One Shot at a Time with Jay Russell (Re-Release)

Welcome to the Heart of Show business. I am your host, alexia Melocchi. 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 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. Welcome to the Heart of Show business. Jay Russell is an American film director, writer and producer. He's a graduate of Columbia University with an MFA in screenwriting and directing. He has written several projects for Paramount Pictures, imagine Entertainment and has directed numerous documentaries for PBS, fox, discovery, to Name a Few. The List Could Go On. He is known for great family films, such as the Warner Family movie that we all love and adore. Personally, I've seen it a hundred times my dog Skip and, of course, the beautiful water horse, which was about the Loch Ness Monster. He also directed two Disney features Tucker, everlasting and the latter 49 with Joachim Phoenix, who got this year's best actor Oscar, as also the hallmark original film One Christmas Eve. Jay is known for directing warm hearted family movies. He has a great knack for telling simple, straightforward tales with an earnest emotional resonance. So I have to say, although I never got the honor of working with him but I do look forward to that one day, because you and I won that route many, many times I would like to welcome Jay Russell to the Heart of Show business and welcome Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. It's so wonderful. I mean, what a perfect time to discuss about our love of movies and television, right? What's interesting for me, why I actually wanted so much to have you on the show, is because you are one of those directors who obviously first started shooting on film versus digital and obviously when you talk to young filmmakers they probably do not even know what 35 millimeter film is or 60 millimeter film. So tell me a little about your journey and how are you doing right now making that transition from being an actual traditional film director to, you know, obviously doing digital?

Well, I mean, for me it started as a kid. I sort of went through all the different formats as a kid. I used to shoot little super eight movies, you know. I mean this was really starting at the basics. So I would shoot super eight movies and then when I got into like college I would shoot on 16 millimeter and then later on 35 millimeter. And, by the way, a lot of kids now not only do they not know about shooting on 35 millimeter, they much less know about cutting on 35 millimeter. I mean, my first two movies, I believe, we actually sat at the table and, you know, use the knife and cut the picture and that's how we edited, you know. And so that's how it all started. And then, because I even shot, you know, even though a lot of people were shooting digital already by the time, I shot Water Horse or Sony and we shot it down in New Zealand and in Scotland and I had the choice of shooting digital then. But you know, I was still trying to stick to the idea of shooting on film and you know, and there are certain directors like Chris, nolan and Tarantino and some of them, you know, they still just absolutely want to shoot on film I've sort of now made. You know, I've rounded the curve and I've shot a couple of things on digital now and really the image quality is pretty much there now and there is a certain ease to it and you don't have to worry about the scratches happening on the negative and so forth, but of course you do have to worry about something happening to the hard drive, but there is an ease to it. And also, the one thing that I do like about digital, which I can't tell you how many times there have been a case of, there have been cases on shooting on film where you know we have a scene going and even as we're shooting I might give a direction to an actor and we try something else while the film is still rolling, and then you have the camera operator say, you know, raise their hand and say, oh, we're about to run out of film. Well, whereas in digital you can just keep, you know, for the most part you can just keep shooting, you know. And so there's an advantage, and also there's definitely advantages in post production to digital. But I still love the look of film and, you know, maybe before it's all over I'll shoot something else on film, you know, but it's definitely a new world in production these days.

Yeah, and I'm sure it's also very convenient to be able to look at the footage right then and there as you're filming, because If you shot something and then, when you were doing it on film, you would have to literally go Watch the footage and then you'll say damn it, you know I miss this, so I miss this detail, and now you have to go back and reshoot it. While you can catch it right then and there, when you're doing it on digital, you can see an envidia village and you can see what's going on. And then, of course, you have the opportunity instead of saying we're gonna fix it in post, which is was always the thing that we used to say back in the day now you can actually fix it on the spot, right.

Well, you can. And the other thing is well, you can still make obviously make adjustments in post in terms of the look of the lighting and so forth. But the other thing you can do now is when you're looking at the high definition monitor, what you see is what you get, you know. I mean, you're able to see what the lighting is doing without having to imagine what the lighting is doing. So there's an advantage in that way as well. But you can still obviously do a lot of tweaking and so forth later on.

That's wonderful. So let's go back to the beginning. Obviously, you said just earlier that when you were a kid, you were shooting on super eight, so what made you want to be a director?

