How Horror Movies Are Made with Joe Begos

Welcome back to On Production, the podcast presented by Wrapbook. I'm your host, Cameron Woodward. Today, I'm diving into the really fun filmmaking, gritty world of independent horror with a filmmaker who's built a career on like really relentless craft. that's Joe Begos

Joe is the founder of Channel 83 Films and the director behind a string of really, I think genre defining horror films, including Almost Human, The Mind's Eye, Bliss, VFW and Christmas Bloody Christmas known for his love of practical effects in camera techniques and 16 millimeter film Joe's projects are Really really awesome and he actually has a new film coming out as well under Eli Roth's new label the horror section Joe welcome to the show

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Joe Begos (01:18.579)

Thanks for having me, man. I love talking and filming.

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Cameron Woodward (01:20.49)

Let's start with your background. What first led you to sort of choose this genre of filmmaking as your lane? What drew you to the hands-on approach of independent horror film production?

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Joe Begos (01:34.282)

I think it was kind of just an organic thing, you I always, I knew I was going to be a filmmaker since I could remember. I wanted to be an actor when I was really young because I thought they just made everything up. And then, you know, when I was eight, nine, 10 years old and I realized what a director did, that's what I wanted to do. And even from a young age, like, I mean, I loved horror when I was five, six years old, like my parents were really cool and let me, you know, I was watching the Terminator and Tales from the Crypt and...

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Basket Case and Nightmare on the Street when I was like six. So the sensationalism of that and also like it was so fun to be able to tell, know, when you're that young, your friends about stuff like that and show them, you know, you start having sleepovers and you show them these movies and just the way that they react. And I loved seeing that. It's almost like a carnival act. You see how people react to the horror and like I liked the sensationalism of that. So as I started kind of getting a little bit older and into my teens and, you know, trying to figure out how I was going to go down this path. I just loved obviously stuff like Evil Dead and Bad Taste and know, Robert Rodriguez was a big inspiration to me. And I knew that I was never gonna like go to film school because I even when I was 14, I hated *** school. And I was like, well, I'm never gonna write a script that's gonna like cause a bidding war. I don't know anybody in Hollywood. The only way I can do this is if I literally make a movie like For No Money and show people what I can do like Raimi did like Peter Jackson did like

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Rodriguez did. So me and my producing partner, who I went to high school with and I'm still, we moved out to LA together. We still work together. He produced Jimmy and Stig's producing, edited all my movies. We just kept cranking out short films and we moved to LA when we were about 20 and started interning for people for free. You know, I worked for Stuart Gordon who directed Re-Animator and From Beyond and all these great classics and came up in Chicago with David Mammoth. So he had a really great kind of stage and experimental background.

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from Chicago and we just kept cranking on shorts out in LA and when I was 23, one of our shorts got into a big festival in London. So we flew out there, wanted to attend and we saw a bunch of features that were there that had distribution, know, not like giant features, but independent features that had distribution and they weren't that great. And me and my producing partner were like, well, maybe this is the time that we go make our movie.

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Joe Begos (03:54.382)

You know, Raimi did it when he was 19, so we're a little behind the curve, but Rodriguez was 23. And we got back from LA, literally from that festival, applied for a bunch of credit cards and we got about $27,000 together and went and made our movie and it got into Toronto Midnight Madness and we sold it for a few hundred grand. yeah. Yeah.

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Cameron Woodward (04:13.07)

Yeah, so this was your film, Almost Human, right? So walk me through how you pulled that off. I mean, you mentioned credit cards, but from a production standpoint, crew, schedule, gear, what were the essential moves you made?

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Joe Begos (04:23.574)

Yeah. Well, we lived in LA at the time, but we went back and shot in Rhode Island where I'm from, just because, you know, we had, it looked like a Stephen King movie and we knew that we had the resources of like all the people who helped me making shorts when I was a teenager would come and help. You know, we can load everybody up from LA to stay at our parents' house and friends' house and all that. And it just gave a different aesthetic to the LA thing. because we had been making shorts ourselves and we learned, you know, I learned how to shoot.

