How Failure Fueled My First Scripted Film Success | Rory Karpf DSH #1205

I was like, wow, how do I want to handle this?

Because this person's a very experienced actor too.

Been on big movies, big sets, big directors.

My first scripted movie, getting things off to the wrong start.

So I knew I didn't want to go up to him and be like, hey man, you don't talk to me that way and be real confrontational.

So I let it go until lunch.

I was like, all right, I'm going to talk to him at lunch.

All right, guys, we got Rory here today, director of Grace Point.

Thanks for joining us.

Yeah, man.

Thanks for having me.

Absolutely.

Just full disclosure, I haven't seen it yet, but I'm excited.

It's crushingly disappointing, but you're going to have to watch it on your way back, and then maybe put it in the comments what you think of it.

I will.

I'll add a little comment to it.

And I'm a big thriller fan, like we were talking about.

Yeah, well, if you like thrillers, you're going to like this.

You said your favorite film was Shutter Island, and there's definitely some comparisons to Shutter Island.

Smaller budget than Shutter Island, but it's a thriller, and there's a big twist.

I don't want to give anything away.

So if you like thrillers, I don't know.

Do you like coming of age movies?

I would say so, yeah.

Yeah.

So there's that aspect as well.

So if you like thrillers, coming of age, just a good story.

Definitely check out Grace Point.

Can't wait.

Yeah.

There's a whole story with how you made this.

You spent 500K, right?

Instead of 13 million.

Yeah.

Well, originally, so I got a manager in.

2013 for the first time.

I did a film called The Book of Manning.

It was about the Manning football family.

And this manager said, well, what like, what's your dream?

What do you want to do?

And I said, I want to do scripted.

I had done primarily documentaries and sports up until that point, but scripted was my dream.

So there was a script called Mercy Falls, which was the bones of Grace Point, but much, much bigger as far as budget.

There were explosions and horses and mudslides, crazy things happening.

And they attached some decent name actors to it.

But like most things in Hollywood, it just kind of languishes for a while, looks, and then it just goes away.

So

I just thought it wasn't going to happen.

Well, fast forward to COVID, and I'm filming in this town in North Carolina called Laurenburg.

And my DP, director of photography, says, Man, we should film a movie here.

This town has so much character.

And I'm like, yeah, you're right.

And he's like, you know what?

You should take that film, Mercy Falls, and rewrite it so it happens in this town.

And it was like a light bulb moment for me.

Maybe like you had one of these with when you decided to do a podcast.

But I went home, I rewrote the script from scratch, rewrote it in a week and that was january 2021 and we were filming by june that's how quickly it came together so i mean once once you have that spark and you follow it um just things start to steamroll after that yeah similar story with me i started a podcast when i was much younger maybe 21 completely failed you know what i mean and um put it on the back burner but i knew i always wanted to do it i was a huge rogan fan growing up and yeah when i started this one five years later i learned a lot more had the right connections and made it work.

Why do you think people are so afraid to fail?

I've never been afraid to fail.

Really?

Well, I don't, I think I'd rather try and fail.

I had a, I had a amateur fight.

I do a lot of things with the UFC.

And I always had this dream of wanting to be a fight.

I'm like, I'm photographing these guys, doing shows with them.

I wanted to know what it was like to take that walk.

So

at 44 years old, without a speck of athletic ability, you might not be able to tell.

Oh, you're looking at me and you're like, Rory, you?

But yeah, no athletic ability.

I decided to step in the cage.

I got training from one of our actors in the film, Sean Kerrigan.

Actually, two of our actors and Dean Thomas trained me.

But Dana White was making fun of me leading up to it.

He's a huge ball buster.

He was actually yelling, throw in the towel when I was walking out.

And the week before, he and some of his buddies were kind of saying, oh, Rory's going to get killed.

So I was facing this failure, but you know what?

I didn't, I don't give a fuck.

I was like, this is something I want to do.

I want to show I've got balls.

And I got my ass kicked in the first round, like a full-on beating.

In fact, at the end of the round, I thought they stopped the fight

because I heard the bell ring and I might have been a little concussed.

And I went back and sat down.

I thought they were going to start taking my gloves off.

And then they're giving me a pep talk in the corner.

They're like, you're doing great.

And I'm like, what?

And they said, lead with your right.

You're doing great.

And I was like, oh, maybe, maybe I'm doing good.

And I don't even realize it.

And then I came back in the second and third and won.

What?

I actually won the fight.

Yeah.

And I think it's a metaphor for life.

It's why Rocky is such a popular movie.