For me growing up, as it was kind of a toss-up of two things that I really loved. I loved music and I was a musician, and I was a musician for most of the way through college. But I also loved movies, you know. I mean, I mean it's some of my earliest memories of going to the movies with my parents and you know, and they would take me to the old, you know Disney family films, you know, with Dean Jones and Kurt Russell. You know those movies and those old Disney comedies and I love them. And then the big blockbuster things like sound of music or whatever, and it just, you know, I was overwhelmed by Cinema and and the big screen and, you know, having pictures tell a story, and so I always had a Love for it. And also the other thing, and you wouldn't know it by the movies I've made, I was also a big Horror movie fan when I was a kid. Yeah, I loved, and particularly the British hammer horror movies. So with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, I love those movies. And so all my first little super eight movies, they were all just complete Gore-fest, you know, it was all about blood and guts and stuff, you know. So, and I still, and in fact, one of the things I'm working on right now is a horror movie and I, before I'm done, I'm going to make a horror movie because really those are the movies that made me want to be a director in a weird way. So, and I just, you know, as time went on, I just as my interest in music, you know. I mean music is sort of like athletics, in that at a certain point, when you reach a certain point, you know whether you're going to be able to do it professionally or not. You know, I mean, you know whether you're going to be able to play basketball in the NBA, and you're also sort of figure out as a musician Can I do this professionally? Am I good enough to be able to play Either in a major symphony or, you know, or play jazz with a group or whatever you're doing, and at a certain point realize no, probably not. I mean, I don't know that I'm good, I'm not that good. And so, while I was trying to figure out then, well, what, what am I going to do, I just spent more and more time in the theater department at my college and more, and started Taking film classes there and shooting little movies, but were more, a little more sophisticated than my blood and guts Super eight movies, and and started writing scripts. And that was the key thing was the writing. I got a lot of encouragement from one of my professors about a couple of scripts I'd written and then, you know, and it sort of went from there and I just never looked backwards. I just, you know, I mean from the day that I got that encouragement, like you should really give this a shot. I mean, it's just been headlong into it for the last however many years you know that, and it's been a lot of years at this point.

So it has been a lot of years and it's interesting that your first movie was about a dog and then you went on to do movies with children and I would think that, from a director's standpoint, those are probably the hardest things to do when you are starting out quote unquote as a director is to direct animals and to direct children. What was it like for you when you got into your first and second movie and third movie?

Well, you know, I mean, interestingly, I'd made even before Skip. I'd made a very small budget independent film even before that and I'd shot as you had mentioned in your intro, I'd shot a lot of documentary stuff. So all of that was good training ground going into the first quote major film, which was Skip. And the training ground was with the documentaries. The training was thinking on your feet, because if you're shooting things in real time and in reality there is no take two, you know. And the other thing that I learned while I was shooting all that documentary work was I would still cover scenes that were happening in real life, but if the drama was happening in front of me, I still would try to cover it as you would. A movie, you know, with close ups and trying to follow the action and so forth, but doing it on the fly, you know as it's happening. And that was great training for being prepared for anything. And so when it came to with Skip, when it came to working with kids and animals, well, you sort of had to be prepared for anything, because you know as much as well as a dog might be trained for a movie, or as well as a kid, you know, maybe an experienced kid actor or whatever. You still never know what's going to happen. You know, because one day the kid is going to be trained. You know, because one day the kid is tired and he just can't. You know, he's just not there. So you got to figure out a way to make it happen. And the same with the dog, because you know the funny thing with animals and film most of the things they do it's food based. You know, it's like if they do, if they walk from here to there, then they get a treat. Or if they run across a field, then they get a treat. Well, at a certain point, you know they aren't hungry anymore. And then that's when it gets. Tricky is when the treats don't mean anything to them. So it's all about thinking on your feet. But the key to that and I think the key to that movie working was, a we had a really good script and B the actors. There was a great cast of actors, but they understood the complications of what we were doing. They understood that, okay, we got to wait on the dog to get hungry again. Or okay, the kid needs to take a nap. You know, because he's cranky. So you know, it took a real sort of group effort to make that happen. And I was there to sort of wrangle it all together. I mean because directing to a great degree as you I'm sure you know it's like wrangling cats, you know, because the cats will run off in all different directions, you got to get them somehow in the same room together. I mean, that's kind of how it all started.

And I guess it also helps that you know you're involved many times in your own projects because you have written the script. You're also one of the producers. You know jumping forward to a film like Ladder 49, which, of course, is a way more dramatic, dealing with adult, professional well, also the other ones were professional actors but dealing with big names like John Travolta and Joaquin Phoenix. What was it like for you to make that transition from children, family fair to something which is dramatic, powerful, emotionally impactful, like Ladder 49, that people still look at it as one of the original movies about firefighters, that still stands today as one of the ones that people look for when they want to see something like that?

