That that system is totally different at this point. And in 2,008, we had the same structure that started to change and collapse, and the whole ladder started going backwards, and everybody was, like, oh my god. And we're we're now at this point where you're coming in, the new young people coming in and going, this doesn't work.
[00:58:12] Cole McCormick:
This is this is dead ends everywhere. There has to be a way for this to work. Especially when, like, filmmakers like Greta Gerwig, you know, she's making this new Narnia movie. Netflix doesn't even wanna put it in the fucking theater. It's like this we got this, like, really, like, quality filmmaker, like, clawing her way into the theater with the biggest company ever. Like, that's
[00:58:30] Zach Mahoney:
it's not compatible. It's not computable. Yeah. It doesn't something's broken. It doesn't make sense. My bet, and this is why I started Indiehub, is that we just have to let's just align the incentives. I
[00:58:45] Cole McCormick:
the big companies And you saw you well, let let me I'm sorry. Don't don't don't don't don't don't you saw it crumbling in 2003. Is that what you're saying? You saw it changing in 2,004? It really started in 2,008. Okay. So so,
[00:58:58] Zach Mahoney:
it took it took 2 or 3 years for me to really recognize it, but looking back, it's 2,008. So I have a spiel on this. I'll I'll give you and your audience, like, if these three things happen simultaneously in any industry, that industry is probably going to implode, and it's probably either either it's dead or it's going to be rebuilt somehow. So in 2,008, three things happened simultaneously. You got politics, technology, and, and economics. So in 2008, there was a writer strike. The whole TV industry was shut down. Canon released the 5 d Mark 2 in 2008. And for anybody who is around back then, they understand how big of a deal and how much of a game changer that camera was for independent production. Now there were other technological advances, of course. The Internet was getting faster. You could throw a final cut in there. YouTube was just becoming a big thing, like but but really 5 d mark 2 is kind of the thing.
And then you had the economic collapse. All three of those things happened in 2008. The industry imploded, and it took 15 years to build back to what it is now. We're going through the same thing again right now. The politics, you've got multiple strikes. The people who are working in the in the industry are not happy with the structure of the business. It doesn't work anymore. The technology in this case, in my opinion, is the payments infrastructure. That's the big difference. And then, of course, you have just the global economy, COVID, that entire thing. So those three things, bam, right on cue, another 15 years, whatever it was, we're in the middle of that transition again. So,
[01:00:46] Cole McCormick:
did other people around you recognize that change as well? Or, like, were people sort of, like, sticking their heads in the sand and not wanting to acknowledge change in the industry?
[01:00:55] Zach Mahoney:
It's a it's a really good question.
[01:00:58] Cole McCormick:
Because you're an actor. Right? That's, like, that was mainly what you were doing? Yeah. I was I was totally focused on acting. I didn't
[01:01:05] Zach Mahoney:
this is actually the thing. The the these are the events that sort of pulled me out of the acting cave I was in to, like, start to develop some semblance of a respect for the business side of filmmaking. When I got here, I had a unique opportunity. I had really good reps. I had really good manager and really good agents, and, like, very, very quickly, I started working. I I got my first union job within 6 months of being here that paid a shitload of money. I booked my first commercial in 3 months. I was doing plays. I was, like, I I started working very, very quickly, and I was in big rooms. I was in big rooms for big movies and big auditions, relatively inexperienced and super, super young.
That ladder worked. That's that structure worked. 2,008 hit, let's say, 2 or 3 years or 4 years goes by, whatever it was, the the level the quality of of projects that I was going to audition for was precipitously and continuously worse and worse and worse. And I got to a point, it's like, I didn't come down here to do this kind of shit. I I I really did not. Like, this is garbage. Like, who am I? Like, nobody. I'm fucking nobody. But I'd I'm, like, I got other shit I wanna do in my life. I love movies. This is trash. So that's what got me into the production side of things, but it was just a very, very, very different business back then. Mhmm. And I think that we can get back to not the same structure, but to the level of if you've got some talent and you've got some ingenuity, you can go make something that can be successful, which is, like, part of the American dream. Right? Like Mhmm. It's merit based. Mhmm. Just go do something that's incredible and see how the market responds.
Let's get back to that. Mhmm. And I I just fundamentally think that that's a payments reality. It's all payments.
[01:02:56] Cole McCormick:
Yeah.
[01:02:57] Zach Mahoney:
It's it's I I shouldn't say payments. It's finance related. Mhmm. It's incentives. It's a financial and it's financial incentives
[01:03:04] Cole McCormick:
being aligned correctly. Were you the only one thinking this? Like, was it were who was influencing your thoughts when you were sort of, like, waking up? Was it just your own thing, or was it managers speaking to you as well? Like,
[01:03:15] Zach Mahoney:
what was that like? It's a really that's a really good question. I know I didn't answer in the last one. I don't know. You're good. I don't think that I don't think that I don't think a lot of people were thinking that way. Right. I was not getting that advice from reps or, like, people in the industry. Everyone was really just kind of struggling and freaking out and trying to figure out what the next thing was that was gonna make money. I mean, this was the same period of time that It's almost like Hollywood is focused on shit coins.
[01:03:46] Cole McCormick:
Yeah. Like Yeah. Yeah. That's what I that's what I hear. Like, it they just wanna focus on what's the next what's the next big thing? What are we gonna pump? Like, it's just everything is just a pump and dump. Figure out how to do the money, how to do the money, how to do the money. I mean, we we were involved. I was involved in some of the earliest YouTube shows. No one would remember them, but What are they? Tell me. There was this this
[01:04:06] Zach Mahoney:
this show called Poor Paul, I was, like, I was young when we did that. And then We do you you mean, like, YouTube original, or what do you mean? No. Way before there was an original. Way before any of this before anyone knew how any of this was gonna work, people would be like, well, you're gonna just, like, do a show? Like, just, like, put it on YouTube? Because YouTube at that point was cat videos and just crazy shit. But, I don't know. We could, like, do a web series, like, web series. Like, that was the new word when I was when this all started happening, I was there, like, ground 0. My buddy Kevin, he worked on the show that got quite famous at the time called Lonely Girl 15. It was totally scripted, but everybody didn't know if it was real or not. Like, it was people were just trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. Mhmm.
I don't my the perspective that I got from the finance side of things and the business side of things was completely outside of the industry.
[01:04:55] Cole McCormick:
Because you were doing research on, like, on the banks and stuff? Or, like, how how did that even happen for you? I had started
[01:05:01] Zach Mahoney:
I had started trying to do my own productions and my own businesses and and and, you know, like, we started shooting a bunch of stuff, and we did this doc, and, you know, we were trying to to to sell that and get things get things going that way. And so I just I had a family member who was more business savvy, and he just started, like, planting little seeds, and I and I I I mean, I tell you, I had negative respect for the finance side of things, like, as an actor. Like, none. Disdain, you know, and not to my benefit. Right? Like like, that was it took me a long time to rewire my brain and have some appreciation for how important the business side of it is. Why did you not even care about the business? It's it's so wild how, like, you wanna,
[01:05:41] Cole McCormick:
like, you wanna make money. Like, you wanna have a house. You wanna you want a car. You want this thing to pay for your life, but then you don't care about the I think that's hilarious. I was really ideologically
[01:05:51] Zach Mahoney:
driven as an actor. I was more concerned with the truth. I was more concerned with the experience of it. I was more concerned with doing my job. I I everything else, and as far as I was concerned, was gonna take care of itself as long as I focused on being really fucking good at this thing. I didn't want to be distracted with anything else. And but it became because the system wasn't functioning correct. Like, in the old system, I could kind of get away with that Mhmm. Because it was functioning correctly. And so a producer would roll around or director, and they'd be, like, well, this kid's just a fucking great actor. Mhmm. We need great actors. Hire him. I don't it doesn't and and so, you know, you go on set, and you're like, I am the most important part of this entire thing.
You have to have that. You have to have that to in order to to sustain the the how difficult it really is to do what you're doing, and how no one on a set really understands what the fuck you're doing and how it works. But when the system stopped functioning and you start going like, well well, I can't the things that gave me life and excitement and and and allowed me to, like, push past the financial piece disappeared. And so all that was there was, like, okay. Well, I'm not making money, and this sucks. It's one thing to be, like, hey. I'm not making too much money, but, man, I'm having a fucking great time. Mhmm. I'm doing good work. You can sort of you know, you can you can tolerate that. But when it's all of this is trash, and I'm making no money, it's just, like, wait a minute. Oh, well, like, I got I don't even reevaluate here. Yeah. And and, you know, for me, it was it was it was also it was 10 years of of learning how business worked.
I mean, I remember having the thought one time of, like, oh, you can just, like, go out and, like, just you can just, like, make money? Mhmm. Just, like, start a business? Like, how is that even how is that possible? Yeah. No. Keep going. I'm I gotta plug in this freaking
[01:07:50] Cole McCormick:
I forgot this phone was, like, about to die. You get
[01:07:53] Zach Mahoney:
It it was, like, it was mind blowing to me that you could just, like, start a business and, like, go make money doing stuff. Uh-huh. It was so difficult for those few years to to to, you know, from 2008 to 2011, let's say. So difficult.
[01:08:11] Cole McCormick:
Anyway That makes sense. No. It it's very interesting because, like, you never really you see actors, go go on to, like, produce things, but you never really hear about, like, their experience with money or their experience with the finance side or what. Because some people might just put their name as a producer just because they want the credit and just because they want the literally, just the cred. They just want to be known as a producer. Yeah. But you're really interesting where you really took it into your own hands, and you actually learned about business, and you actually did the research, and you have experience with experimenting and failing and succeeding and, like, just the this entire situation that you found yourself in, the entire journey that that that you've been on is one of learning and growing and expanding yourself and expanding your own consciousness and your own understanding of the business and just being honest with the reality in front of you. Yeah. And the reality in front of you was it's not working. Yep. And so very few people are willing to admit when the thing in front of them is not real or not or or not what it used to be or not what it says it is. Yep. And that's a huge wake up call for for you and for a lot of other people, because so many people wanna stick their heads in the sand and just say, no. It's we're we're gonna be fine. We're gonna be fine. We're gonna be fine. And then they're dead. Yeah. It's like it's it's it's some people are claiming that, like, that's sort of what Google is doing, and, yeah, they're just saying that, no. We're fine. We're fine. We're fine. We have our own thing, and then they're gonna die off. And then I'm forgetting, what oh, like Sears? Like, Sears, like,
[01:09:45] Zach Mahoney:
is an example of that. So many big businesses that no one ever thought could were saleable, gone. Mhmm. In a matter of days, years. Mhmm. It's crazy.
[01:09:57] Cole McCormick:
Do you think if less people thought like you and and me, would Hollywood and movies be done? Would would they be produced? Would they be done? Like, would it be dead? Would it, like like like because some people are saying, like, it's dying, and some other people are just, like, not even talking about the struggle that Hollywood is going through and what movies are going through. Like, is this just a situation of we need to just continue to talk about what the problems are and potential solutions? Because that's what from my opinion, I think that is the answer. Just continuing to talk about it, reaching out to our friends, just trying to be an example of what a solution can be, because no one else is gonna, like, I don't know.
Not everyone is gonna think how you think unless you show them
[01:10:48] Zach Mahoney:
how you're thinking. Does that make sense? Be the change you wanna see. Mhmm. Right? Like, actions speak louder than words. You get to a certain point in your life and you realize no one is coming to save us. No one is going to fix this. They don't have the incentive to fix it, and and how immature of me to sit around and be, like, why isn't someone fixing this? Mhmm. Like, this is this is your calling. This is your job. Do it. There is a a a great hen I think I think Henry Ford said it. He's like, whether you fail or succeed, you spent the same amount of time either way. Yeah. You know, and, like, there have been times in my life where things have been going really well and times in my life where things were going really poorly.
Sitting on my ass and doing nothing is excruciating. Mhmm. Working really, really hard and getting something done is also excruciating. It's like it's pain either way, so just do the thing that brings some light and joy. Yeah. You know, it but that's not everybody's path. Yeah. That you know, we all have roles to play in the ecosystem. We all have you know, like like in trading. Right? Like, you got you got people who speculate. They play an important role. They provide liquidity. Like, do like, you could say, like, oh, they don't provide value. Like, they do. Like, the whole ecosystem, there's all the flies provide value. I mean, they're taking on a risk. Right? Like, that's what it is. They're creating depth and, you know, so it's not for some people, they're not they're not they don't care. Right? Like, in other words, try try to answer the question. It's like, yeah, the industry would be done if people like you and I didn't say no, that that this could be something different and better, but that's always been true throughout all this time forever.
Right. Right? There's always some small group of people who are like, wait a minute. Like, hold hold on. This is totally fucked. Like, we need to like, this could be so much better. Mhmm. And they go through this, you know, like, the United States, the birth of America. They were like, hold on. Hold on. Yeah. This is fucked. Yeah. And and and it was excruciating. Don't you guys think England's fucking us? Yeah. Like, this this is not right, dude. So I don't know. For me, it was like like, did I become Matt Damon? No. Like, did did but but that I look at it now. I I my wife was an actress for a long time too, and so we get to share in that in that story, and she had a very similar story up to that exact same time period. She'd been acting her whole life. She booked a show. She had a recurring on the show, and then the writers strike hit in 2008, and she was like, I'm fucking done. Wow. Fuck this.
What show? Do you mind if I ask? What show? I honestly don't even know. I don't even remember. They canceled it. It was out. You know, she had multiple episodes. She did a bunch of other stuff, commercials and indies and things like that. Right. What was my point? I was getting to something with that.
[01:13:19] Cole McCormick:
She she saw the same thing you saw in that same time period. She was done. The industry was over. Or she or the industry was changing or something something needed to change. Poof, gone. It'll come back. Bad interviewer. I'm sorry. No.
[01:13:35] Zach Mahoney:
That's bad talker. Oh, oh, like, in other words, that oh, we we both look at each other now and go, what if I had been as successful as I was as as as I wanted to be or as hard as I was working to be in the industry the way that it is now? And I go pretty much unequivocally, like, I'm so glad that I didn't. I don't think that I I could've I could've meshed with the way that the industry is now with who I am as a person. It would not have been what I wanted it to be and the reasons why I got into it in the first place, and that's just the truth of it. Like, to your point about the truth, like, just look at it for what it is. And I go, you know what? It's hard to say, but I'm I I don't maybe people say it's cope, but I don't it wasn't meant to be. I wouldn't it wouldn't have worked. They're diametrically opposed frequencies. Mhmm. It would have been super dissonant. So my role was to go do all of the things that I did and learn the things that I needed to learn. I started the early part of my life and career as a as an artist, and then I got into the business side of things, and now I'm I'm I'm combining those with this platform, and I'm taking my love of movies and my understanding of how important, you know, markets are and energy is, and hopefully, we can redesign something here that that I just want to be in service of, and I want to have I want to have helped in the progression of of consciousness in some way. Mhmm. In in in in in a less entropic version of the world.
Going back to your question about, like, the most impactful movies, I want other people to be able to experience that so that they can continue to propagate good throughout the world. Mhmm. And I I happen to think that this is the best medium to do that, and it's the only one I really know anything about anyway. So, like, I feel like you know, you just, like, you have to be all in. Yeah. Well, my I I can't.
[01:15:38] Cole McCormick:
I'm not gonna go I'm not gonna do anything else. Yeah. What fucking else am I gonna do? I know. I've been thinking long and hard about that too, because I've been thinking about just during the whole pandemic, I I I've been looking at the reality of things, looking at the streamers, looking at Hollywood, and really asking myself, like, do I wanna make movies? Do I wanna make a movie? Like, is that what I want? Do I just wanna make one movie, or do I wanna really make movies? And I there's zero instinct in me to not make a movie. And I'm, like, fuck. Like, I because I could easily say, like, yeah, it just wasn't for me, you know. Like And what a relief that would be Yeah. To be honest. A huge relief. Like, if I could just
[01:16:21] Zach Mahoney:
if the truth was, I don't really care. I'm totally happy doing something else. Like, dude, I would have left so long ago. Yeah. And it would have been awesome. Yeah. But that's not the truth. It's not the truth. And it's like, it's it'd be so easy to just say, fuck California. It's not.
[01:16:35] Cole McCormick:
The the the state sucks. The system sucks. It's not working. It's over. It's done. And I'm just like, I don't believe that. I don't believe that by any means. And I feel crazy for admitting that, like, no. There's, like, movies still have a shot. Movies still have it. Like
[01:16:52] Zach Mahoney:
The Zubie put out this tweet the other day. He was, like,
[01:16:57] Cole McCormick:
basically, I think that the golden era of every art form has already passed. Oh, I saw that. I totally I I called him out on that. Yeah. I was like, oh, no. You're full of shit. I mean, I I hear his point Yeah. For where we're at now.
[01:17:09] Zach Mahoney:
But as a Bitcoiner, you know, like, let's say we get into a real let's say we really all of the shit happens that we think could happen. Bitcoin becomes the global unit of account, and we enter maybe the most prosperous period, probably the most prosperous period in all of human history for the next 500 years, like, whatever. Yeah. I I I I think that they're to suggest that masterworks are done,
[01:17:35] Cole McCormick:
no way. Yeah. What what what's Zubie even making? Wasn't he making music for a minute? Yeah. He's doing rap or whatever. But he's not anymore. Right? Like, what's he creating? Yeah. Like, what's he creating? Right? Because, like, I'm, like, I'm this guy who, like like, I I can see his point. I'm just, like, wait. What do you like, only if you're not creating you think that. Like, that's really wild to to even say, like, every art form is, like, peaked. Like, what are you talking about,
[01:17:59] Zach Mahoney:
dude? Yeah. Like, people are still building buildings. I think that's I think that really is a symptom. He's look that's a symptom of fiat. He's looking at the system as it is right now, and he's going kinda like we were talking about earlier. He's just trying to be truthful about it Mhmm. From where he sees it. See, I I see it from a different perspective, but from where he's sitting, he's going, the way that things are right now, there's absolutely no way that we're ever gonna see another Michelangelo. Yeah. That we're ever gonna see, you know, a Da Vinci. That we're gonna see, you know and and and and in this if this paradigm was the only paradigm from here on out Mhmm. I would agree with him. Yeah.
But it's not gonna be the only paradigm from here on out. Like, it's it's just not. It's not true. It's not it's not true. You you know what? There there's, what's the stat on geniuses? I like, there's a kind of a fixed amount. You know, there's a ratio, roughly speaking, of geniuses all over the world. So there should be more geniuses now than there have ever been at any point in all of human history. Why aren't they capable of whipping shit up in society right now? Mhmm. It's it's a that's that is a symptom of the financial structure that we're in, because the financial structure that we're in is designed to enslave us, and, we have the power to break free of that. We do now. Yeah. We do now. This is Bitcoin. Yeah. So that wasn't certainly not in the digital age. It was not really possible before. Now, again, like, this doesn't I'm not I'm not trying to put forth some naive utopia. We're human beings. We're flawed. We're going to have problems. It's like, that's just the reality.
But but, like, if you're looking at it from a Maslow's hierarchy perspective, like, Bitcoin can solve a lot of these, like, base layer things and get us onto the more important shit like actualization.
[01:19:41] Cole McCormick:
Mhmm.
[01:19:43] Zach Mahoney:
And so, you know, if we can if human beings can coordinate correctly at scale, you can start to take all of these geniuses and and put them to work. Mhmm. And we should see that in the film industry. We should see that in movies. We should see people bringing things forth that none of us have ever thought of or dreamed were possible. Mhmm. And, of course, that's possible because everything's always changing anyway. The context is changing, so doesn't mean the art has peaked. Mhmm. There's there's always something new to be done and a new way to do it. Yeah.
[01:20:13] Cole McCormick:
So what is okay. So we're we're recording this at the end of 2024. It's November 1st. What does 2025 look like for you
[01:20:22] Zach Mahoney:
and Indie Hub? Like, what is this what does the near future for Indie Hub look like, and what are you trying to build in the near future? The the near future is we need to get we need to get the word out for filmmakers specifically. We need to build this community with filmmakers first and foremost. We need shorts. We need to get as many short films onto this platform as we can. There is no market for shorts. We want to become the place where the market's at. I need to be talking to filmmakers. I need to be working with filmmakers, and I need them to get their movies onto the platform as quickly as possible. The next 12 to 18 months, frankly, is gonna be a lot of that. We need to build out the library. We need to build out the community. We need to start educating and changing expectations. Then we need to start working expectations.
Then we need to start working on the marketing piece and get filmmakers to start figuring out how we can bring their audiences over here. Mhmm. But the short term is is like a huddle with the industry. Like, come on. Come on over here. We're doing this thing. We need your help. Mhmm. So that's the short version. Interesting.
[01:21:25] Cole McCormick:
I think, I mean, I'm gonna pat myself on the back. I've been doing this podcast for a couple years. The entire vision for this has been I'm a filmmaker who has a podcast. I'm a podcaster who makes movies. Like, this is it. This is it. So I'm not sure if everyone should have a podcast. Like, everyone already does have a podcast.
[01:21:42] Zach Mahoney:
But 30 years ago, if you had told everybody, like, in the future, you're all gonna have your own talk show. Yeah. You could have been, like,
[01:21:50] Cole McCormick:
what? Like, that's insane to say. Here we are. Yeah. But here yeah. This is it. Like, this is this is reality. But I think I I was gonna ask you about about the marketing piece as well. Like, is there a different thing for marketing, or is it really just, like, going on different podcasts and just starting your own podcast and having the initiative with your own social media?
[01:22:09] Zach Mahoney:
Is it really just that? I think, yeah. I think you have to at this point. You know, back in the day,
[01:22:15] Cole McCormick:
the way the structure was was that the studio was doing the marketing. Yeah. Right. And they would put you on the talk show. They would put you, you know, and on the radio show and all that. Exactly. Like, you got to focus on your job. You were a great actor.
[01:22:27] Zach Mahoney:
They paraded you around. They marketed it. They paid for all the advertising. They set up all the shit. They had really, really talented people doing all of that. This day this is really we're not there anymore, and we're in this transitionary period. So you have to be able to build an audience. You have to be able to capture that audience. You have to be able to communicate with that audience. I hope that Indie Hub can can play a pivotal role and an instrumental role in getting filmmakers in touch with their audiences and in communication with their audiences.
We can't do the marketing. We're not going to be buying billboards for people's movies. We're not a distribution company. But I think that the difference that Indie Hub has is that you can create a direct financial incentive to go find an influencer, or if you have an audience yourself, to put this out onto social media and to bring the audience over to where your work is at. They you can plug that person directly onto the cap table, and they can start getting paid for every second that those people are watching that movie.
[01:23:35] Cole McCormick:
That is a big fucking change from how things work. And that's the payment splits. Right? Because that's the biggest I we didn't even talk about that. The payment splits. Like, that's the real innovation with podcasting 2.0, with IndieHub. The when it comes to royalties and licensing, the real innovation when it comes to using Bitcoin is you can put a split for each person who helped you make that and promote that. So me as a director, I can just give myself 10%. I can give Zach another 10%. I can give someone who did maybe just a little bit less work 5%. Like, anyone can have a split, and it's up to you, up to that group to figure out what those splits are, and those splits are in perpetuity.
Like, they are forever. And that's, like, bigger than a contract. Because that, like, that goes beyond banks. That goes beyond streamers, which I think is it's always been the innovation. It's why I wanted to do a podcast. It's why I wanted my podcast to be aligned with podcasting 2 point o tech because of just the splits and the payments. I'm like, I'm giving you a split on this podcast. I'm gonna get Let's go. I'm gonna get your your lightning, and you're gonna get whatever you want. 50%, 15, 30, whatever you want. I'm gonna give it to you. And A 100%, obviously. Clearly. Let's do it. I'll do yeah. I'll do negative 5%. Sweet. You'll get a 104. You owe me money. But that's the real innovation, and that is like, that's a future thing. Like, that's future. Like, that's some in my head, I have America Plus is like a verb. Like, that like, splits on my movie is so America Plus. Like, that's so that's so that's some future shit. Yeah. And I love that, man. I freaking love that. And I think that's the real key when it comes to communicating what's possible.
When you tell someone, like, you're gonna have a split of the profits of this, and you're gonna have this forever. Like,
[01:25:28] Zach Mahoney:
period. You go do if you're a talented, young kid or whoever, you know, it like, in the YouTube days, when when YouTube was starting, we were all trying to figure out what was going on. You know, we had talent. We had energy. We had equipment. We had time. If we could have just had a platform where we could put it up in a marketplace and see how it responded financially.
[01:25:53] Cole McCormick:
Mhmm.
[01:25:54] Zach Mahoney:
It would have been a game changer. Yeah. And, you know, if you can if you can go produce a short film for $1,000 or $10,000 or $20,000, and you can make that money back, and you can start to build that confidence and build that skill and build an actual business based on audiences responding positively, that's a big deal. And, you know, you you're 19 or 20. You're trying to tell your cinematographer, hey. I'll give you 10% of whatever the short film makes. Happening. You know, in my opinion, it's a it's it is the game changer. You know, are we is any hub ready right now to take on, an independent film that had a budget of $1,000,000, and can we justify saying, hey, you're probably gonna make your money back? No. Like, we're not there yet.
We need to start with the short, and we need to start with people who are motivated and inspired and are going to go iterate and work and work and work who can build their audience. If you can start to do that and you can start to develop a relationship with your audience and you can start to develop a financial, a little bit of financial momentum. It's like the difference between life and death. And you could start you know, my my my vision for Indie Hub is that you get some young kid on there who starts it up when they're 15 or 16. They got their camera. They were doing whatever. They're learning how to edit in high school. You put up one good movie on Indie Hub, and then 20 or 25 years later, you're winning awards. You're a huge director. You're a huge actor. Whatever. You're a huge cinematographer.
Why not? Like, why can't there be a a progression and a ladder in that way? Mhmm. That's what I'd like to see. Yeah. So anybody, you know, anybody who's listening to this, who's in that world, like, I encourage you. Come over here. Put your work on here. Put your short film on here. Iterate. Figure out how to build your your your your audience, and and then just get to work. Just get to work. Just make movies. Your job is to make movies. Just make movies. Yeah. That's it. I'm trying to help you. Just make movies. I wanna see more movies being made by more talented people all of the time. That's what I want. Yeah. Are you gonna be, be producing movies yourself, or are you gonna be just, like, in charge of indie hub? Like, what's that like for you? I would I mean, the second I can get back into the driver's seat on making some movies, I will. Mhmm. But that won't be for quite some time. Right. You know, I I really gotta I gotta commit to this. I gotta make sure that this works, and that's gonna take all of my time and attention and effort.