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Like I D.P. the movie I operated, I directed, wrote, produced, and Josh cut sound design start in it. So like all these things that we learned how to do in shorts, we brought to the feature. And it's like, how can we, know, like the Rodriguez way, it's like, what do you have available to you? So it's like, well, we've got this great New England town. We've got these houses that we can use. We've got these locations we know we can go back and use. One of my producing partners is also a my long time AC worked at our camera house. So it's like what camera and gear.

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can we get for free, you know, we ended up getting like a red one, which at the time was a pretty archaic version of the red, got some cheap lenses. I had to pull focus myself. We didn't have any monitoring situations. We were putting it on old ass hard drives. We were switching out interns. We were like going to local hairstyling schools and getting our hair and makeup team to switch up for free. My mom and dad were, you know, switching off cooking meals, Josh's parents, just like *** like that. And we, you know, we came back with the movie in the can, like $30 left. And then,

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Me and Josh cut the movie, sound designed it, did all that stuff and used the finished cut to raise the rest of the money. And then it was kind of just a calling card and it got out there and it got me some representation, know, saying I made this for 25 grand and it did, it looked, you know, regardless of what people think of the movie, it looked like a half a million dollar movie. So that kind of got us representation and we got a sales agent and, you know, it just got into the right hands at Toronto. It was kind of like...

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that thing where you jump off the cliff and just hope it all works and it was a perfect amalgamation of it.

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Cameron Woodward (06:21.102)

That's amazing, Joe. So yeah, so it premiered at TIFF. What happened next? I think you moved on to your next film, The Mind's Eye. Is that right?

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Joe Begos (06:27.692)

Yeah, IFC bought it right out of TIFF for a profit, so we paid off our credit cards and I had some money to live off of for a year or two. And weirdly, when I was on the festival circuit for Almost Human, I was in Europe on my birthday, my 25th birthday, and I was partying way too hard and I fell off a cliff. I shattered my back, split my head open.

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Cameron Woodward (06:49.952)

Wow, Joe.

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Joe Begos (06:51.18)

Yeah, I didn't know that my back was broken because I can move my legs. I was walking around with these crutches, taking *** hard painkillers the whole time and partying, enjoying my European premiere. got back to LA, tried to get painkillers with a doctor. They thought I looked like some derelict drug addict. So they took x-rays and they're like, sir, your back's broken. This happened eight days ago. And I'm like, yeah, I know, I told you I'm in pain. So I refused surgery.

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They told me to stay in bed for four months in a back brace. And during those four months, I wrote Mind's Eye. Came out of my back brace, being able to walk and being able to operate camera again. And I just kind of put together the money now we got a financier from VHS who put in the first chunk of the money. And I kind of just, that was about a $350,000 movie. And I piecemealed the money and you know, I've done this now in three of my movies, four of my movies. don't recommend it, but.

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I got just, this happened to almost human and mine's eye, I got just enough money to get the movie in the can, because it's like, well, we raised 250, why wait to raise the rest? You know, it's going to be easier to raise the rest of the money if we have a full cut of the movie. So we shot the movie, went back to Rhode Island again, shot the movie and then used the edit to raise money. And actually we sent it to Toronto again without finishing funds and they accepted the movie.

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And we were able to go to investors and be like, do you want to invest in a movie that's premiering at Toronto in six weeks? So like it was a pretty big, it was pretty nerve wracking because we weren't able to get it out of our post house, the DI and stuff without paying them. So we wouldn't have been able to print a TIF unless we raised the money. But we ***, we came in at the nick of time and then that one sold to RLJ. So yeah, so whirlwind those first two movies.

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Cameron Woodward (08:33.274)

pretty intense process. How long did that take from your back break all the way through to finished piece at the festival?

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Joe Begos (08:46.701)

Two years. I broke my back in October 2013 and then I started raising money in 2014. We went into pre-production at end of 2014, started shooting again in 2015 and then premiered at 10th in September 2015.