You know, life's going to kick your ass sometimes, but it's like, if you can just stand there and just keep taking the punches, that's what it is.

In fact,

bringing it back to making a movie,

I've been doing screenings of the film and there's some filmmakers or young filmmakers and then they'll ask me questions about like getting in and you know I'll hear, well, I mean, how do you get past the rejection and this and that?

And I'll say, look, to me, it's like romantic love.

Have you ever been in love, Sean?

Yeah.

If somebody told you as a kid, you're like, if you want to fall in love, they'll say, well, Sean, at some point you're going to get your heart broken.

You're going to face rejection.

You're going to like someone.

They're not going to like you back.

It's going to hurt.

It's going to sting.

But that moment when you find somebody and you fall in love and there's those butterflies, there's nothing like it.

It's the same with filmmaking.

You're going to face rejection.

People are going to laugh at you.

They're not going to want you.

They're not going to like your ideas.

You're going to try and fail.

Like you might try to pick up a girl somewhere and you don't have any game.

But how do you get better game?

Like you said with your podcast, how did you get better from doing it?

Repetitions, repetitions same with filmmaking you get better from doing it but you got to do it first you got to jump in there and be willing to be embarrassed or fail like you did with your first podcast so i think that's one of the keys is you got to put that fear of embarrassment aside.

I was so scared of failure when I was younger, man.

Now I embrace it and I love it.

But I got bullied a lot growing up.

So I think I was really scared of being judged.

And that's why I waited so long to try to do the podcast podcast again.

Yeah.

Well, I did an interview for Grace Point and the interviewer had like a really bad stutter.

And it was one of those things where the person I was with, you don't necessarily want to mention it, but it's so noticeable.

So I asked him about it because it was just unusual that somebody with a stutter is doing the interview.

And he said that he he used to just write out the questions and email them to celebrities and whatnot.

But he started doing the interviews himself over Zoom when COVID hit.

And he said he was so uncomfortable and he'd break out in these sweats before the interview.

But he actually went towards the discomfort.

I think that's what you have to do.

People talk about in sports a lot, you hear like embrace the uncomfortable.

And most of the time they mean like the physicality that you're tired, but you keep going.

But a lot of times it's also just doing something maybe you feel like you're not good at, but you still want to do it.

And I think that's the key of success, whatever the endeavor is, whether it's creative or doing doing a podcast or a business.

Go towards the discomfort in a way.

That's where the most growth is, right?

Yeah.

I think it's why

cold plunging is popular because it's that mentality of it's like the least thing you want to do when you wake up in the morning is get in freezing cold water.

But it's like, well, if I can do this, if I can just make myself get in this water for three and a half minutes, then I can conquer my day.

Same mentality with working out and all that.

Filmmaking, you know, when you're making a film, when you're putting it together, you're shooting day by day, scene by scene.

And it's like,

you're pushing this boulder up a mountain.

It's not just, I'm making a movie.

It's what do I have to do today?

And then what's the first thing we're doing?

And you're dealing with so much stuff as the director.

A lot of it not really even creative.

Logistics, the schedule, especially on a lower budget indie level.

Time is your enemy.

You have to make your days.

It's so important to be buttoned up, prepared, and to go in the day with a plan, with a mission.

And I really tried to embrace that on Grace Point.

Yeah.

And you went from a whole different world of media to this, right?

Because you used to be part of corporate media doing sports documentaries, ESPN 30 for 30s.

Yeah.

I wouldn't say I was part of corporate media.

I was still making movies.

I had my own company.

But it's still embracing discomfort because I was around really big name people.

And I didn't want to be intimidated.

I tried to treat everybody the same.

I try to treat everybody like no one is above me and no one's below me.

I don't care who they are.

And I could still admire them and admire their work ethic.

But at the end of the day, we're all human beings and we all bleed red.

And I try to treat everyone the same and I give people respect, but I demand it back when I'm dealing with someone.

And so same with celebrities.

I've done stuff with Snoop Dogg, Shaq, and a lot of times you got to get these people to do stuff for you, to make a show.

And it could be like pulling teeth with Shaq.

I had to roll jiu-jitsu with him to do stuff i mean i'm 5'6 on a good day 155

and it became this running gag that shaq would want to choke me out for us to go do something and i remember i was on this he was on a commercial shoot and i wanted him to go to his son's basketball game we did this show called shaq life and he didn't want to go to this basketball game and watch he just for whatever reason so i was like all right so i decided to do a flying arm bar on him.

I understand how now I'm saying this out loud.

It sounds incredibly inappropriate, but we had this back and forth.

And he was walking around on the commercial street with me on his arm, my whole body on his arm.

