IFH 776: Crafting Comedy Without Limits: The Indie Spirit Behind Chasing Molly with Shelley Pack & Josh Sutherland

Alex Ferrari 1:54
Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.

Shelley Pack 1:59
If it wasn't quality content. You won't see it, and we weren't forced to water down any of the comedy, which was just so liberating, to be able to create something that you just find genuinely funny without any restrictions,

Dave Bullis 2:16
Right, right! And that, and that's awesome, and that's, you know, there's no test audiences, nothing like that, but, but, but. And Josh, you know, just, you know, how did you get started, you know, you know, in the whole visual effects side and behind the camera side of things?

Josh Sutherland 2:33
Man, yeah, I like to tell people I've been making movies forever, you know, I was definitely the kid who took their parents camcorder. And luckily enough, my parents were very supportive of that. And let me, you know, use our VHS VCR to edit some movies and make some mistakes growing up, make some small short films and stuff like that. And, you know, I went to film school at University of Texas, and after that, kind of made my way out to the West Coast, and I've been kind of grinding in the industry ever since then. And, you know, I'm just super glad to have supportive parents, right, who kind of encouraged that no matter what I wanted to do, I will say a funny, kind of a cool little story. Is when I was 10 years old, I still remember my uncle taking me and my brother to see the matrix. And he told us, he's like, Hey guys, don't tell your mom about you. Take you to this R rated movie. But I want you guys to see it, because they spent two years learning Kung Fu, just to you know, before they even started making the movie, just like it, do it right? And I remember seeing that movie being a 10 year old, and it blowing my mind. And I feel like, ever since then Ford, it was definitely something. I was like, this is, this is what I want to do. And, you know, I was lucky enough to get an internship with a company called Captivate entertainment right out of college. And my main goal was like, I want to, I want to, I want an internship on the lot. I want to internship on of the lot somewhere. And their office at the time happened to be on the lot at Universal. And so, you know, being fresh in the industry, just out of school, and getting to go to honor the universal lot every day was really awesome and really eye opening and and when, once I finished that up, I got a, my first big kind of gig in the industry was I got to be a set PA on a movie called skyline. If anyone remembers that movie is about aliens sucking people out of the sky. And, you know, I ended up being on set for that whole run. And, you know, it was the visual effects company that actually made and produced that movie. And they were like, Hey, do you want to be, you know, in the office, you're really great on set. And I was like, hey, a steady paycheck. Yeah, let's, let's try that. That sounds good. And so. I ended up, started working for them, and literally, you know, through that, I feel like I've done every crew position under the sun, right, like if I'm key set PA to VFX editing to then, you know, first AC to camera operator to location sound mixer to colorist to producing to directing, and so just literally ever since then, working my way up and just cutting my teeth, literally, like I said, learning every crew position you can. And that led me to obviously wanting to create and direct my own projects. And like Shelly said, we kind of came together to make a short film called Daschle, a journey through autism. And ever since that project, I knew me and Shelly were going to get together, get along really well because we finished that short film. And literally every, you know, two weeks, I'd kind of get an email, or I'd get a message saying, hey, from Shelly being like, the movie, it's, it's playing, we got into this such and such little fest, and it's playing in Turkey, and then I get another one saying, like, it's playing in, you know, like London, and then it's playing in Russia, and it's playing all over. And I think that that little short film probably screened in probably, like 35 countries by now, but is Shelly, literally, would just keep sending it and sending it out everywhere. And that only, not that not only proved to me that, like she'll just go to the end of the earth for her projects, but like she's not going to take no for an answer, like we're getting that thing seen by as many people no matter what, and we'll do whatever we have to do to make that happen. And so, you know, ever since then, we basically have teamed up and we're like, what do we what do we really want to do? And we have another comedic property that we've had some investors fall through after we've packaged it a couple times. And so, yeah, literally chasing Molly became something that we were like, hey, look what, what can we make ourselves that nobody, no matter what can tell, can tell us we can't do this. Right? I'm lucky enough to have a nice Cinema Camera package and some really nice sound gear. And I was always been like, we have the tools. We have the tools at our disposal to do something here ourselves, if we have to. And we kind of sat together. Made that made the script, excuse me, the script in the story. And just to figure it out that we were going to try to do this one ourselves and and I will say filmmaking is a team sport where you see all those you're sitting in a movie, and you see all those names scrolling behind the credits, and you're like, how many people worked on this? This is insane. Or you're sitting here for 10 minutes, right for that little bonus scene at the very end. And there's a very good reason for that, because filmmaking is a huge, huge team sport, and so it's almost impossible to do something yourself. And so I'm just so happy with what Chase and Molly has become. And even though we did most of the legwork ourselves, there's no way we could have done this without calling in all of our favors and all the help of so many tremendous people, crew friends, actors, and the list goes on and on, and so we're just super happy to have it finally out to the World.

Shelley Pack 8:20
Oh, sorry, Dave. Go ahead.

Dave Bullis 8:21
No, no, problem Shelley, I was just gonna, I was gonna make a quick joke with Josh. You know, whenever you can tell after you screen a movie, if you want to do a filmmaker, because they'll always ask you one question, and that question is not whether they like the movie, not you know this or that, they'll ask you Josh just one question, and that is, what did you shoot that on?

Shelley Pack 8:40
Yeah.