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Cameron Woodward (09:00.408)

Did you feel like that the production workflow to manage that sort of multi-role execution had improved from almost human? Like, did you have on a producer? Like, what was your production back end?

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Joe Begos (09:13.326)

No, it was the same. Though that's the thing I learned with Mind's Eye is like I went back and kind of did the same thing as almost human production wise, but this time everybody got paid a nice wage. We shot longer, we shot for like 45 days. I had bigger stunts, bigger effects. And it was that movie that kind of made me realize like, oh, this just feels like a lateral move filmmaking wise.

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And because I was in control of both those movies, I was able to learn from mistakes. And I stepped back and really thought about, what do I want to do in my next movie that's going to elevate me as a filmmaker, elevate my abilities, make me push? Because yeah, I just felt like I was kind of just doing almost human. Not again, but like it wasn't the step forward I wanted. So with Bliss, I really took a step back and I was like, all right.

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I know what I did with these first two movies. They were kind of very much like homages, like almost team with my John Carpenter-esque, you know, Stephen King movie. And mine's I was like, I'm gonna do a David Cronenberg movie. And I was in my early twenties when I did those. And I was like, I need to really do something. need to, you know, I've cultivated my personality. I know I can technically pull off a movie. Let me just put it all out there and do something that only I could make that's right for my brain. And how do I elevate?

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the look and feel of the movie. And that's when I decided to shoot on film for the first time with Bliss. And I was like, let's shoot in LA. I'm hanging out in the art scene. I'm hanging out in the bar scene, the metal scene. I'm really having trouble, you know, with this new script, which it's an allegory because like in Bliss, she's doing the big painting and that was basically me writing the script. But it would be way cooler if it was a chick doing a giant painting than a dude in his apartment writing a script. So it all came from that. And then the interesting thing is, is I had less money for Bliss. I had about $230,000.

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versus Minds Eyes 350, but I shot on film. We had a smaller crew. I had a crew of about nine versus Minds Eyes 20. And we just picked all these great spots in LA. And like I very meticulously figured out the light where the sun was because all the daylight I wanted the sun Tony Scott style sticking in the lens. I really wanted to shoot LA for LA, like make it feel like a Clyde Barker movie, make it a character and shoot in real clubs, real bands, real bars, just, you know.

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Joe Begos (11:26.582)

almost like an Abel Ferrara movie in LA, downtown LA. And I did it and we pulled it all off for that amount on film. And a lot of the reviews after are like, finally, Begos is a real budget. And it's like, no, I actually had less. just took a step back and looked at what I did and how to improve and what could I learn. that's the good thing about being in control too of everything and being my own producer. If you're on another movie and a producer is...

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Dictating stuff that you don't like or making you do certain things. It's just gonna piss you off and if it doesn't work You're just blaming the producer. You don't actually learn anything where like if I *** up I'm gonna the first one to be like well, okay. How do I how do I rectify that? What did I do that led me to that? How do I fix it next time and that's a great thing about independent film, you know All my movies have been like that and I've made six movies now and it's like I don't know if I could Enter the world where I had to basically make a movie by committee, you know blessing and a curse

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because I'm confident in what I do, but what's the ceiling on that?

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Cameron Woodward (12:26.764)

It's interesting though, Joe, like it's pretty impressive, like from that first film to sort of like get a foothold into the industry. Obviously there's this interesting interaction between you as an artist and then like the money side of this. It seems like you've been able to actually like find access to capital. Can you describe like what that relationship is like? I mean, I'm sure that there's a lot of tensions there as an artist, as a filmmaker, but on our podcast, we also talk with like film financiers.

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We talk with film commissions who are actually helping to attract filmmakers, even if it's a small budget, to help get their projects made. What's that relationship like for you as a director, as a producer, with figuring out the money side of this stuff?