And I wasn't, I didn't even take up his entire arm.

So you got to be willing to do whatever it takes.

And I think there's some correlations with unscripted and scripted that way with actors.

You know, you have to get the scene and you have to get it right.

And you have to figure out a way, almost like a coach, to get these actors to kind of do what you want or just bring out the best of themselves.

And like players are different.

Like you mentioned, you were shy growing up.

Some people are extroverts.

Some people really want exact, precise direction.

I want you to do this and this.

Other people just want the emotion or they just want you to like leave them the fuck alone.

Don't talk to me for 10 minutes.

I'm getting in the character.

So each person's different.

I loved dealing with that on Grace Point, these different actors like Sean Kerrigan.

He was kind of like, tell me what to do, coach, I'll do it.

He was an athlete.

Jim Parrick, he's more of the Daniel Day Lewis actor in character and whatnot.

Johnny, our star, he, this was his first movie.

So

my biggest goal was to try to make him feel comfortable and loose on set.

So everybody was different in this filmmaking process.

Yeah, I got offered a role when I was maybe two, three years ago, and I turned it down, but I definitely want to get into acting one day, you know?

Was this in a adult film?

No,

it was in a, well, part of the reason was it was a Christian.

I'm not even Christian.

It was like a Christian film about basketball.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

So I think it's important to,

you can't fake it.

I think.

I've been, hey, you should do this because I think you can make a lot of money.

But if you're only chasing the money and that's the only thing you're doing it for, like, oh, like, I'm going to do this and I'll get famous versus like, i really want to do this i have a passion to do this to tell this story yeah so for grace point

because this was my first scripted film i was looking at well should i do a faith-based film because they're really popular or horror that's just straight horror because that sells it doesn't matter if it's straight garbage people will just go see a horror movie netflix will eat those off yeah but for me i love thriller and coming of age those are my two favorite genres of film so i wanted to do something that combined both of them and also had heart every documentary I've done, everything with sports.

I try to make it relatable for the audience.

That's what I tried to do with Grace Point.

Yeah.

Put some like emotion into it.

For me, I'm so scared of it.

And that's why I want to do it because I know, like we said earlier, the most growth is when you're uncomfortable.

I have a lot of trouble opening up emotionally from childhood trauma.

So I had some childhood trauma myself.

We all do, man.

Yeah.

That's true.

You never know what somebody's going through.

I think that's important.

In fact, I'll tell you a good story.

This is from the set of Grace Point.

And so we're we're doing this scene, and it's this actor who's become a really good friend of mine.

And it's a scene, he's got a gun, and it's his first day on set.

And we're trying to figure out what he's going to do with the gun in the scene after he shoots it.

So I said, hey, man, what do you want to do with this gun?

And he says in front of the entire cast and crew, how about I shove it up your ass?

Which.

Very disrespectful.

And I'm trying to set a tone here.

And everybody laughed.

And

I was like, wow, how do I want to handle this?

Because this person's a very experienced actor, too.

Been on big movies, big sets, big directors.

My first scripted movie, getting things off to the wrong start.

So I knew I didn't want to go up to him and be like, hey, man, you don't talk to me that way and be real confrontational.

So I let it go until lunch.

I was like, all right, I'm going to talk to him at lunch.

And I was just like, I got to try to find a way in to make this relatable.

So we were talking about jiu-jitsu, who does jiu-jitsu and I've dabbled and about how like it's good with like releasing your your anger and finding an outlet for it.

And so then I said to him, yeah, man, you know, I, um, growing up, my dad used to humiliate me a lot and, and really make me feel small.

And I realized that was a big trigger for me.

I realized that through therapy.

So it's actually like when you When you said that thing about shoving the gun in my ass, it actually reminded me of my dad.

And for a minute, it made me feel feel that same feeling, made me feel really angry.

But then I realized you're not my dad, and you didn't mean it that way, you're just trying to make a joke.

So, then I was able to kind of talk myself down.

So, I made myself vulnerable telling him this.

I opened up about something with my childhood.

So, he felt bad.

He was like, Oh man, I didn't know, you know, I'm sorry.

And it never happened after that.

So, I think I'm okay with being vulnerable.

You know, everyone has their shit in life.

I had physical abuse,

sexual abuse when I was younger from a neighbor.

And then I went through a really bad divorce that almost broke me.

So, I mean, none of us get out of this thing unscathed in life.

So, I think it's

not about what happens to you.

It's about how you choose to respond to it.

100%.

That victim mentality is dangerous, man.

It can be, for sure.

