Holllywood hustle: what you did not know about the WGA/SAG strike

Welcome to the Heart of Show business. I am your host, alexia Melochi. I believe in great storytelling and that every successful artist has a deep desire to express something from the heart to create a ripple effect in our society. Emotion and entertainment are closely tied together. My guests and I want to give you insider access to how the film, television and music industry works. We will cover Dreams Come True, the Road, life's Travel, journey, beginnings and a lot of insight and inspiration in between. I am a successful film and television entrepreneur who came to America as a teenager to pursue my show business dreams. Are you ready for some unfiltered real talk with entertainment visionaries from all over the world? Then let's roll sound and action.

Well, I am so thrilled and delighted on this new season. I keep having amazing guests. It hasn't even started yet, but I am recording this and you're going to be hearing about it very soon. I have somebody who is not only a friend. I'm not even going to say how many years because that's going to age us both but I'm just going to say that his dad and my mom were very good friends. They shared many lunches in Cannes on the beach. He used to come to my birthday parties with his brother. He used to come visit me at the AFM. I still have pictures where I was sandwiched between those two handsome British young men that they took over their father's empire in the film business. They all became forced to be reckoned with. I'm talking with one of the banker brothers, my dear friend Jonathan connecting all the way from Canada, who has produced a few more movies than I have and even bigger ones, because yesterday I did like 35 movies. I think he did 38 and he's a really big people. He's worked with Jessica Justine, he worked with Gary Oldman, he worked with Opel Walker. I want to hear about that. I think it was right before he passed away. He worked on series and he just did a movie that you can catch on most streaming platforms, I think called Best Sellers, with Michael Gaines and Aubrey Plaza. You have to check that out and also Wolf and the Lion, which is a family movie, so he had me in the word Wolf and Lion and a girl with animals. You're speaking to the lion. Welcome, jonathan.

Thank you, thank you very much. That was a very nice, kind introduction. Thank you very much indeed.

Well, jonathan, I mean you are a producer, but obviously you are somebody who is a real producer, boots on the ground kind of producer. You're not a producer who just finds something that just, oh, I'm going to create and then I'm going to send somebody else run the set. You are like the person who's on the set figuring it out, figuring the financing, how to make movies. How easy was it back then, when you and I first knew one another, and how hard it is today, without having to reach for their vodka and having to get drunk.

Yeah Well, listen, I think that you know it's all relative. You know you look at it today and you think back to the days before how easy it was when you know there was a video market and then a DVD market and there were secondary markets you could tap into. And I can remember sort of the late 80s where you could almost make anything and people would buy it. Amazing as that may sound, and it was. I suppose you know, thinking about your time and when we worked in the business, we were probably too young at that stage really to have taken for the advantage of that way. You know a lot of people that were up and running at that time made a very good living, were very successful, and then some of them, the clever ones, decided that time was to step out and some others stayed in and then discovered, perhaps like going to the casino, that at some point you, your luck, just runs out. The business has changed enormously. It really has on so many levels. I mean you know you, in one of your previous podcasts you were talking about the Cannes Film Festival, for instance, and I remember going going to Cannes as a young boy with my parents and you know the level of the level of parties and the way Cannes was back then there was, it must have been vast amounts of money being thrown around for all sorts of things. Cannes used to last for 10 days. You could go and play golf in the middle of the Cannes Film Festival if you wanted to, because you know there was that sort of a time. I mean, now we go in there and you kind of go in for four days. You don't sleep, you run around, you do squeeze as many meetings and, as you were saying, we don't even make it to the parties anymore because you just can't function if you do so, I always I walk around the New York housing and I think of it as a sort of midnight, looking down the beach at these parties, thinking to myself, oh yeah, and then I think, well, no, on second thoughts, I've got a meeting at sort of eight o'clock tomorrow morning. I'm not going to go into that thing and rub shoulders with are all probably inebriated and would all feel rough the next day. But the market's changed. It's a more difficult business now, but I always say to people that it's a degree of difficulty. You know we're all, as filmmakers and film producers and distributors and sales people. We're used to the challenges that this business throws up, and being able to adapt and change at the times is what keeps you alive. You know, I venture to guess that if I was a Wall Street banker back in 2008, making millions of dollars every year, really without having to get out of bed almost suddenly the changes and the challenges that the financial markets found themselves in were was a significant swing. So you went from making money easily to not making money at all. It's always been difficult to make money in the film business. It's always been a challenge, and I think that you know the term entrepreneur. Being entrepreneurial and being able to adapt to the circumstances is really the fundamental thing that keeps anybody going in this industry. It really is, you know.