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Joe Begos (13:11.238)

it's, it's been different on every movie. Like I also do my own budgets because as a producer and the operator and all this stuff, I know where to put money and where we can take money away. Cause there's a lot of things like just, you know, if you get a regular line producer, they'll just kind of like, it's like McDonald's. I'll plug in numbers and that's not, you know, that works for sure. Some people, but like some movies are so specific that you can't really do that. and I've had line producers on a couple of my movies, but I always do the first budget just to be like, here's a blueprint of where we need to.

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focus, focus money on. And I've had different financials for every movie and I've had a pretty good relationship with all of them, you know. Two of my movies I pretty much self-financed, which was my first movie and my last movie, which is interesting. But you know, Mind's Eye was like 14 different investors. Bliss was one investor. VFW was pre-sold. So we had like, we were basically in the black when we were shooting. And I had a producer on that who was a dick bag, but I had final cut. but so there's like contentions there and that was a, that was the most like volatile.

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Cameron Woodward (14:17.422)

Did that contentious relationship, if you're being honest with yourself, lead to a better outcome creatively or you know? Just pain.

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Joe Begos (14:24.618)

No, no, I made the best of what I could do with it, but there were just things like that they wouldn't let me do because I don't know, this dude was just a *** alpha *** and like wouldn't even though I was right, wouldn't like like, for instance, we had to shoot the movie in 18 days and every single one of my movies has shot for 30 days or more besides almost human. Like those just and like they wouldn't let me take certain things out of the budget. And there was just ways that they were forcing me to work because that's how they made movies before and they were

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Like we kind of met in the middle on some stuff, but that movie, I am very proud of that movie. Like there were things I wish I could do better, but you know, it was what it was. That's VFW. I'm pretty proud of that movie. But because that movie came out the way it did, it was part of a slate, like a six movie slate with that distributor and our movie, and they all cost the same amount of money. And our movie stood so far above the others, on a level of like just not even.

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what people thought of the movie, like it looked bigger, it felt bigger, it felt huge. And that led to on Christmas, buddy Christmas, that same distributor just circumventing the producer and giving me and my partner like a two and a half million dollar budget and didn't ask for any other producers, let us run with the money and do our thing. We had final cut. So like it led to that because I think that those financiers realized.

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why our movie looked like it did and we didn't need that middleman. And then yeah, we were able to go make Christmas, Christmas for two and a half million, which is awesome. We took over a town in Northern California and blowing up and we shot for 45 days on film. We staged blizzards, blew up ambulances, set, caught the police stations on fire, built giant toy stores. Like, you know, it was crazy. So yeah, yeah.

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Cameron Woodward (16:06.094)

You had a good time. You know, interesting question on this one, Joe is, know, for you, you've been the producer, you've been the director, but how do you build a team? What are you looking for? Where you can thrive under, like, let me rephrase the question as a, know, how do you build a team that can really thrive under your do it yourself production environment? Like you have a very, it sounds like a very tight grasp of where you want resources allocated. You know,

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What qualities do you look for in a collaborator?

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Joe Begos (16:38.828)

Well, I'm very loyal. I've had the same people that started on my first movie. There's definitely a handful that have come all the way and then I picked up more and more where like I have a really core group of people, which is why I was able to pull up Jimmy and Sting for so little because you know, I have a really loyal crew, but like I just want somebody who's open to how I work. I know like I only know my movies and my sets and I hear other people talking about when they're on sets and all that stuff. And I just, like, how do people make movies like that? Like.

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I just like, I'm in control. have a very direct idea of what I want. Very *** specific, but I want everybody to be on the same page as me. And if you find the collaborators who are on the same page as you, then they offer things that elevate your material. Like, you know, here's what we're going to do, but people offer ideas that are in that zone. like on Christmas, buddy Christmas.