I mean, I think it's important sometimes to have empathy for people that you went through something and maybe you were a victim, but you're right in that mentality of woe is me or life's not fair because life's not fair.

It's not.

I mean, it's, it'd be great if it was, but sometimes it's not.

Sometimes great things happen to people that don't necessarily deserve it.

And people that do deserve great things, bad things happen to.

So I think it's just grappling with that.

But in my work as a director, I love dealing with people.

And I think I don't, and you must love talking to people, or at least maybe you do now more

as you do it for a living.

But like on social media, you would think like we're so divided that we have nothing in common.

You either feel this way or this way.

But the more you're out with people, touching grass, talking to people, I find that you really have much more in common with most people.

And yeah, maybe you disagree about this or that, but if you find those commonalities, childhood or parents or love of your kids or things like that, then you can find a connection.

That's what I try to do on my unscripted work.

And it's what I try to do with the actors in my scripted.

100%.

Yeah.

You're like the architect, right?

You're like a coach,

I would say.

But yeah, architect is another term you could use.

And it's just trying to get that motivation.

I just did a film where the It was a documentary on ESPN and Roger Goodell of the NFL was interviewed in it.

And he was friends with this person person who had passed away, Buddy Tevens.

He died in a bicycling accident, and Roger was just friends with him.

They were just friends.

But you think Roger Goodell, in fact, Roger Goodell, you know who he is?

He's the commissioner in the NFL.

So when I started my career at the NFL right out of college, so he's like on this pedestal.

But at the end of the day, I'm interviewing someone who just lost their friend.

I'm not interviewing the commissioner of the NFL.

I'm just interviewing somebody who loved.

this guy, Buddy Tevens.

And that's how I treated it.

So, and he got emotional on camera.

He choked up, teared up, interviewed his wife too.

So, and one of the comments people gave is like, wow, I've never seen that side of him before.

So, it's like just finding those things that we can all relate to.

Right.

Almost like humanizing, because some people put these celebrities or notable figures on such a pedestal, right?

It kind of dehumanizes them.

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, I think

you could put Michael Jordan on a pedestal for his athletic ability.

He has a skill that no one else possesses in the world, but still, at the end of the day, he is a human being and he can't walk on water.

And so I still think that,

again,

he's got, he lost his father.

He has some things that other people have gone through.

So it's just finding those things that everyone can kind of relate.

Yeah.

What did you think of his documentary?

Did you watch it?

The Last Dance?

Yeah.

I mean, it's great.

To me, it's what you, everything you strive to have, this sort of monumental figure with all this footage no one has seen before.

There was some criticism about that

in the documentary community specifically.

Oh, really?

Well, from Ken Burns.

Do you know who Ken Burns is?

No.

He's one of the kind of the godfathers of documentaries.

You know, really only in the last 10 to 15 years, documentaries have kind of become more buzzworthy with Netflix.

But for the longest time, you heard documentary you thought boring.

You thought like, oh, great.

I've got to learn something.

It's like something you watched in school.

When I was growing up,

that's what I thought documentaries were, like something about science.

So he's considered one of the fathers of documentaries with still photos and everything.

And he didn't like that Michael Jordan had

cooperation in the film.

And I think he was paid for it.

Creative control.

I don't think, I don't know if he had creative control, but he got to watch cuts.

And it's like, well, if you want Michael Jordan, who never does anything to be in it, you have to give up something.

You get all this incredible footage.

So yeah, maybe Ken Burns is doing something on the Civil War.

Well, all those people are dead.

They're not going to talk.

So, you don't have to worry about forming relationships with them.

So, I don't think there's a universal rule necessarily for that.

But I like that documentary.

I appreciate a good documentary, man.

Yeah.

I really do.

Well,

the quality and the

varying degrees that people will make stuff.

In fact, I got into scripted through my documentary work because I do a lot of recreations.

So there's scripted elements in my documentaries.

And

there's no like

one

be-all end-all way to do docs.

I think you can have it with narration, without verite.

You could put animation.

They'll do that.

I've done that in a film with on Ric Flair.

So there's a lot of different ways you do that.

I feel like those 30 for 30s really changed the narrative for me because those made documentaries interesting with the sports.

And I really enjoyed those.

30 for 30 was really revolutionary because before that,

so what it was was originally the concept was it was was going to be 30 films by 30 scripted filmmakers for the 30th anniversary of ESPN.

It changed as time went on, but the idea was they're going to bring a style that no one's seen to documentaries.

Because before that, most sports documentaries were on HBO and it was very, they were good, but it was very traditional.

A narrator takes you cradle to the grave on somebody.

They were born here, they died here.