Yeah, absolutely, and I think you know. Obviously we want to call out the elephant in the room because you know those are the good old days where you and I could just show a trailer to somebody or show a script and people go, oh yeah. I've got money. You know, I want to give you money. Let's make a movie or let's resell it. And now the market is already difficult post COVID. And we were just coming out of COVID with thinking, oh great, maybe we can start making movies again or TV shows. And now we have a strike that is four months going between actors and writers, and the war is with AMP, tps or whatever I'm spelling it wrong which has the word type producer in that world. And so people are thinking that you and I are the bad guys, the producers are the bad guys. So maybe clarify a little bit. You know, why are we not the bad guys?

Well, yes, I mean, you raise a good point. I mean, you know, the producers versus the creators, that's. That's the sort of way this has been sort of portrayed, but as a matter of fact, it's not that at all. I mean, we find ourselves as producers is sort of a little bit stuck in between a rock and a hard place. You know, we also suffer from the fact that you know the studios, the streamers, you know, in their business models. It has an impact upon us too, you know, in a negative way. I think that you know, this recent situation has obviously been brewing for a while. We all recognize that the system that we have is probably broken for a whole variety of reasons. It needs a reboot and a rethink across many levels. But my personal view is that this was extremely bad timing. I think that they could quite easily kick the can down the road for 12 months on this and given the industry a chance to write itself, to put itself back in, to get its house in order, if you like, after COVID, get itself back into some kind of rhythm. You know, in 2019, I produced a film Crisis with Gary Oldman. I went straight into doing the film with Michael Cain and Best Sellers and nothing begets business more than business. So you're on a roll, you've got things going on and so on, and then COVID came and hit and essentially destroyed those two films as a marketing campaign. There was no way of distributing those movies. They essentially got lost in the whole COVID thing. Then you come out of that and then, in 22, I was able to produce two more pictures. I did a big project for Goumont which we filmed here in Montreal, which is a $30 million movie, and then we followed that up with the film. It wasn't a sequel, but it was another movie called Jaguar, my Love Again, the animal family film, which is in post-production at the moment. And then the strike comes. So again you get two movies made and everything grinds to a halt, the difference being this time is that, like a lot of producers, we benefited at least in Canada, at least anywhere, and I think in many other countries. The government was very generous with the arts. We got very good loans, we got financial support who were given the means to be able to keep our operations turning over, and if we weren't producing anything and many of us have borrowed or were given grants and loans Some of those loans need to be repaid. We're reaching a stage where those loans that were very low-interest loans have now transformed themselves into interest-bearing loans and here we are in a situation where there's no business coming in. So obviously that's a big concern for independent filmmakers like myself who have I have five people that I employ. I have an overhead. It's not a big overhead but nevertheless you spend 18 months or two years without generating any income. That has a very negative impact upon your business model, which means that money that you would otherwise be spending on developing projects, trying to set up new ideas, and you have to go on to hold, because the money that you have you have to use for keeping the lights on and paying your staff, which I think is a very important thing to do. So that means that when you come out of all of this, when eventually this strike is resolved, you can't be on the other side. None of your IP is being developed, so you're kind of back to square one, but actually you're worse off than square one. You're actually behind the eight-borne. You've actually gone backwards, not forwards. So my personal view was well, look, we should have been