Josh Sutherland 8:42
Yeah, exactly right. It's like, definitely the question, you know, who is in the industry or not, right? But what? But what they're asking, and it's pretty it's pretty apparent that this one was definitely a labor of love. I'll say that

Shelley Pack 9:00
We shot on 4k camera red See, learning all of this, you know, it was a kind of a perfect marriage, so to speak, because Josh could do everything behind the camera. And then I had built, you know, kind of a repertoire of comedians that I've been performing with for years, and, you know, making content. And basically we could come together the two sides. So all the comedians you'll see in the movie are all, you know, personal friends I've, I've worked with before. And so when you ask them, Hey, can you do one day, you'd be doing me a huge favor. They'd be like, Yeah, I'm gonna need you to do this project for me. You know, you kind of like, okay, well, no problem. And then getting like, Felicia Day, she's a friend from, you know, everyone's like, how did you get her? You know, we perform together. We used to do improv together.

So when I asked her to do this, and she read the script, she she wanted to, don't, you know, give her time, I say donate, because no one made this movie, because so it was almost like a donut. You felt like a donation, like I should be writing them like a tax write off for making the movie. But everyone did it because they felt they loved the project. They fell in love with the story, they liked the script, and we just what started as the two of us picking off whatever we could. Then it snowballed as we started to get bigger and bigger talent on set. And you know, when we got Kurt Kurt angle's this big wrestler guy, for those of you guys who don't know that was a cold call. We did not, I definitely was not one of my comedy friends, and we did not know him at all. So they're someone who fell in love with the project because he had no reason, you know, to to fly have us fly him out from, you know, Pittsburgh, to come out to Los Angeles to make an independent film. So we were very fortunate that we had something that people that also attracted people to it. Go ahead, Josh,

Josh Sutherland 11:25
What does it say? Yeah, I mean, we definitely like, I've been lucky enough, thank thank God, through that visual effects company, a lot of their jobs just to be under a plethora of projects right in the last 10 years, from everything from San Andreas to, you know, huge, multi million blockbuster movies, being on set for those and seeing how they operate firsthand, to super independent shoes productions to music videos and commercials and everything under the sun, right? So I get to see a lot of how it works and how it's supposed to happen. And, you know, this film was not made like a traditional, you know, feature film like, 30 to 60 days back to back, right? So we kind of knew that going in that we can't have a traditional shooting schedule. We can't have a bunch of the traditional perks or crew positions that generally exist on a on a big feature film set. And so we structured our shooting schedule and the way we knew we were going to pick it off, and sat in pre production and planned all this out very meticulously so that it would put us in a situation to win. So until, you know, would go then to reach out to some of these people who are her friends, to do us these favors. You know, what's the one thing that a big actor, or, you know, a celebrity has the least of in the most, and that's, frankly, it's time, right? And so we knew that if we could structure the shooting to where we could reach out to them and be like, Hey, we're not going to have any ADR, there's no chance this is going to go into more days. Basically, we're going to shoot you out in one day. We're not gonna, you know, there's not a lot of company moves on this day. Blah, blah, blah. There's no chance of overtime. It basically would put us in a situation to win. So we, we knew that we, we were doing that, and so when we reached out to a lot of people, we definitely got a lot of, you know, answers. And it's not just a simple like, no, sorry, I'm booked, or I can't give you four days. Or, you know, just a lot of those stipulations, we kind of, we kind of set ourselves up to win.

Dave Bullis 13:28
You know, I like that. That's a very good explanation, or very good quote to is, is, you know, we're setting ourselves up to win. And also, the the pitch to the to, you know, you know, different people, you know, is, about time. You're absolutely right. That's the absolute that's the number one thing that a lot of them don't have anything that don't have a lot of and even when they do have time, it's meticulously planned out. You know, they're constantly getting with pitches. They're constantly getting scripts sent to them, and, you know, they're constantly getting, you know, their agent going, Hey, you got to do this, or, you know, don't do that. And so whatever they do, they do actually commit to a project. They don't have a lot of time for the next one starts

Josh Sutherland 14:04
For sure. And as Sally said, I mean, you know, luckily, she's friends with a lot of the comedians in the film, but Kurt was a complete cold call, and it was super cool when we were sit, we're sitting discussing Mr. Black, and I was like, I really want, like, a big, muscley type over the top personality to play this. And we were kind of like, what about professional wrestlers? And we were kind of feeling some out some other professional wrestlers. And Shelly was like, What about Kurt Angle? And I literally kind of had a laugh out loud moment as I was like, I don't know if he'd be into this after knowing what some of the lines that we've been writing and talking about on the page. And, you know, we're like, what do we have to lose, right? And that's kind of been the whole model for the whole movie. Is like, why not? What do we have to lose? So we sent him the script. He actually read it. He actually liked it. A few days later, we were in touch with his agents. I will say, I know his agent. He's probably told him not to do it. He wanted to do it anyway. And so, like Shelley said, too, right? Like he would come out. We, we worked it out. He's locked in the movie. We, our crew was bigger. We ballooned up that day. We had locations and, and it's just, it was super cool. It definitely has been like that. It's just the projects and, like, literally, just like The Little Engine That Could just steam rolling out of control, basically.

Dave Bullis 15:19
So, so what were some of the other wrestlers that you, you were considering just, just, just for conversation.