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You know, we a crew of 25 and at one point I was like, well guys, we've got to redo this. So like at one point we're just blaring music and we're all just paint every single crew members painting and hurry up and fixing the toy store. A PA can give me a, an idea and I can say, no, I don't like that. But if you, they have a great idea, I'm going to take it. And then they feel like they're part of the crew. like, it just feels like you're really part of a team where like, you know, you get into these bigger movies where it's like, you know, it's like, know, somebody's like, well, they don't want to know anybody's names or *** talking to everybody else. You know, one guy gets mad at you if you push the button and this guy does this. It's like, no.

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We're going to have people. all making the movie. If you need to go do that. If like, if I want your suggestion on this, if like, you know what I mean? so it's a very, like almost like a, community theater troupe or something like that. Not even a community theater, but like a theater troupe where it's like, you're all there to pass the ball to each other. I'm the leader on the quarterback, but you know what? The better you guys do, the better I look, the better I do, the better you guys look. And I think that people just have fun on my movies because we make movies. have the best job in the world. Nobody else should be stressing. I should be stressing and I don't want to show that stress, but.

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That's also why I give myself so many days to shoot because I want a small crew and I want more days to shoot so we can all be there on the floor figuring it out and having fun and not like, da da da da da. It's like, you know, I don't like the way that looks, you don't like the way it looks, let's work it out, we've got time, you know? And I think that everybody really enjoys that and you know, take care of my crew.

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Cameron Woodward (18:43.866)

Joe, let's talk about your new movie, Jimmy and Stig's. This is, as I understand it, a four-year production built largely inside of your apartment. Give us the story. What's the background on the production side of this one?

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Joe Begos (19:05.23)

Yeah, so I did Bliss and VFW like back-to-back and You know, they had releases right like Bliss came with the tail end of 2019 and VFW right at the start of 2020 and they both are really well received got good releases I was really proud of both movies and I thought that I was gonna have the heat to like Immediately go make another movie, but then the world shut down and you know, everybody was making not everybody but there were a lot of people making stuff like on their phones or on their

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on their laptops or on Zoom or whatever, ***, you and they were getting distribution and I was like, so I'm just a filmmaker by heart. So I don't care about budget. don't care. I just got to go make a movie. And I was like getting so, I don't know, anxious, just not being able to work on anything, just sitting in my apartment. And I was like, well, I own all my 16 millimeter equipment. I got this cool apartment I live in. I don't know if you've seen the movie, but the apartment is basically like it was 80 % there before we started shooting. And I just kind of did some stuff to it.

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But, all my good friends are my closest collaborators. So why don't we make a real deal movie in my apartment and we'll have it done by the end of the summer. And it took four years to make because I decided to make it so complicated. But also the thing is, like a lot of people, you you look at Sam Raimi, you look at Rodriguez, you look at Peter Jackson, Eraserhead with Lynch. It's like their first movies are like multi-year projects that they sometimes act in and sometimes don't. This was my fifth movie. I already had a career.

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so it was a weird thing where like, didn't want to, my filmography is so precious to me. And it's also the, every movie I make is so precious to me where I didn't want to just *** a movie out and be like, I had to make a movie cause COVID then you look back and it's like, that's the movie that Joe just made. It's like, no, I wanted it to be a movie that felt like an organic part of my filmography. like, now I have the thing of like, I'm in this small room. How do I make a propulsive, big cinematic, crazy

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sensationalized movie with these parameters. And I learned a lot as a director, like I was talking about with Mind's Eye, like I learned a lot as a director because I had to work within those really tight parameters to do it. And I'm acting, which I've never done before. And it made me such a better director because I would look at footage of myself, like when we were first starting and I'm like, okay, that's terrible. What do I have to do? What kind of direction do I have to give myself?

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Joe Begos (21:31.567)

to get a better performance. And I was able to actually build that out. And also another reason we took four years is because I got the financing for Christmas, Buddy Christmas about a year and a half in. So I had to take a year and a half off because it's a real movie with a company behind it. But when I went to go make Christmas, Buddy Christmas, the things that I learned from directing myself, I brought to directing the two leads of that movie. And like it's by far the most naturalistic performances in my films because I learned.