again. I don't disagree with anything that the writers' guilds are arguing for a SAG are arguing for and I have my own particular views on that, we'll discuss it in a minute but a 12-month hiatus that's kicked the can down the road for 12 months picked things up would have been a welcome thing. It would have enabled us to keep that ball rolling again, because we're not really as the independent producers, we don't call the shots. We kind of end up inheriting whatever it is that everybody finishes negotiating with, which invariably will mean that making a movie or making films will cost more money. That's always the end result of these negotiations. The costs go up, the amount of money available to us to make the films doesn't increase, but the cost of making them does, and so, again, the impetus falls upon us to try and find ways and means of being able to close that gap. And that's sort of really where, you know, being a producer comes into the fore. You have to be able to find solutions, be it making creative compromises or be it being really, really savvy about trying to tap into soft money, financing or co-production structures. There are lots of different ways of being able to skin the cat, but you have to know what those things are and able to be able to do them properly. So you know, my opinion of the strike is that, yes, it was inevitable. Did it have to happen now? Probably not. Will it have an impact upon our businesses, filmmakers, going forward? I'm sure it will, in terms of an increase in cost in some form or other. And you know, is it going to make our lives any easier? Well, the answer is clearly no, it's not. It's not going to make our lives any easier at all. I always use this. I speak about residuals particularly, which obviously is a sore point. But residuals is something where I hear people arguing saying well, if the film is successful, our union members should benefit from the success of a project, and I agree with that. But then what's the definition of success? The definition of success in most people's business is when you start making a profit that's deemed to be a success. I find it very difficult that residuals get paid before the cost of the film has actually been recouped. Before I, as a producer, make any money, before I, as a producer, get any of my deferred fees back, before I reimburse my bank, before I reimburse my investors, I'm paying out residuals and if I haven't been able to convince my US distributor or my distributors to assume those obligations to SAG or to the writer's guild. I get stuck with those things even though I have no revenue coming in, and that doesn't seem to be in the spirit of what the intention was going forward. I understand if you go a step further when you start talking about TV exploitation and things being seen on TV and those residuals that are derived from that. And that's a little bit different from what we're talking about here is if I make $10 million of sales international sales to finance my movie, I've got to pay a residual on that Before I even. I'm already being charged a residual on that $10 million and I haven't recouped the $10 million it's cost to make the movie and I haven't actually made any upside on this. I think that's never gonna get resolved. But that remains a bit of a sore point to me because I think that's not equitable as a producer. We shouldn't be in a position where we're effectively paying people a profit share on a film before the film was a profit. And if you think about most of the movies that I do at least anyway, because I'm working here in Canada usually the stars of our movies are the SAG players. So all of my secondary roles, my supporting roles, my extras everybody else down the line are not necessarily tapping into this. So if I'm paying an actor a million dollars as a fee or $2 million to two actors, for example so that's a fairly decent fee by all accounts I'm having to defer most of my fee, or the completion guarantor takes my fee in case of obriges or whatever the case may be, and then I find myself having to pay my stars residuals and it's like well, hold on a minute here. I've just paid you a million dollars each, which is a fairly decent payday. I haven't paid me and made any money yet. I haven't even reimbursed anything. And here you are with your union asking me to pay residuals to you. There's something not right with that.