Josh Sutherland 15:24
I mean, yeah, go ahead,

Shelley Pack 15:26
I don't know anything about wrestling. Like, I used to watch glow, you know, and so, like, I don't to me. I wasn't intimidated about reaching out to anybody, so I was just on social media, just like, it wasn't like, Oh, I've got to get this guy the rock, John Cena, you know, I no plan. I mean, it was literally like, we need this. So I'm like, Okay. And I just kept like, you know, it went down that Twitter like wormhole where it's like, you should follow so and so have you you should follow. I was like, I should follow them. And then I just started reaching out. And Kurt was far. I mean, we had some people that were like, okay, but they were wrestlers. I I'm not even going to throw anyone under the bus. Let's just, you know, like my dad was like, I remember Johnny dumbbells, you know. Like, that guy, not a person anyone would really know. So, um, Kurt, I was like, What do you think of this guy? And Josh's mouth is on the floor. He's like, that's an option. I'm like, Yeah, I got this. I got his manager. He's gonna, you know. So we made it happen. Like Josh said, you have to be really resourceful and meticulous with scheduling. None of our actors are on set sitting. You're there. You come camera ready. I mean, you know, like they said, we had bigger names on set. We had hair and makeup. But aside from that, just, you know, you come ready to go, you can be creative. I think that was also the lure to get a lot of these really talented comedians. You know, there's a lot of things we do as actors to make money, you know, commercials and stuff like that. But this was a, this was an opportunity to kind of be as funny as you wanted to be without limits. So I have an improv background, and I knew that I would get certain improvisers that are going to nail their lines in the first take, maybe two, you know, maybe we need to for safety, and then I we could improvise together. So you'll find the dialog like, you know, of course, all the jokes are in there, which I'm thrilled about. But then there's also, like, really kind of genuine moments that seem organic, and it's probably because they, you know, we improvised it, not every scene, and not every character we could have do that, but the ones that you know, you'll see Jim Cashman, who's Jamie on the progressive commercials, basically a national treasure. He's a he's a Groundlings friend of mine. So I love working with him, we have a great chemistry. So I said, Listen, I need you for you know, I think we had team for two days, but we shot every second. I mean, we just had it going every minute. You know, 10 pages a day, whatever we had to do. And then you would find these really great moments where we could just improvise. And so I think it feels very different. It doesn't feel scripted and like, here comes a punch line, or, uh oh, this is going to, you know, they're going to fall into that. I mean, it's, it has to be the content and the writing and the story. That was king. We didn't have money for special, you know, huge, you know special effects or anything like that. So it had to be quality content. The script had to be good. And I think that's the great thing about independent films, is that they're not made just because you have a bunch of, you know, celebrities in the movie, or, you know, a big name attached, or anything like that. Independent movies get made because they it's so powerful the story, or it's so, you know, funny or something like that, that everyone jumps in to support it. Otherwise, the movie doesn't take off. We know how fortunate we are. It's not lost on us. How many people you know, have ideas and it's hard to get made, and we've been there too, you know. So it took a lot of years in production and doing on camera and off camera stuff to be able to get to the point where we could tackle the feature.

Dave Bullis 19:28
Right, right! And, you know, it's a good point too. Shelley is, you know, even when you do have, like, everything kind of lined up, even, like, you know, in some of these, you know, huge, multi million dollar productions, you know, things fall through all the time, you know, for whatever reason, and and we've all been there in one way or another, where you're a part of a production, and maybe as a, as a, as an actor, or you're, you know, either or whether it's even your project, or, you know, you've kind of been there where these different projects all just fall through for a number of reasons. And I, Josh even was alluding to that too. Just, you know, things just always sort of, you know, something happens and it kind of creates a domino effect, but, but, you know, just in chasing Molly so Shelly, when you were writing this, you know, did you kind of have this in mind? You know, you didn't want to write something into the script that was going to be almost impossible to get.

Shelley Pack 20:28
Yeah, so this was made. Was written like, we're, we're going to make it. So when we were we'd have the story, and Josh would be like, okay, when you have 90 pages written, we're going to start shooting. And so when I was writing it, I attempted to do, we would do, like my character and like one or two other characters. So we knew that. And then we would try and not get, I would try not write locations that that we couldn't get. But if we did need to get one, we said, You know what? We would really need a pawn shop scene. So I had to get a pawn shop. And, you know, start hitting the pavement. Everyone says no. Everyone says no. And you find the one, and it happens to be the best pond. I mean, with the most stuff, you most random stuff you've ever seen, another funny production story. So we get this pawn shop. We can't afford to, like, rent it out, close it down, so it's open for business, as we're trying to get a clean speed so we have this, like these two women that were in there, like, Oh, what a great Sagittarius ornament. You're a Sagittarius, aren't you? I mean, the small talk, go picking up everything, looking at it with a magnifying glass. They didn't buy anything, but they wasted an hour of our time. And I'm looking at the light, the sun's going down. We're like, my, my comedian Fred, is like, Quiet on the set. He's not, he's not part of the crew, you know what I mean. So it's like, it didn't get more independent. But then when you pull it off and you get the last thing before the sun goes down, or you get me finally walking into the pawn shop, and we get it. I mean, the victories, you know, the struggles and the hurdles might be bigger, but then so are the victories. So you would get so excited to be able to to pull something like that off, something, yeah,

Josh Sutherland 22:19
Never again. No, no closed locations, non closed locations. Never again. Looked at joy for about two hours in front of our scene, and we're having a dosed around shooting this scene around her basically because, but she would not leave the store. It was crazy.

Dave Bullis 22:34
So did when she walked in. Did she like, Look at the camera, look at you, Josh and and just kind of like, blank. It didn't, didn't, like, put so and two together.

Josh Sutherland 22:43
It was the craziest thing, because she literally would be, like, looking at rings in the same like, cabinet, glass shelf, counter that we're shooting at. And I'm like, you don't see all these lights, you don't see this boom mic or the camera. And like, was oblivious to it for literally about 45 minutes. And then was like, Oh, are you guys making something here? Like, is this a school? Like, we've been here for about an hour trying to shoot through your head.