Well, thanks, alex. I mean the thing to me it's all about storytelling. You know, whether you're telling a story of a boy and his dog, or, in the case of Tucker Belasting, whether you're telling a story about a family who's immortal, or, in the case of Ladder 49, these firefighters trying to save one of their own, which is Joaquin's character, gets trapped in a burning building that we look back over his life. It's all storytelling, you know. And the wrinkle in Ladder 49, whereas, like with Skip, the wrinkle was the dog, never knowing how exactly the dog's going to behave Well, in Ladder 49, it was the fire, because all the fire that you see in the movie, it's all real. I mean, there was no. At the time we shot that, digital work wasn't sophisticated enough to be able to put fire in those settings, so we had to have real fire all the time. The actors they were highly trained in their jobs, which, by the way, ended up really working for the characters of the movie, because they went to the fire academy, including Joaquin and Travolta, and so by the time we actually shot the movie, they were practically trained well enough to work for the fire department. And we had to do that because we were sticking them in the fire and if something had gone wrong, which at any time they had to know how to get themselves out of it and how to save themselves. So that was the dog in that movie, was the fire. It was really, you know, dangerous and had us all you know, on edge all the time, but at the end of the day, though, it was just telling a story and the rest of it was just a matter of putting the shots together. I'm going to jump ahead for a second, but it's to your point. When I made this movie, the Water Horse for Sony, it involved a ton of digital effects. I mean more digital effects than I'd ever worked with. I mean, I think there was something like 1,200,. You know visual effects shots in the film, and you know, when I went into it, I had a great conversation with this fellow named Joe Leteri, who was our visual effects supervisor for that film. Now, joe, you would know, because Joe is also the person that runs Weta Digital down in New Zealand for Peter Jackson, and Joe has a string of Oscars on his desk. He did, you know, he did all the Lord of the Rings movies and he did King Kong with Peter and he did Jurassic Park, going back to Spielberg, and so Joe is like the guru of visual effects. And Joe gave me the greatest tip I think I've ever gotten, because when you're doing these visual effects movies, it might be easy to get overwhelmed with the scope of everything you're doing. And he said to me one day. We're sitting on the set and he goes. You know, jay, we make these things one shot at a time, and that was just like the most. It's so simple. But it just completely put me at ease Because I stopped worrying about the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of shots that I had to get with visual effects. It was just one shot at a time, and when you focus that way, well then suddenly it's not overwhelmed, you know so. But anyway, it was that similar approach to the latter 49, which is, yeah, we're going to be doing a lot of crazy stuff in this, but it's one shot at a time, you know. So that's how we approached it.

Well, you must have had so many memorable moments being on set in so many different countries, settings, circumstances. Is there any specific memory that stands out to you when you were on set and you had a certain feeling like this is it, I've made one of my best work here? Or any relationship that you had with an actor in a talent where there was magic happening?

Well, I think, you know I mean probably and I've loved working with all the actors I've worked with, and I've had the great fortune of working with some really good ones over over all the different movies, so a lot of people who have Oscars on their desk but working with Joaquin was really special and it was every single day exciting, because I haven't met, and I doubt that I ever will meet, another actor that's as committed to his craft that he is, and you know, he just, and he never lets up. You know, it's like there isn't a day where, oh, he's a little off. That day it's just not going to happen with him. And so, therefore, because he's so prepared and he's so committed, you have to show up with your A game too, all the time. And so I think that was, you know, probably the most exciting experience I'd had with an actor, but also one of the memorable things happening on a set was with him, whereas, as I was saying, the fire was really dangerous stuff and no one got injured on the move, not a, not even a turn of an ankle. I mean, we were really lucky that no one got injured. However, there was one shot and one day, and I'll never forget it, because it scared the crap out of me was Joaquin was is at the beginning of the movie. If you see the movie you'll see there's this big explosion in this building and the floor collapses underneath Joaquin and he slides down and falls like a number of floors. Well, you know, obviously that was on a set and the floor collapse was all a mechanical thing. You know where the floor would go at different stages. But as he's sliding down on the floor collapses, all of this burning material falls. But it's supposed to fall after he goes down into the hole. But something happened and there was some misfire. No pun intended, but when he was sliding, all the fire came down right on top of and if you watch Really closely in that sequence, you'll see that his jacket on his back is on fire and you'll also see this one big chunk Flaming. Something lands right by his face and I'm talking about inches from his face, and so and I'll tell you another interesting thing about that that was one of the last shots we did on the entire film, so we almost burned walking up on the very last day of shooting, but fortunately he never even knew he was on fire, because when he slides down into the hole. There were like three actual fire fighters down there to just put him out immediately and he didn't even know that he was on fire. But that was a certainly a memorable Moment. And the other one I think I could think of was Only because it's a shot for people who like the movie it was, it's a shot that really moves people was at the end of my dark skip. We have this scene where the old skip, this old dog, he is going to get up on the bed that he always would sleep on with when the when his Boy was a boy and and now he's he's grown, and at the very end of the movie the dog goes to the bed and he's trying to get up on it, as he always did, but he's too old and arthritic. So then Kevin Bacon has to come out and pick him up and put him on the bed. You know it. Just, everybody just balls their eyes out. You know when, at that scene. Well, that scene almost didn't happen because, as I was talking about, you know, with dogs it's it's very. You know, dogs can usually only do as the trainer would told me. You know they can usually only either do one trick or two tricks at most at a time, Because the rest of it is too confusing for them and and they know if they, okay, if I do the one trick, I'll get a treat. If I did the second trick, I'll get a treat, but that's about it. Well, in that shot the dog had to do like three or four things. It had to walk in this really slow sort of crippled way, and that's one trick. It had to get up to the bed and put its paw up on the bed. That's two tricks. That it had to scratch, like it could, you know, like it was trying to get up. That's three tricks. And then it had to turn around and look at Kevin Bacon when he was gonna come and pick him and put him on top of. So it was like four or five tricks and we almost didn't get it. I mean, we just kept shooting and shooting and shooting and shooting and finally, producer, you know, kind of, put his hand on my back and he goes. Yeah, I don't think it's gonna work. Let's, let's rethink it. You know, I think he goes. I just, you guys, see how, what you're going for and I know what it's, but it's just not working and we're gonna be here all Day. So you got to move on and I said can we just try one more time? Just one more time. And on that last time he did it perfectly. It's just as you see in the movie. That's what happened was on that very last time. So those are two kind of like big memories I have on shooting.