Jonathan, I think that there is a thing that people saying well, you know the argument, and I have a lot of actor friends who obviously are not stars and they're saying listen, we're living on $26,000 a year on average. We can't even pay for our health insurance and we need this money. But the point is that sad reality is that those type of actors are not gonna trigger our financing. So I understand that they wanna get paid and understand that the residuals are important for them. But we need the actors in order to get our financing and sadly it is not gonna be the journeyman who is going to make our film Great Lit, and so it becomes a whole big problem for us, not to mention the fact that not many people know that. You know, produces guilt is not a union, it's a guilt. So we are also waiting for residuals. We don't have any way of fighting. We don't have medical coverage and, as you said yourself, sometimes we may work on a film for five, 10 years and then, if we look at our producer fee, that may end up being 100,000, 200,000. You divide that by 10 years, it does become 20,000. Which is less than what an actor would make working for maybe five days in a whole week. And we're working for five years. How is that fair? You know, cause we are in the same predicament as them. They keep on separating us as if, like we're like I said, we have private yachts and planes and everything that we got plenty to live on and they do not see the sacrifices that we all make to see a movie done, because we have to deal with all the unions and make them happy. And why shouldn't everybody profit? If somebody is there to profit, who says that a director of photography is not essential to the success of a movie? Or a production designer? Or an editor, why are we singling out the writers and the actors? Granted, without something on the page, you can't make anything. You and I, especially when it comes to scripts, we need something on the page for you and I would say we're gonna go off and make a film or a series about that. But still, if there has to be a pool, then everybody has to enjoy it from that pool. And, like I said, if that's gonna happen, it could have waited. Because, yes, we're arguing about AI. Well, guess what people? Ai has been here for years. Now everybody's talking about AI. Did we not multiply crowds when we are cutting costs on visual effects and we can't afford to get 5,000 extras in a scene and we only hire 50 actors. We always use the AI. Yes, it's true, but I also hear from first aidees and I don't know if you have similar stories where I say a lot of these extras that they wanna get paid because their image is gonna be reused. They've had horrible experience with some of the quote unquote newer actors who go there and eat crab services and start pitching scripts to the stars, steal stuff. I mean I'm not saying everybody's the same, but I mean it's very hard even for first aidee to work with the day players. So where is this issue with AI? I mean, yes, it is an issue. It is mostly for writers, even more than it is for actors, I think. I think for writers it's scarier than it is for actors.

Yeah, I agree with that. I agree, I think, just to your point earlier on. I just wanted to make a last comment on the residual things. One of the interesting things in Canada with Actra, who is the acting union up here, is that you have the option as a producer to buy out four years of residuals as part of your budget. So what you do is you say, look, I'm gonna pay you 135% of your fee and for the next four years, or for the first cycle of the movie, I don't need to report you to anything. So the beauty with that is that that 135% fee is a little bit more expensive to us going in, but I can get a tax credit on that because it's part and parcel of the actor's salary, so I get some relief on that. So it's not just money out of my pocket that basically has to come out of thin air. Yes, it increased the cost, but the actors in question, and it may be that 135% that I pay, which sort of buys out everything under the sun. That's on the premise that the film is actually very successful. It may not be very successful, but I'm covered anyway. So I think to myself well, surely there must be a middle ground here where we could come up with a formula where we could say okay, well, look for the actors that aren't the stars whether it's fixing a level of salary or a definition as to what that actor is in the movie, so that all the people that are below that level, that line level, whatever it's set at would be entitled to. You could buy out the residual upfront as part of your budget. You could build it into your financing. If you're doing it in some such way, maybe there's a tax credit you can generate because it comes part of a salary. That seems to be to be a much more sensible way of doing it. What it takes away, though it takes away the sort of Seinfeld effect and what I mean by that is the is the notion that you could work on a show that could suddenly explode and go into syndication and you're making more money in residuals than you ever made from actually making the show. So maybe there's a different sort of approach to that too. I really don't know, but I think that both the producers association and the guild seem to be so far apart in terms of what it is that they want. I don't know what will be involved in terms of who's going to cave first because someone's going to have to give something up. It doesn't seem to me that the moment either parties are going to give anything up, so it has to get to that point, and I don't know how long this will last, for I think that it's probably going to last up until the end of the year. I think that people will begin very soon to think well, december's just around the corner. Are we really going to start anything between now and the end of the year? Probably not. We may as well bump it to the new year, and that, I think, will slow down the negotiation process. I think we're looking at the early part of next year before this is resolved, and even if they resolve it beforehand, by the time it actually sort of gets into the system and people are able to start gearing up again and getting things back together again. No one's going to start production in November and then come back in January. They're going to wait and just come back in January. So I think this is I think we can pretty much put across through 2023 as independent filmmakers, because even getting the waivers right now is taking. I applied for a waiver on July, the 19th. We're now what? The 22nd of August and I still have nothing back. So, and this is just to get casting offers out. So if it takes me that long to get that, you know how long do I, how long is it going to be, how long does it take? And you know we're working on productions which sort of need to go into production right now. It doesn't give you a lot of time. You know it's like, okay, so I have to wait for six to eight weeks before I get a waiver so I can make an offer to an actor. And we're sitting here, we're sitting here in September now. So just think about it for a second. I hope for six weeks from the time making application today. That brings me up to the end of September. Then I've got to make an offer to talent. It's going to take me a month to do that. Let's say so now, the end of October. Am I really going to start my financing in November and December? And you know, no, it's going to get pushed until next year. So you know, being a Montreal-based producer where we have snow on the ground from January through to April, I'm basically telling myself, okay, well, likelihood is we're not going to do anything until next spring, which is 18 months of inertia, which is not great.