You know, honestly, theater is where my heart's at. Okay. I I love theater. I could sit in I could I could sit in a theater all day and rehearse and perform. There's nothing like that. Yeah. I'll be back. I'll be back to that. I'll be back to making movies. But for the foreseeable future, this is where all of my attention and energy and effort are going, and I'm doing everything that I can to support the people who are still out there doing that. Mhmm.
[01:28:58] Cole McCormick:
That's dope, dude. Thank you. How much time do you have? Do you have Plenty time. Let's do it. Dope, dude. What other movies do you like? Well, what's like a movie that you always go to? Let me pee. Well, that's a good spot for a break, and then we'll we'll keep it going. Yeah. We'll pause it. We'll pause it right now. We'll pause it. You're good. We're gonna take a quick value break, everybody. If you didn't know, America Plus is a value for value show. This entire, situation is ran on the value that you are receiving and wanna reciprocate. If you're enjoying the conversation so far, I wanna encourage you to send in a boostagram on a modern podcast app like fountain.fm. Go to value for value dot info for more info, then download the fountain.fm app. It's the best way to support the show. Fountain is really good. Podcast Guru is awesome. Podverse, Cast O Matic, these are modern podcast apps that you are able to support America Plus with some small bits of Bitcoin called Satoshis.
And I'm gonna be reading some boostograms from the last couple weeks. This is from episode 138. We got 2 boostograms in from the same person. The, these these 2 come from, Pies, our boy Pies. What up, Pies? His first one, he sends in a beautiful 420 sats. I love that dude. And then he sends a bunch of emojis, a saluting emoji, beer, mushrooms, fist pump, 2 fist pumps, strength, water gun, America equals money. And he sends, like, a bunch of flags, like an English flag, a a Danish flag. I think that's an English flag. Oh, yeah. Just like a Europe. The he's he has these European flags and a equals poop emoji. So thank you, Piz. Boosting is loving. It's basically, you put Bitcoin with anything, and all of a sudden, that is more efficient. Thank you very much. And then he has something to say here with his second boost to Graham.
He sends in another 404120. That's a that's a marijuana boost, if you didn't know that. 420 sats, from PS. He has to say this, Fight for freedom. And and so just to remind you, the last episode was about the election, and, so he has this to say about the election. Fight for freedom. I want peace and love, but always be prepared for war. God bless us all that we move toward that that we move forward as a peaceful species. Most of us aren't built for that possibility of death and destruction. Until you watch a man get killed to the bare hands and fists of another man 10 feet away from you, You can't say you you can deal with the violence we may have in front of us. Well, Jesus Christ, p s. And then he goes on. Oh, and by the way, I smoke hella weed. I couldn't tell, dude.
And stay strong, and stay working out, to prepare for battle and follow what's going on around us. The weed is a medicinal element to mental health. Some people may use it and have blinders on, but many of us, get more focused when enjoying the green gift from God. And now Thank you. As the French say, it is time for Le Boost. Thank you very much, Piazza. Yeah. So that was in response. I think I was, like, talking shit about some stoners not caring about the election. I understand what you're saying. It's a gift. People can get more focused on it. Piazza, I'm just in a place where I'm not smoking weed right now for mainly spiritual reasons slash mental health. I guess you can say mental health reasons. I just I'm in a place where I don't think weed is really helping me. And I've, like, gone through enough stages and phases to to realize that it's just like, right now, it's just not helping me with anything. So I'm choosing to just stay to stay abstinent from that and alcohol. Doing my best with that.
But thank you so much, PS, for sending in that value. And thank you to everyone else who was streaming in SaaS. That's really important to be to be streaming in SaaS. That's, like, the whole innovation going on with podcasting 2.0. It's it's similar to what Zach is talking about with his indie hub platform. Streaming Satoshi, streaming money to the content that you like is the future. And just sending money instantly to the to the creator that you want, to the producer that you want is the future. So I encourage you to do that. And, Zach is getting some money. He he he's getting a split of money. So so don't forget to send in a boostagram for this episode to help out Zach, to help out myself, and to just help out the entire podcasting 2.0 ecosystem, dude. Just be a part of this, man.
We're gonna wrap things up, with the second half of the episode, and we're gonna play a song at the very end. So I hope you stick around and just enjoy the rest of the episode, folks. Twing.
[01:33:46] Zach Mahoney:
Alright. We're back. We're back.
[01:33:48] Cole McCormick:
Back from the Back from that. Yeah. What movies do you like? What's, like, a movie that you always watch? And, like, does it, like, inspire you? Or, like, what are you what are you getting from like, what do you wanna get from a movie?
[01:34:01] Zach Mahoney:
Excellent question. So I it sucks to admit, but but I've been so
[01:34:13] Cole McCormick:
you only watch German expressionist movies?
[01:34:18] Zach Mahoney:
I just I just watch YouTube all day. No. That's me. No. I the the you know, I've been so, disheartened by the industry for the last 10 years Mhmm. That that I really have have, unfortunately, I have not found it to be, like, a great use of my time Yeah. Because so much of it is just garbage. I can see that. No. I I I agree with that. You know? And and whereas before, I would just be devouring great movies. And and and, look, part of that is part of that is I I'm in a totally different age. I'm married. I'm building a business. I there's only so much time in a day. You've probably already seen all the good movies. Right.
You know? And so, occasionally, someone will be like, you gotta watch this. You gotta watch it. Like, okay. Like, you know, it's rare at this point. Mhmm. That doesn't mean I'm not going back to that. It's just that's kinda where I'm at. So that but that being said, like, a lot of the stuff that that I that I would say is, you know, we're gonna talk about older stuff. There was this period, probably right around I I memory gets a little hazy here, but probably around the time Game of Thrones came out originally. I don't remember even when that even was. When did the first Game of Thrones
[01:35:37] Cole McCormick:
come out? I think it came out in 2,008, which I didn't believe, but it did. Okay. Which is a wild time and time. Perfect example.
[01:35:47] Zach Mahoney:
That's when television started, ironically, a a totally new renaissance. Mhmm. You you the the movie Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad started in o eight as well. Exactly. The amount of good television that was propagated throughout those periods was was mind blowing. Mhmm. Movies got really terrible, and then but they brought the theatrical style and quality to episodic content. Mhmm. I will say this. True detective season 1 Oh, yeah. Is probably the best thing that's ever been put on celluloid Mhmm. In my opinion. Was it put on celluloid? It was shot on film. I didn't know that. Yeah. That's cool.
That's its own thing. We talk about shooting on film. The the film is important. That new topic. We'll go there later. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The thing about True Detective, it took me it took me it took me a while in my life to, like, accept the fact that some people just don't some people just watch movies because they wanna just not think about shit. Like, literally, they just wanna be entertained. I I that's not why I watch movies. I watch movies to be challenged Yes. To be inspired Yes. To to feel something, to to learn something. Like, when I'm watching a movie, I like, my wife will be, like, can I watch a movie? It's you know, she just wants to hang out, and I'm, like, no. No. I don't I don't watch movies to hang out. Yeah. Like, I used to you know, when I was younger, I used to stand up. I had my monitor put I had my my TV put on a hot stand height directly at eye level, and I would stand up and watch movies Mhmm. Because I was so actively engaged in the whole process.
It's not relaxing for me at all. Yeah. And then as I got more into production, it you know, you start to you I started to learn more about how all of that worked. I started to get good at editing. I started to get good at shooting, at cinematography, at lighting. You know, the acting had already ruined a lot of it for me, but then all of that just kind of like the the the it just became it was not a relaxing experience. So I really like, when the stuff was good, it was it was there just can't get any better. Mhmm. And true detective for that true detective for me was that. Yeah. It was like the culmination of every single aspect of that series. 23, they don't count. They're literally just nonsense.
It was a masterpiece at every level. The acting, the writing, the cinematography, the score, the music, the composition, like, all of it. Mhmm. Masterpiece. And the thing about true detective that I liked is that it a lot of people are like, oh my god. It's so dark. It's so dark. Like, that is one of the most hopeful, positive, least cynical things that has ever been produced. Mhmm. But you have to get through the darkness of it to appreciate that final line in the series, which is just fucking mind blowing. It used to be that there was only darkness.
Seems to me the light is winning. Holy fuck.
[01:39:03] Cole McCormick:
That's real. That's some real universe shit. So hardcore.
[01:39:07] Zach Mahoney:
And for him to to build this story to get to that final, it was the I haven't talked about this show in a while, but I have never in my life finished a show and been like, that ending was perfect. Really? Not even breaking bad? No. Wow. No. The end of breaking bad was insane. It was like, how are they gonna how are they gonna wrap this up? There's just a fucking massive shootout. Like, it was just ins but it was, like, it was a masterpiece because the whole thing had gotten to this one point, this one idea. Mhmm. I want to prove that this idea is right, and that is that things aren't fucked up. Mhmm. Like, we're the the good side is winning. That's powerful. It was so fucking powerful when I saw that. It's like I literally was standing there, like, arms crossed, like, just crying. Mhmm.
It was so well done.
[01:40:04] Cole McCormick:
And and so it I I You're the meme of the dad standing in front of the TV. Like, you're the you're that guy. That's how I was how I used to watch stuff. You know? Yeah. And I,
[01:40:13] Zach Mahoney:
so it so what am I what am I looking for when I'm watching? So I'm looking for that. Mhmm. I'm looking for I'm looking for energy. Mhmm. I'm trying to tap into some kind of of of source power that I can use to, like Mhmm. Motivate me and push me throughout the day, and give me some orientation that's worth
[01:40:37] Cole McCormick:
running towards. I felt that way when I was younger watching Deadpool Society. Such a good fucking movie. When they stand up on the desks, and it's like, oh my god. Like, that's I I literally when I was a kid, like, I'm crying watching it. I'm in high school. Mhmm. And I'm just like, grab in my captain. Like and I think it was, like, right when Robin Williams had died too. And I was, like, like, every time somebody died, I would just, like, go into, like I would just binge all their stuff, and that's that's been, like, the thing that that's pissed me off of of being alive. Like, I only know when someone is so good. I only saw 10 Things I Hate About You after I saw The Dark Knight. Mhmm. Like, I only know how good Heath Ledger is after he died. And it's, like and then I'm, like, it seems like I I'm the only one who cares about, like, their last thing. Because, like, I remember, like, loving, Heath Ledger's last movie, The Imaginarium of Doctor Purnassas.
And, like, do you know about that? No. Oh, yeah. So that was yeah. So when Heath Ledger died in in 2008, he was filming a movie with Terry Gillian Terry Gillian. And it was just super fantasy movie. This there's this theater troop, and they're it's just Andrew Garfield and Christopher Plummer. And they're it's this, like, sort of, like, homeless theater troop, and they're going around London. And they're poor, and they're just, like, sort of, like, scamming people, and people aren't respecting them. And then they find this dead guy hanging underneath the bridge, and it's Heath Ledger. And this it's a wild story.
And, but he died in the middle of that. And I remember loving that movie, but nobody saw it. Mhmm. And I've always sort of, like, felt, like, singled out by, like, loving these movies that no one else does. Like, I love Megalopolis. Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis. Like, everyone was, like, shitting on it, but I feel inspired when I watch that movie. I feel like, I'm looking for inspiration. Yeah. I'm looking for I wanna get hyped up. So, like, I'll watch I'll watch Megalopolis and Top Gun Maverick. Like, those 2 like, that's a real good duo for me. Like, I'm gonna beat the enemy. We're gonna do it. Fucking Friday. Let's go. Exactly. Exactly.
And, I just love I remember even, like, being obsessed obsessed with Forrest Gump because, like, just like being I wanna fell fell in love with history. I wanna I I fell in love with, like, the idea of an adventure through that sort of a lifetime. Like, I've always loved these. Like, even, Catch Me If You Can. I would like, Forrest Gump, Catch Me If You Can, Dead Poets Society, he anything with Heath Ledger. Like, these are, like, things that I find I find inspiring and, like, hopeful and love and life, and it's like, these things are I've I've always, like, hovered around these things.
It's always been very interesting to me. And when I saw Megalopolis, I didn't feel the emotions per se, but I could see the vision. Mhmm. And I could see how much Coppola felt, how much love, and how much inspiration Coppola felt for this idea for a better society, for a better future. And for me and myself, as as just a consumer of movies, I'm always looking to be inspired for a new idea.
[01:43:39] Zach Mahoney:
And I had There's very few movies like that. For tell me what you think here. We're we're early in the up days, but I I'm I think I'm gonna put into some marketing material. I had the realization there there's 2 ways to get an audience. Mhmm. You can captivate, or you can capture. Mhmm. And we're we're in the capture phase of it right now, and we need to get back to the captivate. Mhmm. The captivate is a willing exchange of energy. Who's capturing? Marvel? Like, Disney? Like, what do you mean by Captivate streaming services? Right? YouTube. We're capturing your attention. We're forcing you into this pin, and we're moving you around in ways that make us money and take away your time. We're dragging you through our through our algorithm. Exactly. It's not a mutually beneficial relationship. I mean, that that's not I understand that's absurd. There's a lot of use to YouTube. I'm not, like But, ultimately, that's what it is. Exactly. You're you're in their little device. Right?
We need to we need to get people paying for things because they're captivated by them. By the emotion. Like, of course, we don't wanna pay for most of the show on YouTube. It's trash. Yeah. It is trash. Fucking trash.
[01:44:49] Cole McCormick:
There's no way I'm gonna pay for mister beast. Right. Even though I might be entertained Right. By something he does, but I I would much rather pay for a Robin Williams movie. Yes. Any any sort of Chris Nolan movie, anything like that because there's so much more love into that. You're captivated.
[01:45:04] Zach Mahoney:
Right? There's something that's that's you're getting something in exchange for the $10 or $5 or whatever. It's totally fucking worth it.
[01:45:12] Cole McCormick:
Anyway, Keith. You gotta watch Heath Ledger's last movie because he died in the middle of filming. And so when that happens, it's like, oh, no. The movie's done. But they recasted him with 3 actors. Oh, wow. Jude Law, I kinda remember this now. Yeah. It was Jude Law. It was, Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell. Wow. They all and and they rewrote the script. They had to change it for it to make sense, but they were all, like, trying to capture that essence, trying to capture what what Heath was able to to captivate with his performances.
Yeah. And it was so intriguing to me as a child. That was 2009 when that came out, and I was so obsessed with that idea. And and I could, like, feel it. Because that movie's about it's it's very, like, ethereal. Like, there's, like, Christopher Plummer. He makes a deal with the devil, and he's using Heath Ledger to, like, to make that deal happen. And it's, like, it's very interesting like that. It's very mystical and very dark as well. But to see the love, to to to see, like, the essence of of that actor try to come forward through these other actors, I was so inspired by. Because, oh, that's my girlfriend. What up, Shannon? Hi. Hi. This is Zac Mahoney. Hi. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Shannon works with dogs. Oh, nice. She's obsessed with animals. We have a cat. I think he's asleep, Shan.
Just so you know. If you don't see the cat.
[01:46:34] Zach Mahoney:
He's I saw the cat bowl. I wonder where the cat was.
[01:46:40] Cole McCormick:
But I'm I've always been inspired by by something like that. Like, just capturing an essence capturing this this, this inspiring thing within movies. So I I forgot what I where I was trying to go with that. But Yeah. We were talking about, like, why. Like, what are we looking for out of a movie? Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Just I wanna be inspired. I wanna think about something new. I wanna think about life. I wanna think about the expansion of life. Yeah. Like, when I think about Forrest Gump, it's sort of like like, there's never gonna be another Forrest Gump, but it's almost like everyone's life is Forrest Gump. Like, you're going through a war. You're going through a heartbreak. You're going through, like, something that you don't really understand. It's universal human experiences
[01:47:25] Zach Mahoney:
Mhmm. That these geniuses can can, articulate and express in a unique way. Mhmm. They they they they they trick us into our own humanity. Yeah. You know, they it's a way to, like, get around the ego. Mhmm. Be like, oh, yeah. We're all Mhmm. We all experience these. That's a really interesting movies get us around the ego.
[01:47:49] Cole McCormick:
That's so wild. That's true too, because some characters are so ego, and you hate that. You hate the ego guy. Yeah. You hate him. And it's, like, you don't wanna like Tom Cruise in Top Gun because he's cocky. But then it's, like but then he gets around it. Like, there's a journey. Yeah. And so it's, like, you can identify that, and then you can, like, forgive that. Yeah. It's so interesting, dude. I mean, I was thinking about this the other day in a totally different context, but it's, like, you know, part of this you know, being an actor, you
[01:48:19] Zach Mahoney:
you know, generally speaking, you wanna play the hero, you wanna play the good guy, you wanna be the but but playing the role of the bad guy is is necessary. Tremendous honor. Mhmm. Oh, yeah. Like, are you evil? No. Of course not. You're tapping into it for the service of the greater good. Mhmm. That role those roles are super important. Mhmm.
[01:48:44] Cole McCormick:
I mean, I I immediately I mean, the biggest villain right now is Thanos. Like, Josh Brolin as Thanos. Like, he is like, they made an iconic villain with Infinity War, with Thanos. Like, that's and people don't view Thanos as evil. He kills half the universe, but he's literally justified through his own way of being and thinking. And he's and he's a fucked up father. He kidnapped and abused these these girls. But somehow, some way, there's, like, you still understand him, and you can still see how he can how he fits in. And it's it's very interesting how how things like that happen. And and the actor is interested in playing something like that. Yeah. You know, people you know, Josh Brolin doesn't wanna be the the hero all the time. He wants to like, he he he was cable in Deadpool. He's like some angry hero. But then, like, you know, Thanos is so much more of a interesting character because he has a motive, because he he has a real service to the greater good of the movie. There's depth and dimension. Mhmm. Like, you know, we had this we had this saying in as an actor. It's, like, you can't play disconnected disconnectedly.
[01:49:49] Zach Mahoney:
Yeah. You can't be the surface level version. Like, you can't play a Nazi.
[01:49:54] Cole McCormick:
Mhmm. And not, like, curl when you say the line.
[01:50:00] Zach Mahoney:
Like, when you say the line as a Nazi, you need to, like, actually, like, try to, like Yeah. Like like, off your chest up. Like, how do you how do you how do you play a scene where they treat humans as if they're trash and do it authentically? Mhmm. Well, you can't play that scene, like, I am I am playing this as an evil person. No. You can that's literally what you call bad acting. This is garbage. Yeah. You have to substitute it, and you say, like, oh, that I'm going to treat this human being as this as if it's a chair. I'm gonna just fucking throw it out. Like, burn it. I don't care. Mhmm. But you can't so my point about, you know, the the the the evil characters that we fall in love with is because they're not playing evil.
They're they're playing an a a flawed human being Mhmm. Who's going about their life. The undercurrent is that they're doing it with love Mhmm. But they're misguided. Yes. We all relate to that. Yes. Oh, completely understand that. You know? Like, we want someone to be able to redeem themselves or to have redemption in spite of the fact that they're flawed. Mhmm. But you can't play it. This is just acting talk, but you just you can't play a flawed person flaw flaw diddly. Yeah. No. You can't. I'm the most flawed. Like, this is nonsense. You know? It is nonsense. Yeah. What do you think of okay. So here's a take that I have on Spielberg.
[01:51:19] Cole McCormick:
I'm not sure if anyone agrees with me, but I have I have zero that like button. I yeah. I have zero sets. Please. I have zero nostalgia and love for Spielberg's fantasy movies. I literally Like what? Which ones? I'm talking about his fantasy movies. I'm talking about Indiana Jones. I'm talking about Jurassic Park. I have no love for Spielberg's fantasies. I only like and enjoy and go back to Spielberg's dramas for some reason. And I have this theory within my own self, and I feel like this goes for, like, cinematic culture as well. 2008 was such a big year. It's like a changing year for everything. 2008, Iron Man, Dark Knight, Indiana Jones 4.
And I've always have felt like like, that was, like, one of my fur that was my first Spielberg movie. And I never got into like, I didn't wanna watch Indiana Jones after I saw Crystal Skull. I was, like, a part of the hype. Like, I I I I Well, you got lied to. I got lied to. I forced myself to be hyped up, and then I was lied to about how such a I mean, that movie sucked, didn't it? Like, if I remember correctly, Crystal Skull. It did suck. No. It it was no good. I mean, sort of because of George Lucas, he had a bad idea. It was George Lucas who had the idea with the aliens, but, I was 11 years old, and I just wasn't into it. And then I just I I I can see the quality of the fantasy movies. Like, I can see the quality of Indiana Jones and the cinematography, and I I know that he he tapped into something with Jurassic Park, and, like, he really sweeps you up. But I just have 0 like, I'm more interested in Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, War Horse.
I'm more interested in Lincoln than I am Indiana Jones. I don't know why. I'm not sure. I I I feel like a like an odd thumb out. Like, no one else agrees with me. People in your generation won't agree with me because I'm sure you grew up with some fantasy Spielberg. Like, I'm sure you have sort of nostalgia or you have, like No. I I
[01:53:21] Zach Mahoney:
I think that if you if you really drill down and you ask people, you just have to ask the question differently. You can't say, like, what's your favorite movie? Because a lot of times people are gonna be like, what movie did I have the most fun watching? Mhmm. Or what movie, like, blew my fucking mind? Like, Jurassic Park, when it came out, was unprecedented. Yeah. The context of the time, it blew people's fucking minds. And I wasn't around for that. You didn't have the context. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that Jurassic Park was the movie that affected them the most. Almost always, if you really get into, like, Spielberg, they're gonna be, Schindler's List. Right. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. You know, it's It's his best movie. Lincoln, Schindler's List, Private Ryan, whatever.
So I I I think you're being unfair to your to yourself. You know, you're you're not isolated in that opinion, I don't think. It's just a it's just a different question. Just ask a more specific question. Right. And I think most people generally would agree with you. Mhmm. You know, what movie affected you the most? Like, most people are gonna be if they're honest with themselves, they're gonna be like, yeah. I was Schindler's List. Like Mhmm. Fuck. Yeah. Private Ryan, no one had ever done you know, it's kind of, like, expected. It's it's it's like the norm today, but, dude, you for anybody who's young, when Saving Private Ryan came out, that had never been done before. That 30 minutes on the beach, that movie broke every rule that existed for war movies, violence, realism.
It was completely unprecedented. People were fucking speechless Mhmm. In the movie theater after watching that scene. I mean, they were fucking affected. People were shaking. They've never seen anything like that. Mhmm. That's the problem with movies. They're so contextual. Mhmm. What came before it societally? What came after? Anyway, I'm on a I'm on a rant. I I think that I think more people would agree with you than you give yourself credit for. I think you're right. Yeah.
[01:55:23] Cole McCormick:
I always found that interesting, and I wasn't sure if that was, like, even accurate to think, because you always see, like, peep like, Spielberg will be remembered because of Indiana Jones and Jaws and these fantasies. And people will put Schindler's List up as, like, the best movie, but he's, like, remembered for the other stuff, for the Jurassic Park. It's like Pete the culture loves him for Jurassic Park. Filmmakers love him for Schindler's List. But, like, ultimately, it's the fantasy that sort of, like, leads everything. Yeah. And I I I always just found that interesting, because I was just I've been more interested in
[01:55:57] Zach Mahoney:
real life stuff or something that tries to convey real life. Well, I we just got them watching the World Series. Right? Like, everybody's gonna remember the grand slam Mhmm. The walk off grand slam in the first game, because it's exciting, and it's spectacular, and it never been done before. Nobody's gonna be like, man, there was like a, you know, series of 45 pitches where this pitcher was really playing a chess match with this guy that, you know, he had been in a battle with 3 seasons prior. Like like, no Yeah. No one cared about that. But the but but, objectively, like, that that battle Mhmm. Is is that the those grinds, that that masterful, execution of something, it's the thing that gives the exciting part a foundation.
Yeah. And it's just, you know, the people aren't in the weeds. Right? Like, we're in the weeds. It's great. Yeah.
[01:56:50] Cole McCormick:
Oh, yeah. I mean, I was a tour guide at Warner Brothers. So I was, like, as deep in the weeds as you can with, like, nerd culture and people. And I think that's sort of what what I've been, like, reacting to. Just, like, all the tour guides love Jurassic Park. And, like, I like, I'll watch it. Sure. But I'm not obsessed with it. Yeah. And it's, like, tour guides are obsessed with these things. Yeah. And I just always had a different perspective, and it's very interesting like that. Or I would watch I I haven't seen it, but I would I would I was always willing to talk about Roads to Perdition, that film that Warner Brothers Yeah. That's Spielberg. Yeah. I think it's Spielberg. Maybe it's not. Or or I should say I think Spielberg did Red Perdition.
Over AI. Yeah. Over because there was, like, this one there's this one back loss set that both those movies filmed on. So I was always willing to talk about this one movie over this fantasy movie because I just because of my own preference.
[01:57:39] Zach Mahoney:
I think I think you could go back into Jurassic Park without the expectation of Spielberg.
[01:57:44] Cole McCormick:
Yeah. And go into it, like That's the real fuck date that it's always Spielberg, Spielberg, Spielberg. It's, like, I'm sorry. Like, I just don't Just go into it with musicality,
[01:57:54] Zach Mahoney:
appreciation of the musicality, of the tempo, of the timing, of the tension, and the discovery of pay pace and tempo.
[01:58:01] Cole McCormick:
Mhmm. You know, then you're, like, okay. Because then I feel vindicated when the movie, like, Ready Player 1 comes out, and it's, like, oh, he's really just, like he's just repeating what he did. And then people are, like, wanna get hyped up because, oh, did did you see the dinosaur in Ready Player 1? It's, like, it's not that exciting. I don't know what to tell you. I don't care. I care about I care about Lincoln. I care about I care about him calling Daniel Day Lewis Lincoln on set. Like, I I care about him actually doing it and being authentic with it. Like, I care more about him using candles on the set than using some sort of other lighting for the camera in Indiana Jones. Like, I don't know why I feel that way, but I just do. What what do you think about Coppola? Do you think Coppola still has it? Did you see Megalopolis? I haven't seen it yet. It's on the list. I think you would like it. What you've explained to me, you would enjoy Megalopolis.