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how to direct actors better by directing myself and being the production designer on Jimmy and Stig's, I was also able to like really look at the intricacies of production design and filling frames. Like I knew how to do that stuff before to a degree, but actually doing it myself and having to go in and hand paint everything and reset everything, it allowed me to direct my production designer on Christmas a lot better, which I think the production design and that is, you know, top notch because he was a great production designer, but I had such a better grasp on specific direction, if that makes sense.

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Cameron Woodward (22:27.522)

It does. So on this film, you're partnering with the horror section, which is an Eli Roth

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you know, set up and this is going to be oriented towards a theatrical release. From your perspective, what are the implications of preparing a film like Jimmy and Stig's for, you know, a theatrical rollout after such an independent process in your career?

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Joe Begos (22:53.23)

Well, it's been interesting because I finished the movie and we were on the festival circuit and I just wasn't getting The offers I wanted and I've self-financed a lot of it. So I was like, well, no, I don't $25,000 for a 20-year ***, you know license to just dump on VOD I can put it on VOD myself. I can do a roach 135 I could partner with a home video company that I know so it was starting we were starting to sell forum rights and I was like just kind of

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Like, all right, I guess I'm gonna have to raise money to start my own company and just ***, cause I also got the rights back to my first couple of movies already. mine's almost human. So I was like, well, maybe it's time to start a small distribution company and raise some money to do that. And I can tour Jimmy and Stig's and put it out myself and just sell overseas and re-release my first couple of movies. And I was literally in the process of, figuring that out when a mutual friend, Ty West, who did like X Pearl Maxine, stuff like that, asked me what was going on with it. I sent him a sales trailer. He.

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It was like, Eli seen this? And I'm like, I don't know Eli well enough to have sent it to him. And then like 10 minutes later, Eli's like, can you send me the movie? And then the next day he's like, I'm launching a distribution company. My next movie was going to be first, but I want to launch it with this. I want to go out in 1500 screens, theatrical exclusive in four months. What do you think? And I'm like, well, I mean, that sounds *** awesome. But yeah, it's been a whirlwind since then. I mean, there's been nothing like special I've had to do to prepare. They just had, I've been on a press tour like.

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Like I was telling you before we started rolling, I've barely been home in the past couple of months. But like the people there are very much in tune with what the movie is. So like the marketing campaign is all geared towards, you know, very specifically like the movie. So it's kind of just been like an extension of the movie and we're shooting, know, Eli's like, does your...

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Cameron Woodward (24:35.514)

Is that different, Joe? Like the selling part of it, the marketing side of it? I mean, you've always done this for your work. You've always like gone to work for your films to get them seen. But like, that process been a learning experience for you?

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Joe Begos (24:51.246)

Uh, it's been bigger this time, like just because there's, have money behind it and like, you know, seeing the stuff that people react to. It's also cool going out there and going to every city and seeing the people and what they react to and, um, going on the convention. So it's been a learning experience in a way that it's been a wider birth than what I'm used to. Um, but it's just, it's, it's weird because like VFW is, it's so funny with this *** industry. don't know, like this is why I tell, I have so many friends who are like,

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are directors and they make a movie for like a million dollars, say, and then they're very hell bent on their next movie being bigger.

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and they'll wait around sometimes for three or four years to get a three-month budget. It's like, dude, are you a filmmaker? Like, what's going on? Are you *** independently wealthy? I don't understand. I'll take, if somebody offers me 300 grand, like, can you make a movie in two months? I'll *** probably do it. That's why my budgets jump around so much. But like, Bliss was 230 grand and it made such a huge impact on my career. And then like VFW, you know, we spent so much time, like I had a big producer who did all these bigger movies and we spent so much time getting like Stephen Lang, who's the biggest *** movie of all time as the *** villain.