Shelley Pack 23:10
I'm about to buy all of these things for you and just give it to you. Because, yeah, we'll buy it for you. It's on us making something so, you know, I think something interesting. You also said, Dave was like, how projects fall through. You do one small piece of it. So Josh and I, we had to have the attitude that we're since we are, like, steamrolling this whole thing, we're also really attached to every part. So every edit, we're the ones watching it all the ADR, were the ones listening to it. So there wasn't we're very attached. So in the same way, we were never going to let this movie not be made or not get put out there, which is something because we were wearing so many hats while making it.

Josh Sutherland 23:55
Yeah, and I just want to speak a little bit to, you know, kind of cool filmmaking knowledge here about Shelly was saying we would like, you know, talk and discuss scenes, right? And we be like, where do we want the story to go from here? And so we definitely, you know, structured the story so that we could make it ourselves. And when I say that, I want to, you know, I mean, like, Okay, well, we, obviously, we live in LA, so we're going to set the story in LA. Let's, let's, we know we can't shoot 30 to 40 days back to back, because we don't have money to do this two months straight. So we're just going to pick it off like, you know, nights, weekends, just every time we can shoot. And so how do we do that? Right? Well, we can't really then have continuity or scripting on set, because we're switching all these days up. So let's just make it like a run the gauntlet story where it happens, like in a night, a day and a night and that and that kind of basically, like, I keep saying it put us in a situation of rent when right? So we're spread out over a bunch of different days or weeks. When you show up to set, you're kind of wearing the same wardrobe that you wore in most of the scenes. It kind of eliminates needing wardrobe person on set. It eliminates having to have. Of the continuity person to figure out what you were wearing or which way you turned out of this door and stuff like that. And so we definitely structured it so that we could pull that off.

Dave Bullis 25:11
Yeah, and that's a such a great idea to do that is kind of, you know, use figure out what you have and kind of build around that, rather than, you know, vice versa. But you know, even when you do that, you do that, you kind of hit obstacles. So I wanted to ask, you know, you know, what was the hardest thing to get out of the whole production of Chasing Molly

Shelley Pack 25:32
Morgan, seeing the the Kurt day, where we had to literally, you know, it had to be so precisely planned out because we had this guy who's so big and who's used to like really nice sets, so we had to really, I think, I think that pulling off the the end with Kurt was probably the hardest, the hardest day

Josh Sutherland 25:59
For me personally, It was probably just the whole post production.

Shelley Pack 26:02
Post production. Post was the hardest part, just because, really,

Josh Sutherland 26:07
I'll say, like, you know, I'm lucky enough to have know a lot of people in the industry, right? And you're kind of, like, continuously helping other people. And I, you know, like I said, filmmaking is a team sport, so that way you're just stacking all these favors, right? So you can call them in when you need them. And post production, you know, we had some big, big, big people work on it in post, but you're not paying them enough to where it's like, Hey, this is a there's a hard deadline, right? Like, I'm paying you X amount of dollars. It's due on this day. It's kind of like, Hey, I know you're working your main job and doing this on your free time for me personally, please finish as soon as you can. So post production kind of dragged on because of that, and it's just the nature of the beast. But basically, that was the hardest part, in my opinion. It was getting that, getting that done. And as well, as I said, the Curt day was definitely our biggest day. And I said, biggest day, it's still pretty small, relatively in terms of big sets. I mean, we probably had 20 people on set for that day, but, you know, just a cool story of how, like, you know, the stars aligning for our movie was basically, we had this really cool location that we actually shot out and made it look like three locations. But we were, we were there, and it's like a back lot place. Shout out Reyes RV where they kind of rent and also store RVs in this, like parking lot, in this huge, like back lot area. And you know, we shot in their office and their attic, in their backyard, back lot, inside their studio, and all over. And anyway, we were gonna have Kurt there, Kurt Angle, and they happen to just rent star wagons. And so, you know, we're, he's gonna show up, we're having this big set day, and they're like, oh, we'll just plug in this pupa generator and turn on one of these star wagons. And so he shows up, and he has a star wagon and his makeups in there waiting and all that, all that to the nines. And, you know, it just looks like way more slicker and like than than it really is, right, something like that.

Shelley Pack 28:08
And also another that reminds me so in post, we wanted this really cool special effects shot, and it involved Kurt, and we, in order to track it, we needed, like, a model of his head. Well, that's not easily applicable. I mean, and we can't be like, can you put your head in this mold? It would really help, like, make this shot look great. So Josh and I are scouring, scouring. He ends up finding a guy who made a video game of Kurt and had his exact head dimensions that we needed. And he's like, I don't know if I even have this. Sure enough, he had it, and we, you know, got it from him. So like, again, the shot looks amazing. Josh has these connections with people who have worked on X Men and Avengers and everything like that. And they're working on our movie. And then we're they're like, well, to make this look really cool. It would be really great if we had this. We're, like, the dimensions of Kurt's head. How are we going to get that and then we deliver it to them? Because we found this guy who made a video game and had an exact stuff like that to be able to the stars had to align for that to happen.

Josh Sutherland 29:16
Yeah, for the people who want to know, like, the technicalities and, like, I said, like, we're I'm lucky enough to know some extremely professional people and so exactly my buddies who work on these huge, huge visual effects movies, you know, and they're used to getting all the proper things right. Like, if you're gonna do something 3d to someone's head, you really need, like, a model, so that you can map those animations and all all that on top of that. And so the guys, you know, unfortunately, they're like, hey, is there any way we can get a head model of Kurt? And I'm just like, Guys, this is not that movie, right? Like, I don't even know if that's physically impossible. And me and Shelly are literally, literally like, do we fly to Pittsburgh and then have to get Kurt another day? This is kind of how, like we just talked about we we sold the movie on that bothering you ever again, right? So we're like, how do we figure this out? And I'm scouring messaging boards, and lo and behold, happened to stumble upon a guy that worked on the WWE Raw, one of the like, Playstation or Xbox movies, like 10 years before that, maybe even earlier. And he's like, Ah, I did Kurt's. He happened to do the modeling for Kurt in that, in that game. And he's like, I think I have his head model just chilling on my machine. Let me, let me check and, like, a week later, I literally have a head model of Kurt Angle, and it's, and send that over to our 3d guy and our VFX team. And they're, they're like, shocked, and it's just, you know, another story of the stars aligning for us.