And again, they could be good and well done, but 30 for 30 really changed how people view sports documentaries.

Absolutely.

Which one was the first one?

Because you've made a few of those, right?

Yeah.

I did a 30 for 30 on this guy, Tim Richman, who was a NASCAR driver who died of AIDS.

Wow.

And he was kind of the first athlete who got HIV before Magic Johnson, and he hit it.

And This is in NASCAR too, where back then in the mid-80s, this is a southern sport.

He didn't want the perception that he was gay to be out there.

He wasn't, as far as I know, gay, but he didn't want that perception.

So that was cool.

And that was my, that was actually one of my first projects with ESPN.

It started the relationship with them.

I had done something on Tim Richman for another project for NASCAR.

I got to do these really cool projects for NASCAR at the time.

Did one with Tom Cruise.

Wow.

Did one with Kevin Costner.

This was like the height of NASCAR.

I did one on Dale Earnhardt.

Do you know Dale Earnhardt?

Yeah, that one broke TV D records, right?

Yeah.

So, and yeah, Dale Earnhardt, for those that don't know, he died at the Daytona 500, which is like the Super Bowl.

It'd be like dying at the Super Bowl on camera.

He did it on the last lap trying to block for his teammate to win the race.

What?

Yeah, so it would be like at the Super Bowl, like a member of the Chiefs dying on camera protecting somebody.

So

he became sort of a a mythical figure, almost like Kurt Cobain or Tupac.

And I did a film.

It was in theaters on him.

Wow.

And I got to do it when I was really young.

And Paul Newman narrated it.

So that kind of got me on my way to do Docs.

Yeah.

And you did the Christian Leightner one.

I still remember that commercial.

That's how viral that one was.

Yeah.

I hate Christian Leitner.

That was a fun one.

When you talk about failing, I remember this vividly.

I got a call from the executive at ESPN.

It was on New Year's Day.

And he said to me, I would like to say I'm starting the new year with good news.

He had just watched the first rough cut and he really disliked it.

Really?

Really disliked the first cut.

And this was, so it's January 1st.

The film's airing March 15th.

Wow.

So at ESPN, they wanted to delay the film, I later found out, and take me off the film.

They didn't think I was capable of doing it.

There were some haters there, believe it or not.

So

I said, I can do this.

And what what turns out was he thought I was playing it way too safe.

He wanted me to take way more risks.

He wanted me to do something way bigger than just Christian Leitner, do it about hate in sports.

He said, that was the original concept.

What happened to that?

And I was like, you're right.

I did play it too safe.

And I decided to like almost start over from scratch.

I wrote out the script first.

that Rob Lowe, it's how I met Rob Lowe and his sons in my film Grace Point.

I wrote the script out and I tried to make it like very pop culture culture and humor and just have fun for me writing it.

Like put the karate kid in there and Arsenio or different things.

And it started with that.

And I remember it took me six weeks.

And my wife at the time was in the hospital.

So I was taking care of both my kids while working on this movie, getting like three hours sleep a night and gave them a completely different cut of the film six weeks later.

Incredible.

Yeah.

So that's one I'll always be proud of just because of that process being stared down the barrel of total failure.

This was like supposed to be a huge coming out party for me airing March 15th, going into the Final Four, giant documentary, and this dude saying, hey, you did it and it sucks.

I can take criticism, by the way.

I'd always rather somebody shoot straight with me.

I'd rather somebody be like, you know what?

I don't like you.

I just don't like you.

I don't like your face.

I don't like the way you talk.

And I think you're a fucking idiot.

I'm like, okay, I can deal with that.

I much more prefer that than, oh, dude, you're the best.

Yeah.

And then you leave and they're like, that guy sucks.

I hate that guy.

That's how most people are.

They'll talk shit when you're not around, but they don't have the balls to just tell you straight up to your face.

It's why I like Sean Kerrigan in my film.

He had a problem with me once.

He called me up.

He goes, you know what, man?

You really pissed me off.

And I was like, well, what's going on?

He's like, he was mad because

when the film was in Santa Barbara Film Festival, Grace Point,

I didn't invite him to the Q ⁇ A.

It was an oversight on my part.

Yeah.

And I was wrong.

And I was like, well, Sean, I'm glad you told me.

That's my fault.

And he was like, okay, good.

And I was like, this guy's a good friend.

He shoots straight with me.

And that's what I like in life.

So

bringing it back to Christian, I hate Christian Leitner.

He shot straight.

And I had to kind of start over.

I got a little story about that film.

Yeah.

That was one of ESPN's top 30 for 30, I believe, right?