You might laugh at parts. You might think some parts are ridiculous. But, ultimately, I think it it's in the vein of what you're looking for. I'm I'm sure I would. I mean, the dude's a master.
[01:59:01] Zach Mahoney:
Maybe it's not the pinnacle of his of his artistic endeavors, but he's you have to respect You have to. Like, the the the talent. I Sandy Meissner has this quote, your talent lies in your choices. I when I'm watching a movie, I'm looking for specific choices. Whether they sometimes they hit, sometimes they don't, but I I have gotten to a point where I respect somebody trying something that's really specific. Again, like, if it's a dud, I I I clap because someone had the courage to stand up and do the thing in the first place. Mhmm. That's why I clap. Yes. That deserves respect and honor. You know? Why I like Joker too. It's a fucking musical with a murderer.
[01:59:54] Cole McCormick:
And, like, it's actually, like it's weird. It's wonky. And, like, Megalopolis is the same way. Like, I can I I'm I'm willing to applaud just the sheer act of going for it? Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm inspired by. Like, it's what I wanna do as well even though these movies made no money. Yeah. I'm inspired by the flops. It's you got you then so that's you know?
[02:00:12] Zach Mahoney:
It's easy to just talk shit on the sidelines. Easy for me to go to an NFL game. Be like, I can't believe you missed it again. You suck. You know? Like like,
[02:00:19] Cole McCormick:
dude, I'm not on the field. Yeah. I put so much of the audience how hard that shit is. So much of the audience is Monday morning quarterback game. Yeah. It's really strange to me. A lot of shit talking. It's easy to talk shit. But, yeah, you should watch it. Yeah. Whenever it's on streaming, you should check it out. If it's still in theater, I mean, I would just give Coppola the money. Yeah. Just really go for it. Yeah. But yeah, man. Megalopolis.
[02:00:44] Zach Mahoney:
It's wild. Yeah. I I mean, I I've seen reviews, and usually when a movie is has, like, a a usually, there's, like, a distribution curve. Mhmm. But this one's just, like, hate, apathy, and love all mixed into 1, which usually to me indicates that somebody did something incredibly specific and incredibly skillful. Yes. And people just don't understand how to react to it. The there's, people who aren't in the weeds and who don't make movies or aren't movie nerds or whatever will equate the quality of a movie with whether or not they liked it. Mhmm. I can dislike a certain kind of music and and be like, no. This is, like but that too is a a master. Mhmm. Like, this is incredible. It doesn't it's not the type of music that I enjoy. Mhmm. I can separate. I don't like the thing with it was whether it was good or not. A lot of people, like, if I didn't like it, it wasn't good. That's not true. From a filmmaking perspective, something can be a masterpiece, and you can hate it.
Those are totally separate realities. And so the the reviews I've seen on this kind of say that. Like, did he really to me, it seems like a masterpiece because so many people were pissed off, and it was so polarizing. You can't do that unless you've you've done something really, really specific. Mhmm. So it seems like he was going for something very specific. It was. I mean, he combined Roman history with modern America,
[02:02:01] Cole McCormick:
and he he he wanted to make a Roman epic in regards to a Roman epic talking about modern America. Mhmm. Like, that's what it is. And so you got people are named Caesar. People are like, Aubrey Plaza's character's name, Wow. Her name is Wow. And you got Jon Voigt. He's this like, Jon Voigt's in, like, a Peter Pan costume for half the movie. And it's just, like, it's so silly. And you got Same. And specific. And Shia Labeouf is in it. Like, just Shia Labeouf for just that itself. Like, I I'm obsessed with Shia. And his he's a wild character. He's just a wild card in the movie. And there's, like, some political undertones, but they don't go too far with it. It's really about, like, the world.
It was hyper specific. And but he mixes in different things from history, from fantasy. And he calls it a fable, because it's like it it it is a fantasy. It is a fable, but I respected it. The my first viewing of it I saw it three times. My first viewing, it was on Thursday night. I think a lot of people were drunk. It was, like, it was, like, 10 o'clock at night. Wasted. No. For real. And people were, like, laughing and mocking it, like, laughing in a mocking way. And it wasn't like an uncomfortable laughter. Like, oh, what did we just see? Well, like, what was it was like, this is fucking retarded. Dumbest shot I've ever seen. Literally. Yeah. And then my second viewing, it was, like, people were sort of more respectful to towards it. People were there there there's silly parts in the movie. Like, objectively, there are there is comedy in the movie that you should laugh at, and there are some things that are purposefully absurd.
And so that second viewing, the audience was more receptive to that. And I was also more willing to to laugh as well. Because the the first viewing, I was just like like, I was on the roller coaster for the first time. Like, like, I don't know how to react. I'm just, like, seeing it all for the first time. And then my second time, I'm like, oh, that is funny. Like, that's that's why that he did that. Like, Coppola, like, that's cool, dude. And then my 3rd viewing, I just fell in love with it. I just I was like, wow. This is important. I think it's gonna stand the test of time. Maybe not in terms of, like, oh, this movie was so good. But in terms of, like, wow. This movie is actually impactful. Like, the ideas that it brings forward, just this concept because Adam Driver's whole thing in the movie is, like, he wants to build a better world. He wants to build a better Rome, and the old guard doesn't want that. And it that's Giancarlo Giancarlo Esposito, Gus from Breaking Bad. He's he's the mayor, and he doesn't He's he's trying to open up a casino in the beginning of the movie. It's gonna bring jobs, and it's gonna we're gonna have union workers.
And, Adam Driver comes in, and he's like, to be literally, to be or not to be? Like, literally, like, reciting Shakespeare while talking about his vision for a better city.
[02:04:56] Zach Mahoney:
It's, like, damn. Like, this is it's so much more deeper than people were ready for. It's it sounds like it's a movie. And again, I'm talking out of my ass. Haven't seen it, but it sounds like it's a movie that We're gonna watch it right now. Live viewing. It's one of those movies that probably won't be appreciated until 20 years after. Yeah. Until America's fallen. Until until people or is in the middle of being reborn. Right? This is really where we're at right now. Yes. And, you know, Coppola, right, like, take k. You got a you got a master of his craft and a dude who's been around a long time and seen a lot of shit.
He's doing something that probably people will appreciate who have gone through a little bit more of the shit that he's seen. Mhmm. So you take millennials and get them to maybe 60 years old. Mhmm. Once we go through this, whatever this crazy transition is, my ability to look back on a movie like this and be like, oh, oh, wow. That's what he was saying. Yeah. I mean, like, oh. That is what will happen. That's what I believe. Because it's like it's still quality. Like, it wasn't cheap. It wasn't just thrown together.
[02:05:57] Cole McCormick:
Like, it's actually, like it's really it's really quite interesting. And he was willing to during filming, I know that he was trying to do what they did with star war with the Star Wars shows. He tried using the the the video wall, but he, like, got rid of that, and he was like, it's not working. It's not he just went to normal just normal green screen effects and stuff like that. So, like, it's just interesting how he was willing to experiment with new technology and, like, modern technology. And I think the, the cinematographer was, like, younger as well, like, not working with someone that he had worked worked with before. So just willing to experiment. I think that's that's the real thing that I was inspired by. This this guy in his late seventies is willing to experiment with a new type of story.
And and and also the choices that they did, they were doing a lot of because he's he's in the theater. Like, he loves directing theater, and the all the actors would talk about how they were do just do theater games, during rehearsals. And there's takes in the movie where they're actually, like, doing, like, a theater game. Yeah. And that's, like, this back and forth between these two characters. It's like, woah, bro. Like, no one would do that. No one wouldn't do that. Like, no one would do that. The the the thing is we used to do that shit all the time. Mhmm. The
[02:07:12] Zach Mahoney:
one of the one of the real problems, in my opinion, where we're at right now is that movie making became a very, like, director of photography centric art form after 2,008. Right?
[02:07:41] Cole McCormick:
How pretty is the shot? How pretty can you make it look? Right. Can we and and we lost the the directors
[02:07:48] Zach Mahoney:
who used to spend thousands of hours in a theater with actors working on the whole point is a relationship between human human beings. I mean, this is what we were relating to. Mhmm. Tempo, blocking, timing, relationship, tension, discovery, timing, all of that is gone. And it was replaced by how can I make how can we have a pretty one shot? Here's a close-up. Here's a pretty close-up. You watch movies now, it's close-up, close-up, close-up, close-up, close-up. I don't want to see someone in a fucking close-up. Yeah. I wanna see 2 people reacting to each other, relating to each other in the scene. That's where all of the good juice is at. That's where all of everything we wanna see is when 2 great actors are in relationship with one another in the same frame. Yeah. You shouldn't edit unless you have to. There's some specific point, but it just became this, like, well, we're gonna stand there, and we're gonna make this look pretty, and we're gonna stand there. And then the directors tried to start controlling the actor's job of pacing Yeah.
In the edit. And it's, like, this is not this is not effective. I hope that we can I I the I'm I'm a little bit concerned about this? I hope that that good directors can start to get back into the theater or at least into a classroom where they're in relationship with actors and writers in the same place, and they can all hash this out. Mhmm. Because I mean, I watch I watch some stuff these days, and I'm like, this is literally like they shot the first rehearsal. Yeah. What is going on?
[02:09:27] Cole McCormick:
And I it's just like they're just churning and burning. Like, how can we get 10 pages done in a day, 15 pages done in a day? Mhmm. Just close and close and close and close. We'll edit pacing later. I think that's why you got filmmakers. So before the pandemic at at WB, when I was working there, you got, Ethan or I it was Joel Cohen. He was doing a Shakespeare movie with Denzel. They were doing Macbeth. Right. And a part of me felt like the reason for them doing that was because, like, there's nothing interesting to do right now. Like, they like, just let's just go back to Shakespeare. Let's just do the play. Like, we just, like, back back to fundamentals. Let's just go back to the fundamental of these characters, of these human beings.
Just a simple story, Macbeth, and, you know, and, I'm not sure if that if anyone really saw that movie, but I I did, and I liked it. Like, it's it's Macbeth. It's Shakespeare. You're it's always gonna be, like, quote, unquote, good. Like, it's it's well done. But I feel like some filmmakers are reacting in that way. Like, they want to continue. They wanna keep that connection between the human beings and that journey. We're just in a strange state. Very strange state. And it's, like, people are hyped up for Downey Junior coming back to Marvel, but it's, like, it's still not. Like, he they're just he's he's gonna be in front of a green screen. He's not really in front of actors. He's he might be on the same set with with some actors, but it's, like, it's not really it's more about doom. It's more about Marvel. It's more about these things. It's like Yeah. I I saw I remember seeing, Heat for the first time. Michael Mann's Heat. I went down to the new Beverly, theater. And that was my first time seeing it ever. Super old, film stock. It was, like, scratchy. I was in the front row.
I I showed up late. That's why I was in the front row, and I wasn't ready. My girlfriend I my girlfriend was on the very end of the row, and I had to be in the middle of the row. So we didn't even get to see it together. Terrible. But, but I'm watching Heat, and I remember, like, reading about how much of a big deal it was to have De Niro and Pacino in in the same scene. And they're sitting at a table in a cafe. And what you said earlier about 2 actors being in front of each other next to each other, like and creating that energy, like, I felt that in heat. Mhmm. I felt that. Because those two characters are they're in different places in different parts of the movie, and then they finally come together. And that's a big moment, not just from the celebrity actor point of view, but from the story point of view. Like, that's actually really interesting, these 2 guys sitting down and giving each other respect and talking about their world. And that's so unique, and that needs to, like, continue to to be a thing. And I hope people don't just forget about that.
[02:12:05] Zach Mahoney:
Going back to what movies are are just always hit, Glengarry, Glenn Ross. Never seen that. Oh, it's a it's a must. It's a must. You're you're talking about some of the greatest actors of all time Mhmm. Doing a a a phenomenal play, shot by g everyone involved in that is basically a genius. But what what what what that really brings to the forefront in the context of this conversation is how important blocking is. Mhmm. There are some camera moves in there that are so subtle, but so effective and so important that are always in service of what how can we highlight and underscore the dynamics of the relationship between the characters on screen? This isn't let's make someone look pretty with cool lights in the background. This is what is the actual story of the relationship that's happening, and how can we how can we underscore it and highlight it and support it?
The the camera blocking in that I mean, the regular blocking too, but the camera blocking in that is exquisite. It's subtle, but it is masterful. Mhmm. They cross the line where the line needs to be crossed and moments that that matter. Every decision they make is how do we support the relationships. Mhmm. And then, of course, the acting in that is just I mean, it's just 1st class 1st class. Glengler Glengarry Glen Ross always hits. I'll check it out. Yeah. I also think about when when you bring up blocking, I think about,
[02:13:42] Cole McCormick:
David Fincher, and I think about The Social Network, and just all of David Fincher's movies. But The Social Network specifically, it's so, I actually had a friend who worked on David Fincher's movie Mank, that came out on Netflix. Mhmm. Did you ever see that? Mhmm. It's about the make it's about the writer of Citizen Kane riding Citizen Kane. Not the making of Citizen, but the writing of Citizen Kane. Right. My buddy worked on that, and he was, he was a double in it. And he was describe I was like, dude, what's it like working with Fincher? And he was telling me, it's like, it's so interesting how he talks about blocking, how he talks about, like and you it's not just you need to hit your mark. It's like it's these very specific things. Yep. And they're it's there to tell the story. It's not Yeah. Fucking random. Like, I don't know. Stand over there. Like, no. Yeah. What? Yeah. And then I think about the social network and, you know, just that famous scene where Andrew Garfield, he storms through the doors. He's like, Mark. Mark. And it's like, you know, there's a reason why the camera is, like, sort of like a low angle on Andrew Garfield. It's like and there's a reason why it's higher up on Jesse. It's like and then it's, like, sort of like it it's like this, like, a weird, shady shot on Justin Timberlake.
And it's like this like, there's reason for the camera. There's reason for the movement. There's reason, like, all this. And now all these people are together, and they're actually, like, combating or they're, like, pushing their energy together into the center, and that center is the screen. It's the movie. Yeah. It's like I found that so like, I get hyped up when I think about that. Fincher, I he he's so specific.
[02:15:20] Zach Mahoney:
He he in some ways, I think he kind of contributed to the problem that we have today. He got a lot of directors trying to emulate him, but but almost no one is that smart Mhmm. Or or that committed and dedicated. And he was, like, one of the first people who when when using a red, when using digital cinema, would would would edit in different takes. Mhmm. It'd be a scene of a people around a table, for instance, and you'd be watching a scene play out, and it's actually his 3rd take and her 5th take and the 9th take from this guy. He would splice it. It was the first time you could do that with high resolution. And, like, it's cool to talk about that.
From an actor's perspective, it's, like, dude, you're you're you're just shitting on the decisions that people made for a particular reason and the and the energetic ball that was bouncing back and forth in the scene, he could get away with it because he's Fincher. Mhmm. But then you but then you got in the studios, and you got people saying, well, why why can't we do this faster and better? You know, like, can't we just splice this here and do this there? And it was, like, the he was doing it for really, really, really specific reasons that he could justify. Those people are just not on that level. Mhmm. Yeah. They're just not. And, like, you know, so let's get back to the fundamentals. We get back to the fundamental like, there's a scene in Saving Private Ryan. You know, Spielberg was so good at this.
You would have you would have, like people don't generally think of Spielberg in terms of, like, long takes. That's not like what they remember. Like, go back and watch private Ryan. There's just long takes in that. Very long takes. There's that scene after they take the beach. Tom Hanks, captain Miller just pulled the translator, I think, and they're going to, like, talk to the crew dudes, and there's, like I wanna say it's, like, almost 6 minutes. Wow. And it's not like children of men where it's, like, oh, we're gonna make this a spectacle. It was just, like On them. This is what we need to do to move the story from a to b to c to d. Mhmm. Let's just do it in this one take, and we'll and and each take had you know, that one take had multiple close ups in it. It had multiple wide shots.
It had everything that you would have without without having to edit because they understood how to block the fucking scene correctly. Mhmm. They took time doing it. Mhmm. It's stuff like that that just has gone by the wayside on so many movies today, and I really And I think I encourage filmmakers to just, like, go back to the basics. Figure out what you're doing. Figure out how to work with actors. Figure out how to work with the timing. Figure out how to work with tempo. Tension and discovery.
[02:18:04] Cole McCormick:
I think YouTube is ruined. Last. Yeah. Edit last. I think YouTube is ruining some of this as well because there's I got sort of caught up with this whole, like, make your thing look cinematic. Like, make it like, make your shot cinematic. Like, this whole, like, that just that term. What does that mean? What the fuck is cinematic dude? And it's like they're always talking about this, like, the triangle over the fucking eye. And they're talking about depth of lighting. They're talking about just, like, just some major bullshit. It's like, how many movies are you watching? And that's really,
[02:18:34] Zach Mahoney:
like and that's really what's going on. Like, that's not a movie. It's not what is, like Yeah. Was it is this a shallow depth? Like, okay. Your your lens is wide open the whole time. Like, so there there are
[02:18:44] Cole McCormick:
some of the best movies of all time were shot at, like, a 4 or a 5, 6, you know, just because, like, they needed to make it happen that way for focus when you're doing one take for 6. Like like yeah. I totally agree. So much of what is like, what makes a good movie is just out of the necessity of that day when they were making it. Yeah. That's, like then that's, like, a real high quality thing. That's they were, like, trying to solve a problem they had on set, and then that's, and then that's the shot. Like, the only reason we think of, like, cinematic space battles is because of Star Wars. But Star Wars was solving a problem with when it comes to an object moving in space. How do you make an object
[02:19:22] Zach Mahoney:
look like it's moving really fast in space? And then they were solving a problem for that. Well, this this this kinda makes me think of of this is sort of a Bitcoiner perspective on money and and philosophy in life. Shooting things on film
[02:19:37] Cole McCormick:
Oh, yeah. Yes. Film. Yes. Bring it up. Shooting things on film was
[02:19:43] Zach Mahoney:
so much better. Yeah. It was so much better from a performance perspective. You had to be specific. The shit was expensive. And expensive. Yeah. And you could only take you'd only run and take for so long. Mhmm. You couldn't just, like, let's do it 60 times like Fincher, and then just, like, delete or, like, whatever. Who cares? Throw it on a hard drive. You had to plan, and you had to prep, and you had to rehearse Mhmm. Multiple rehearsals. You had camera blocking. You had to get everything in sync. It was a dance. And when when that camera started rolling and you heard that film running through, it was like, fuck. I need to be on my game right now. Mhmm.
This whole crew of a 100 people and all of this money and all of this shit is coming down to this moment, it's important. Now I'm not saying that doesn't exist in the digital world, but it's a different thing. It is a different thing. When you limit just like Bitcoin, right, when you when you put a a constraint on something, you're actually opening it up. 1 of the one of the biggest lessons I ever learned as an artist was when I when I realized that that limitation actually bred creativity. I didn't wanna be limited. I had this young opinion like, you never did. You know? Whatever. And then once I finally realized that I had to constrain myself intentionally.
And until I did that, I wasn't able to actually get as creative as I needed to get. Mhmm. My life changed after that, and that's true that's true across all mediums. It's not just, like, on on stage or whatever. Like, a a with money. You know, scarcity and money creates abundance and everything else. There's an inverse relationship between the 2. We have to have structure Yeah. In order to we have to have limitation. We have to have structure. That's our gateway to the infinite. It's counterintuitive, but it's true. But, yeah, I I just I look back on this day shooting stuff in film, and it was so much more important. Yeah.
[02:21:41] Cole McCormick:
Well, people who are on the show Euphoria, that show Euphoria on on HBO, they filmed on film. They had Kodak create a very, like, a special film stock That's dope. For them. I'm not sure if you know that. It was this old film stock that was only around for 16 millimeter. This I believe it was called Ektachrome something. Okay. But the filmmaker, Sam Levinson, he went to Kodak and wanted it to be he wanted this film stock that was discontinued to be recreated for 35 millimeter. That's dope. And everyone involved with that has just talked about how there's it's just a different vibe. It's just a different thing. Because you know how you don't have a lot of it. You need to get the take right away, and it's and it will look a certain way for this particular reason. And it's it's so just boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. There's reason for reason for reason. And structure. There's so much structure. That's why Tarantino films on film. That's why Nolan films on film. You know? And he's trying to push the boundaries with that with IMAX film.
It's like, you know, film is still around. I'm pretty sure the the Russo's who are directing the next Avengers movies, I I they hinted at wanting to film the new ones on IMAX film because of that seriousness, because of that thing, and I just find that so interesting. And I wanted to shoot on film. I had an so I went to so my film school story, I went to Scottsdale Community College in Arizona, which is, like, it's where Bill Hader went. It's where, David Spade went. Okay. So it's a random connection to those guys, but, really good film school. And there's a section where they you actually buy film from Kodak, but I dropped out before we did that. Mhmm. So I've never gotten gotten to work with film, but I've always seen, like, the value of it. And I've always wanted to work with that. And then I look up the prices for film right now, and it's, like, one reel or a a case, which is, like, 2 or 3 reels or something like that. It's, like, a $1,000 or, like, $700.
And it's like, wow. And that's, like, maybe 30 minutes of footage. It's like, that's not worth it. It's not worth it at all. And I and then I'm thinking about, like, how much money are the is Nolan spending on his film? Like, how much like, how do you know how much money you need for how much film you need? Like, how do you even calculate that? It's like, wow. Like, they were just burning through that shit back in the day.
[02:24:02] Zach Mahoney:
You had to be specific. Mhmm. Like, it it you had to be specific. That's the only way you manifest. Right? When you're when you're specific. Specificity is the key to everything. Yeah. It is the key to everything. You you like, especially as an actor. You can't be general. You cannot be middle of the road. It can't be middle of the road nonsense choices. You have to be as specific
[02:24:23] Cole McCormick:
as you possibly can. Yeah. Amazon's not oh, yeah. We'll do 2 days sometimes. 2 day shipping sometimes. Yeah. Exactly. No. You know Amazon is Amazon because of 2 day shipping. Yep. You know Nolan is Nolan because of his choices. Yeah. Like and and and, you know,
[02:24:39] Zach Mahoney:
again, you rehearsed. Like, back in the day, it was like the movie was already done before you got on set. Mhmm. I mean, that's not totally true. There's there's things where there are definitely movies where they're just, like, figuring it out. But, like, generally speaking, the objective was, like, we're just going to grab the shots that already exist in our mind, already exist on paper. We know the framing. We're not finding it on set. It's this. Mhmm. We it's been this for 2 years. Go get it. Mhmm. Make it happen. You know, Elia Kazan, Sydney Lumet, you know, you you you you started these things with rehearsals.
You rehearsed for months. You blocked it out. You taped it out. You went into a room. You built the set with painter's tape. Like, you didn't show up on set and, like, oh, well, I guess, stand over there and somebody load up, whatever on the screen. Like, again, I'm I'm being facetious, but you had to be as specific as you possibly could. Mhmm. And you're like, cool. We got you know, and then there was an economic rally behind it too, which is, like, we're losing money. We're losing daylight. We can't come back here tomorrow. Mhmm. You have to get this in 5 takes. Yeah. Yeah. Is you don't have choice.
Figure it out. They're like, we'll fix it in post. Like, oh, well, you know, like, no.
[02:26:02] Cole McCormick:
No. We need to get it now. Matters. It needs to be now. Figured it out. Now. There's this crucible. There is this you know, and it's like
[02:26:11] Zach Mahoney:
working on set is is this incredibly unique experience. It's crazy. It's like going to war. I I'd say that I've never been to war. It's not really like going to war, but there's something about it that is hypercollaborative. Generally speaking, most people were there because it they felt like it was hyper important. Mhmm. You're all rowing in the same direction. It's really, really hard. Everyone knows it's really, really hard. You're giving yourself You put you've got all to it, and and and but there's a limit. Like, if you didn't get it in that day, it didn't get done. You failed. Mhmm. Like, you you failed. That's serious.
So more of that. You know? Like, let's bring let's let's raise the stakes. Let's let's raise the stakes. Yeah.
[02:26:59] Cole McCormick:
Well, Zach, I got no more questions for you. Dude. This has been wild. It was an honor. It was a pleasure. Hey. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. I'm excited for 2025, dude. I'm gonna be making short films for Indie Hub. Let's go. And then I'll be distributing them through RSS. Yeah? Is that gonna be a thing for a long time? Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna figure out the pricing on that,
[02:27:20] Zach Mahoney:
but we're so what we're gonna do right now, we're working on this. We're gonna create what we're calling extensions.
[02:27:26] Cole McCormick:
Okay.
[02:27:27] Zach Mahoney:
And so, like, if you're a filmmaker, you can upload a movie. We have to approve it. There's, like, a base layer of quality. But, basically, once it's approved, like, your movie's up there, we're not gonna charge you. There's nothing there. But then there's gonna be certain things where you can add an extension. So if you want RSS capability, you can add that extension. And we're for the foreseeable future, that's gonna be just we'll let you do it. But at some point, it's basically, like, we have to host for you, and so we gotta figure out what the cost and the prices to push and pull data. Yeah. That was a big thing that I was, like, thinking about. I even I I had I boosted into to an Adam Curry show, and,
[02:28:05] Cole McCormick:
I told him, like, my movie my movie is on Indie Hub, and it's on the podcasting apps. And he was like, oh, he's hosting? Like, it was like he like, he's like he was, like, warning you about the hosting fees, about about the about the broadband. Yeah. So, like, that's interesting. I'm happy that you're thinking about that because I think RSS distribution is really important, but it's also it can be very difficult because you can't really it's it's hard to to distribute video like that. Yeah. Yeah. I it
[02:28:34] Zach Mahoney:
you know, I trust that that it's it's a market thing and the market will figure it out. Mhmm. Is that is that our primary business model? Like, no. If we can figure out a way for it to work for filmmakers, then fantastic. Like, our job is to give tools to filmmakers to do their jobs and succeed. So we'll have, you know, we'll have that. Like, if you wanna add audience capabilities, you'll be able to add that as an extension. And we're and and and this is gonna grow. There's gonna be all of these different things that not all filmmakers are gonna want. Some people don't care about advanced analytics. Some people want advanced analytics. There's all of this stuff that we're gonna sort of, like, figure out how to mix and match. Mhmm. But a 100%, dude. Like so the RSS will be there. Like, let's go. Let's get the movies on there, and let's get people figuring out the splits. Right? Like, let's get your whole cast and crew list on there. Mhmm. Give them the ability to also promote, to feel like they're there, their profile's there, and and and their their payments are happening through there.