Dave Bullis 31:01
Well, you know, just to play devil's advocate, what if that? What if that didn't exist? Like, was there, like, a plan B or a plan like, C or D that? Like, if that didn't exist, like, what you would have done instead?

Josh Sutherland 31:12
Was there saying we're like, do we fly? Because there's some really cool apps and ways to get scans. And I, I've worked in VFX a long time, and I definitely know what's needed to get to get that properly. And it was just going to be like, Man, we're gonna have to bother Kurt to go get it. Or, frankly, you know, it's just more time and energy, unfortunately, for the VFX guy, or just have to make that shot look really good and spend more hours and work on it to to make it all work with the geometry of his face, without having that is very, very difficult. And so the short answer is, no, there's. The other option is to not have it. And so it's kind of just crazy that we did.

Shelley Pack 31:57
There'd be lots of things like that where there'd be something like, I had to have, like, we were really looking for, like, almost like a theme song for chasing Molly. And I fell in love with this song. It was a fat boy, slim song. It's like, okay, I'm not a singer, but it goes like, back once again for the renegade master, deep, full of damage, up power to the people. I'm like, Josh, I need this. It's like, you're you're crazy. What do you mean? You're crazy? Well, turns out, fat boy, slim. It's not his. He licensed it from this other guy. I find that guy, and we end up buying the hook. And then we were able to make this really cool song. We find someone else and pay them to mix it. So now we have this like song that's our, you know, our we. We have own the rights to it, but it's also familiar to so many people who listen to that Fat Boy Slim song, and everyone's like, how did you get that Fat Boy Slim song? We're like, it's we didn't. We bought the hook that everyone remembers, and it's a totally different song. Fat Boy Slim song is okay. I'm just kidding. You know, of course, I'm a fan of the song, or I wouldn't have wanted to get the hook, but stuff like that, whereas either we really needed this, like I felt like we needed it or wanted it, and we had to go get it no matter what, and you're always away, you just find a way. I mean, that is filmmaking, or you have to leave it. We shot one scene that was so dark, it just we couldn't fix it. Cannot be fixed so you'll never see it. But if we could, if it was something we really felt like we wanted, we'd have to find a way to make it happen. And when it is just the two of you, we you make it happen. There is no one else. It has to be you or, you know, you don't have a choice.

Josh Sutherland 33:42
And just like I was saying earlier, right? Shelley not taking no for an answer. I mean, it's just like she said, like, we have to have it. We're gonna find a way to get it. And if it either it takes us, you know, whether we find it tomorrow or it takes us 10 days, like two weeks, we're gonna just keep pushing until we get what we need.

Dave Bullis 34:00
You know, it kind of reminds me of a funny story. When I was shooting my student film, you know, quote, unquote, it was with a bunch of friends, you know, I kind of, I kind of broke all the rules and I and what the first thing I ever shot was, like, you know, I got a feet. Was a feature film. It was my student film, and it had, you know, we was a bunch of friends of myself making a movie. And the my one friend, who was actually the star of the movie, just vanished for the summer, like we couldn't, he wouldn't like he, he did one of those things where he's just like, I'm so tired of making this damn thing. And I'm like, Dude, we're almost done. And he was like, I can't, I can't. I just don't want to make it anymore. And he just kind of vanished for that summer. So I sat down with my friend, and we were talking about how we're going to do this, and he's like, Well, what if you find a guy who looks like our main actor, and we just try to act like That's him, and we just kind of finish it that way. And he's like, you know, they used to do it for different movies, and you just kind of get a guy that looks exactly this. It looks similar. And you kind of shoot it differently. So I actually went on a site, and I found a guy who did look like him, and I started to talk to this guy, I was like, Yeah, you look just like my friend. And the site was called ugly New York models.com and I handed out that's, that's a true that's a true site, I swear to God. And it was a, it was a site dedicated to people who have, like, exotic looks, you know what I mean, or like, they have like these different types of looks. And but the one looked just like my friend, and I actually was gonna bring him down from New York, here to Philadelphia, and I and my friend actually ended up coming back in at the same time. And I said, You did you see what you made me do? I said I had to scour a modeling website. And he looked at it and was like, ugly New York models,