No, and I'm so glad you're talking about the waiver issue because I have some friends of mine again who are SAG members and they're getting those newsletters from the guild saying oh, don't worry, we're here to support the indie producers. They're going to, though, they have to do a scholars, and we'll give them a waiver right away. And you're not the first person that I hear. It's taking forever even to get a return call. Yes, maybe somebody was a star. They're going to get the waiver right away, but you and I are not. And then what happens with that waiver? Because you have to automatically agree to the new agreement, whatever that agreement means, which means that you cannot sell to a streamer until that agreement is done. Yeah, so how do you again go back to your investor and say guys, thank you for giving me millions of dollars, but I'm going to be selling your film and, as we know, the streamer is pretty much 80% of the sale. At this point, for us to make any money back is certainly not international.

No, absolutely.

Turkey and Greece and whatever 5000 year and 5000 there. So they're saying great, we'll give you the waiver, but you have to agree that you're not going to sell to us. So how are we going to make our money back? And that's why I love that you're talking about the waiver thing, because they think they're helping us. I honestly don't think they are.

Well, I'm not sure. I think also that it's a little bit the blind lead in the blind. I think that they don't really know how to manage their way through this. I think they're. Look at some of the movies that are being given waivers. You think to yourself well that's, that's odd. How did that waiver get given? Because aren't they financed by Amazon or Lionsgate or somebody else? The formulas that I filled out. I have to declare that I have no financing from any of those entities. So I guess there are technicalities to some of it and maybe contracts that have already been signed and deals that have already been agreed. I honestly don't know, but it's a slow process and I would imagine that SAG, they probably are doing their best, but this is a complicated and slightly convoluted affair. So it's just again, the timing of it sort of isn't great, but look, it'll sort itself out and we'll go back to making movies in some fashion, or rather, whatever the case may be. But I think that you know, as producers, it would be great if we could find a way of being able to talk with one voice and have a consensus and be able to do things. You know, here in Quebec, most of the producers here are very unhappy with the fact that our tax credit isn't as aggressive as it possibly could be and the local government here is reluctant to increase the tax credit. But you know, if all of the local producers here stop producing content in Quebec particularly where the French language component and the whole cultural aspect of film and television is incredibly important, if we stopped producing something just for six months, the government, purely on a cultural basis, would have to sit down and say, oh well, look, what are we gonna do when there's no French language new TV stuff, no French language movies coming out? And they would invariably turn around and say, okay, we need to do something about the industry and probably increase the tax credit. But you know, producers, do you think that I could get, you know, 50 producers in Quebec to all go on de facto strike? There'd always be one who would say, oh, this is a great opportunity. The 49 of them are on strike, but I'm gonna keep on producing because I can make. You know, I can make. Hey, what everything else is going on. So you know that you couldn't get that consensus. But in a utopian world, if there was a way of getting our independent producers to all agree on certain things. We do have some influence. We do have the ability to drive things. We do have the ability to have, say, you know, if you look at what happens with you know, the AFM, for example, and some of these other marketing organizations, they're able to impose certain things in certain ways. So, you know, I think there's a possibility of it. But is the goodwill there? Are the people in the business willing to? Is it a case of help? You mentioned one of your podcasts about people teaming up and helping each other. It's a nice thought. I don't know whether or not all of our colleagues and friends who are producers are necessarily of that view. You know it's like is it all for one and one for all? You know, I don't know. I think it's much more a case of you know, okay, well, I'll look at what's best for me. And if it means that you know someone else that I know doesn't end up getting what he wants, well it doesn't really matter. But listen, who knows? I mean, I don't want to be too cynical about it, but one does wonder sometimes whether or not there would be, you know, if you all sat down in a room and we all have the same problems. We all have the same concerns. You'd have thought we could all come up with one solution that would fit all, but you know.