It did really well at the time.

And Christian Leitner's mom called me up, really mad at me when the film was announced.

It was announced.

You said you saw the commercial.

All the time.

And she left me this vitriolic voicemail saying, how dare you say, I hate Christian Leitner.

This should be called, I love Christian Leitner.

My son, this really pissed off.

So I called her back and I was like, hey, can I just meet with you?

Can we just meet up?

And I brought my son with me at the time.

I think he was like six or seven years old.

Smart move.

Yeah.

He was like,

oh, yeah.

I was like, she's not going to yell at me in front of this.

This kid was like the cutest kid you've ever seen at this age.

Like little chipmunk cheeks and baby brown eyes.

And you, you can, when I opened the door, she opened the door like this.

And she's like, oh, who's this?

And he's like, hi, don't be mad at my daddy.

So I just told her, I explained, like, I was like, look, a lot of people don't know who Christian Leitner is.

I'm trying to reach a large audience.

And this is the way in to say, I hate Christian Leitner, get people interested.

I said, what I'm going to do is I'm going to make people think about that, hopefully, about why they like hating someone.

more than loving someone.

And she was kind of, all right.

And I was like, you're just going to have to trust me.

I don't have bad intentions.

I know you have no reason to trust me, but I'm telling you, like from my heart, looked her in the eye.

This is what I'm trying to do.

I'm not going to make him look bad or look like a villain.

And she later wrote me a letter after the film aired.

I still have it on my desk.

And she said, I get it now.

I get what you were doing.

And she says, she said, your son is lucky to have a champion like you for his father.

So I always remember that.

Yeah.

When that same kid became a teenager, told me he hated me.

I'm like, well, look, I got a letter saying you should, I'm a champion to you.

He's like, yeah, I fucking hate you, dad.

He came around, though.

Teenagers are just naturally rebellious around that.

They were.

He went through a rough, rebellious year, but now we're buds again.

Yeah, I feel like those teenage years for male and female, man, those are probably the toughest.

I mean, I'm not even a parent yet, but I'm just talking from experience of how I was.

My other son's 15.

He's great at 15.

They are, they're tough.

It's tough, man.

You said it was awkward.

I mean, they're awkward years,

those teenage years.

Yeah.

You don't want to peak in high school.

That's what I tell people.

It's like, if you're struggling in high school, that might be a good sign because that means you might peak in your 20s, 30s.

That's a better time.

Look, how old are you?

27.

27.

You're peaking, man.

Yeah.

You're peaking.

You got the podcast going.

27.

Maybe 17 wasn't your year.

No.

27 is.

I was getting no girls at 17.

Yeah.

What's going to happen at 37?

Super model wife, maybe?

Whew, we'll see.

I'm getting married this year.

Lambo.

Yeah.

Oh, you're getting married this year?

This year, yeah.

Seven years in now, man.

Oh, wow.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Lambo, though, I'm not

big on cars.

Me neither.

I've never been that into cars.

I think to each their own.

Yeah.

But materialism, I went through that phase with watches or whatever, and it's kind of boring now.

I'm with you.

I'm with you.

I think, yeah, with material stuff for me, I think it's if it has sentimental value.

I think you saw that a lot with the LA fires when people have lost everything.

Right.

And some people are like, oh, it's just stuff.

But when that stuff has sentimental meaning, like your dad gave you this or that.

But at the end of the day, you know, to me, life's all about your emotional connections with people and your relationships.

Yeah, you probably knew a lot of people talked about that, right?

In your space.

Not a lot, but a good amount.

Definitely,

especially in this town.

I live in North Carolina.

But yeah, I know a couple of people who just lost everything.

quickly like they woke up that morning not knowing and yeah some of them had no orders to leave even i heard yeah crazy yeah my one friend's in texas right now living at his brother's house with his wife and two kids under the age of five and they had to get a school for him and life's crazy like that man you just that's why i try not to worry i try not to worry about the future because you just don't know like we're only promised today you really don't i mean look at how covet affected your industry too COVID, the strikes.

I mean, it's just one hit after another.

That's why for me, I'm 47.

I know you're like, 47, you look like you're 30.

I know, Sean.

But for like, I was like, I don't have time to waste.

There's not any brand new 65-year-old directors new on the scene.

So I was like, it's now or never for me with scripted.

And I was like, I just don't want to wait anymore.

And COVID actually kind of motivated me because I got the idea to do this, to rewrite the script during COVID.

And I was able to get more people to participate because of COVID.

People weren't working as much.

So they're willing to go do a movie in North Carolina for a month.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Your space changes so fast.