Now the second somebody's, like, just gets to, like, oh, somebody's watching my movie right now. Like Yeah. There's value being streamed to this wallet. Like, that's a It's a big deal. Crazy. It's a really big deal. Hell. It is cool as hell. Alright. So I'm
[02:29:41] Cole McCormick:
I'm going for it. I will make more short films. I'm gonna make, like, 5 short films in 2025. Let's do it. Five films for 2025 Let's do it. On Indie Hub. I'm excited, man. Thank you for making Indie Hub. Thank you for being an innovator. Thank you for just wanting to make the world a better place. Like, that's like, you're a good human being.
[02:30:00] Zach Mahoney:
Thank you. Now back at you, man. Thank you for putting your work on there and and having the enthusiasm and the courage to, you know, really, it is. It takes a lot of courage to look at to look at something to to to stare something in the face that isn't going as well as it could go and say, like, I'm I'm I'm gonna put myself on the line and try to make this better. All of that encouragement and respect I give to filmmakers like you, I'm I wanna see you guys succeed. I wanna see you crush it. It's important. Like, I believe that.
Like, this is important. Like, they're, you know, they're silly movies, and we do silly things, and we're learning and we're growing. But, like, there are times when it matters tremendously, and it will alter the course of of human history and expand human consciousness. And if we can all row in that direction, then it's a life well lived. I'm for it. Dude, Zach, thank you so much. Absolutely, bro. Thank you. Hell, yeah.
[02:30:58] Cole McCormick:
Hey. Thank you so much to Zach Mahoney, folks. Zach Mahoney, thank you for coming on America Plus. That was awesome. We're gonna wrap things up with a little song here. If you didn't know what part of value for value is, I play a song at the end of every episode, and the artist is getting 90% of your boostagram. So I'm gonna play a song here from an artist called Hurling Pixels. Have you ever heard of them, folks? This is a song called midnight in Tokyo. It's like instrumental late night vibes. I hope you enjoy it, folks. They're getting 90% of your sats. Don't forget to send in a boost. That's America Plus, bitch. Stay free.
Alright, dude. Zach Mahoney, dude. Thank you for being here. You're on America Plus. You are an innovator in America. I love your website. I love IndieHub. I think you're innovating in the movie realm. And, dude, just, like, tell me about, like, how did Indie Hub come about? Like, how did this whole situation with Bitcoin like, combining Bitcoin and movies come about for you? Man, I
[00:00:29] Zach Mahoney:
I'm just this is gonna be all over the place. So at any point, just, you know, interject, ask a question, get more specific. Go for it. I I mean, it's kind of a simple idea. You know, I'll try to start simple, and we can sort of expand on it, but, I I personally sort of fell into the crypto rabbit hole in early 2017. And for those of us that came around were either around then or came around then, we'll you'll remember that that was the ICO craze. And so, you you had you've always had the Bitcoin Maxis, but at that point, we had all of these, these other l ones and and and tokens that were raising money in order to solve every problem known to mankind. It was like, we're gonna literally solve every single thing that there is. Every problem that's ever been had been a problem is now solvable on a blockchain. It was it was madness.
Mhmm. Like, there was literally a coin Scams are called scams. They were all scam. Like, there was one called Denticoin. They were, like, dentists on a blockchain, and it it had volume, like, if people were buying this thing. Anyway, I totally digress. The it was madness at that time, and it took me a while to, like, suss out Bitcoin and what Bitcoin is how Bitcoin is unique. But the key idea for me was that we can now start to stream money in the same way that we stream data. We can break it up into little packets, and we can route them, and we can find more efficient ways for them to move. And anybody who's had any experience with the legacy financial system, which is literally everybody, it's it's it's a total disaster, and you cannot do that.
And the key the key issue here is, essentially who is the arbiter of truth? Who gets to decide what is true and what is not true with regards to a particular ledger? So if I send money to you from my bank, there's 4 people involved, my bank, me, your bank, and you. Our banks have a relationship with each other. My bank does not have a relationship with you. You do not have a relationship with my bank and necessitates 4 parties in a transaction that really should just be 2 people, like, cash settlement would just be you and I. So it was my point is is that it's the the old system is incredibly slow, and it's incredibly inefficient.
[00:02:53] Cole McCormick:
Banks suck. Exactly.
[00:02:56] Zach Mahoney:
You know? And Bitcoin fixes it. It does. It does. In a lot of ways, it it it it, yeah, it fixes at least half of the problems. You know, the biggest problem that human beings have really is trust. But I digress. The point is is if you can stream money the way that we stream data, movies are uniquely suited for that use case. It's not like a blog, even podcast to some extent can be nonlinear. You can chop them up. You know, people use little bits to promo, but a movie is intended every, you know, moment a connects to moment b connects to moment c, almost like a blockchain. Yeah. You know, like like, moment c is dependent on moment b. If you don't have the context of b, you don't understand what c is. I can just play a movie Mhmm. Without context, and you'd be like, I have no idea what the fuck is going on, and this doesn't mean anything to me. Mhmm. Anyway, we we we consume movies linearly. And if you can tie payments to that linear distribution of data, which is what Netflix solved for Mhmm.
It starts to to fundamentally change the the architecture of the business Mhmm. Side of the industry, which part of the reason that film suffers part of the reason that film is having the problems that it's having right now is that the business side of it is still tied to a world in which unit sales reign supreme, like licensing deals and union contracts and performers deals and and music rights. All of this stuff sort of was built up around a totally different financial technology, that was predicated on unit sales, on ticket sales, on box office receipts. Netflix changed the deal. Now we are streaming data. We're not buying tickets anymore, but the business side hasn't really caught up.
So I once those ideas connected in my mind, I I realized or at least that I I had the sneaking suspicion that it would solve a lot of the problems that I had had both in front of and behind the camera. Mhmm. So I that's it. That's really it. Data, money, streaming.
[00:05:10] Cole McCormick:
When did you start figuring that out? So that was, like, 2018, 2019, or during the pandemic? Or 17. It was all 2017. You started thinking about this all right there. Yeah. I mean, you know, it it what the the
[00:05:22] Zach Mahoney:
streaming money was not a unique idea. Like, I did not come up with that. Right? That was that was one of the main points of a lot of these other l ones that existed back then that were really popular. The biggest one would have been the XRP Ledger. Mhmm. You know, fast, cheap, you you know, Bitcoin can do, what, about 8 transactions a second, 8 to 10 on average, whatever it is. You know, the XRP ledger even back then, you had the ability to open up payment channels on the ledger, and you could do 50,000 transactions a second back and forth, which is kinda how lightning works right now. But the problem is is the l one was not as distributed and secure as lightning's l one, Bitcoin.
So that wasn't a unique idea that we can start to route money like we route packets of data like TCPIP, But I was just my whole world was films and movies and production and entertainment, and so it just was like, doink. And that sound is the idea connecting. Doink.
[00:06:30] Cole McCormick:
Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding
[00:06:33] Zach Mahoney:
ding ding. And and a lot of these other ICOs, there were a lot of ICOs, and and there still are to some extent, you know, this whole web 3 thing, which I you know, it's I don't I I don't subscribe to, but Sort of bullshit. Yeah. It's it's it's essentially the idea that we need to create a token in order to solve a given problem, which is just not that's just not true. I think you just saw you're creating a new problem. Yeah. Yeah. And and like a regulatory nightmare. So you had a lot of, like, you had a lot of people who understood how to build, an l one or build a blockchain or build this technology, and they're like, oh, well, we're gonna put this on movies, but they didn't understand anything about the industry. They didn't understand anything about the movie business. Mhmm. All the people who were in the movie business were far too busy actually doing shit to care about what you know, you know, an l one, you know, like, they didn't it was like, no. We're actually doing work. Yeah. Hollywood's not technical. Like, it took them forever to figure out like, 2019 Disney plus comes out. Netflix had been around since, what, 20 like, streaming on Netflix. What? 28, 2009? Like, when did Netflix start streaming? Really, really yeah. It started in earnest. I you know, roughly 2,008, 2009.
And then 10 years later, Disney finally comes out with a streaming service. So it's like they're late they're always late to the game. Exactly. And it and it makes sense. Right? Like, they they've got real money. They've got real business. Mhmm. They can't turn on a dime. They shouldn't turn on a dime. That's not how you know, they have moats. They've got lawyers. Like, they don't need to move quickly in a lot of ways. We kind of ride in their wake. But in the same way that Netflix in 2,008 started to change the structure of the industry, and it took 15 years for them to go from mailing DVDs to people to spending more money on production than every other studio combined.
Which is insane. Insane. That's billions. Right? Billions upon billions. Many, many. And I I fundamentally believe that we're on the verge of another paradigm shift that'll take another 15 years or so, and I fundamentally believe that the business of filmmaking will be impacted. Netflix changed the the exhibition and the delivery, and that's great, and that's important. It does it's not as profound of a change as the as the financial infrastructure of the industry. In my opinion, that will be a much, much, much larger change. And, you know, as far as, like, you know, as far as the as far as the Internet, like, we're in the bottom of the third. You know? Like, it's been let's just call it 25 years. Let's just call it a generation for sake of con like, this not that's nothing. Even if it's 40 years, it's nothing in terms of its impact on society.
So, again, like, Netflix is a big deal. I'm not saying it's not a big deal, but I think that the biggest changes are yet to come. Mhmm.
[00:09:10] Cole McCormick:
I I think I agree because just me as a consumer, I'm 27. I've been around I'll just say I'm as old as the the Internet. I'm a little bit older. I grew up on YouTube. I grew up, like, just scrolling on my parents' computer and just seeing the entire situation just change in terms of what I'm watching, where the news is. Like, at a very young age, I knew that there was a difference between, like, what was on the TV and what was on the Internet. These two things were not connected. Mhmm. And I was always just more gravitated towards towards the Internet clearly, because I'm just a young person. What what do you what do you think that that was? What do you think you you gravitate more towards YouTube than, say, like, a movie theater or something? Well, I was always going to the movies. I was always into movies. Like, I mean, I was, I mean, I was obsessed with toy story when I was a toddler, and then I was I remember just loving movies in with in, like, the 4th 5th grade, and wanted to, like, perform and stuff. And then 2,008, you get Iron Man and The Dark Knight, and that is actually, like, for me personally, I'm 11 years old in 0 8, and I see Heath Ledger's Joker, and that, like that's, like, my cinematic awakening. I'm, like, holy shit, dude. This is possible with movies? Yeah. Well, yeah. And, like, and then I'm, I'm impersonating Heath Ledger. I'm doing the Joker for Halloween, and then I'm, like and then I get into, like, woah. Like, who made this movie? And then it's Chris Nolan, and it's Jon Favreau. It's, like, oh, directing. Oh, like, behind the scenes. And then I'm watching behind the scenes of everything. And so and I was watching those behind the scenes on YouTube. And the DVDs, of course, but, like, I'm looking for the information about the movies on YouTube.
And then there was, like, a whole culture on YouTube when I was in high school of, there's a show called, like, AMC Movie Talk, Collider Movie Talk, and, like, there I was just, I was consuming the information around cinema online more, and that made me wanna get into it a lot more. So and everything else was just, like, the normal TV was just not doing that. Like, I would watch a movie. I would watch, like there was always movie on FX. Remember that little theme song? So there was a bifurcation for you Yeah. Between
[00:11:17] Zach Mahoney:
television, the Internet, and the movie theater, in terms of an exhibition format. Absolutely. And TV, it was, like, there was no place for it in your mind. I don't understand the point of this. Yeah. Like, I would just That's fascinating. I'd be scrolling through it and may like, there'd be some movies, like, I I remember seeing
[00:11:32] Cole McCormick:
I knew that, like, we so grow growing up, we had DIRECTV, and I knew that DIRECTV had video on demand. Like, we would be able to rent a movie on DIRECTV. But I hated watching movies on TV because of the commercials and because of, like, just that specifically. I hated the commercials, and I knew from a very young age they were editing shit out. Yep. I said, I don't watch TV. What he said? Literally. Literally. And I remember being, like, really pissed off and, like, and my dad telling me about, like, censorship, or or just, like, general, like, oh, yeah. Well, they have to if if there's, like, a live, football game, they have a 7 second delay, and they need a sensor. I'm, like, why? Like, I was always, like, so confused about that, and so I just didn't like it. I was never into it, and I was, just I would sneak my parents money to to buy a movie on iTunes or to to buy the South Park movie or to or to get a few episodes of, of Modern Family or I remember, renting John Wick when it was on VOD, and that's that was, like, the first wave of John Wick when, like, John Wick was getting super popular.
To my memory, I think that's how it got popular. But I would always just I was always looking for no commercials. Yeah. That's really what it was. And if I had to pay for it, I would just use my parents' money. And then growing up, I'm the I would I would usually buy the DVD, but then I see DVDs, like, decreasing and things. And when it when it comes to streaming, my consumption has been different because a a part of me feels like Netflix and a lot of, like, things that go straight to streaming are almost, like, made for DVD movies, or they're, like, made like, they're lower quality. Yep. And I was and and I've been, like, upset within, like, the last 10 years of, like like, the movies in the movie theater are still, like, high quality, but that financial model, like, they're going for the sequels, they're going for the IP. Yeah. And I'm, like, okay. Well, maybe there's an opportunity to, like, have better entertainment, different types of stories, online, and some movies are quality. Like, some straight to Netflix movies are are good, but a lot of them Most of them are misses.
Big misses. Yeah. Huge. Like, they just suck. Like Yeah. Every rock movie sucks. Like, there's this new movie coming out with The Rock and Chris Evans. It's gonna be in the movie theater, but it looks like a Netflix movie. Yep. It's like they're, like, kidnapping Santa or something. Yeah. Like I saw that I saw that commercial last night. I was, like, just turned him over to my wife. Like, what the fuck are they doing? Like, what is going on? It's absolutely atrocious. God. And so and it's almost like No offense to anybody who was on that movie. Yeah. But but regardless, like Except whoever whoever green lit it. Object objectively, the rock movies aren't really that good, Unless he's gonna do some of a 24, you know, unless there's, like, a real there's, like, a few handful of studios and companies that are actually trying to make quality Yeah. And are trying to have some sort of aesthetic or some sort of brand around that.
But that's, like, far and in between. And then if you have, like, a real filmmaker like Coppola, you know, he he he funds his own movie. You know, Hollywood doesn't respect that. And then, like, on the audience side, there's also this weird thing with the audience where audiences on Twitter might say, like, we want original stuff. I'm so tired of Marvel. I'm so tired of sequels. But then, like, when Coppola comes out, like, it doesn't make any money. Yeah. So it's like, you complained, and then and then you don't see it. Yep. So it's like, what the like, this whole thing is fucked. Yep. But then there's this other side where I saw and really begun with me with podcasting, streaming money for the content while you're consuming the content.
I saw the opportunity with podcasting in 2021, and I my mind immediately went to movies because my mind always goes to movies. Yep. And I didn't know how that could work. I didn't know how that could even be possible, or if, like, you know, just that that type sit situation. I'm not a technical person. I don't really know the details of the tech behind Bitcoin, but I know you can do a lot of things with Bitcoin. Like, there has to be a way. And I was I remember during the pandemic, I was, drawing up, like, these, like, I have these crazy diagrams of, like, of a token, like, streaming a token for a movie, and it's, like, I think I was coming up with some, like, movie theater casino, some bullshit like that. Like, you'd be able to gamble on a movie and then make more if it went better or something like that. It was some crazy I had some I had arrows going everywhere.
But I I I I've always had the sense that there's, like, something can change. Not that it should change, but it can change. Like, there's a real opportunity that it could change. And when I look at IndieHub, you're really going towards that new infrastructure of how a movie can be can come up and be consumed. And just because it's straight on your computer, you know, it doesn't mean that the quality is lower. It just brings a it brings more opportunity for the filmmaker to make something that they really want, and then the audience can actually see that and can engage with that in a more authentic way. I think so. Because when you pay for a ticket at the movie theater, it's a it's it's it's one price for the movie, but you don't know if that movie's gonna be good. Yep. And the opportunity with streaming money, you can stream if you'd like it. You can pay when you like it. Like and that's the model with the Internet. I've been thinking, like, there's this guy on Instagram I follow named producer Patrick. He he sort of he's documenting the downfall of Hollywood.
It's it's actually pretty hilarious. Yeah. If you're you've gotta get into follow IndieHub. We gotta get this going. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I I I I'm, like, I'm trying to, like, to get into that. I'm I'm trying to tell him tell him about it, but, that's, like, a a different thing. But he's documenting the downfall of Hollywood, and Hollywood is just not keeping up with technology and with the Internet. He was just at some, like, unscripted content convention or something. And, it was a bunch of studio heads and producers, and there's, like, a q and a section. And somebody asked, like, what is your response? Like, what are you guys thinking about, competing with TikTok or competing with social media?
And, like, the studio heads had nothing to say about that. Like, they had no response to the Internet. They don't know how to think about the Internet. Yeah. And so I think that that gives an opportunity for more independent people, more, independent mindset, artists and filmmakers like us who see an opportunity with Bitcoin, who see like, who still love movies. Because that's the other thing too. Like, people like, there's just, like, this drag on movies. Yep. And it's, like, no. Like, that's not real. Like, I refuse to believe that narrative. Like, that's that if anything is fake news, like, movies going movies going away is fake news. Yeah. I remember reading some interview with Brad Pitt. He was like it was like in 2019 when he was promoting Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, and they're like, what are you Brad, what's next? And he was like, oh, it's gonna be far and in between. We'll see if movies are even around in the future.
And I'm like, what the fuck, Brad? Like, you're the biggest fucking movie star ever. You really believe movies won't be around? And I just I can't fathom that. And so I have so much emotion with bringing movies, like, just keeping movies movies. Because I don't want it to be scrolling, and I see, like, just clips of something. Like, I don't I I want like, there's a value in sitting down and seeing that linear story or nonlinear. If it's some Chris Nolan at, like Yeah. The story's told back to you. Nonlinear. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But that singular event of a movie, like, that's super important, I believe. So even even think about memes. Right? Like,
[00:18:59] Zach Mahoney:
I've never heard any I've never heard anybody really describe what's going on with the meme, so I'll just throw my my hat in the ring. Give it to me. You you know, you usually and, again, this is generally speaking, like, someone will will pull a meme out of a movie. Right? Like, I just saw one the other day that was from, what was what was the name of the the one with, Matt Damon and their their building the Ford, the racing movie. Oh, yeah. Like, the first GT. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What the hell is that movie called? It's called Ford and Ferrari. Ford versus Ferrari. Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, whatever. This is, like, kind of a classic meme template where Matt Damon rolls out, you know, and he he puts the sign up for the guy coming around the the bend, and, you know, you the what movies part of what your job is as a filmmaker or a storyteller, particularly an actor, is to when you're setting up a moment, a scene, you're doing a superlative of that scene or of that moment. You're doing the most of that the essence of that vibe or that feeling, whether it's it's shame, it's disappointment, it's betrayal, it's love. Like, whatever is going on in that scene, it has to be the pinnacle of that frequency, of that vibration. The reason that meme templates are almost always movies is because filmmakers, their job is to make the most specific versions of those emotions. Yes. So those emotions are always true, which is why we like them. They're universal. They're universally applicable all of the time, which is why you can throw a meme template from a movie into any situation, not any situation, but there's other situations where you're like, oh, yeah. That totally works here too, because their their job is to translate a part of the human experience in a way that the most people can relate all of the time.
My point is is that even the memes themselves are harkening back to the master art form of doing that, which is cinema. Mhmm. Like, that is the master art form that encompasses all of it. Mhmm. I think side note. I think music is the foundation upon which all of that is built. But it's combined. But but the the the masterpiece is the whole Yeah. Enchilada. And, you know, really, what I I think what you're saying, and I would agree with you. I think you can correct me if I'm wrong here. But what what we're presupposing is that storytelling is not going away. Correct. And as far as we're aware right now, filmmaking is still the primary successful effective methodology for storytelling. Mhmm. TikTok is not gonna change that. YouTube does not change that. These aren't those aren't stories. They're little they're little vignettes. Sometimes they're like a point that you're making, but to to have a whole complete, you know, actual story, which is fundamental to the evolution of consciousness, particularly for human beings and has been since the dawn of time, It's not going away. It's gonna change. Mhmm. It's gonna adapt. It's gonna evolve, but storytelling is not going away. This is ludicrous. It's completely insane. It and it's certainly not gonna be around in a way that that, like, these a list legends, you know, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, George Clooney, these guys,
[00:22:14] Cole McCormick:
The Hollywood that they that their stardom was born into, that's that's gone. Yeah. That's never coming back. And that might be what he was even speaking to. Yeah. Because those types of movies were, like, the starring Brad Pitt. It's, like, he has the volume of movies to for me to say like, okay, I'll assume this new movie with him is good. Mhmm. But that's no longer the driving force, you know? And, like, Tom Cruise is like the very, very, very last guy to even do that because we all know how crazy he is for movies. Like, he loves he's gonna literally put everything he can, and he's also gonna try his best to inspire his all the young people around him to try to put everything in they can for that movie. And it and they always come out of it. It was, like, it was a wild experience. And, like, they're always like I always see all these, like, interviews with people talking about, like, what Tom Cruise gave them or, like, the it's always like some old Hollywood advice. Like, he I I forget who it was, but, he told some actor to, like, you need to learn to dance or, like, you need to learn like, you need to learn it yourself if you want this to be authentic. In the old days, they would have paid for the studios would have paid for this type of training for this movie, but you that's not a thing anymore. You need to do that, and that's such a old way of thinking. And it's very romantic, but Yeah. Things are evolving.
And there's this you know, technology is eating everything, And it's up to the filmmaker to figure out what tools are like, what tools do they want to use to make their movie, and what's the best version of it? That's really what it is. Like, what's the best version of this scene? What's the best version of this story? And that's why you do get, like, gems of of, like, big movies. You know? It's like the, that's why, like, when it comes to, like, avengers, like avengers endgame and infinity war, like, everyone saw those movies because those filmmakers really have a a storytelling driving driving them. Like, they don't wanna just make a movie. They don't wanna just do something for money. Like, they actually wanna tell a story. Like, what's the biggest impact that this character can go through? Yeah. And then it's like, oh, fuck. Spider Man's gone. Like, you know, like, we get these we get these crazy moments, and that's, like, on the big scale of pop culture.
But then on the smaller scale, I can't really think of any movies right now, but, like, there are smaller movies that have a big, like like, incredible emotion, and they can freeze frame an emotion. Think about, like, Breakfast Club right now. At the end of Breakfast Club, like, it it like, it it the freeze frame has become a meme, but Breakfast Club ends on a freeze frame of this guy being victorious. He got the girl's kiss. He he has, her earring or something, and, like, he changed.
[00:24:53] Zach Mahoney:
And it's sort of, like, when you watch that, it's, like, hell, yeah. Like like, I vibe with that. I love that. Yeah. And They're taking universality. Right? They're they're taking a universal human experience, which is true across time and space. Mhmm. You know, what? There's 7 movies or whatever we can make. They're all it's all just different iterations of the same stories over and over and over and over again. Mhmm. The context always changes, of course, but that timeless human experience of betrayal or of loss or of revenge or of fear, you know, these superlative human experiences, the context changes, but the frequency doesn't. And the and the storytellers that are really, really concerned about doing their jobs correctly are the ones who are worried about communicating that universal theme to them.
It it's not to the most people. It's not it's not, like, quantitative. It's qualitative. Mhmm. If you if you get to the superlative thing, it is, like, almost by definition going to resonate with the most amount of people. Mhmm.
[00:25:47] Cole McCormick:
What what are your favorite movies? Like, what do you think like, what's, like, the peak versions of these things for you? Like like, you just think the movie just hits it every time. I
[00:25:57] Zach Mahoney:
I think that there's a few. There's a few. I mean, this is not an exhaustive list, but I think what what you mentioned, earlier, I thought it was really interesting. You're talking about, Dark Knight Mhmm. Which was your generation's, you know, kind of the film that woke you up to what's possible with cinema. Mhmm. For me, that movie was American History X. Mhmm. That movie destroyed me. That's with Edward Norton. Right? That's when he's a Nazi? Ed Norton and Edward Furlong Yeah. Destroyed me. I was way too young to have watched that movie. I I don't know how old I was. 12 or something. 11, 10. I don't know. But I hadn't experienced like, it it it it it literally dove into my consciousness, into my soul, and just ripped me inside out. I was balling at the end of that movie for probably 15 minutes after I saw it. And I realized what the the medium was capable of in that moment through that movie.
None of them have had a bigger impact on me in the way that that movie did. It was like the first time you do anything, you know, the first time you drink, the first time you do drugs, the first time you do this, first time you do that, like, you you almost never get back to that, like, how intense that first time was. Mhmm. American history x was that for me for sure. But there were other movies that, I mean, like the matrix. Like, the the matrix is is an absolute fucking masterpiece. Like, to say that it's sci fi is like It doesn't work. Is like, No. It's this is a universal, this is a universal universal exploration of consciousness of waking up, and it just happened to be told, like, with a sci fi, you know, key in a sci fi note. Mhmm. You know, but then there's other ones that, like, every time I watch it, it gets funnier, like The Big Lebowski. I've seen that movie Oh, that's one of my favorite. 45 times.
Every time, I'm just, like, these guys were on it. They are so good. This was so but that's what that's what like, that's how the truth is. Right? Like, a great piece of music, the Bible Mhmm. Really good wine, really good food. It doesn't get old. You don't get bored of it. The layers just keep unfolding and unfolding and unfolding and unfolding, and so it's it's like that's what makes it timeless. Jurassic Park, incredible. Gladiator, incredible. Saving Private Ryan, incredible. It's crazy how Spielberg like, you just listed Spielberg's, like, multiple times and Ledge. I mean, but he's a he was a master. He was a master at what he did. Mhmm. You know, again, not exhausted. There are so many other movies that just that I always forget, and I always get pissed at myself for forgetting.