Shelley Pack 35:48
This is what you brought to this is your fault. You did this so good. He thought it was no actually a buddy. Yeah, I was gonna say a funny story like that, like, what we were gonna do? So there's a part of chasing Molly that features the grapefruit technique. If you're not familiar with it, Google it, not in front of your kids. Josh shows me this video, and I'm like, this is the most disgusting random thing I've ever seen. We need to have it in our movie. We need this. So we need this. So we're gonna recreate it. We're gonna go on. We had people auditioning for this grapefruit technique. You know, I was gonna, like, work with someone I work in my other job, not even an actress. But I was like, Would you do this? She's like, Yeah, I'll do it. Well, we end up finding the woman who made the video. We got her and another, like, huge score, Josh and I finally found, you know, this is our Moby Dick. We finally find her, and we go back and forth, back and forth, and she ends up, we buy the footage. So you actually the footage you see in the movie is from that actual video. So it was another huge Well, what would you what would you have done? We would have, you know, figured out a way, got an actress to recreate it. You do what you have to do. But we, you know, when you have that kind of ingenuity, and that won't take no for an answer. Um, you end up, we found her, we got her, and she agreed to do it. So, um, it's just, was a huge get. We also got this guy on set, uh, Scar, who plays the, you know, Hispanic gang leader, again, this guy, I didn't know he wasn't a comedy friend of mine, but I start scouring YouTube, and I find these videos called Cholos try and they're these viral videos about, you know, I guess a group of Cholos, and they try all these different, like, stereotypical white people, things. It's very, very funny. And I see this guy. He's got tattoos on his face, on his neck, on his hands, on his toes. I don't know where else he had him. And I'm like, This is him. This is just a guy. So then I have to find him, Dave. His name is not scar. I don't know how to burst your bubble on this. That was not his given name. So I have to find who he is, where he is. Thankfully, we live in a day of social media, and you can, you know, someone's just like a Twitter follower away from finding him, and I find him, and he agrees to do our movie. So we're like, yeah, just one day you're going to come out. Be really, really fun. And we pitch it like that, and we shoot him out, you know, six, seven scenes back to back in one day, he was really, actually a very nice guy, a super Zen cholo. And it worked out great for us. But again, it's like we had to be really resourceful. We didn't have a casting director who had money and had casting sessions. If we wanted to get big talent, we had to find them stuff like that. It was so I think the product ends up being really unique because of the way it was done, the non traditional way. They're not like, oh, this actor's been did it, and we have, he's on our roster. We have to get him booked on something, so we'll cast him in this movie. Was like, No, we just cast the best people we knew, and if we didn't have them, we would find them. So was, we had to be really resourceful. But I think the product, really, you know, paid off in the end,

Dave Bullis 39:20
Yeah. And, you know, that's, you know, one of the key things here is, you know, making an independent movie is calling to different people, not actually relying on a casting agent. Because, like having casting sessions, it's something I've learned too, is having casting sessions and a casting agent and everything. It just adds a lot of money that that, you know, when you look at it, unless you actually have budgeted that at the get go. And you know, you could spend that money elsewhere. You know what?

Josh Sutherland 39:44
I mean for sure. I mean, frankly, we just couldn't afford to have it. There wasn't a lot of, you know exactly, casting sessions or rehearsals. And frankly, I mean, we didn't presale any territories. This movie didn't have distribution going into it. Anyhing like that. And so, you know, Scar, who does these viral Cholo Cholos try videos. You know, we were trying to pad the movie. You know, any role that was open with someone who had a big social media following that way, if we did, you know, at the end of the day, have to self distribute this, we knew when, when the actors were at least blasting it out, that they would have some sort of audience already built in, just in case, right? Because that's, that was the biggest, the biggest thing, you know, you finished this, this thing, this long, arduous task that put all this work into it. And it really could have been like when we're sending it out just hey, you know, good job, guys. Here's the pat on the back. Keep trying to make movies. And so we lucky, luckily, had had more than a few offers on it, and and put us Yeah, and put us in a great situation.

Dave Bullis 41:03
And I like that name, by the way, that Shelley came up with the Zen cholo, yeah, I think that's kind of like a sequel movie for him that you should make at some point,

Josh Sutherland 41:13
For sure.

Shelley Pack 41:15
Well, I be taught he actually, like, He's helping me, like, with certain social media things. And I'm just like, well, what if we did this? What if we did this, and he's like, Shelley, you're overthinking it. The movie's hilarious. I was like, You're right, Scar, I am overthinking movie is hilarious. And I'm just like, he put me like, I was just like, thank you. Like, he's like, this Buddha. So it really, you know, it was cool because we have people who are in the movie, again, not for a huge paycheck, so they're not locked in their trailer demanding, you know, brown rice and sushi. You know, it's people who are, you know, they love it because they love being in projects that they're proud of. So they knew at the end of the day, it'd be something they're happy with. And we made it a cool experience. So it wasn't like, you know, big lights and big trailers and catering and all this stuff. But you got to be part of a project that was completely different, and you got to be creative and have fun and not be like, you know, tied down with certain obligations from, you know, corporate and stuff like that. I think Josh and I, we both come making things where, you know, had to be commercial or had to be appropriate for TV or stuff like that, and it was really fun and liberating getting to make a movie that's not appropriate for anyone really, really felt good to be able to do that

Josh Sutherland 42:37
Definitely not appropriate everyone, especially my mother, Right. I'm just want to say, sorry, Mom, I apologize. It's not the movie that she wanted me to be my directorial debut, but this is just how the cookie crumbles.

Shelley Pack 42:50
So she's very supportive, but she's like, What about that dash movie about national journey? Like that was the one she loved. We're like, we love that one too. You know, don't, don't we still love that one, but

Dave Bullis 43:02
Well, if she sees it, you can be like, Well, hey, Mom, listen, Scar is a really good guy in there. He's

Shelley Pack 43:07
Like, then show low, Mom.

Josh Sutherland 43:10
Oh, they, they love it, but, yeah, it's just not, not the one she would have me make. But I will say, one of the coolest feelings in the world ever was getting, you know that photo of my parents in Texas holding my DVD up and sending me a selfie that they ordered that blu ray on Best Buy, and it makes you feel really good.

Dave Bullis 43:30
And, you know, that's kind of ties in with the next question I had, too, is, you know, you mentioned, you know, having different actors with social media followings, when? When the movie? Because the movies on, you know, out right now, it's on all the different sites, when they started to actually, like, you know, mention the film. Did you see like a correlation? I'm always interested in that thing, in that type of stuff, where you know when they mention it, when they link it, when they etc. Do you see a spike in, you know, in interest to, you know, people talking to you online, you know, whether it be on Twitter, Instagram, etc. And, you know, did you actually see, like, a direct correlation between that?