It's mind-blowing.

I mean, now they call it TikTok brain.

People's attention spans are so short.

I was watching Quentin Taratino on Rogan, and he was saying how streaming sites like Netflix really impacted the movie business.

Yeah.

And it was really fascinating to me how pretty much DVDs were so profitable for guys like you, right?

Yeah, DVDs are good.

I mean, now my movie is on demand, they call it.

But you're right.

A lot of times movies are on in the background.

I think movies are the one thing where it should should have your undivided attention, if possible.

And the phone, it can be the enemy to that.

But getting lost in a movie, I mean, movies affect people.

With my movie, Grace Point, I've gotten some of the most touching notes about it from some people.

I had a critic, a female critic, reach out to me privately and say,

I don't really share this, but my brother.

died in a drunk driving accident.

And there's a line in our film.

One of the characters says, you know, his mother dies in a drunk driving accident, and she was driving.

Don't judge her by her worst mistake.

And this girl wrote to me that line really hit me hard.

And then somebody else told me, oh man,

I'm five years sober and this or that.

So, I mean, movies can really change people's lives, really affect them,

really motivate them, keep them going sometimes.

There's been times where I've just felt like just quitting, not just movies, but like life.

I was just been feeling so down and out.

I watch Rocky, a fictional story, and you see him get knocked down, knocked down, keep getting back up.

So there's always hope.

I always say, if you have a heartbeat, you have hope.

Yeah, some movies really touch you, man.

Harry Potter, that was the first time I cried, I think, watching a movie, man.

Yeah.

I saw something recently on Reddit.

And this person was talking about they were in a, they had tried to kill themselves.

They were in a mental institution, a mental hospital.

And they played Forrest Gump for the entire unit.

And everybody was fixated on this movie for two and a half hours.

And then this person said, well, you know, that was six years ago.

And that movie kind of helped get them on their way.

Now they're married, have a good job.

And that was kind of like their rock bottom.

So I say, look, if you're going through a bad time, just keep going.

Just keep trying to go.

And hopefully you're at your rock bottom.

And there's when you're at rock bottom, there's nowhere to go but up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And everyone goes through those, right?

I've had a couple already.

Yeah.

It's, I don't know if you saw this film, but they did a documentary on Christopher Reeve.

It's gotten some good attention.

I haven't seen it.

Yeah.

And they talked about his accident where he got paralyzed and totally paralyzed from the neck down.

But his son, his oldest son, said that's when he became the closest to him.

Whoa.

So you think about that, that this horrible accident is what brought them closer together.

He said, before that, he wasn't close to his dad.

He was 17.

But he said, in those 10 years, they really bonded.

So even sometimes out of the worst of situations, something good can happen.

That's how I met my wife.

Really?

My current wife.

Yeah, well, one of my close friends was the actor Luke Perry.

And he, the film Grace Point is dedicated to Luke Perry.

He was an actor.

He was on Beverly Hills 90210.

He was in Quentin Tarantino's last movie.

He died very suddenly out of nowhere of a stroke.

Seemingly healthy.

It was really shocking.

When he passed away, he was on the cover of People Magazine.

And it really floored me because a lot of times in this industry, everyone's, oh, he's my friend.

He's my friend.

I love it.

This guy was like really my friend.

We were really close.

So when he passed away, it really hit me.

Well, a few years before that, when I was going through my divorce, he was trying to set me up with a friend of his.

He's like, you got to meet this girl.

She just moved to North Carolina.

She's a friend of mine.

I was like, oh, have her call me.

And he'd be like, all right, I'm going to have her call you.

Well, she never called.

He'd be like, did Michelle call?

I'm like, no, she never called.

He's like, what's up with her?

I'm like, I don't know.

So when he passed away, she reached out to me,

sent me a message and said, hey, Luke always wanted us to meet up.

And I'm here in North Carolina.

I don't really have anyone to talk, talk with about him.

Would you want to talk on the phone or something?

So we wound up getting lunch together.

And then.

We went to his memorial together in L.A.

I asked.

She wasn't going to go because she had to work.

I kind of convinced her to go.

And then we've been together ever since.

Wow.

Yeah, we're married now.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

She works with me at my company.

She's a production manager.

So he really brought us together.

So out of that tragedy,

something positive.

Yeah.

He's probably still happy looking down on you guys.

People say that, but he was like a hardcore atheist.

So I always, I always say, I always say if he is looking down on me, he's pissed that he was wrong.

He was like, ah, there is an afterlife.

What the hell, man?

No,

I think he'd be really happy.

And his son's really successful.

His son's a pro wrestler.