Absolutely, and you're being realistic, jonathan, and you know I sat at the NAMP, the event I remember right after the pandemic, and one of the things that I said is with when it comes to European producers, for example, they come together way more than say what is happening US, canada, north America because they have to do that out on necessity in order to access multiple funds to make movies. They all have come together. The Germans have to work with the British, have to work with the Italians, have to work with the Spaniards, even when it comes to series, they'll pick up something. They're gonna need another broadcaster. It can be just Sky that does it all. It can be just the BBC. So they are coming and they're all contributing on the storytelling aspect. They're all contributing and chiming in and they're not killing each other. So there's something to be said about them all and I think we you and I are gonna be in Toronto and I am so excited because, of course, I'm gonna do a podcast after all this and I'm gonna talk about all our adventures there. We'll see how Toronto's gonna pan out. I mean, what are your thoughts? Is the last thoughts of like us going to a market where there's hardly any red carpets. There's hardly any star presence, where nobody can really pitch anything with stars. What do you think is gonna happen? Why are we even going to Toronto?

Well, tiff is always a bit like the first day back at school, right? I always say it's a little bit like, you know, when you finish a summer holiday you're all brown and you're healthy and you're relaxed and you go back to school and you're thrilled to see all your friends and then by the time AFM runs around in November, we're all green and fed up and tired and exhausted again. So Tiff's always great because everyone looks great, everyone looks fresh, everyone's in a good mood, everyone's optimistic. I really like going there. I find there's a really good vibe to the place. It's a good festival too. The festival is well run and I think it's. If you're a filmgoer and if somebody wants to see movies, I think Tiff is one of the best film festivals out there. From a professional perspective, tiff is very different from a lot of the other markets because there isn't that sort of pressure where you kind of feel that you need to come away with something. It's more like a sort of hi, how are you? Like I said, first day back at school kind of thing. This year, without the actors, without the red carpets, it'll take away some of the glitz of the thing, but it's almost as if you took away the glitz from Cannes, you'd still have the film market, you'd still have meetings, people would still be there and people like you and I will sit down, we'll talk, I'll meet people that I haven't seen for a while, we'll have conversations and discussions and we'll agree to meet up again later on. So I think that Tiff is an important part of the calendar. I look at the year and I don't go to as many film markets as you do, because I've taken the view that as a producer, as opposed to a salesperson, there's a limited amount of use to these markets and if I need to go to LA, I generally try and avoid going during AFM because everybody is so crazed and there's a billion people in town and it's much better. You're much better going there outside of the market and seeing people in their offices and a more relaxed atmosphere. But Tiff is very much a sort of to remind people you're around, remind people, you're still here and I think that everybody, even with the strike this year, there'll be okay in so far as everyone's gonna take the view that it'll be resolved soon. So it'll be like okay. Well, it's not great right now. We're just finishing the summer, let's see how things pan out. So I think it'll be a weird market, but it wasn't as weird as a couple of years ago when it was just COVID. It was just past COVID it was completely desert that street, is it King Street? In front of the-.