Josh Sutherland 44:06
Yeah, so you, I mean, you have to be pretty you have to search it out. I mean, a point point blank, no, no bullshit. Like, when you sell that movie, you know, to the distribution company, it's technically not yours anymore, right? It's theirs. And so we don't get a lot of numbers of how the movies actually doing. You know, they come out quarterly, and so you kind of, it's kind of like a wait and see, of like, how many is it really selling? But what you're talking about is when you see, you know someone in the film, share it, or you see, you know, all these other actors, kind of like, retweet and reshare or post a trailer, and then it the best part is mainly seeing, like, how many people re share those? Because you get to see that and see all the comments, right? And just every time someone's, you know, we're literally it's not a separate PR firm or separate team of social media people managing these accounts, like the Twitter, the Facebook, the Instagram. So. When someone asks us, or we see the shares, or the whatever, we get to see all that, and we see all the comments. And so it's, it's not so much of seeing like a direct correlation in the numbers of the units, but it's basically seeing like the shares and then reading all the comments. I mean, that's the best thing for me in the world, right? Is like, whether it's a hater or someone who loved the movie, just the fact that someone out there took the time to watch the movie and then not only that, but get on their computer and type up and say something about it, just makes me feel super special.

Shelley Pack 45:33
I mean, I love I first of all, we disagree on the fact if someone writes something mean whether we should comment. Clap back, as they say. But the best feeling like Josh said, like, We are the PR team. So when you hear a comment where it's like, I've been hearing about this movie, I gotta watch it. I was like, what he's been hearing about the movie? You know, each we're like, weighing in on each comment. But it's great to hear like someone you don't know, it's not a friend or family, because you kind of like, even when your friend, it's an acquaintance, says they love it, you're like, but are you? Do you really love it? But then a total stranger is like, really well done. Hilarious. I was like, Oh my It's because we're so attached to it. It wasn't just we did one part. I didn't just act Josh. Didn't just direct. You feel like, exponentially more proud because of the fact that you this is something that literally, you made, you feel like you made by hand. You're so attached to it. So it's, it's crazy to see other people that you don't know that have watched it without you telling them about it. So they, you know? I'm like, oh, it's working. The PR is working, you know, but when Kurt tweets out something, it's huge. I mean, he's got a huge social media following, but like Josh says, we don't know the numbers, so we just put our heads down and we just keep going as if the movie could be doing extremely well, or it could be friends and family, but it doesn't matter either way. We push just as hard. And I think that's also the mentality is that no matter what or how you think it's going, you keep your head down and you keep working, you keep doing podcasts, you keep reaching out and networking. It's another it's another thing that we're getting into that we didn't really know ahead of time how to do it, but you find out, you start swimming, you figure it out. And now we're really getting, you know, getting going on, networking with people who will really love the film. And so it's nice to see that people are appreciating the comedy and really are liking it. When someone says they're like, fan girling out, when they're talking to me. I'm like, what just me, it's, see, you know, it's a cool feeling,

Dave Bullis 47:48
Yeah, and, you know, just to kind of, you know, as we talk about casting and everything else, you know, one of the reasons I was asking that question is I was a part of, I was kind of like a consulting producer for a movie a few years ago, and that topic actually came up. And the reason was, was because they wanted to cast these kind of like, I guess the world be Instagram models. I guess that's kind and they wanted to cast them the movie. Because why? Well, hey, they've got this huge social media following each and they were just wondering, you know about this. And when it came time to present them with a contract, they both were, like, iffy about actually mentioning the project and this and that and and, you know, they, they wanted to see it before they they mentioned it, and blah, blah, blah. So, you know, my with my little voice, I was like, is this really worth it? Everybody? Really

Shelley Pack 48:42
It's a gamble. And

Dave Bullis 48:43
I was like, Are there followers even gonna really care about them in a movie, because they really follow them to, you know, because they're, they're, they're doing Instagram stuff, you know what I mean? Their Instagram, you know, they're posing on Instagram. You know what I mean. So I always that whole correlation there. Oh, by the way, in case somebody wants to know they did end up casting the Instagram models. They did not, they did not mention the project at all, yep. And they had to keep, like, tapping them on the shoulder, like, Hey, could you mention it? Like, you know, it's kind of contractually obligated to do it. Never mentioned it. And that was a whole point of, yeah, whole point of contention there, and a lot of leather producers were fighting with each other, but, but again, I because when they had another the last meeting, I was like, you know, I kind of said, you know is it really worth it either way, so, but it was two other producers who were like, you know, one was like, adamant that they had me casting other. One was like, kind of signing with me was, like, is this really, you know, what's the point? But yeah, you know, it that type of stuff happens. You only mean, so,

