Just Screen It

Today I’m talking with Marcus Markou about his experiences distributing his two feature films, Papadopoulos and Sons , put out in 2012, and his latest feature, The Wife and her House Husband, which is just starting its theatrical release. Marcus, Greek by descent and hailing from Great Britain, has a fantastic story to tell, starting in theatre and then shifting to film as a better way to slice up...

In this episode I talk with Antoine Dillard, filmmaker and founder of Indie Nation Network , a streaming site dedicated to independent film. Antoine founded INN after some frustration with an earlier distributor of one of his films. Antoine clearly has that independent spirit, and truly recognizes the difficult position that indie filmmakers find themselves in as they pour their heart and soul int...

Today on the program I bring you my one-of-a-kind conversation with Baraka Noel , an L.A. based filmmaker and standup comedian. Baraka and I really had a fun conversation here, certainly not one of my more structured interviews but that's just fine. We simply had a fun, stream of consciousness back and forth about a whole of things film related, distribution related sometimes, maybe sometimes not...

Chance Shirley and his team at Crewless Productions have put out three genre features, but we spent most of this conversation talking about Chance's first feature, called Hide and Creep. The synopsis, straight from Tubi , is: “When an army of the undead attacks a small town, the residents must contend with bloodthirsty zombies, flying saucers, and bad television reception”. It’s a cool movie, one...

I'm back after an unplanned hiatus, bringing you a very interesting interview with Ankit Mishra, all the way from India. Ankit talks about the experience of making and distributing his feature, Ghost of Wuhan , a very personal story about a virologist who, after returning from the lab in Wuhan where Covid was (depending on who you talk to) discovered or created, contracts the virus and embarks on...

Today I talk to Ryan Graves, a fellow Portlander who also happens to be filling the role of colorist for the three short films I’m making this summer. Ryan has started to establish himself in the Portland as a professional colorist, but on the show Ryan and I talk primarily about his film, Emily , about a young married couple struggling to stay together after the husband suffers a crisis of faith....

Josh has been the producer and/or director for several films, including All God’s Creatures, What Would Bear Do, Catch 22, and several more that I saw on his web site that I didn’t even know about. Josh has also written a self-distributed book series about his experiences, collectively entitled Filmmaking, The Hard Way . This a great casual conversation about Josh’s origin story, the making of tho...

My guest today is Raphael Sbarge , an established industry actor and now director of the documentary, Only In Theaters . If you’re an independent filmmaker who appreciates the value of watching independent films in movie theaters as I do, then this is a film you must find a way to see. Only In Theaters follows Greg Laemmle, CEO of the iconic Laemmle theater chain , as he navigates the difficulties...

Liz Manashil is, as she reminds me very quickly in this interview, first and foremost a filmmaker. She’s made two feature films, one with more or less traditional distribution, the second with a hybrid distribution strategy, and is on to make her third feature, Best Friends Forever, which she intends to entirely self-distribute. Liz came to my attention through the Making Movies Is Hard podcast, f...

Ashley Maria and Lea-Ann Berst are the director/producer team behind Pioneers In Skirts , a documentary following Ashley’s own story as a director in Hollywood, the sexism and stereotypes she faced, and a candid exploration of how we can all work to “shift the tide” towards equality and fairness within the Hollywood system. it’s a dextrously light-hearted and at the same time serious film that cer...

During the early days of COVID, Jack McDermott and Ethan Gomez Zahnley made Satan’s Servant, a horror feature, while they were still in high school. From a small, informal crowdfunding campaign, Jack and Ethan raised enough money to shoot the film making full use of their available resources. Informed partly by some experience they had already gained with several shorts, they distributed to online...

Today I’m interviewing Stefanie Davis, a Florida-based micro-budget filmmaker with three feature films and many more shorts under her belt. Stefanie embodies the spirit of micro-budget filmmaking, not just in production but in distribution as well. She’s put her movies out there on streaming platforms with a lot of thought given to not just the quality of the content but to the prospect of seeing...

On this episode I’m really excited to bring you my interview with Andrew Bellware. Andrew has been making low-budget sci-fi movies for two decades, starting in the early aughts with a movie called Pandora Machine. As you might imagine, Andrew has seen a lot of changes in the world of indie distribution over that time, and it certainly shows in this conversation. We cover a lot of topics here, rang...

On this episode I interview Stacey Maltin, one of the partners of the production company, Besties Make Movies . Stacey falls into that category of filmmakers who actually has gotten distribution for their movies, but in this day and age, I think there’s still plenty for filmmakers who are leaning towards self-distribution to take away here. In fact, I’m learning more and more that this distinction...

My guest on this episode is Tim Lightell, who self-distributed his comedy, Manbaby -- about a stand-up comedian who tries to convince his wife to have a baby by actually becoming a baby himself. Tim made the film in the mid-2010s on a 5-figure budget, and spent eight - as he describes it - agonizing years trying to get his film made and out to audiences. But despite that characterization, it’s cle...

In this episode I talk with Ian Austin, the director of the Barbatachtian series. Ian hails from England, and maybe better embodies the spirit of just-go-out-and-make-a-movie more than anyone else I’ve interviewed so far. During those early days of COVID, Ian decided that if he was going to be holed up in his apartment, he might as well make use of the limited resources available - his camera and...

My interview today is with Randy Mack and Joanna Rudolph. Randy produced the coming-of-age comedy Burning Annie back in the early aughts, and Joanna came on as an executive producer early on in the distribution phase. Burning Annie tells the story of a college student, obsessed with the Woody Allen movie, “Annie Hall”, trying to navigate the waters of romance and friendship. As we discuss in the i...

Today I bring you my conversation with Andy Palmer, a fellow Portlander who makes a living as a reality TV editor, but who has several independent horror films under his belt, including a fun, campy — but not quite over the top campy — slasher film called The Funhouse Massacre. To be clear, Andy has gone with a distributor for all of this films, but he has so much great experience getting his movi...

Zach Lona and Anthony Gibson are two independent filmmakers who hooked up to make the movie He Who Lives in Hidden Lakes , a sort of mockumentary folk-cult horror/comedy about a mysterious man who lives in the woods and in fact may or may not exist, and wreaks weird chaos on a quiet town, and in so doing becomes a Bigfoot-like of local legend. Zach and Anthony, after not really seeing success at s...

Today I bring you my conversation with Sujewa Ekanayake. Sujewa is a New York based, very independent filmmaker. As we discuss in the interview, he makes his own micro-budget movies, completely on his own terms, and brings them directly to audiences through mostly self-arranged theatrical screenings. We also talk about his perspective that filmmaking should not be looked at primarily as a business...

Today I bring you my conversation with Dan Mirvish. Many of you may know Dan as one of the co-founders of the Slamdance Film Festival, founded in 1995, as an alternative to Sundance for first-time filmmakers. Dan’s first feature was entirely self-distributed, but since then Dan has made several more films, including his most recent 18 1/2 , a thriller/comedy about a White House transcriber who stu...

On this episode I interview J Horton, known among other things for his very informative YouTube channel . On his channel J speaks prolifically about film distribution and marketing. He is very open and transparent and he really tells it like it is from his point-of-view. J has built for himself a remarkable career, starting out with the high hopes of his first feature, then the reality of struggli...