But but I think, like, to stay on theme, American History X Yeah. Fundamentally changed my it altered the my perspective as a human being permanently, and it won't that that will never leave my consciousness. Mhmm. Did that wake you up to cinema or just, like, a bigger world in general? Both. Right? Like, the human condition, number 1, which is the point. Mhmm. The point is to is to have a human experience, and ideally one that brings us closer together, that gives us more empathy for our fellow human beings, whether they're making mistakes or whether they're succeeding or or whatever, that you see someone you can see someone who's in deep pain, and instead of having judgment and and pushing them away, you can figure out a way to address that pain. That's a human problem.
Mhmm. So, ideally, we have I mean, of course, if it's great, it gets us deeper into the cinema world, but the more important thing is the human part of it, which is the whole point of telling stories in the first place so we can relate to one another. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My opinion. I've never seen American History X. I need to watch it.
[00:30:05] Cole McCormick:
I mean While you were saying that, I was, thinking about I saw I just watched this, one of the newest, Joe Rogan episodes. Yesterday, he had JD Vance. The he's running for vice president. And out of the blue, this guy just mentions how he, he was in some hotel, and he was rewatching a movie he had seen a a 1000000000 times before. And he'd always loved it, Boyz in the Hood. Mhmm. And he realized that at like, somehow, Boys in the Hood influenced his political takes and his, like, economic takes. And I've I I haven't seen that movie either, but he's talking about, like, how that the movie is pretty much about, like, black nationalism. And now, like, here he is, like, running as a Republican, and it's literally influencing how he thinks about the world, influencing economics. It's like, that's that's movies. And I I I no one was ready for that. I didn't even, like I I was almost I was giggling when I was listening to it. I was like, what the fuck? Like, what that's incredible. This movie from I I think that came out in eighties. Right? Boyz n the Hood, that's with Ice Cube. Yeah? Yeah. Like, that's that's history, and that's like and they froze that moment in time. They froze they were able to capture that community and that mindset in that era.
And then all of a sudden, that that's influencing 20 20 4 politics, the 2024 reality. 91. Yeah. Poisonhood, 91. Dude, that's that's so, like, that's so wild. That's so wild to me.
[00:31:29] Zach Mahoney:
It it's crazy, and and but it illustrates how important good storytelling is to the structuring of our minds. Mhmm. And, you know, it it it just illustrates that it is invaluable that storytellers do their jobs for society
[00:31:50] Cole McCormick:
correctly with enthusiasm, and that we support them in doing that. So what's wrong with the system now? Like, are are studios just just old and tired and not paying attention, or are they really, like, running themselves into the ground and not even thinking? Like, what like, from your perspective, what is that? What's the real problem?
[00:32:08] Zach Mahoney:
The the the incentives are just misaligned. So so I I I guess that's a different way of saying the system is just dysfunctional. Mhmm. The system is locked up. The system is frozen. It it it needs to be dismantled because it doesn't function anymore. It no longer serves its purpose. Mhmm. So I you know, it this strike and the last couple of years, particularly in this industry, have been brutal. It's I don't I don't I'm not I'm not in I'm not, like, applauding people's pain and discomfort, but the industry needs to be burned to the ground, and it needs to be rebuilt Mhmm. For the betterment of everybody. And it was the same thing that happened in 2008.
You you know, this is more intense. There were more strikes, things are going on longer, things are extended. The the severity is maybe, like, the magnitude is a little higher, but it was the same vibe. You know, nobody knew if TV was ever gonna come back. Nobody knew if movies were gonna come back. The whole ladder completely shifted. I and I again, like I said earlier, I think that we're still in the we're we're in this transitionary phase, but it's going to get better. Mhmm. The system is going to to change.
Mhmm. But the issue is in how the system is currently designed. We have this rickety building that has elements of, like I was saying before, unit sales, licensing from a time that lit just doesn't exist anymore. Like, it doesn't exist. They still call it a box office. Like like Yeah. You go to the AMC in Burbank. There's literally no one there's no one in the box office. There isn't a box office. There aren't box seats. You know, like, back in the day, it was, like, free seats at the bottom. You paid for the ones at the top. That's where box office even comes from. Like, the whole we're in such a different paradigm now, that the system just needs to change. So more specifically, what happened part of the thing that's happened is that, you've had this so Fiat. Right? Like like, we can talk Bitcoin. We can talk money.
There's been a massive consolidation, and this is this is true across all industries. This isn't only, entertainment or media related. Mhmm. But you've got this huge consolidation across this industry. So public massive whales, publicly traded companies just keep buying smaller companies because they have this mandate as a publicly traded company that they have to increase shareholder value. And there's a point, but there's a logical point at which, like, there's no more customers left. Like, there's nothing to do. So they just go in and they'll buy all of these other companies, whether they're making money or they're not making money. And so what happens is is that, all of the risk in making a movie is they're trying to get rid of it. They're trying to minimize risk, because that's what you do when you're in a big company like that, in that in that financial structure. But but film is unique in its risk profile.
It is a very unique business, and it is, like, the intersection of you have to take a certain amount of risk, and you but you also have to be financially savvy, and you gotta figure out a way to make it economically viable. Mhmm. You know, if you're making buggy whips, you can make the same thing over and over and over and over again, and that's what the market expects. It wants consistency. It wants the product that it's buying to be the same every time it buys it. That is not movies. Mhmm. And, you know, we can talk a lot of shit about, you know, the movie mogul period, but there was a period in time when people's egos were on the line with their studios.
You get a private company, and you get some dude who's egocentric, and he's, like, no. I am going to make the greatest fucking movie that's ever been produced or whatever. That's a bad example, but you start to have this competition, and the risk goes up. The more risk we can take, the more boundaries we can push, the farther we can push consciousness forward. But that can't really happen in the structure where every where the whole thing is owned by publicly traded companies because in that situation, all of the responsibility is abdicated.
So it's this really perverse incentive system where somebody is a CEO of something, and they're like, well, I'm gonna get fired in 3 years anyway, so just wanna get my bonus. I wanna I wanna repeat the financial success, so I'm just gonna go into the data, and the data's gonna tell me do Spider Man 27 because I'm not gonna get fired sooner, and it'll probably get a bonus. They don't get a reward for taking responsibility and saying the movies that we've produced are garbage. There is no incentive for them to do that, and so they don't.
The idea behind Indie Hub is that we we we change that incentive system, and we say, you're gonna take all of the risk, you filmmaker or producer or team. You're going to get almost all of the reward. IndieHub is gonna work on on on on the infrastructure, on the financial plumbing, on on the legal foundations, but you get to go take the risk. We can't have these people abdicating all of the risk, minimizing all of the risk, and then hiring the people who should be getting all the reward for taking all of the risk, like, they're completely divorced, and so everybody's phoning it in. They you have no incentive to go do a good job on a movie, because they're, like, here's a flat rate. Take it or leave it. You have a bigger incentive to delete a movie.
[00:37:25] Cole McCormick:
Yeah. Dude, Warner Brothers deleting a Looney Tunes movie. Like, that's you know, Warner Brothers deleting Batgirl, which I mean, I wouldn't have seen, but it's still it's still, like, something that's it's still a movie people were making. Like, that's they had a tax incentive to delete it. Like, that's why Exactly.
[00:37:40] Zach Mahoney:
So the the that's a long way to try to answer it, which is this that the the incent the system is broken. The incentives are totally perverse and backwards. We need to we need to create a new system that puts us back in alignment with proper incentives that are appropriate for storytelling. Mhmm. That's very different than making an f 150 Mhmm. Or producing a syringe at a hospital. Like, these are it's a completely different phenomenon. Replica movies are not replicatable products. No. And we don't That's the problem. We don't want them to be. Right? We Yeah. We have this insatiable appetite for I want the same thing, but different. Mhmm. Want the same thing, but different. That's unique. That's super unique.
Music for sure, movies for sure. Mhmm. So we need to get the business we need to get the engine, the energetic engine underneath, like, rebuilt and oriented in the right direction. And that's Indie Hub. So you're rebuilding
[00:38:33] Cole McCormick:
the financial structure of how movies are sort of funded,
[00:38:38] Zach Mahoney:
and then also distributed. Is that right? Yeah. We're trying to change the whole pipe from where the money starts, the audience member, and where it ends, the filmmaker. And so this whole thing in between, we can just get as many people out of the way as humanly possible, create a direct energetic relationship from where it starts to where it ends, and and this thing should feed itself in a more proper cycle if if they're connected correctly. Mhmm. You know, if you got, you know it's like resistors in, you know, in it you got 15 people who are in the way between the payer and the receiver of the money, like, it the signal dies. Mhmm. It doesn't even get there, and then there's certainly not enough signal for these people to go continue to produce great work or to get better at their job. So just get as many people out of the way as possible, plug them into each other, and let the thing run. Yeah. Is Bitcoin really the the key to all that, or is it possible to stream dollars one day? Like, is that Bitcoin is not the key.
Bitcoin itself is not the key. The Bitcoin technology is the key. Mhmm.
[00:39:43] Cole McCormick:
Which is blockchain? Bitcoin technology. Is that blockchain? Or is that, like, how do we like, that's sort of evolving with this conversation of Bitcoin, and we got, social media like Nostr. They're trying to change the incentives of social media with Bitcoin technology. Like,
[00:40:00] Zach Mahoney:
you see how it's all changing? It's Well, okay. So I'll get this is my perspective. I'm sure some hyper nerds can tell me to fuck off or whatever. But from where I'm sitting, this is kinda how I see it. Yeah. Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. Bitcoin. Blockchain like, blockchains existed before bit came Bitcoin came around. Like like, companies have been using a blockchain for, you know, their their, you know, like, Toyota. I know this one who was producing blockchain working on blockchains for Toyota, like, you know, 30 years ago or 20 years ago. Interesting. The thing let let protocols. Okay? The the word I want to use here is protocols.
The Internet is a protocol. It is anyone can tap into it. Nobody controls the rules of it. It's something that we all use and agree on and is open source and openly usable. There's no one that can tell you you can't use it. There's no one that can tell you you have to use it. English is like that too. Right? English is a protocol. No one anyone can learn English. We all use it to communicate efficiently and effectively globally. No one can unilaterally change the rules of English. Like, if I say, hey, I'm gonna change the definition of this word. I have to go convince however many people speak English on the planet that this is the new definition of the word. Mhmm. Good luck with that.
So Bitcoin is a protocol. It's it's it's a communications protocol that happens to work really well as money. Lightning is a protocol that taps into the Bitcoin protocol. The reason I say this is because these protocols aren't permissioned. They're they're they're permissionless. The banking system of the United States is permissioned. Visa or PayPal is permissioned. You need their permission to be on that network. Mhmm. So Bitcoin IndiHub is using we're built on top of Lightning, which is to say that we're like Bitcoin native, but the important part is that there's this permissionless protocol, this permissionless payments protocol that we're using that anyone can build on top of and anyone can tap into.
We use a a payments provider on Lightning. If that payments provider goes out, we can just go find somebody else who runs that infrastructure also on top of Lightning. There's multiple companies that do it. We can anyone in the world can participate using that protocol. No one there no one can tell you you can't. Mhmm. So you can issue stable coins on top of that. It could be a dollar representation. It could be USDT or, you know, euro stable coin or a yen stable coin or whatever. Like, I it doesn't matter. But the point is is that you can you can use that protocol without having to have permission of the people who wrote the rules of it. Mhmm.
[00:42:44] Cole McCormick:
So so we just need a protocol for the dollar, and then, like, more people will, like, start to understand this system. Do you think so? Because every time when I talk about Bitcoin, people roll their eyes and people are just, like, they don't really care, or they sort of get that it's money. Even people in my generation, like, some people sort of understand crypto. And even when it comes to the conversation with podcasting 2.0 stuff, you know, people like, there's sort of been, like, a ceiling met when it comes to streaming sats and people using this this thing. And I feel like the only way to move forward is if we're sort of allowed to innovate with the dollar or the government itself innovates with the dollar implementing some sort of new protocol and not not it being stuck within a permission system with the Fed or with Visa.
[00:43:32] Zach Mahoney:
Something like that needs to happen, but Well, that that thing is Bitcoin. That thing The thing you're talking about is Bitcoin. Is Bitcoin. The reason that, the reason that, you you know, you say that the the government should create a protocol for the dollar. It it it doesn't it structurally can't possibly work that way because the dollars themselves are sourced from the central bank. Mhmm. The birthplace of the dollars are from a tightly controlled centralized entity. Even if you have a dollar stable coin, that's just a representation of somebody supposedly having that dollar deposit on a ledger somewhere.
Back to what we were talking about in the beginning of this is, who is the arbiter of truth? That's what all of this is about. Mhmm. Who gets to dictate the truth? Is it the people running the dollar ledger? Because you can't you can't verify that. You can't adjust it. You can't download the ledger and say, yes, there are 21,000,000 coins or however you you literally can't. We have to trust that they are the ones, that that that they are being honest about the ledger, and that they'll operate that ledger, you know, equally and and universally, and and they don't. Like, we know they don't. They they they turn people's bank accounts off that they don't like. It's a permission system. So I I'm trying to the protocol aspect is important Yeah. But but but a a dollar on a protocol is still permissioned in some sense. So even if we have Tether on top of Lightning, you know, the the US government is tapping on Tether's shoulder saying, hey, you have to you have to block this transaction because this is a terrorist, which is bullshit. I I mean, if it's terrorism.
This is our catch 22. Right? Like, we're, like, well, you know, I mean but the point of Bitcoin is that that is the thing. It's never going to be a sovereign currency that is actually a protocol that's actually open and permissionless. This is why Bitcoin is a big deal. It's the first time we have an an actual unit of account that cannot be duplicated digitally that is digitally native. So it's view I know this is all we can we can I'm I love we can talk about this. It's it fuses the physical world and the digital world, and the people that most peep the peep the reason that people, particularly in the United States, chuckle and laugh and get annoyed when you talk about Bitcoin is because they don't actually understand money as a technology at all. Yeah. They haven't really thought about it, and the reason they haven't thought about it is because we've been blessed that our financial system for the last 80 years has more or less been great.
We don't have to think about it. You go talk about this with anybody in any other country that's ever dealt with having with with a currency that's been destroyed or manipulated by a small group of people, and they get it immediately. Mhmm. They think about money more than anyone in the United States. Not anyone, but your average person, dollar for pound for pound. More than your average American. They think about money way more. It's way more important, and they realize how important the tool is. United States, we don't even most people don't understand how how a check works. They don't understand that how a credit card works or when you pay for something at a at a grocery store, like, you're not actually paying.
I'm not making a point, just an observation that it's an uphill battle to try and explain Bitcoin because you have to explain the protocol. There's so many things you have to explain for them to get it in the first place. Mhmm.
[00:47:05] Cole McCormick:
So how can we make that easy somehow? Like, because I'm aligned with Indie Hub. I'm aligned with Bitcoin, and, like, I will continue to push it. I'm gonna be using it. I've already I'm one of the first directors to use Bitcoin to fund my movies. Yes. So it's like like that's like, I'm I'm really proud of that, but then, like, my friends still don't get it. Like, I I literally get my friends paid who helped me make the movie, and they still don't get it. It's like, I there's some sort of glass ceiling. There's some sort of invisible threshold that we need to push through. We need to pierce the veil for it.
I don't know what that is. Do you? I mean, the abstract culture. You know? Maybe just culture and just talk continuing to talk about it, continuing to talk about how bad the money system is or It's I I unfortunately, I think that the answer is pain. Right.
[00:48:02] Zach Mahoney:
COVID and the and and the government's response to COVID has done more to wake people up than anything, any that you or I could have said screaming from the rooftops about, you know, decentralization. Like, no one gives a shit. They care and, you know, it's I understand. They care when they're in pain. Mhmm. And so we're in this, like, kind of unfortunate situation, which is, like, the the more people understand Bitcoin, it probably means that they were in significant amounts of pain. They were in more pain than they were previously before they understood Bitcoin. You know, Michael Saylor is a good example of this. Like, he he he poo pooed Bitcoin. He was talking shit on Bitcoin, and then he found himself in a in a situation. He was in significant amount of pain, financial pain, and it clicked.
A lot of people are gonna have to go through a lot more pain to really understand why the technology is important and why it's useful. And I'm honestly, I'm not convinced that that I'm not convinced that the retail public in the United States is going to be the entity that brings Bitcoin into its, you know, into its final form. I think that that's going to be probably 3rd world country. It's a bottom up situation. Mhmm. And I think that it's gonna it's so I guess my answer to you is pain and time. Mhmm. And it's why at IndieHub, like, we're not you can pay in anything you want. You don't have to pay in Bitcoin. You don't have to care about Bitcoin. You don't have to know anything about Bitcoin. It's that's not that's not crucial to understand, you know, with regards to using it. And I don't expect most audiences to care for quite some time.
But if we can use that technology to solve the payments problem and the pain point for filmmakers
[00:49:52] Cole McCormick:
Mhmm.
[00:49:53] Zach Mahoney:
That's really what matters. They're in the most pain, and so if we can try to solve that for them, we've done a good job. Now, like, for your friends on Indie Hub. Right? Like, for them to understand it, it has to be material. Yeah. They have to be, like, how much money did I make on YouTube last week? 45¢. How much money did I make on Indie Hub last week? $55. Mhmm. Like Yeah. It's it has to start getting that Clear. Obvious. Mhmm. But that just takes time. Yeah. Just time. Just time. Time and bottom up, and then it'll come into America when it's just when it just works. Yeah. Right. I and and I think that I think that Bitcoin will in the United States will will be a savings technology.
Mhmm. It doesn't a, the tax code does not incentivize people using Bitcoin to spend. Like, I'm not paying 20% extra for anything. I'm I'm not doing it. Like, I'm gonna owe tax on that, and I don't care. And, frankly, my credit card works just fine. But I don't have any tool in my arsenal that I can use to really protect myself from debasement. That's what the tool is useful for here in the United States. And we're even seeing this globally. Right? Like, stablecoins on other networks are becoming widely needed and requested as a payments technology. Mhmm. And so we're starting to see 2 different things happen. You've got payments technology, and you've got savings technology.
At some point, the savings technology becomes worth so much money that we say, well, why don't we just use it as the payments technology? But it has stages that it has to to to go through in order to get there. Mhmm.
[00:51:30] Cole McCormick:
It's very interesting. So we need more so pretty much long story short, we need a protocol for movies. Is that is that sort of what what it's all building up to instead of a instead of a platform? Because all these studios and the movie theater, you know, these are all sort of platforms
[00:51:45] Zach Mahoney:
the way I see it. Yes. I I think that it's a good I I think that I think that we need to plug we need to have a common in my opinion, the common protocol is money. Money is a communications protocol. Money communicates,
[00:52:05] Cole McCormick:
that Attention and energy. Exactly. Like, did this user
[00:52:08] Zach Mahoney:
actually liked this product? Mhmm. I don't get to I don't get to when I subscribe to Netflix, I don't get to dictate where that capital goes. I give them $20 a month. They get to decide who gets the money and where it goes. It makes more sense to say, hey, I am I am allocating that monetary energy on a on a per second basis of where my attention went. Mhmm. And then we can funnel resources to the people who are actually getting the attention. Mhmm. That's just a feedback in a market that should naturally be there, rather than this black box where who knows where the money goes at that point, even though we might have all been paying attention to this or whatever. Yeah. So I I think that there's always gonna be there has to be production companies. There has to be we have to decentralize all of the decision making, but we need to we need to clean up the the the the line of communication with regards to where the money is coming from and where the money is going. Mhmm. That makes a lot of sense.
[00:53:08] Cole McCormick:
It makes me wanna, like, just be the the prime example of it. Like, just me as a guy with an ego, like, I just wanna, like, let's just fucking woah. I did it. I just I just hit one of my buttons on accident. You didn't hear what you didn't hear what I just heard.
[00:53:22] Zach Mahoney:
His ears are bleeding. His ears are bleeding.
[00:53:25] Cole McCormick:
But, I don't know how hard I hit the table. That's funny. I want there to be, like, a prime example of a movie making this work because that is also, like if a filmmaker is able to see how much money do do I make on YouTube, how much money do I make on indie hub, I want the audience to see what the system is. Like, oh, look at these filmmakers over here doing this thing with this new system opposed to what's going on with Disney or Warner Brothers. Like, these are things that the audience needs to see Yeah. As well. And so, you know, we're so early. You know? Like, Indie Hub is still in beta. Yeah. You know? It's, like, it's wild to be a part of this conversation so early and be so inspired.
But, like, I'm telling you right now, Zach. Like, I am, like, I'm so deep into it. Like, I am, like, I'm literally thinking about making a movie every single day. I'm thinking about what to do. I'm thinking about how to do it. I'm thinking about the money. I'm thinking about the locations. I'm thinking about how we get if I wanna build a set, how the fuck am I gonna build this? Like, all these things. And then I'm thinking, how am I going to convince my friends who are helping me to actually be a part of this new system?
Because when I've made my short films in the past, specifically last year with Magic Mushroom Fun Time, my cinematographer, he was really wanting me to encouraging me to put it out into film festivals. And I just saw no zero value in that. Mhmm. You know? And Interesting. There's value in, I guess, the, the networking and just just, you know, just talking to people about my process or about myself and just engaging with that in that way. But the way that the way that I see it, the way that the industry works, it's not through film festivals. Like, I'm not Spike Jones. I'm not Tarantino. I'm not, like, you know, like, fucking 2019, Joker is the biggest movie at at Venice. What a joke. Right? Like, no. It is a joke. It's a joke. It is a joke. And then I I I did enjoy the second one. I'll just say that. Like, it was sort of I'm not sure if you saw what Tarantino said about Joker 2. It was like Tarantino said the Joker directed Joker 2. Like, he just it was a giant fuck you to the audience, fuck you to the studio. They used $200,000,000, and they made a fucking musical out of Joker. Like, the Joker made Joker 2.
But but but what I'm saying is, like, the big IPs, like, the big movies from the big like, it it it's not someone no one's breaking out within a film festival anymore. Yeah. And that's not I'm not even trying to get famous. I'm just I'm I'm I'm inspired to make movies. I'm inspired to make a living making movies. And this conversation of, like, how to make a living with producing things online, that thing is changing. And I also don't wanna do some I Love Lucy shit and that be like advertising baking soda or advertising some vaccine. Like, I don't wanna that's not my situation. I don't wanna do that. And so it's difficult. I find myself in a very difficult place, but but I'm so young, but I I'm so outside or I wanna be outside. I'm sort of, like, anti everything. I'm like the I'm like the ultimate
[00:56:40] Zach Mahoney:
anti guy. Yeah. Because because none of it works. Yeah. It doesn't. There's no you know, it when when I started in this industry, it's When was that, by the way? When did you start out? I started auditioning in 2,000 I wanna say 4 2003 or 2004. I moved down here, I think, in 2,005, and I came in right at the very very end of the old paradigm. Like, the end of what movies used to be that golden era from a from, like, a Like, 80 nineties? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Like, just the way that the industry was set up. There was there was a pretty clear ladder for any any you know, if you wanted to be an editor, there was a there was a clear way to make it in that line of work. If you wanted to be a gaffer, if you wanted to be an actor, if you wanted to be there were pretty, you know, you started here, you did this, you did that, you did that, if you had some persistence and some talent and some decent reps or whatever, you know, it was it was you you you had a decent shot.
That that system is totally different at this point. And in 2,008, we had the same structure that started to change and collapse, and the whole ladder started going backwards, and everybody was, like, oh my god. And we're we're now at this point where you're coming in, the new young people coming in and going, this doesn't work.
[00:58:12] Cole McCormick:
This is this is dead ends everywhere. There has to be a way for this to work. Especially when, like, filmmakers like Greta Gerwig, you know, she's making this new Narnia movie. Netflix doesn't even wanna put it in the fucking theater. It's like this we got this, like, really, like, quality filmmaker, like, clawing her way into the theater with the biggest company ever. Like, that's
[00:58:30] Zach Mahoney:
it's not compatible. It's not computable. Yeah. It doesn't something's broken. It doesn't make sense. My bet, and this is why I started Indiehub, is that we just have to let's just align the incentives. I
[00:58:45] Cole McCormick:
the big companies And you saw you well, let let me I'm sorry. Don't don't don't don't don't don't you saw it crumbling in 2003. Is that what you're saying? You saw it changing in 2,004? It really started in 2,008. Okay. So so,
[00:58:58] Zach Mahoney:
it took it took 2 or 3 years for me to really recognize it, but looking back, it's 2,008. So I have a spiel on this. I'll I'll give you and your audience, like, if these three things happen simultaneously in any industry, that industry is probably going to implode, and it's probably either either it's dead or it's going to be rebuilt somehow. So in 2,008, three things happened simultaneously. You got politics, technology, and, and economics. So in 2008, there was a writer strike. The whole TV industry was shut down. Canon released the 5 d Mark 2 in 2008. And for anybody who is around back then, they understand how big of a deal and how much of a game changer that camera was for independent production. Now there were other technological advances, of course. The Internet was getting faster. You could throw a final cut in there. YouTube was just becoming a big thing, like but but really 5 d mark 2 is kind of the thing.
And then you had the economic collapse. All three of those things happened in 2008. The industry imploded, and it took 15 years to build back to what it is now. We're going through the same thing again right now. The politics, you've got multiple strikes. The people who are working in the in the industry are not happy with the structure of the business. It doesn't work anymore. The technology in this case, in my opinion, is the payments infrastructure. That's the big difference. And then, of course, you have just the global economy, COVID, that entire thing. So those three things, bam, right on cue, another 15 years, whatever it was, we're in the middle of that transition again. So,
[01:00:46] Cole McCormick:
did other people around you recognize that change as well? Or, like, were people sort of, like, sticking their heads in the sand and not wanting to acknowledge change in the industry?
[01:00:55] Zach Mahoney:
It's a it's a really good question.