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Don't, and Avatar and Don't Breathe, we've William Sather, Martin Kovac on like the number one Netflix show. And then the movie just goes to VOD and gets a few theaters. And then with Christmas, Buddy Christmas, it's like, you know, we got all this money to make these giant action scenes, these big theatrical action scenes, you know, let's get all this money behind it. We've got a big corporation behind it with billions of dollars. And it just kind of comes out a couple hundred theaters and on VOD. And then it's like, I'm going to make a movie in my apartment starring me for a hundred grand. And it's like, that's the one that goes.

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*** wide like a Marvel movie. I mean, you just never and because it's self-financed for the most part, I mean, I had friends come in and help me as we got across the finish line, of course, but like it might end up being the movie that I make the most money on and like also like, you know, if you can, even if the movie only makes a couple million dollars at the box office, if it really makes a million dollars at the box office, it's like, well, my last movie made 10 times its budget at the box office alone, which is just like a buzz and buzz worthy enough thing to get more money to do something. So yeah, it's

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Joe Begos (26:50.946)

The thing I've learned too through my career is to budget as long as you can make enough to pay your rent through the process of it. Like I'm going to go do it because in the end, nobody cares what the budget is. It's what you what's on the screen. Yeah.

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Cameron Woodward (27:01.05)

Is it a good movie or not? Right. You know, I'm curious, Joe, like for other filmmakers working outside the system and then finding themselves in the system and then out of the system again, what's your advice on structuring a production in a way that protects creative vision while still being realistic and sustainable? mean, I think you were touching on it a little bit here, but I guess what, lessons have you learned?

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Joe Begos (27:25.064)

well on everything besides VFW, I raised the money. So like, there's not a lot of, movement like leeway, like, cause it's like, get final cut me and Josh are going to produce. and yeah, it just comes from that. Like if you, if you're, you know, I see other, see other people too, who like, they're like, I've got three producers attached, but no money. It's like, what the *** are they doing? You know what I mean? so I think when you get yourself in a situation like that, you're already kind of digging yourself out of a hole, but.

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I just go out there and try to raise the money myself. because I have, I mean, at this point, you know, I did those first couple of movies that I produced myself and they got a release. That's enough to show other people like I can produce this movie. Like you don't need to bring on other production companies to kind of help. And then even like with VFW, like that was my fourth movie. I was like, look, I know you guys are the producers, but I get final cut. And I got it.

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Cameron Woodward (28:17.082)

in your movies to come, you gonna be starring in them? No, this was a special one off.

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Joe Begos (28:24.172)

Yeah, I'll give myself a small role, but definitely not starring. And it's funny, though, because my buddy Josh Trank, who did Chronicle and the ill-fated Michael B. Jordan Fantastic Four, he was like, need, he's like, your movies look so good for the budget. I'm doing a horror movie, like a five or six million dollar horror movie. want to, I want your department heads. And I'm like, of course, dude. I was like, also check out Jimmy and Stig's. Like they all worked on this, too. So we watched it and he's like.

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dude, you're a good actor, you wanna be in my new movie? And then I just like acted in this movie with like Victoria Justice and Tim Heidecker and *** Will Fischer. So, I mean, I'll act in other people's movies, especially like I'm sitting there in a trailer and I'm like, damn, this is pretty chill, actors got it *** easy. But like, I like operating cameras so much and like being there on the floor. This was just because of the nature of the movie. Though I will always give myself a small role in my movies because...

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Joe Begos (29:17.176)

The reason I decided with Christmas I'll give myself a small role is I put all my friends in my movies and then like a year after they come out they're all getting residual checks from SAG and I'm getting jack *** and I'm like okay well you know what *** I'm gonna put myself in my movies now cause you know that might only be $200 residual check but that's $200 that I'm not getting and I made the *** movie. Yeah exactly.

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Cameron Woodward (29:36.142)

That's beer money.

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Well, Joe, this has been such an awesome conversation. Congratulations on the film and its release coming up here. Really inspiring. And I know so many of our listeners definitely can take some advice out of some of this stuff or just know that there's a fellow traveler making it happen. Thanks for joining me.

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Joe Begos (30:01.763)

Thank you man, thanks for having me, appreciate it.

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