Shelley Pack 49:57
Yeah, you don't know. I mean, they're not, you know? So like I said, we couldn't be like, not only are you going to do this movie for basically no money, but we also need you to like, then promote it, right? So we would never risk like, the part for like, you know, the we wouldn't risk the acting for like, a social media following. So for example, we have a, you know, a maxim model that has a million followers. Tiffany Stanley, she's a cover Max model, but we cast her in a model role, where her being a model, you know, we set her up to win too. So, you know, she's got a huge following. We don't know if she's going to tweet or say anything, but at the same time, that's why it's like, Well, either way, whether she does or doesn't. We need someone who's going to be good for the part. We would never compromise the part or the movie because someone had a social media following, because we had tons of people that we were like, Okay, should we get this person? They've got X amount of followers? Is it worth it? You know, we went back and forth, and our round table is just Josh and I, so we have to be unanimous, and usually it is. If we both, you know, if one agrees and disagrees, then we find it's not the right thing anyway. So we're both always like, Oh yeah, we have to do this. Or no, it's not worth it. So we definitely had to make those decisions. And no one is obligated to. We didn't have anyone who said we absolutely will, basically being fortunate, combined with, like, really hard work and dedication, we wouldn't have jumped into production had Josh and I not been experienced, you know, me in front of the camera, him behind the camera. You know, we wouldn't have just been like, let's make a movie. You know, we had both been really working and getting really good at our craft before we would jump into taking on a project like this. So we're really, really proud of the I mean, it does. It's, it's really a surreal feeling to have the project completed and then to have people like it. You're like, it's, it's really amazing. I'm still kind of having an outer body experience about the whole thing,

Dave Bullis 52:00
Yeah, and, you know, it's always awesome when the movies finally done and you got to actually get to see it, it's always that feeling of like, holy crap, this is actually possible. Oh my god. What the hell were we thinking? It's like, get to the end. But it's funny Shelly, you know, for everyone listening, this is actually a redo of the of the I actually interviewed Shelly and Josh before, and this is a redo of that interview, because the file became unusable. So they were so gracious to come back on. And it's just I had a feeling of deja vu there, Shelly, because suddenly I lost you there for a second. I'm like, Oh no.

Shelley Pack 52:36
Like calling me. I'm like, nobody is more important than me talking about this movie right now, so I apologize for that, but no, let's see Josh and I were willing to do this next week if we have to. You know, we know that this is, like, we've had plenty of things where they're like, well, we just that's not usable, you know.

Josh Sutherland 52:54
I mean, some scenes of the movie, right? Like, we'd spend days going out, and then we just get back and be like, Man, we can't. I mean, a lot of stuff ended up on the cutting room floor, and you got to separate yourself and realize, like, once you take off that director hat, you can't think about, oh, how much time and money and energy went into shooting this, and just have to be pretty, pretty vicious in the editing room and not man, had some stuff.

Shelley Pack 53:17
There were so many jokes that I was like, can't make this joke where he's like, Shelly, we'd have to reshoot this whole I'm like, but it's such a good joke. I mean, but you have to again. It's like, well, take off your you know, writer, actress, you know, hat can't save every joke and be a producer. And a producer say this isn't quality. It's does not quality enough to be in your film. You have to be really this is your baby. So if it's not quality, it needs to be cut. And so many times I was just like, Ah, man, I hate to lose that. But Josh is right. It does not look like, you know, it doesn't. It's not up to our standards. But it would be very difficult, and he would get real. Edward Scissorhands, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what happened there, you know, but in the end, like all my jokes that I liked got put back in, I'll just say that right now, it's not an I told you so moment, Dave, it's just a, you know, I was right, which is a little worse than I told you. So I think

Dave Bullis 54:25
So. You know, just where can everyone find Chasing Molly at right now,

Josh Sutherland 54:29
Man, we are lucky enough to be on almost anywhere that you can stream a movie online. We are there if you need, if you get a movie through your TV, car, Cox spectrum, time, Warner, basically everywhere except dish VOD we are on, you know, Amazon Prime, Fandango, red box voodoo, just literally, yeah, iTunes, you know, anywhere you can stream a movie or get a movie digitally, we're there if you want a DVD or a Blu ray. Where, you know, Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart target, Barnes and Nobles, super cool, literally almost everywhere.

Dave Bullis 55:09
And I'm going to link to all this everyone in the show notes. And then, because I know all the things we talked about too, I'm going to link as well in the show notes, everybody. And so Josh, you know, Josh and Shelly. Just in closing, I know we've been talking for probably about, I guess, roughly 55 minutes now. Just in closing, is there any parting thoughts that you wanted to give to sort of put a period at the end of this whole conversation?

Josh Sutherland 55:33
Sure, yeah. I mean, I just want to say first bit, first and foremost, thank you, Dave, for having us on. I just sincerely appreciate it. And, you know, actually said it's not, you know, it's not lost on us how rare and special This is. You know, I know a lot of people and friends that can make a feature length movie if they had to, but selling it is a whole another ball game, and so we feel super special. And just, I hope everyone goes out and sees it and supports independent filmmaking and go check out Chasing Molly.

Shelley Pack 56:09
Yeah, I just want to say also, thank you so much, Dave for having us on and supporting independent film. We're really proud of Chasing Molly. It's something very, very different. It's comedy that, you know, you'll be very shocked, I think, at certain points. But, you know, I'm surprised by the people who are like quoting, you know, the movie. Back to me. It's a really cool feeling. If you're looking for something different, like you haven't seen and you want to support independent film, you know, watch chasing Molly. We really appreciate it,

Dave Bullis 56:43
And where will find you out online Shelley?

Shelley Pack 56:46
Shelley pack, S, H, E, L, L, E, Y, P, A, C, K, mainly chasing underscore Molly. I'd really, let's keep it let's keep it business right now. I'm just kidding, chasing underscore Molly. So look for us on Twitter and on Facebook, Chasing Molly movie and Instagram Chasing Molly movie. So definitely follow us to keep to keep posting updated on where you can watch Chasing Molly next.

Josh Sutherland 57:14
Yeah, and if you want to find anything I'm ever working on, I mainly post to Instagram. It's at Sutherland film, and that's S, U, T, H, E, R, L, A, N, D, F, I, L, M, I'm lucky enough to be working on some pretty cool projects currently, and obviously me and Shelley have some more projects in the pipeline. And if you ever want to see any of that stuff, it's online there.