[01:00:58] Cole McCormick:
Because you're an actor. Right? That's, like, that was mainly what you were doing? Yeah. I was I was totally focused on acting. I didn't
[01:01:05] Zach Mahoney:
this is actually the thing. The the these are the events that sort of pulled me out of the acting cave I was in to, like, start to develop some semblance of a respect for the business side of filmmaking. When I got here, I had a unique opportunity. I had really good reps. I had really good manager and really good agents, and, like, very, very quickly, I started working. I I got my first union job within 6 months of being here that paid a shitload of money. I booked my first commercial in 3 months. I was doing plays. I was, like, I I started working very, very quickly, and I was in big rooms. I was in big rooms for big movies and big auditions, relatively inexperienced and super, super young.
That ladder worked. That's that structure worked. 2,008 hit, let's say, 2 or 3 years or 4 years goes by, whatever it was, the the level the quality of of projects that I was going to audition for was precipitously and continuously worse and worse and worse. And I got to a point, it's like, I didn't come down here to do this kind of shit. I I I really did not. Like, this is garbage. Like, who am I? Like, nobody. I'm fucking nobody. But I'd I'm, like, I got other shit I wanna do in my life. I love movies. This is trash. So that's what got me into the production side of things, but it was just a very, very, very different business back then. Mhmm. And I think that we can get back to not the same structure, but to the level of if you've got some talent and you've got some ingenuity, you can go make something that can be successful, which is, like, part of the American dream. Right? Like Mhmm. It's merit based. Mhmm. Just go do something that's incredible and see how the market responds.
Let's get back to that. Mhmm. And I I just fundamentally think that that's a payments reality. It's all payments.
[01:02:56] Cole McCormick:
Yeah.
[01:02:57] Zach Mahoney:
It's it's I I shouldn't say payments. It's finance related. Mhmm. It's incentives. It's a financial and it's financial incentives
[01:03:04] Cole McCormick:
being aligned correctly. Were you the only one thinking this? Like, was it were who was influencing your thoughts when you were sort of, like, waking up? Was it just your own thing, or was it managers speaking to you as well? Like,
[01:03:15] Zach Mahoney:
what was that like? It's a really that's a really good question. I know I didn't answer in the last one. I don't know. You're good. I don't think that I don't think that I don't think a lot of people were thinking that way. Right. I was not getting that advice from reps or, like, people in the industry. Everyone was really just kind of struggling and freaking out and trying to figure out what the next thing was that was gonna make money. I mean, this was the same period of time that It's almost like Hollywood is focused on shit coins.
[01:03:46] Cole McCormick:
Yeah. Like Yeah. Yeah. That's what I that's what I hear. Like, it they just wanna focus on what's the next what's the next big thing? What are we gonna pump? Like, it's just everything is just a pump and dump. Figure out how to do the money, how to do the money, how to do the money. I mean, we we were involved. I was involved in some of the earliest YouTube shows. No one would remember them, but What are they? Tell me. There was this this
[01:04:06] Zach Mahoney:
this show called Poor Paul, I was, like, I was young when we did that. And then We do you you mean, like, YouTube original, or what do you mean? No. Way before there was an original. Way before any of this before anyone knew how any of this was gonna work, people would be like, well, you're gonna just, like, do a show? Like, just, like, put it on YouTube? Because YouTube at that point was cat videos and just crazy shit. But, I don't know. We could, like, do a web series, like, web series. Like, that was the new word when I was when this all started happening, I was there, like, ground 0. My buddy Kevin, he worked on the show that got quite famous at the time called Lonely Girl 15. It was totally scripted, but everybody didn't know if it was real or not. Like, it was people were just trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. Mhmm.
I don't my the perspective that I got from the finance side of things and the business side of things was completely outside of the industry.
[01:04:55] Cole McCormick:
Because you were doing research on, like, on the banks and stuff? Or, like, how how did that even happen for you? I had started
[01:05:01] Zach Mahoney:
I had started trying to do my own productions and my own businesses and and and, you know, like, we started shooting a bunch of stuff, and we did this doc, and, you know, we were trying to to to sell that and get things get things going that way. And so I just I had a family member who was more business savvy, and he just started, like, planting little seeds, and I and I I I mean, I tell you, I had negative respect for the finance side of things, like, as an actor. Like, none. Disdain, you know, and not to my benefit. Right? Like like, that was it took me a long time to rewire my brain and have some appreciation for how important the business side of it is. Why did you not even care about the business? It's it's so wild how, like, you wanna,
[01:05:41] Cole McCormick:
like, you wanna make money. Like, you wanna have a house. You wanna you want a car. You want this thing to pay for your life, but then you don't care about the I think that's hilarious. I was really ideologically
[01:05:51] Zach Mahoney:
driven as an actor. I was more concerned with the truth. I was more concerned with the experience of it. I was more concerned with doing my job. I I everything else, and as far as I was concerned, was gonna take care of itself as long as I focused on being really fucking good at this thing. I didn't want to be distracted with anything else. And but it became because the system wasn't functioning correct. Like, in the old system, I could kind of get away with that Mhmm. Because it was functioning correctly. And so a producer would roll around or director, and they'd be, like, well, this kid's just a fucking great actor. Mhmm. We need great actors. Hire him. I don't it doesn't and and so, you know, you go on set, and you're like, I am the most important part of this entire thing.
You have to have that. You have to have that to in order to to sustain the the how difficult it really is to do what you're doing, and how no one on a set really understands what the fuck you're doing and how it works. But when the system stopped functioning and you start going like, well well, I can't the things that gave me life and excitement and and and allowed me to, like, push past the financial piece disappeared. And so all that was there was, like, okay. Well, I'm not making money, and this sucks. It's one thing to be, like, hey. I'm not making too much money, but, man, I'm having a fucking great time. Mhmm. I'm doing good work. You can sort of you know, you can you can tolerate that. But when it's all of this is trash, and I'm making no money, it's just, like, wait a minute. Oh, well, like, I got I don't even reevaluate here. Yeah. And and, you know, for me, it was it was it was also it was 10 years of of learning how business worked.
I mean, I remember having the thought one time of, like, oh, you can just, like, go out and, like, just you can just, like, make money? Mhmm. Just, like, start a business? Like, how is that even how is that possible? Yeah. No. Keep going. I'm I gotta plug in this freaking
[01:07:50] Cole McCormick:
I forgot this phone was, like, about to die. You get
[01:07:53] Zach Mahoney:
It it was, like, it was mind blowing to me that you could just, like, start a business and, like, go make money doing stuff. Uh-huh. It was so difficult for those few years to to to, you know, from 2008 to 2011, let's say. So difficult.
[01:08:11] Cole McCormick:
Anyway That makes sense. No. It it's very interesting because, like, you never really you see actors, go go on to, like, produce things, but you never really hear about, like, their experience with money or their experience with the finance side or what. Because some people might just put their name as a producer just because they want the credit and just because they want the literally, just the cred. They just want to be known as a producer. Yeah. But you're really interesting where you really took it into your own hands, and you actually learned about business, and you actually did the research, and you have experience with experimenting and failing and succeeding and, like, just the this entire situation that you found yourself in, the entire journey that that that you've been on is one of learning and growing and expanding yourself and expanding your own consciousness and your own understanding of the business and just being honest with the reality in front of you. Yeah. And the reality in front of you was it's not working. Yep. And so very few people are willing to admit when the thing in front of them is not real or not or or not what it used to be or not what it says it is. Yep. And that's a huge wake up call for for you and for a lot of other people, because so many people wanna stick their heads in the sand and just say, no. It's we're we're gonna be fine. We're gonna be fine. We're gonna be fine. And then they're dead. Yeah. It's like it's it's it's some people are claiming that, like, that's sort of what Google is doing, and, yeah, they're just saying that, no. We're fine. We're fine. We're fine. We have our own thing, and then they're gonna die off. And then I'm forgetting, what oh, like Sears? Like, Sears, like,
[01:09:45] Zach Mahoney:
is an example of that. So many big businesses that no one ever thought could were saleable, gone. Mhmm. In a matter of days, years. Mhmm. It's crazy.
[01:09:57] Cole McCormick:
Do you think if less people thought like you and and me, would Hollywood and movies be done? Would would they be produced? Would they be done? Like, would it be dead? Would it, like like like because some people are saying, like, it's dying, and some other people are just, like, not even talking about the struggle that Hollywood is going through and what movies are going through. Like, is this just a situation of we need to just continue to talk about what the problems are and potential solutions? Because that's what from my opinion, I think that is the answer. Just continuing to talk about it, reaching out to our friends, just trying to be an example of what a solution can be, because no one else is gonna, like, I don't know.
Not everyone is gonna think how you think unless you show them
[01:10:48] Zach Mahoney:
how you're thinking. Does that make sense? Be the change you wanna see. Mhmm. Right? Like, actions speak louder than words. You get to a certain point in your life and you realize no one is coming to save us. No one is going to fix this. They don't have the incentive to fix it, and and how immature of me to sit around and be, like, why isn't someone fixing this? Mhmm. Like, this is this is your calling. This is your job. Do it. There is a a a great hen I think I think Henry Ford said it. He's like, whether you fail or succeed, you spent the same amount of time either way. Yeah. You know, and, like, there have been times in my life where things have been going really well and times in my life where things were going really poorly.
Sitting on my ass and doing nothing is excruciating. Mhmm. Working really, really hard and getting something done is also excruciating. It's like it's pain either way, so just do the thing that brings some light and joy. Yeah. You know, it but that's not everybody's path. Yeah. That you know, we all have roles to play in the ecosystem. We all have you know, like like in trading. Right? Like, you got you got people who speculate. They play an important role. They provide liquidity. Like, do like, you could say, like, oh, they don't provide value. Like, they do. Like, the whole ecosystem, there's all the flies provide value. I mean, they're taking on a risk. Right? Like, that's what it is. They're creating depth and, you know, so it's not for some people, they're not they're not they don't care. Right? Like, in other words, try try to answer the question. It's like, yeah, the industry would be done if people like you and I didn't say no, that that this could be something different and better, but that's always been true throughout all this time forever.
Right. Right? There's always some small group of people who are like, wait a minute. Like, hold hold on. This is totally fucked. Like, we need to like, this could be so much better. Mhmm. And they go through this, you know, like, the United States, the birth of America. They were like, hold on. Hold on. Yeah. This is fucked. Yeah. And and and it was excruciating. Don't you guys think England's fucking us? Yeah. Like, this this is not right, dude. So I don't know. For me, it was like like, did I become Matt Damon? No. Like, did did but but that I look at it now. I I my wife was an actress for a long time too, and so we get to share in that in that story, and she had a very similar story up to that exact same time period. She'd been acting her whole life. She booked a show. She had a recurring on the show, and then the writers strike hit in 2008, and she was like, I'm fucking done. Wow. Fuck this.
What show? Do you mind if I ask? What show? I honestly don't even know. I don't even remember. They canceled it. It was out. You know, she had multiple episodes. She did a bunch of other stuff, commercials and indies and things like that. Right. What was my point? I was getting to something with that.
[01:13:19] Cole McCormick:
She she saw the same thing you saw in that same time period. She was done. The industry was over. Or she or the industry was changing or something something needed to change. Poof, gone. It'll come back. Bad interviewer. I'm sorry. No.
[01:13:35] Zach Mahoney:
That's bad talker. Oh, oh, like, in other words, that oh, we we both look at each other now and go, what if I had been as successful as I was as as as I wanted to be or as hard as I was working to be in the industry the way that it is now? And I go pretty much unequivocally, like, I'm so glad that I didn't. I don't think that I I could've I could've meshed with the way that the industry is now with who I am as a person. It would not have been what I wanted it to be and the reasons why I got into it in the first place, and that's just the truth of it. Like, to your point about the truth, like, just look at it for what it is. And I go, you know what? It's hard to say, but I'm I I don't maybe people say it's cope, but I don't it wasn't meant to be. I wouldn't it wouldn't have worked. They're diametrically opposed frequencies. Mhmm. It would have been super dissonant. So my role was to go do all of the things that I did and learn the things that I needed to learn. I started the early part of my life and career as a as an artist, and then I got into the business side of things, and now I'm I'm I'm combining those with this platform, and I'm taking my love of movies and my understanding of how important, you know, markets are and energy is, and hopefully, we can redesign something here that that I just want to be in service of, and I want to have I want to have helped in the progression of of consciousness in some way. Mhmm. In in in in in a less entropic version of the world.
Going back to your question about, like, the most impactful movies, I want other people to be able to experience that so that they can continue to propagate good throughout the world. Mhmm. And I I happen to think that this is the best medium to do that, and it's the only one I really know anything about anyway. So, like, I feel like you know, you just, like, you have to be all in. Yeah. Well, my I I can't.
[01:15:38] Cole McCormick:
I'm not gonna go I'm not gonna do anything else. Yeah. What fucking else am I gonna do? I know. I've been thinking long and hard about that too, because I've been thinking about just during the whole pandemic, I I I've been looking at the reality of things, looking at the streamers, looking at Hollywood, and really asking myself, like, do I wanna make movies? Do I wanna make a movie? Like, is that what I want? Do I just wanna make one movie, or do I wanna really make movies? And I there's zero instinct in me to not make a movie. And I'm, like, fuck. Like, I because I could easily say, like, yeah, it just wasn't for me, you know. Like And what a relief that would be Yeah. To be honest. A huge relief. Like, if I could just
[01:16:21] Zach Mahoney:
if the truth was, I don't really care. I'm totally happy doing something else. Like, dude, I would have left so long ago. Yeah. And it would have been awesome. Yeah. But that's not the truth. It's not the truth. And it's like, it's it'd be so easy to just say, fuck California. It's not.
[01:16:35] Cole McCormick:
The the the state sucks. The system sucks. It's not working. It's over. It's done. And I'm just like, I don't believe that. I don't believe that by any means. And I feel crazy for admitting that, like, no. There's, like, movies still have a shot. Movies still have it. Like
[01:16:52] Zach Mahoney:
The Zubie put out this tweet the other day. He was, like,
[01:16:57] Cole McCormick:
basically, I think that the golden era of every art form has already passed. Oh, I saw that. I totally I I called him out on that. Yeah. I was like, oh, no. You're full of shit. I mean, I I hear his point Yeah. For where we're at now.
[01:17:09] Zach Mahoney:
But as a Bitcoiner, you know, like, let's say we get into a real let's say we really all of the shit happens that we think could happen. Bitcoin becomes the global unit of account, and we enter maybe the most prosperous period, probably the most prosperous period in all of human history for the next 500 years, like, whatever. Yeah. I I I I think that they're to suggest that masterworks are done,
[01:17:35] Cole McCormick:
no way. Yeah. What what what's Zubie even making? Wasn't he making music for a minute? Yeah. He's doing rap or whatever. But he's not anymore. Right? Like, what's he creating? Yeah. Like, what's he creating? Right? Because, like, I'm, like, I'm this guy who, like like, I I can see his point. I'm just, like, wait. What do you like, only if you're not creating you think that. Like, that's really wild to to even say, like, every art form is, like, peaked. Like, what are you talking about,
[01:17:59] Zach Mahoney:
dude? Yeah. Like, people are still building buildings. I think that's I think that really is a symptom. He's look that's a symptom of fiat. He's looking at the system as it is right now, and he's going kinda like we were talking about earlier. He's just trying to be truthful about it Mhmm. From where he sees it. See, I I see it from a different perspective, but from where he's sitting, he's going, the way that things are right now, there's absolutely no way that we're ever gonna see another Michelangelo. Yeah. That we're ever gonna see, you know, a Da Vinci. That we're gonna see, you know and and and and in this if this paradigm was the only paradigm from here on out Mhmm. I would agree with him. Yeah.
But it's not gonna be the only paradigm from here on out. Like, it's it's just not. It's not true. It's not it's not true. You you know what? There there's, what's the stat on geniuses? I like, there's a kind of a fixed amount. You know, there's a ratio, roughly speaking, of geniuses all over the world. So there should be more geniuses now than there have ever been at any point in all of human history. Why aren't they capable of whipping shit up in society right now? Mhmm. It's it's a that's that is a symptom of the financial structure that we're in, because the financial structure that we're in is designed to enslave us, and, we have the power to break free of that. We do now. Yeah. We do now. This is Bitcoin. Yeah. So that wasn't certainly not in the digital age. It was not really possible before. Now, again, like, this doesn't I'm not I'm not trying to put forth some naive utopia. We're human beings. We're flawed. We're going to have problems. It's like, that's just the reality.
But but, like, if you're looking at it from a Maslow's hierarchy perspective, like, Bitcoin can solve a lot of these, like, base layer things and get us onto the more important shit like actualization.
[01:19:41] Cole McCormick:
Mhmm.
[01:19:43] Zach Mahoney:
And so, you know, if we can if human beings can coordinate correctly at scale, you can start to take all of these geniuses and and put them to work. Mhmm. And we should see that in the film industry. We should see that in movies. We should see people bringing things forth that none of us have ever thought of or dreamed were possible. Mhmm. And, of course, that's possible because everything's always changing anyway. The context is changing, so doesn't mean the art has peaked. Mhmm. There's there's always something new to be done and a new way to do it. Yeah.
[01:20:13] Cole McCormick:
So what is okay. So we're we're recording this at the end of 2024. It's November 1st. What does 2025 look like for you
[01:20:22] Zach Mahoney:
and Indie Hub? Like, what is this what does the near future for Indie Hub look like, and what are you trying to build in the near future? The the near future is we need to get we need to get the word out for filmmakers specifically. We need to build this community with filmmakers first and foremost. We need shorts. We need to get as many short films onto this platform as we can. There is no market for shorts. We want to become the place where the market's at. I need to be talking to filmmakers. I need to be working with filmmakers, and I need them to get their movies onto the platform as quickly as possible. The next 12 to 18 months, frankly, is gonna be a lot of that. We need to build out the library. We need to build out the community. We need to start educating and changing expectations. Then we need to start working expectations.
Then we need to start working on the marketing piece and get filmmakers to start figuring out how we can bring their audiences over here. Mhmm. But the short term is is like a huddle with the industry. Like, come on. Come on over here. We're doing this thing. We need your help. Mhmm. So that's the short version. Interesting.
[01:21:25] Cole McCormick:
I think, I mean, I'm gonna pat myself on the back. I've been doing this podcast for a couple years. The entire vision for this has been I'm a filmmaker who has a podcast. I'm a podcaster who makes movies. Like, this is it. This is it. So I'm not sure if everyone should have a podcast. Like, everyone already does have a podcast.
[01:21:42] Zach Mahoney:
But 30 years ago, if you had told everybody, like, in the future, you're all gonna have your own talk show. Yeah. You could have been, like,
[01:21:50] Cole McCormick:
what? Like, that's insane to say. Here we are. Yeah. But here yeah. This is it. Like, this is this is reality. But I think I I was gonna ask you about about the marketing piece as well. Like, is there a different thing for marketing, or is it really just, like, going on different podcasts and just starting your own podcast and having the initiative with your own social media?
[01:22:09] Zach Mahoney:
Is it really just that? I think, yeah. I think you have to at this point. You know, back in the day,
[01:22:15] Cole McCormick:
the way the structure was was that the studio was doing the marketing. Yeah. Right. And they would put you on the talk show. They would put you, you know, and on the radio show and all that. Exactly. Like, you got to focus on your job. You were a great actor.
[01:22:27] Zach Mahoney:
They paraded you around. They marketed it. They paid for all the advertising. They set up all the shit. They had really, really talented people doing all of that. This day this is really we're not there anymore, and we're in this transitionary period. So you have to be able to build an audience. You have to be able to capture that audience. You have to be able to communicate with that audience. I hope that Indie Hub can can play a pivotal role and an instrumental role in getting filmmakers in touch with their audiences and in communication with their audiences.
We can't do the marketing. We're not going to be buying billboards for people's movies. We're not a distribution company. But I think that the difference that Indie Hub has is that you can create a direct financial incentive to go find an influencer, or if you have an audience yourself, to put this out onto social media and to bring the audience over to where your work is at. They you can plug that person directly onto the cap table, and they can start getting paid for every second that those people are watching that movie.
[01:23:35] Cole McCormick:
That is a big fucking change from how things work. And that's the payment splits. Right? Because that's the biggest I we didn't even talk about that. The payment splits. Like, that's the real innovation with podcasting 2.0, with IndieHub. The when it comes to royalties and licensing, the real innovation when it comes to using Bitcoin is you can put a split for each person who helped you make that and promote that. So me as a director, I can just give myself 10%. I can give Zach another 10%. I can give someone who did maybe just a little bit less work 5%. Like, anyone can have a split, and it's up to you, up to that group to figure out what those splits are, and those splits are in perpetuity.
Like, they are forever. And that's, like, bigger than a contract. Because that, like, that goes beyond banks. That goes beyond streamers, which I think is it's always been the innovation. It's why I wanted to do a podcast. It's why I wanted my podcast to be aligned with podcasting 2 point o tech because of just the splits and the payments. I'm like, I'm giving you a split on this podcast. I'm gonna get Let's go. I'm gonna get your your lightning, and you're gonna get whatever you want. 50%, 15, 30, whatever you want. I'm gonna give it to you. And A 100%, obviously. Clearly. Let's do it. I'll do yeah. I'll do negative 5%. Sweet. You'll get a 104. You owe me money. But that's the real innovation, and that is like, that's a future thing. Like, that's future. Like, that's some in my head, I have America Plus is like a verb. Like, that like, splits on my movie is so America Plus. Like, that's so that's so that's some future shit. Yeah. And I love that, man. I freaking love that. And I think that's the real key when it comes to communicating what's possible.
When you tell someone, like, you're gonna have a split of the profits of this, and you're gonna have this forever. Like,
[01:25:28] Zach Mahoney:
period. You go do if you're a talented, young kid or whoever, you know, it like, in the YouTube days, when when YouTube was starting, we were all trying to figure out what was going on. You know, we had talent. We had energy. We had equipment. We had time. If we could have just had a platform where we could put it up in a marketplace and see how it responded financially.
[01:25:53] Cole McCormick:
Mhmm.
[01:25:54] Zach Mahoney:
It would have been a game changer. Yeah. And, you know, if you can if you can go produce a short film for $1,000 or $10,000 or $20,000, and you can make that money back, and you can start to build that confidence and build that skill and build an actual business based on audiences responding positively, that's a big deal. And, you know, you you're 19 or 20. You're trying to tell your cinematographer, hey. I'll give you 10% of whatever the short film makes. Happening. You know, in my opinion, it's a it's it is the game changer. You know, are we is any hub ready right now to take on, an independent film that had a budget of $1,000,000, and can we justify saying, hey, you're probably gonna make your money back? No. Like, we're not there yet.
We need to start with the short, and we need to start with people who are motivated and inspired and are going to go iterate and work and work and work who can build their audience. If you can start to do that and you can start to develop a relationship with your audience and you can start to develop a financial, a little bit of financial momentum. It's like the difference between life and death. And you could start you know, my my my vision for Indie Hub is that you get some young kid on there who starts it up when they're 15 or 16. They got their camera. They were doing whatever. They're learning how to edit in high school. You put up one good movie on Indie Hub, and then 20 or 25 years later, you're winning awards. You're a huge director. You're a huge actor. Whatever. You're a huge cinematographer.
Why not? Like, why can't there be a a progression and a ladder in that way? Mhmm. That's what I'd like to see. Yeah. So anybody, you know, anybody who's listening to this, who's in that world, like, I encourage you. Come over here. Put your work on here. Put your short film on here. Iterate. Figure out how to build your your your your audience, and and then just get to work. Just get to work. Just make movies. Your job is to make movies. Just make movies. Yeah. That's it. I'm trying to help you. Just make movies. I wanna see more movies being made by more talented people all of the time. That's what I want. Yeah. Are you gonna be, be producing movies yourself, or are you gonna be just, like, in charge of indie hub? Like, what's that like for you? I would I mean, the second I can get back into the driver's seat on making some movies, I will. Mhmm. But that won't be for quite some time. Right. You know, I I really gotta I gotta commit to this. I gotta make sure that this works, and that's gonna take all of my time and attention and effort.
You know, honestly, theater is where my heart's at. Okay. I I love theater. I could sit in I could I could sit in a theater all day and rehearse and perform. There's nothing like that. Yeah. I'll be back. I'll be back to that. I'll be back to making movies. But for the foreseeable future, this is where all of my attention and energy and effort are going, and I'm doing everything that I can to support the people who are still out there doing that. Mhmm.
[01:28:58] Cole McCormick:
That's dope, dude. Thank you. How much time do you have? Do you have Plenty time. Let's do it. Dope, dude. What other movies do you like? Well, what's like a movie that you always go to? Let me pee. Well, that's a good spot for a break, and then we'll we'll keep it going. Yeah. We'll pause it. We'll pause it right now. We'll pause it. You're good. We're gonna take a quick value break, everybody. If you didn't know, America Plus is a value for value show. This entire, situation is ran on the value that you are receiving and wanna reciprocate. If you're enjoying the conversation so far, I wanna encourage you to send in a boostagram on a modern podcast app like fountain.fm. Go to value for value dot info for more info, then download the fountain.fm app. It's the best way to support the show. Fountain is really good. Podcast Guru is awesome. Podverse, Cast O Matic, these are modern podcast apps that you are able to support America Plus with some small bits of Bitcoin called Satoshis.
And I'm gonna be reading some boostograms from the last couple weeks. This is from episode 138. We got 2 boostograms in from the same person. The, these these 2 come from, Pies, our boy Pies. What up, Pies? His first one, he sends in a beautiful 420 sats. I love that dude. And then he sends a bunch of emojis, a saluting emoji, beer, mushrooms, fist pump, 2 fist pumps, strength, water gun, America equals money. And he sends, like, a bunch of flags, like an English flag, a a Danish flag. I think that's an English flag. Oh, yeah. Just like a Europe. The he's he has these European flags and a equals poop emoji. So thank you, Piz. Boosting is loving. It's basically, you put Bitcoin with anything, and all of a sudden, that is more efficient. Thank you very much. And then he has something to say here with his second boost to Graham.