Nice.

So he was a great guy.

He was a good example to me of somebody who had a great success, but he never let it go to his head.

And he treated everyone right.

And,

you know, if I could be half the man he was, I'll be all right.

Yeah.

What do you think that difference maker is when people have success and then it gets to some people's head?

Some people, they're able to like stay the same.

What do you think causes up?

Well, when people go, hey, you changed, man.

Well, of course.

First of all, everyone should change.

To me, change is growth.

But if somebody, if you go from no one knowing you are, then suddenly everyone knows who you are, that's going to change you.

I would imagine you'd have to be a little more guarded.

And then you throw in, so you're not just famous, but now you have a lot of money.

Money's like freedom.

And it could be the best thing or the worst thing.

So I would imagine when you go through fame, money, power.

It's an adjustment for everybody.

I wouldn't know, but the actors I've talked to or sports celebrities, you kind of get used to it.

And then hopefully you come back to your values.

I think you have to have a base of values as a human being that you're not, you're not better than somebody just because you have this skill.

And first responders aren't famous, but to me they do, they have a great calling.

Or if you're in the armed forces or you're a police officer, whatever it is, you know, that's a very noble profession.

I also, to me, find that the people that don't let it go to their head, they're not not defined by their career.

They look at it just as that.

It's a career, but they're more defined by how they are as a parent or how they are as a spouse.

And or that sometimes those people are religious.

You know, they have, they feel there's a higher power than themselves.

Yeah.

There's a lot of narcissism in this industry.

I can see that.

People think the world revolves around them.

So you have to deal with that sometimes.

Have you had battles with your ego?

Because you're working with all these famous people, you know, successful movies.

With my

own ego.

Well, luckily, I hate myself.

So that hasn't been, that hasn't been that difficult.

Uh,

no, I've always tried to stay humble.

I, maybe when I, I think maybe when I was younger, actually, because it was like a defense mechanism.

I find people that brag a lot, a lot of times they're trying to make up for something else.

That's a red flag to me, too.

Yeah.

It's, you know.

Why?

It's like there's a deficiency somewhere or they're name dropping all the time.

So I don't think I have that problem now, but maybe when I was younger and I had Napoleon complex, something like that.

I find it even to this day creeping up sometimes.

So I'm always trying to be aware of like why I'm feeling that way.

And just, I think that first step is awareness, right?

I think if they, I once said, if you're even questioning yourself, that means you're not that narcissistic or a sociopath.

Sometimes I wondered, am I a sociopath?

But I'm not, thankfully.

There's tests for that.

Yeah.

I'm like, why am I not getting moved by this right now?

I'm like, I have no emotion.

Am I going to be a serial killer?

And then I would see something like a, you know, a butterfly.

But, oh, okay, I'm good.

Anytime I work with someone or I want to like have a relationship with someone, I have them take the dark triad test.

Have you heard about it?

No, what's that?

It measures your three worst skills: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopath.

It gives you a score of zero to 100.

But don't you have to answer those questions like truthfully?

Can't you?

Yeah, so they'll be

you could probably do that, but you can naturally, you know, kind of get a baseline at least.

Yeah.

But yeah, one of my guests today got 95 in all of them.

Wow.

Well, I try not to take myself that seriously.

I think that's one of the keys.

I take my work seriously, but not myself.

A lot of times people take...

take this shit so serious with making movies and shows.

You would think they're curing cancer and doing heart surgery, and it's like they're making the real housewives in Atlanta.

It's like, this is supposed to be fun.

If I wanted a real job, I'd work in insurance.

We're telling stories and playing pretend.

I used to do that with like my He-Man action figures as a kid.

And at the end of the day, we're just doing that at an elevated level.

So that's how I try to look at it.

Just having fun, telling a good story, try to bring joy to my work.

You know, Snoop would say to me, Snoop Dogg be like, man, you're always, you're always smiling.

But it would make him smile.

Sometimes he could get a little grouchy.

Yeah.

You know, if he hasn't had his medicine that day.

You know what I mean?

I love it.

Rory, it's been awesome.

We'll link Grace Point below.

I'll watch it and add a comment to the video.

Anything else you want to close off with?

Just to your audience, man, give Grace Point a chance.

It's on Amazon, Apple.

Give it a rental.

It's like 83 minutes.

And I promise you'll like the movie.

If you do like it, leave a review.

If you don't, keep it to yourself.

No one asked you.

But yeah, hopefully you like it, man.

Grace Point, check it out.

Thank you so much for having me.

Awesome.

Thanks for watching, guys.

Check out the links below.

See you next time.