Oh, King Street, yeah, the highest.

It was completely empty. There was nothing, it was just empty. There was no one there. It was the weirdest thing the street was closed but none of the restaurants were operating. There was no one in the streets. It was like a ghost town. So I think it'll be busier than that and I think that there'll be a lot of people obviously talking about the strike. But the independence have an opportunity right now to sort of. There's an opportunity here. I don't quite know exactly in what form or how long it'll be, but there's an opportunity to do something. If you were able to have a good project, the people with money still need to. If you're an investor and you're running an investment fund, you've still got to give your investors a rate of return at the end of the year. And if there are no big movies being made, then you've got to put them into something right. So and cast aren't working. So if you can get actors to come and work for you, I think there's an opportunity here to do something interesting. We'll see, but you know, you know it's a case of really being positive and trying to keep a positive attitude about what you think the industry can ultimately end up, you know, giving you in the next sort of 12 months or so.

I love your positive attitude, jonathan, also because, if you remember, the last time that you and I went to TIP, we were celebrating you getting the funding for best sellers, and your son was there and we all went to dinner, and I'll never forget it because he's like I can't believe it. It just came together just like that and you were almost shocked and surprised because it was just like you had been trying for so long and then all of a sudden it's like oh, it's happening. So maybe, teff, we'll be lucky for both of us this year.

Yeah, that was probably my most pleasant experience as a film producer. Again, I don't know quite what it was that we did or what the Zyg-Eye's was or whatever the hell, but the stars aligned and it all just slotted in and it was like, oh, that was really easy the casting, the financing, the distribution. Of course COVID came along and screwed the whole thing up, but the actual putting together of the movie he was like, wow, okay, wouldn't it be great if it was always like this? I mean, it was, and making the film was great. Working with Michael Cain was absolutely amazing. He was just an amazing character. It was just working with him. I'm not usually starstruck, but working with Michael was really. He and I have become very good friends, in fact my wife, who's also from Guyana, the same as his wife. We've remained very close and we communicate, I don't know. Probably once a month or something we always go to see them in London. Dear old Michael's 90 years old now but he's still got all his faculties and stuff. But yeah, it was. Working with him was one of the highlights of my life. Somebody actually said to me my God, jonathan, you realize you've actually got to the stage now where you've reached the heights where you're working with Michael Cain, and I thought to myself hmm, maybe it's more a case of Michael Cain has now dropped to the depths where he's working with Jonathan Vanger.

Oh God, oh, I love your sense of humor. Well, you know what? The best way to sum up what producers are is that we still believe in the magic, and that's what we're here With money. With no money, we never say die, we always show up. We always have some great memories about filmmaking, Some not so great, but we have always some good memories to hold on which keeps us going. So, you know, here's to us making more money. Magic, Jonathan, and thank you so much for coming on my show. I can't wait to do this. It's going to be amazing. And if any of you are not familiar with Jonathan's work, first of all, if you ever want to make a movie in Canada, he's your guy Number one hello text credits. But second, all you have to do is look up his IMDB. You can see his credits. Let's support him, let's help him make some money so he can pay his investors back Like I have to pay mine back and maybe watch those movies, even if we're not getting any residuals. Maybe somewhere you can even buy a DVD or something. That would be $2 a profit for Jonathan. It will help work up to his defer producing fee. So let's support Jonathan, support me, support all the indie producers out there, Cause really it starts from the producers and it ends from the producers. And thank you again, Jonathan, for coming.

That's a pleasure. It's a pleasure, Alexi, anytime. I'm being delighted to be here and thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me. That's terrific.

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