He sends in another 404120. That's a that's a marijuana boost, if you didn't know that. 420 sats, from PS. He has to say this, Fight for freedom. And and so just to remind you, the last episode was about the election, and, so he has this to say about the election. Fight for freedom. I want peace and love, but always be prepared for war. God bless us all that we move toward that that we move forward as a peaceful species. Most of us aren't built for that possibility of death and destruction. Until you watch a man get killed to the bare hands and fists of another man 10 feet away from you, You can't say you you can deal with the violence we may have in front of us. Well, Jesus Christ, p s. And then he goes on. Oh, and by the way, I smoke hella weed. I couldn't tell, dude.
And stay strong, and stay working out, to prepare for battle and follow what's going on around us. The weed is a medicinal element to mental health. Some people may use it and have blinders on, but many of us, get more focused when enjoying the green gift from God. And now Thank you. As the French say, it is time for Le Boost. Thank you very much, Piazza. Yeah. So that was in response. I think I was, like, talking shit about some stoners not caring about the election. I understand what you're saying. It's a gift. People can get more focused on it. Piazza, I'm just in a place where I'm not smoking weed right now for mainly spiritual reasons slash mental health. I guess you can say mental health reasons. I just I'm in a place where I don't think weed is really helping me. And I've, like, gone through enough stages and phases to to realize that it's just like, right now, it's just not helping me with anything. So I'm choosing to just stay to stay abstinent from that and alcohol. Doing my best with that.
But thank you so much, PS, for sending in that value. And thank you to everyone else who was streaming in SaaS. That's really important to be to be streaming in SaaS. That's, like, the whole innovation going on with podcasting 2.0. It's it's similar to what Zach is talking about with his indie hub platform. Streaming Satoshi, streaming money to the content that you like is the future. And just sending money instantly to the to the creator that you want, to the producer that you want is the future. So I encourage you to do that. And, Zach is getting some money. He he he's getting a split of money. So so don't forget to send in a boostagram for this episode to help out Zach, to help out myself, and to just help out the entire podcasting 2.0 ecosystem, dude. Just be a part of this, man.
We're gonna wrap things up, with the second half of the episode, and we're gonna play a song at the very end. So I hope you stick around and just enjoy the rest of the episode, folks. Twing.
[01:33:46] Zach Mahoney:
Alright. We're back. We're back.
[01:33:48] Cole McCormick:
Back from the Back from that. Yeah. What movies do you like? What's, like, a movie that you always watch? And, like, does it, like, inspire you? Or, like, what are you what are you getting from like, what do you wanna get from a movie?
[01:34:01] Zach Mahoney:
Excellent question. So I it sucks to admit, but but I've been so
[01:34:13] Cole McCormick:
you only watch German expressionist movies?
[01:34:18] Zach Mahoney:
I just I just watch YouTube all day. No. That's me. No. I the the you know, I've been so, disheartened by the industry for the last 10 years Mhmm. That that I really have have, unfortunately, I have not found it to be, like, a great use of my time Yeah. Because so much of it is just garbage. I can see that. No. I I I agree with that. You know? And and whereas before, I would just be devouring great movies. And and and, look, part of that is part of that is I I'm in a totally different age. I'm married. I'm building a business. I there's only so much time in a day. You've probably already seen all the good movies. Right.
You know? And so, occasionally, someone will be like, you gotta watch this. You gotta watch it. Like, okay. Like, you know, it's rare at this point. Mhmm. That doesn't mean I'm not going back to that. It's just that's kinda where I'm at. So that but that being said, like, a lot of the stuff that that I that I would say is, you know, we're gonna talk about older stuff. There was this period, probably right around I I memory gets a little hazy here, but probably around the time Game of Thrones came out originally. I don't remember even when that even was. When did the first Game of Thrones
[01:35:37] Cole McCormick:
come out? I think it came out in 2,008, which I didn't believe, but it did. Okay. Which is a wild time and time. Perfect example.
[01:35:47] Zach Mahoney:
That's when television started, ironically, a a totally new renaissance. Mhmm. You you the the movie Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad started in o eight as well. Exactly. The amount of good television that was propagated throughout those periods was was mind blowing. Mhmm. Movies got really terrible, and then but they brought the theatrical style and quality to episodic content. Mhmm. I will say this. True detective season 1 Oh, yeah. Is probably the best thing that's ever been put on celluloid Mhmm. In my opinion. Was it put on celluloid? It was shot on film. I didn't know that. Yeah. That's cool.
That's its own thing. We talk about shooting on film. The the film is important. That new topic. We'll go there later. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The thing about True Detective, it took me it took me it took me a while in my life to, like, accept the fact that some people just don't some people just watch movies because they wanna just not think about shit. Like, literally, they just wanna be entertained. I I that's not why I watch movies. I watch movies to be challenged Yes. To be inspired Yes. To to feel something, to to learn something. Like, when I'm watching a movie, I like, my wife will be, like, can I watch a movie? It's you know, she just wants to hang out, and I'm, like, no. No. I don't I don't watch movies to hang out. Yeah. Like, I used to you know, when I was younger, I used to stand up. I had my monitor put I had my my TV put on a hot stand height directly at eye level, and I would stand up and watch movies Mhmm. Because I was so actively engaged in the whole process.
It's not relaxing for me at all. Yeah. And then as I got more into production, it you know, you start to you I started to learn more about how all of that worked. I started to get good at editing. I started to get good at shooting, at cinematography, at lighting. You know, the acting had already ruined a lot of it for me, but then all of that just kind of like the the the it just became it was not a relaxing experience. So I really like, when the stuff was good, it was it was there just can't get any better. Mhmm. And true detective for that true detective for me was that. Yeah. It was like the culmination of every single aspect of that series. 23, they don't count. They're literally just nonsense.
It was a masterpiece at every level. The acting, the writing, the cinematography, the score, the music, the composition, like, all of it. Mhmm. Masterpiece. And the thing about true detective that I liked is that it a lot of people are like, oh my god. It's so dark. It's so dark. Like, that is one of the most hopeful, positive, least cynical things that has ever been produced. Mhmm. But you have to get through the darkness of it to appreciate that final line in the series, which is just fucking mind blowing. It used to be that there was only darkness.
Seems to me the light is winning. Holy fuck.
[01:39:03] Cole McCormick:
That's real. That's some real universe shit. So hardcore.
[01:39:07] Zach Mahoney:
And for him to to build this story to get to that final, it was the I haven't talked about this show in a while, but I have never in my life finished a show and been like, that ending was perfect. Really? Not even breaking bad? No. Wow. No. The end of breaking bad was insane. It was like, how are they gonna how are they gonna wrap this up? There's just a fucking massive shootout. Like, it was just ins but it was, like, it was a masterpiece because the whole thing had gotten to this one point, this one idea. Mhmm. I want to prove that this idea is right, and that is that things aren't fucked up. Mhmm. Like, we're the the good side is winning. That's powerful. It was so fucking powerful when I saw that. It's like I literally was standing there, like, arms crossed, like, just crying. Mhmm.
It was so well done.
[01:40:04] Cole McCormick:
And and so it I I You're the meme of the dad standing in front of the TV. Like, you're the you're that guy. That's how I was how I used to watch stuff. You know? Yeah. And I,
[01:40:13] Zach Mahoney:
so it so what am I what am I looking for when I'm watching? So I'm looking for that. Mhmm. I'm looking for I'm looking for energy. Mhmm. I'm trying to tap into some kind of of of source power that I can use to, like Mhmm. Motivate me and push me throughout the day, and give me some orientation that's worth
[01:40:37] Cole McCormick:
running towards. I felt that way when I was younger watching Deadpool Society. Such a good fucking movie. When they stand up on the desks, and it's like, oh my god. Like, that's I I literally when I was a kid, like, I'm crying watching it. I'm in high school. Mhmm. And I'm just like, grab in my captain. Like and I think it was, like, right when Robin Williams had died too. And I was, like, like, every time somebody died, I would just, like, go into, like I would just binge all their stuff, and that's that's been, like, the thing that that's pissed me off of of being alive. Like, I only know when someone is so good. I only saw 10 Things I Hate About You after I saw The Dark Knight. Mhmm. Like, I only know how good Heath Ledger is after he died. And it's, like and then I'm, like, it seems like I I'm the only one who cares about, like, their last thing. Because, like, I remember, like, loving, Heath Ledger's last movie, The Imaginarium of Doctor Purnassas.
And, like, do you know about that? No. Oh, yeah. So that was yeah. So when Heath Ledger died in in 2008, he was filming a movie with Terry Gillian Terry Gillian. And it was just super fantasy movie. This there's this theater troop, and they're it's just Andrew Garfield and Christopher Plummer. And they're it's this, like, sort of, like, homeless theater troop, and they're going around London. And they're poor, and they're just, like, sort of, like, scamming people, and people aren't respecting them. And then they find this dead guy hanging underneath the bridge, and it's Heath Ledger. And this it's a wild story.
And, but he died in the middle of that. And I remember loving that movie, but nobody saw it. Mhmm. And I've always sort of, like, felt, like, singled out by, like, loving these movies that no one else does. Like, I love Megalopolis. Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis. Like, everyone was, like, shitting on it, but I feel inspired when I watch that movie. I feel like, I'm looking for inspiration. Yeah. I'm looking for I wanna get hyped up. So, like, I'll watch I'll watch Megalopolis and Top Gun Maverick. Like, those 2 like, that's a real good duo for me. Like, I'm gonna beat the enemy. We're gonna do it. Fucking Friday. Let's go. Exactly. Exactly.
And, I just love I remember even, like, being obsessed obsessed with Forrest Gump because, like, just like being I wanna fell fell in love with history. I wanna I I fell in love with, like, the idea of an adventure through that sort of a lifetime. Like, I've always loved these. Like, even, Catch Me If You Can. I would like, Forrest Gump, Catch Me If You Can, Dead Poets Society, he anything with Heath Ledger. Like, these are, like, things that I find I find inspiring and, like, hopeful and love and life, and it's like, these things are I've I've always, like, hovered around these things.
It's always been very interesting to me. And when I saw Megalopolis, I didn't feel the emotions per se, but I could see the vision. Mhmm. And I could see how much Coppola felt, how much love, and how much inspiration Coppola felt for this idea for a better society, for a better future. And for me and myself, as as just a consumer of movies, I'm always looking to be inspired for a new idea.
[01:43:39] Zach Mahoney:
And I had There's very few movies like that. For tell me what you think here. We're we're early in the up days, but I I'm I think I'm gonna put into some marketing material. I had the realization there there's 2 ways to get an audience. Mhmm. You can captivate, or you can capture. Mhmm. And we're we're in the capture phase of it right now, and we need to get back to the captivate. Mhmm. The captivate is a willing exchange of energy. Who's capturing? Marvel? Like, Disney? Like, what do you mean by Captivate streaming services? Right? YouTube. We're capturing your attention. We're forcing you into this pin, and we're moving you around in ways that make us money and take away your time. We're dragging you through our through our algorithm. Exactly. It's not a mutually beneficial relationship. I mean, that that's not I understand that's absurd. There's a lot of use to YouTube. I'm not, like But, ultimately, that's what it is. Exactly. You're you're in their little device. Right?
We need to we need to get people paying for things because they're captivated by them. By the emotion. Like, of course, we don't wanna pay for most of the show on YouTube. It's trash. Yeah. It is trash. Fucking trash.
[01:44:49] Cole McCormick:
There's no way I'm gonna pay for mister beast. Right. Even though I might be entertained Right. By something he does, but I I would much rather pay for a Robin Williams movie. Yes. Any any sort of Chris Nolan movie, anything like that because there's so much more love into that. You're captivated.
[01:45:04] Zach Mahoney:
Right? There's something that's that's you're getting something in exchange for the $10 or $5 or whatever. It's totally fucking worth it.
[01:45:12] Cole McCormick:
Anyway, Keith. You gotta watch Heath Ledger's last movie because he died in the middle of filming. And so when that happens, it's like, oh, no. The movie's done. But they recasted him with 3 actors. Oh, wow. Jude Law, I kinda remember this now. Yeah. It was Jude Law. It was, Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell. Wow. They all and and they rewrote the script. They had to change it for it to make sense, but they were all, like, trying to capture that essence, trying to capture what what Heath was able to to captivate with his performances.
Yeah. And it was so intriguing to me as a child. That was 2009 when that came out, and I was so obsessed with that idea. And and I could, like, feel it. Because that movie's about it's it's very, like, ethereal. Like, there's, like, Christopher Plummer. He makes a deal with the devil, and he's using Heath Ledger to, like, to make that deal happen. And it's, like, it's very interesting like that. It's very mystical and very dark as well. But to see the love, to to to see, like, the essence of of that actor try to come forward through these other actors, I was so inspired by. Because, oh, that's my girlfriend. What up, Shannon? Hi. Hi. This is Zac Mahoney. Hi. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Shannon works with dogs. Oh, nice. She's obsessed with animals. We have a cat. I think he's asleep, Shan.
Just so you know. If you don't see the cat.
[01:46:34] Zach Mahoney:
He's I saw the cat bowl. I wonder where the cat was.
[01:46:40] Cole McCormick:
But I'm I've always been inspired by by something like that. Like, just capturing an essence capturing this this, this inspiring thing within movies. So I I forgot what I where I was trying to go with that. But Yeah. We were talking about, like, why. Like, what are we looking for out of a movie? Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Just I wanna be inspired. I wanna think about something new. I wanna think about life. I wanna think about the expansion of life. Yeah. Like, when I think about Forrest Gump, it's sort of like like, there's never gonna be another Forrest Gump, but it's almost like everyone's life is Forrest Gump. Like, you're going through a war. You're going through a heartbreak. You're going through, like, something that you don't really understand. It's universal human experiences
[01:47:25] Zach Mahoney:
Mhmm. That these geniuses can can, articulate and express in a unique way. Mhmm. They they they they they trick us into our own humanity. Yeah. You know, they it's a way to, like, get around the ego. Mhmm. Be like, oh, yeah. We're all Mhmm. We all experience these. That's a really interesting movies get us around the ego.
[01:47:49] Cole McCormick:
That's so wild. That's true too, because some characters are so ego, and you hate that. You hate the ego guy. Yeah. You hate him. And it's, like, you don't wanna like Tom Cruise in Top Gun because he's cocky. But then it's, like but then he gets around it. Like, there's a journey. Yeah. And so it's, like, you can identify that, and then you can, like, forgive that. Yeah. It's so interesting, dude. I mean, I was thinking about this the other day in a totally different context, but it's, like, you know, part of this you know, being an actor, you
[01:48:19] Zach Mahoney:
you know, generally speaking, you wanna play the hero, you wanna play the good guy, you wanna be the but but playing the role of the bad guy is is necessary. Tremendous honor. Mhmm. Oh, yeah. Like, are you evil? No. Of course not. You're tapping into it for the service of the greater good. Mhmm. That role those roles are super important. Mhmm.
[01:48:44] Cole McCormick:
I mean, I I immediately I mean, the biggest villain right now is Thanos. Like, Josh Brolin as Thanos. Like, he is like, they made an iconic villain with Infinity War, with Thanos. Like, that's and people don't view Thanos as evil. He kills half the universe, but he's literally justified through his own way of being and thinking. And he's and he's a fucked up father. He kidnapped and abused these these girls. But somehow, some way, there's, like, you still understand him, and you can still see how he can how he fits in. And it's it's very interesting how how things like that happen. And and the actor is interested in playing something like that. Yeah. You know, people you know, Josh Brolin doesn't wanna be the the hero all the time. He wants to like, he he he was cable in Deadpool. He's like some angry hero. But then, like, you know, Thanos is so much more of a interesting character because he has a motive, because he he has a real service to the greater good of the movie. There's depth and dimension. Mhmm. Like, you know, we had this we had this saying in as an actor. It's, like, you can't play disconnected disconnectedly.
[01:49:49] Zach Mahoney:
Yeah. You can't be the surface level version. Like, you can't play a Nazi.
[01:49:54] Cole McCormick:
Mhmm. And not, like, curl when you say the line.
[01:50:00] Zach Mahoney:
Like, when you say the line as a Nazi, you need to, like, actually, like, try to, like Yeah. Like like, off your chest up. Like, how do you how do you how do you play a scene where they treat humans as if they're trash and do it authentically? Mhmm. Well, you can't play that scene, like, I am I am playing this as an evil person. No. You can that's literally what you call bad acting. This is garbage. Yeah. You have to substitute it, and you say, like, oh, that I'm going to treat this human being as this as if it's a chair. I'm gonna just fucking throw it out. Like, burn it. I don't care. Mhmm. But you can't so my point about, you know, the the the the evil characters that we fall in love with is because they're not playing evil.
They're they're playing an a a flawed human being Mhmm. Who's going about their life. The undercurrent is that they're doing it with love Mhmm. But they're misguided. Yes. We all relate to that. Yes. Oh, completely understand that. You know? Like, we want someone to be able to redeem themselves or to have redemption in spite of the fact that they're flawed. Mhmm. But you can't play it. This is just acting talk, but you just you can't play a flawed person flaw flaw diddly. Yeah. No. You can't. I'm the most flawed. Like, this is nonsense. You know? It is nonsense. Yeah. What do you think of okay. So here's a take that I have on Spielberg.
[01:51:19] Cole McCormick:
I'm not sure if anyone agrees with me, but I have I have zero that like button. I yeah. I have zero sets. Please. I have zero nostalgia and love for Spielberg's fantasy movies. I literally Like what? Which ones? I'm talking about his fantasy movies. I'm talking about Indiana Jones. I'm talking about Jurassic Park. I have no love for Spielberg's fantasies. I only like and enjoy and go back to Spielberg's dramas for some reason. And I have this theory within my own self, and I feel like this goes for, like, cinematic culture as well. 2008 was such a big year. It's like a changing year for everything. 2008, Iron Man, Dark Knight, Indiana Jones 4.
And I've always have felt like like, that was, like, one of my fur that was my first Spielberg movie. And I never got into like, I didn't wanna watch Indiana Jones after I saw Crystal Skull. I was, like, a part of the hype. Like, I I I I Well, you got lied to. I got lied to. I forced myself to be hyped up, and then I was lied to about how such a I mean, that movie sucked, didn't it? Like, if I remember correctly, Crystal Skull. It did suck. No. It it was no good. I mean, sort of because of George Lucas, he had a bad idea. It was George Lucas who had the idea with the aliens, but, I was 11 years old, and I just wasn't into it. And then I just I I I can see the quality of the fantasy movies. Like, I can see the quality of Indiana Jones and the cinematography, and I I know that he he tapped into something with Jurassic Park, and, like, he really sweeps you up. But I just have 0 like, I'm more interested in Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, War Horse.
I'm more interested in Lincoln than I am Indiana Jones. I don't know why. I'm not sure. I I I feel like a like an odd thumb out. Like, no one else agrees with me. People in your generation won't agree with me because I'm sure you grew up with some fantasy Spielberg. Like, I'm sure you have sort of nostalgia or you have, like No. I I
[01:53:21] Zach Mahoney:
I think that if you if you really drill down and you ask people, you just have to ask the question differently. You can't say, like, what's your favorite movie? Because a lot of times people are gonna be like, what movie did I have the most fun watching? Mhmm. Or what movie, like, blew my fucking mind? Like, Jurassic Park, when it came out, was unprecedented. Yeah. The context of the time, it blew people's fucking minds. And I wasn't around for that. You didn't have the context. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that Jurassic Park was the movie that affected them the most. Almost always, if you really get into, like, Spielberg, they're gonna be, Schindler's List. Right. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. You know, it's It's his best movie. Lincoln, Schindler's List, Private Ryan, whatever.
So I I I think you're being unfair to your to yourself. You know, you're you're not isolated in that opinion, I don't think. It's just a it's just a different question. Just ask a more specific question. Right. And I think most people generally would agree with you. Mhmm. You know, what movie affected you the most? Like, most people are gonna be if they're honest with themselves, they're gonna be like, yeah. I was Schindler's List. Like Mhmm. Fuck. Yeah. Private Ryan, no one had ever done you know, it's kind of, like, expected. It's it's it's like the norm today, but, dude, you for anybody who's young, when Saving Private Ryan came out, that had never been done before. That 30 minutes on the beach, that movie broke every rule that existed for war movies, violence, realism.
It was completely unprecedented. People were fucking speechless Mhmm. In the movie theater after watching that scene. I mean, they were fucking affected. People were shaking. They've never seen anything like that. Mhmm. That's the problem with movies. They're so contextual. Mhmm. What came before it societally? What came after? Anyway, I'm on a I'm on a rant. I I think that I think more people would agree with you than you give yourself credit for. I think you're right. Yeah.
[01:55:23] Cole McCormick:
I always found that interesting, and I wasn't sure if that was, like, even accurate to think, because you always see, like, peep like, Spielberg will be remembered because of Indiana Jones and Jaws and these fantasies. And people will put Schindler's List up as, like, the best movie, but he's, like, remembered for the other stuff, for the Jurassic Park. It's like Pete the culture loves him for Jurassic Park. Filmmakers love him for Schindler's List. But, like, ultimately, it's the fantasy that sort of, like, leads everything. Yeah. And I I I always just found that interesting, because I was just I've been more interested in
[01:55:57] Zach Mahoney:
real life stuff or something that tries to convey real life. Well, I we just got them watching the World Series. Right? Like, everybody's gonna remember the grand slam Mhmm. The walk off grand slam in the first game, because it's exciting, and it's spectacular, and it never been done before. Nobody's gonna be like, man, there was like a, you know, series of 45 pitches where this pitcher was really playing a chess match with this guy that, you know, he had been in a battle with 3 seasons prior. Like like, no Yeah. No one cared about that. But the but but, objectively, like, that that battle Mhmm. Is is that the those grinds, that that masterful, execution of something, it's the thing that gives the exciting part a foundation.
Yeah. And it's just, you know, the people aren't in the weeds. Right? Like, we're in the weeds. It's great. Yeah.
[01:56:50] Cole McCormick:
Oh, yeah. I mean, I was a tour guide at Warner Brothers. So I was, like, as deep in the weeds as you can with, like, nerd culture and people. And I think that's sort of what what I've been, like, reacting to. Just, like, all the tour guides love Jurassic Park. And, like, I like, I'll watch it. Sure. But I'm not obsessed with it. Yeah. And it's, like, tour guides are obsessed with these things. Yeah. And I just always had a different perspective, and it's very interesting like that. Or I would watch I I haven't seen it, but I would I would I was always willing to talk about Roads to Perdition, that film that Warner Brothers Yeah. That's Spielberg. Yeah. I think it's Spielberg. Maybe it's not. Or or I should say I think Spielberg did Red Perdition.
Over AI. Yeah. Over because there was, like, this one there's this one back loss set that both those movies filmed on. So I was always willing to talk about this one movie over this fantasy movie because I just because of my own preference.
[01:57:39] Zach Mahoney:
I think I think you could go back into Jurassic Park without the expectation of Spielberg.
[01:57:44] Cole McCormick:
Yeah. And go into it, like That's the real fuck date that it's always Spielberg, Spielberg, Spielberg. It's, like, I'm sorry. Like, I just don't Just go into it with musicality,
[01:57:54] Zach Mahoney:
appreciation of the musicality, of the tempo, of the timing, of the tension, and the discovery of pay pace and tempo.
[01:58:01] Cole McCormick:
Mhmm. You know, then you're, like, okay. Because then I feel vindicated when the movie, like, Ready Player 1 comes out, and it's, like, oh, he's really just, like he's just repeating what he did. And then people are, like, wanna get hyped up because, oh, did did you see the dinosaur in Ready Player 1? It's, like, it's not that exciting. I don't know what to tell you. I don't care. I care about I care about Lincoln. I care about I care about him calling Daniel Day Lewis Lincoln on set. Like, I I care about him actually doing it and being authentic with it. Like, I care more about him using candles on the set than using some sort of other lighting for the camera in Indiana Jones. Like, I don't know why I feel that way, but I just do. What what do you think about Coppola? Do you think Coppola still has it? Did you see Megalopolis? I haven't seen it yet. It's on the list. I think you would like it. What you've explained to me, you would enjoy Megalopolis.
You might laugh at parts. You might think some parts are ridiculous. But, ultimately, I think it it's in the vein of what you're looking for. I'm I'm sure I would. I mean, the dude's a master.
[01:59:01] Zach Mahoney:
Maybe it's not the pinnacle of his of his artistic endeavors, but he's you have to respect You have to. Like, the the the talent. I Sandy Meissner has this quote, your talent lies in your choices. I when I'm watching a movie, I'm looking for specific choices. Whether they sometimes they hit, sometimes they don't, but I I have gotten to a point where I respect somebody trying something that's really specific. Again, like, if it's a dud, I I I clap because someone had the courage to stand up and do the thing in the first place. Mhmm. That's why I clap. Yes. That deserves respect and honor. You know? Why I like Joker too. It's a fucking musical with a murderer.
[01:59:54] Cole McCormick:
And, like, it's actually, like it's weird. It's wonky. And, like, Megalopolis is the same way. Like, I can I I'm I'm willing to applaud just the sheer act of going for it? Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm inspired by. Like, it's what I wanna do as well even though these movies made no money. Yeah. I'm inspired by the flops. It's you got you then so that's you know?
[02:00:12] Zach Mahoney:
It's easy to just talk shit on the sidelines. Easy for me to go to an NFL game. Be like, I can't believe you missed it again. You suck. You know? Like like,
[02:00:19] Cole McCormick:
dude, I'm not on the field. Yeah. I put so much of the audience how hard that shit is. So much of the audience is Monday morning quarterback game. Yeah. It's really strange to me. A lot of shit talking. It's easy to talk shit. But, yeah, you should watch it. Yeah. Whenever it's on streaming, you should check it out. If it's still in theater, I mean, I would just give Coppola the money. Yeah. Just really go for it. Yeah. But yeah, man. Megalopolis.
[02:00:44] Zach Mahoney:
It's wild. Yeah. I I mean, I I've seen reviews, and usually when a movie is has, like, a a usually, there's, like, a distribution curve. Mhmm. But this one's just, like, hate, apathy, and love all mixed into 1, which usually to me indicates that somebody did something incredibly specific and incredibly skillful. Yes. And people just don't understand how to react to it. The there's, people who aren't in the weeds and who don't make movies or aren't movie nerds or whatever will equate the quality of a movie with whether or not they liked it. Mhmm. I can dislike a certain kind of music and and be like, no. This is, like but that too is a a master. Mhmm. Like, this is incredible. It doesn't it's not the type of music that I enjoy. Mhmm. I can separate. I don't like the thing with it was whether it was good or not. A lot of people, like, if I didn't like it, it wasn't good. That's not true. From a filmmaking perspective, something can be a masterpiece, and you can hate it.
Those are totally separate realities. And so the the reviews I've seen on this kind of say that. Like, did he really to me, it seems like a masterpiece because so many people were pissed off, and it was so polarizing. You can't do that unless you've you've done something really, really specific. Mhmm. So it seems like he was going for something very specific. It was. I mean, he combined Roman history with modern America,
[02:02:01] Cole McCormick:
and he he he wanted to make a Roman epic in regards to a Roman epic talking about modern America. Mhmm. Like, that's what it is. And so you got people are named Caesar. People are like, Aubrey Plaza's character's name, Wow. Her name is Wow. And you got Jon Voigt. He's this like, Jon Voigt's in, like, a Peter Pan costume for half the movie. And it's just, like, it's so silly. And you got Same. And specific. And Shia Labeouf is in it. Like, just Shia Labeouf for just that itself. Like, I I'm obsessed with Shia. And his he's a wild character. He's just a wild card in the movie. And there's, like, some political undertones, but they don't go too far with it. It's really about, like, the world.
It was hyper specific. And but he mixes in different things from history, from fantasy. And he calls it a fable, because it's like it it it is a fantasy. It is a fable, but I respected it. The my first viewing of it I saw it three times. My first viewing, it was on Thursday night. I think a lot of people were drunk. It was, like, it was, like, 10 o'clock at night. Wasted. No. For real. And people were, like, laughing and mocking it, like, laughing in a mocking way. And it wasn't like an uncomfortable laughter. Like, oh, what did we just see? Well, like, what was it was like, this is fucking retarded. Dumbest shot I've ever seen. Literally. Yeah. And then my second viewing, it was, like, people were sort of more respectful to towards it. People were there there there's silly parts in the movie. Like, objectively, there are there is comedy in the movie that you should laugh at, and there are some things that are purposefully absurd.
And so that second viewing, the audience was more receptive to that. And I was also more willing to to laugh as well. Because the the first viewing, I was just like like, I was on the roller coaster for the first time. Like, like, I don't know how to react. I'm just, like, seeing it all for the first time. And then my second time, I'm like, oh, that is funny. Like, that's that's why that he did that. Like, Coppola, like, that's cool, dude. And then my 3rd viewing, I just fell in love with it. I just I was like, wow. This is important. I think it's gonna stand the test of time. Maybe not in terms of, like, oh, this movie was so good. But in terms of, like, wow. This movie is actually impactful. Like, the ideas that it brings forward, just this concept because Adam Driver's whole thing in the movie is, like, he wants to build a better world. He wants to build a better Rome, and the old guard doesn't want that. And it that's Giancarlo Giancarlo Esposito, Gus from Breaking Bad. He's he's the mayor, and he doesn't He's he's trying to open up a casino in the beginning of the movie. It's gonna bring jobs, and it's gonna we're gonna have union workers.
And, Adam Driver comes in, and he's like, to be literally, to be or not to be? Like, literally, like, reciting Shakespeare while talking about his vision for a better city.
[02:04:56] Zach Mahoney:
It's, like, damn. Like, this is it's so much more deeper than people were ready for. It's it sounds like it's a movie. And again, I'm talking out of my ass. Haven't seen it, but it sounds like it's a movie that We're gonna watch it right now. Live viewing. It's one of those movies that probably won't be appreciated until 20 years after. Yeah. Until America's fallen. Until until people or is in the middle of being reborn. Right? This is really where we're at right now. Yes. And, you know, Coppola, right, like, take k. You got a you got a master of his craft and a dude who's been around a long time and seen a lot of shit.
He's doing something that probably people will appreciate who have gone through a little bit more of the shit that he's seen. Mhmm. So you take millennials and get them to maybe 60 years old. Mhmm. Once we go through this, whatever this crazy transition is, my ability to look back on a movie like this and be like, oh, oh, wow. That's what he was saying. Yeah. I mean, like, oh. That is what will happen. That's what I believe. Because it's like it's still quality. Like, it wasn't cheap. It wasn't just thrown together.
[02:05:57] Cole McCormick:
Like, it's actually, like it's really it's really quite interesting. And he was willing to during filming, I know that he was trying to do what they did with star war with the Star Wars shows. He tried using the the the video wall, but he, like, got rid of that, and he was like, it's not working. It's not he just went to normal just normal green screen effects and stuff like that. So, like, it's just interesting how he was willing to experiment with new technology and, like, modern technology. And I think the, the cinematographer was, like, younger as well, like, not working with someone that he had worked worked with before. So just willing to experiment. I think that's that's the real thing that I was inspired by. This this guy in his late seventies is willing to experiment with a new type of story.
And and and also the choices that they did, they were doing a lot of because he's he's in the theater. Like, he loves directing theater, and the all the actors would talk about how they were do just do theater games, during rehearsals. And there's takes in the movie where they're actually, like, doing, like, a theater game. Yeah. And that's, like, this back and forth between these two characters. It's like, woah, bro. Like, no one would do that. No one wouldn't do that. Like, no one would do that. The the the thing is we used to do that shit all the time. Mhmm. The
[02:07:12] Zach Mahoney:
one of the one of the real problems, in my opinion, where we're at right now is that movie making became a very, like, director of photography centric art form after 2,008. Right?
[02:07:41] Cole McCormick:
How pretty is the shot? How pretty can you make it look? Right. Can we and and we lost the the directors
[02:07:48] Zach Mahoney:
who used to spend thousands of hours in a theater with actors working on the whole point is a relationship between human human beings. I mean, this is what we were relating to. Mhmm. Tempo, blocking, timing, relationship, tension, discovery, timing, all of that is gone. And it was replaced by how can I make how can we have a pretty one shot? Here's a close-up. Here's a pretty close-up. You watch movies now, it's close-up, close-up, close-up, close-up, close-up. I don't want to see someone in a fucking close-up. Yeah. I wanna see 2 people reacting to each other, relating to each other in the scene. That's where all of the good juice is at. That's where all of everything we wanna see is when 2 great actors are in relationship with one another in the same frame. Yeah. You shouldn't edit unless you have to. There's some specific point, but it just became this, like, well, we're gonna stand there, and we're gonna make this look pretty, and we're gonna stand there. And then the directors tried to start controlling the actor's job of pacing Yeah.
In the edit. And it's, like, this is not this is not effective. I hope that we can I I the I'm I'm a little bit concerned about this? I hope that that good directors can start to get back into the theater or at least into a classroom where they're in relationship with actors and writers in the same place, and they can all hash this out. Mhmm. Because I mean, I watch I watch some stuff these days, and I'm like, this is literally like they shot the first rehearsal. Yeah. What is going on?
[02:09:27] Cole McCormick:
And I it's just like they're just churning and burning. Like, how can we get 10 pages done in a day, 15 pages done in a day? Mhmm. Just close and close and close and close. We'll edit pacing later. I think that's why you got filmmakers. So before the pandemic at at WB, when I was working there, you got, Ethan or I it was Joel Cohen. He was doing a Shakespeare movie with Denzel. They were doing Macbeth. Right. And a part of me felt like the reason for them doing that was because, like, there's nothing interesting to do right now. Like, they like, just let's just go back to Shakespeare. Let's just do the play. Like, we just, like, back back to fundamentals. Let's just go back to the fundamental of these characters, of these human beings.
Just a simple story, Macbeth, and, you know, and, I'm not sure if that if anyone really saw that movie, but I I did, and I liked it. Like, it's it's Macbeth. It's Shakespeare. You're it's always gonna be, like, quote, unquote, good. Like, it's it's well done. But I feel like some filmmakers are reacting in that way. Like, they want to continue. They wanna keep that connection between the human beings and that journey. We're just in a strange state. Very strange state. And it's, like, people are hyped up for Downey Junior coming back to Marvel, but it's, like, it's still not. Like, he they're just he's he's gonna be in front of a green screen. He's not really in front of actors. He's he might be on the same set with with some actors, but it's, like, it's not really it's more about doom. It's more about Marvel. It's more about these things. It's like Yeah. I I saw I remember seeing, Heat for the first time. Michael Mann's Heat. I went down to the new Beverly, theater. And that was my first time seeing it ever. Super old, film stock. It was, like, scratchy. I was in the front row.
I I showed up late. That's why I was in the front row, and I wasn't ready. My girlfriend I my girlfriend was on the very end of the row, and I had to be in the middle of the row. So we didn't even get to see it together. Terrible. But, but I'm watching Heat, and I remember, like, reading about how much of a big deal it was to have De Niro and Pacino in in the same scene. And they're sitting at a table in a cafe. And what you said earlier about 2 actors being in front of each other next to each other, like and creating that energy, like, I felt that in heat. Mhmm. I felt that. Because those two characters are they're in different places in different parts of the movie, and then they finally come together. And that's a big moment, not just from the celebrity actor point of view, but from the story point of view. Like, that's actually really interesting, these 2 guys sitting down and giving each other respect and talking about their world. And that's so unique, and that needs to, like, continue to to be a thing. And I hope people don't just forget about that.
[02:12:05] Zach Mahoney:
Going back to what movies are are just always hit, Glengarry, Glenn Ross. Never seen that. Oh, it's a it's a must. It's a must. You're you're talking about some of the greatest actors of all time Mhmm. Doing a a a phenomenal play, shot by g everyone involved in that is basically a genius. But what what what what that really brings to the forefront in the context of this conversation is how important blocking is. Mhmm. There are some camera moves in there that are so subtle, but so effective and so important that are always in service of what how can we highlight and underscore the dynamics of the relationship between the characters on screen? This isn't let's make someone look pretty with cool lights in the background. This is what is the actual story of the relationship that's happening, and how can we how can we underscore it and highlight it and support it?
The the camera blocking in that I mean, the regular blocking too, but the camera blocking in that is exquisite. It's subtle, but it is masterful. Mhmm. They cross the line where the line needs to be crossed and moments that that matter. Every decision they make is how do we support the relationships. Mhmm. And then, of course, the acting in that is just I mean, it's just 1st class 1st class. Glengler Glengarry Glen Ross always hits. I'll check it out. Yeah. I also think about when when you bring up blocking, I think about,
[02:13:42] Cole McCormick:
David Fincher, and I think about The Social Network, and just all of David Fincher's movies. But The Social Network specifically, it's so, I actually had a friend who worked on David Fincher's movie Mank, that came out on Netflix. Mhmm. Did you ever see that? Mhmm. It's about the make it's about the writer of Citizen Kane riding Citizen Kane. Not the making of Citizen, but the writing of Citizen Kane. Right. My buddy worked on that, and he was, he was a double in it. And he was describe I was like, dude, what's it like working with Fincher? And he was telling me, it's like, it's so interesting how he talks about blocking, how he talks about, like and you it's not just you need to hit your mark. It's like it's these very specific things. Yep. And they're it's there to tell the story. It's not Yeah. Fucking random. Like, I don't know. Stand over there. Like, no. Yeah. What? Yeah. And then I think about the social network and, you know, just that famous scene where Andrew Garfield, he storms through the doors. He's like, Mark. Mark. And it's like, you know, there's a reason why the camera is, like, sort of like a low angle on Andrew Garfield. It's like and there's a reason why it's higher up on Jesse. It's like and then it's, like, sort of like it it's like this, like, a weird, shady shot on Justin Timberlake.
And it's like this like, there's reason for the camera. There's reason for the movement. There's reason, like, all this. And now all these people are together, and they're actually, like, combating or they're, like, pushing their energy together into the center, and that center is the screen. It's the movie. Yeah. It's like I found that so like, I get hyped up when I think about that. Fincher, I he he's so specific.
[02:15:20] Zach Mahoney:
He he in some ways, I think he kind of contributed to the problem that we have today. He got a lot of directors trying to emulate him, but but almost no one is that smart Mhmm. Or or that committed and dedicated. And he was, like, one of the first people who when when using a red, when using digital cinema, would would would edit in different takes. Mhmm. It'd be a scene of a people around a table, for instance, and you'd be watching a scene play out, and it's actually his 3rd take and her 5th take and the 9th take from this guy. He would splice it. It was the first time you could do that with high resolution. And, like, it's cool to talk about that.
From an actor's perspective, it's, like, dude, you're you're you're just shitting on the decisions that people made for a particular reason and the and the energetic ball that was bouncing back and forth in the scene, he could get away with it because he's Fincher. Mhmm. But then you but then you got in the studios, and you got people saying, well, why why can't we do this faster and better? You know, like, can't we just splice this here and do this there? And it was, like, the he was doing it for really, really, really specific reasons that he could justify. Those people are just not on that level. Mhmm. Yeah. They're just not. And, like, you know, so let's get back to the fundamentals. We get back to the fundamental like, there's a scene in Saving Private Ryan. You know, Spielberg was so good at this.
You would have you would have, like people don't generally think of Spielberg in terms of, like, long takes. That's not like what they remember. Like, go back and watch private Ryan. There's just long takes in that. Very long takes. There's that scene after they take the beach. Tom Hanks, captain Miller just pulled the translator, I think, and they're going to, like, talk to the crew dudes, and there's, like I wanna say it's, like, almost 6 minutes. Wow. And it's not like children of men where it's, like, oh, we're gonna make this a spectacle. It was just, like On them. This is what we need to do to move the story from a to b to c to d. Mhmm. Let's just do it in this one take, and we'll and and each take had you know, that one take had multiple close ups in it. It had multiple wide shots.
It had everything that you would have without without having to edit because they understood how to block the fucking scene correctly. Mhmm. They took time doing it. Mhmm. It's stuff like that that just has gone by the wayside on so many movies today, and I really And I think I encourage filmmakers to just, like, go back to the basics. Figure out what you're doing. Figure out how to work with actors. Figure out how to work with the timing. Figure out how to work with tempo. Tension and discovery.
[02:18:04] Cole McCormick:
I think YouTube is ruined. Last. Yeah. Edit last. I think YouTube is ruining some of this as well because there's I got sort of caught up with this whole, like, make your thing look cinematic. Like, make it like, make your shot cinematic. Like, this whole, like, that just that term. What does that mean? What the fuck is cinematic dude? And it's like they're always talking about this, like, the triangle over the fucking eye. And they're talking about depth of lighting. They're talking about just, like, just some major bullshit. It's like, how many movies are you watching? And that's really,
[02:18:34] Zach Mahoney:
like and that's really what's going on. Like, that's not a movie. It's not what is, like Yeah. Was it is this a shallow depth? Like, okay. Your your lens is wide open the whole time. Like, so there there are
[02:18:44] Cole McCormick:
some of the best movies of all time were shot at, like, a 4 or a 5, 6, you know, just because, like, they needed to make it happen that way for focus when you're doing one take for 6. Like like yeah. I totally agree. So much of what is like, what makes a good movie is just out of the necessity of that day when they were making it. Yeah. That's, like then that's, like, a real high quality thing. That's they were, like, trying to solve a problem they had on set, and then that's, and then that's the shot. Like, the only reason we think of, like, cinematic space battles is because of Star Wars. But Star Wars was solving a problem with when it comes to an object moving in space. How do you make an object
[02:19:22] Zach Mahoney:
look like it's moving really fast in space? And then they were solving a problem for that. Well, this this this kinda makes me think of of this is sort of a Bitcoiner perspective on money and and philosophy in life. Shooting things on film
[02:19:37] Cole McCormick:
Oh, yeah. Yes. Film. Yes. Bring it up. Shooting things on film was
[02:19:43] Zach Mahoney:
so much better. Yeah. It was so much better from a performance perspective. You had to be specific. The shit was expensive. And expensive. Yeah. And you could only take you'd only run and take for so long. Mhmm. You couldn't just, like, let's do it 60 times like Fincher, and then just, like, delete or, like, whatever. Who cares? Throw it on a hard drive. You had to plan, and you had to prep, and you had to rehearse Mhmm. Multiple rehearsals. You had camera blocking. You had to get everything in sync. It was a dance. And when when that camera started rolling and you heard that film running through, it was like, fuck. I need to be on my game right now. Mhmm.
This whole crew of a 100 people and all of this money and all of this shit is coming down to this moment, it's important. Now I'm not saying that doesn't exist in the digital world, but it's a different thing. It is a different thing. When you limit just like Bitcoin, right, when you when you put a a constraint on something, you're actually opening it up. 1 of the one of the biggest lessons I ever learned as an artist was when I when I realized that that limitation actually bred creativity. I didn't wanna be limited. I had this young opinion like, you never did. You know? Whatever. And then once I finally realized that I had to constrain myself intentionally.
And until I did that, I wasn't able to actually get as creative as I needed to get. Mhmm. My life changed after that, and that's true that's true across all mediums. It's not just, like, on on stage or whatever. Like, a a with money. You know, scarcity and money creates abundance and everything else. There's an inverse relationship between the 2. We have to have structure Yeah. In order to we have to have limitation. We have to have structure. That's our gateway to the infinite. It's counterintuitive, but it's true. But, yeah, I I just I look back on this day shooting stuff in film, and it was so much more important. Yeah.
[02:21:41] Cole McCormick:
Well, people who are on the show Euphoria, that show Euphoria on on HBO, they filmed on film. They had Kodak create a very, like, a special film stock That's dope. For them. I'm not sure if you know that. It was this old film stock that was only around for 16 millimeter. This I believe it was called Ektachrome something. Okay. But the filmmaker, Sam Levinson, he went to Kodak and wanted it to be he wanted this film stock that was discontinued to be recreated for 35 millimeter. That's dope. And everyone involved with that has just talked about how there's it's just a different vibe. It's just a different thing. Because you know how you don't have a lot of it. You need to get the take right away, and it's and it will look a certain way for this particular reason. And it's it's so just boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. There's reason for reason for reason. And structure. There's so much structure. That's why Tarantino films on film. That's why Nolan films on film. You know? And he's trying to push the boundaries with that with IMAX film.
It's like, you know, film is still around. I'm pretty sure the the Russo's who are directing the next Avengers movies, I I they hinted at wanting to film the new ones on IMAX film because of that seriousness, because of that thing, and I just find that so interesting. And I wanted to shoot on film. I had an so I went to so my film school story, I went to Scottsdale Community College in Arizona, which is, like, it's where Bill Hader went. It's where, David Spade went. Okay. So it's a random connection to those guys, but, really good film school. And there's a section where they you actually buy film from Kodak, but I dropped out before we did that. Mhmm. So I've never gotten gotten to work with film, but I've always seen, like, the value of it. And I've always wanted to work with that. And then I look up the prices for film right now, and it's, like, one reel or a a case, which is, like, 2 or 3 reels or something like that. It's, like, a $1,000 or, like, $700.
And it's like, wow. And that's, like, maybe 30 minutes of footage. It's like, that's not worth it. It's not worth it at all. And I and then I'm thinking about, like, how much money are the is Nolan spending on his film? Like, how much like, how do you know how much money you need for how much film you need? Like, how do you even calculate that? It's like, wow. Like, they were just burning through that shit back in the day.
[02:24:02] Zach Mahoney:
You had to be specific. Mhmm. Like, it it you had to be specific. That's the only way you manifest. Right? When you're when you're specific. Specificity is the key to everything. Yeah. It is the key to everything. You you like, especially as an actor. You can't be general. You cannot be middle of the road. It can't be middle of the road nonsense choices. You have to be as specific
[02:24:23] Cole McCormick:
as you possibly can. Yeah. Amazon's not oh, yeah. We'll do 2 days sometimes. 2 day shipping sometimes. Yeah. Exactly. No. You know Amazon is Amazon because of 2 day shipping. Yep. You know Nolan is Nolan because of his choices. Yeah. Like and and and, you know,
[02:24:39] Zach Mahoney:
again, you rehearsed. Like, back in the day, it was like the movie was already done before you got on set. Mhmm. I mean, that's not totally true. There's there's things where there are definitely movies where they're just, like, figuring it out. But, like, generally speaking, the objective was, like, we're just going to grab the shots that already exist in our mind, already exist on paper. We know the framing. We're not finding it on set. It's this. Mhmm. We it's been this for 2 years. Go get it. Mhmm. Make it happen. You know, Elia Kazan, Sydney Lumet, you know, you you you you started these things with rehearsals.
You rehearsed for months. You blocked it out. You taped it out. You went into a room. You built the set with painter's tape. Like, you didn't show up on set and, like, oh, well, I guess, stand over there and somebody load up, whatever on the screen. Like, again, I'm I'm being facetious, but you had to be as specific as you possibly could. Mhmm. And you're like, cool. We got you know, and then there was an economic rally behind it too, which is, like, we're losing money. We're losing daylight. We can't come back here tomorrow. Mhmm. You have to get this in 5 takes. Yeah. Yeah. Is you don't have choice.
Figure it out. They're like, we'll fix it in post. Like, oh, well, you know, like, no.
[02:26:02] Cole McCormick:
No. We need to get it now. Matters. It needs to be now. Figured it out. Now. There's this crucible. There is this you know, and it's like
[02:26:11] Zach Mahoney:
working on set is is this incredibly unique experience. It's crazy. It's like going to war. I I'd say that I've never been to war. It's not really like going to war, but there's something about it that is hypercollaborative. Generally speaking, most people were there because it they felt like it was hyper important. Mhmm. You're all rowing in the same direction. It's really, really hard. Everyone knows it's really, really hard. You're giving yourself You put you've got all to it, and and and but there's a limit. Like, if you didn't get it in that day, it didn't get done. You failed. Mhmm. Like, you you failed. That's serious.
So more of that. You know? Like, let's bring let's let's raise the stakes. Let's let's raise the stakes. Yeah.
[02:26:59] Cole McCormick:
Well, Zach, I got no more questions for you. Dude. This has been wild. It was an honor. It was a pleasure. Hey. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. I'm excited for 2025, dude. I'm gonna be making short films for Indie Hub. Let's go. And then I'll be distributing them through RSS. Yeah? Is that gonna be a thing for a long time? Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna figure out the pricing on that,
[02:27:20] Zach Mahoney:
but we're so what we're gonna do right now, we're working on this. We're gonna create what we're calling extensions.
[02:27:26] Cole McCormick:
Okay.
[02:27:27] Zach Mahoney:
And so, like, if you're a filmmaker, you can upload a movie. We have to approve it. There's, like, a base layer of quality. But, basically, once it's approved, like, your movie's up there, we're not gonna charge you. There's nothing there. But then there's gonna be certain things where you can add an extension. So if you want RSS capability, you can add that extension. And we're for the foreseeable future, that's gonna be just we'll let you do it. But at some point, it's basically, like, we have to host for you, and so we gotta figure out what the cost and the prices to push and pull data. Yeah. That was a big thing that I was, like, thinking about. I even I I had I boosted into to an Adam Curry show, and,
[02:28:05] Cole McCormick:
I told him, like, my movie my movie is on Indie Hub, and it's on the podcasting apps. And he was like, oh, he's hosting? Like, it was like he like, he's like he was, like, warning you about the hosting fees, about about the about the broadband. Yeah. So, like, that's interesting. I'm happy that you're thinking about that because I think RSS distribution is really important, but it's also it can be very difficult because you can't really it's it's hard to to distribute video like that. Yeah. Yeah. I it
[02:28:34] Zach Mahoney:
you know, I trust that that it's it's a market thing and the market will figure it out. Mhmm. Is that is that our primary business model? Like, no. If we can figure out a way for it to work for filmmakers, then fantastic. Like, our job is to give tools to filmmakers to do their jobs and succeed. So we'll have, you know, we'll have that. Like, if you wanna add audience capabilities, you'll be able to add that as an extension. And we're and and and this is gonna grow. There's gonna be all of these different things that not all filmmakers are gonna want. Some people don't care about advanced analytics. Some people want advanced analytics. There's all of this stuff that we're gonna sort of, like, figure out how to mix and match. Mhmm. But a 100%, dude. Like so the RSS will be there. Like, let's go. Let's get the movies on there, and let's get people figuring out the splits. Right? Like, let's get your whole cast and crew list on there. Mhmm. Give them the ability to also promote, to feel like they're there, their profile's there, and and and their their payments are happening through there.
Now the second somebody's, like, just gets to, like, oh, somebody's watching my movie right now. Like Yeah. There's value being streamed to this wallet. Like, that's a It's a big deal. Crazy. It's a really big deal. Hell. It is cool as hell. Alright. So I'm
[02:29:41] Cole McCormick:
I'm going for it. I will make more short films. I'm gonna make, like, 5 short films in 2025. Let's do it. Five films for 2025 Let's do it. On Indie Hub. I'm excited, man. Thank you for making Indie Hub. Thank you for being an innovator. Thank you for just wanting to make the world a better place. Like, that's like, you're a good human being.
[02:30:00] Zach Mahoney:
Thank you. Now back at you, man. Thank you for putting your work on there and and having the enthusiasm and the courage to, you know, really, it is. It takes a lot of courage to look at to look at something to to to stare something in the face that isn't going as well as it could go and say, like, I'm I'm I'm gonna put myself on the line and try to make this better. All of that encouragement and respect I give to filmmakers like you, I'm I wanna see you guys succeed. I wanna see you crush it. It's important. Like, I believe that.
Like, this is important. Like, they're, you know, they're silly movies, and we do silly things, and we're learning and we're growing. But, like, there are times when it matters tremendously, and it will alter the course of of human history and expand human consciousness. And if we can all row in that direction, then it's a life well lived. I'm for it. Dude, Zach, thank you so much. Absolutely, bro. Thank you. Hell, yeah.
[02:30:58] Cole McCormick:
Hey. Thank you so much to Zach Mahoney, folks. Zach Mahoney, thank you for coming on America Plus. That was awesome. We're gonna wrap things up with a little song here. If you didn't know what part of value for value is, I play a song at the end of every episode, and the artist is getting 90% of your boostagram. So I'm gonna play a song here from an artist called Hurling Pixels. Have you ever heard of them, folks? This is a song called midnight in Tokyo. It's like instrumental late night vibes. I hope you enjoy it, folks. They're getting 90% of your sats. Don't forget to send in a boost. That's America Plus, bitch. Stay free.
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