What an incredible backstory. Oh, my goodness, now I get to think about it when I watch it again and I think about wow, this actually was the last.

Last shot at it, the last shot.

That is incredible. So tell me, jay, what is next for you, because I know you are always involved in a lot of amazing projects and, as it happens in our business, some take off, some did not take off because of what's going on, but what is it that is driving you right now? What are you passionate about?

Well, as I told you earlier, I've written and it's not when I say horror movie, it's not Texas Chainsaw Massacre or anything like that, it's more of a psychological horror movie. But I do have a horror movie that I've written that I really want to do that. We were actually just about to start casting when all of this business stay at home business happened, so I'm hoping that's something we'll pick back up on after this is all over. It's called You're Not Real, so that's something that I'm really excited to do. And then I've got two true stories that I'm working on. One is with my old friend, kevin Bacon, who I seem to keep coming back and working with over the years, and Kevin and I are working on this true story of a. It was a homeless man living in Nashville like, literally living under a bridge or freeway bridge, and he had moved to Nashville like so many, like so many do out here who want to be movie stars or whatever. He had moved to Nashville because he wanted to be a country and Western star, but instead he got addicted to drugs and he just his life just went about as bad as it could possibly go, but he never stopped playing music, like, even if it was on the street and he never stopped writing songs. Well, lo and behold, he ends up writing a number one country song. I mean, the odds of that happening are just astronomical, you know, and anyway. So I'm working on that story with Kevin. And then the other one that I'm working on as a true story is about Brian Epstein, and I don't know if you know that name at all, but Brian Epstein was the young man who both discovered and then was the manager of the Beatles. But he also had a really interesting and even tragic life. I mean, at the height of Beatlemania he was 32 years old and he died of what is likely drug overdose at age 32. And so it's both this amazing story of this young man finding these other young men and taking over the world. But yet it still couldn't save him, you know, given some of the other things going on in his life. And that's the movie, because there's a lot of things that went on in his life that nobody knew about and it led to a tragic ending. But that's another one I'm working on. So there's a couple of true stories and then the other thing that I've done, and it will again once our business starts up again. It'll be published as a longtime friend of mine, as a fellow named Steve Niles who's kind of a rock star in the comic book world, and Steve and I have written a large format graphic novel. It's a 122-page graphic novel that is going to be published once we're able to publish it, and we're doing that through John Carpenter's and his wife Sandy's company, storm King, and Storm King is publishing it. But it's something that not only are we doing it as a graphic novel but then we want to turn it into a television series as well. So that's another thing I've been working on. So oddly, given that we're all trapped here at home, there's a certain part of the work that I can still do because a lot of it is in the writing stage right now. So doing a lot of writing work and staying busy that way but going stir crazy at the same time.

Yeah, aren't we all? Well, I call this the winter season, but at the same time, it's during the winter that we get to prepare and we get to be our most creative, uninterrupted, because we can do Zoom meetings. We can do a lot. We don't have to run around in traffic and go to talk to people. We can do it over Zoom. That we're doing right now in our interview. So in closing, jay, is there any word of advice that you would like to give to anybody who is a listener, who is aspiring to be a filmmaker or a television maker or any type of content creator? What would be your biggest words of wisdom that you would like to impart in this beautiful conversation we just had?

Well, I'm going to throw two things out there, and one of them I'm going to steal from the fellow who said it to me and I'll say it yet again. I said it earlier you make these things one shot at a time, don't be overwhelmed by stuff. It's one shot at a time. That's one thing. The other thing is and this may be the most important thing and I talk to young filmmakers about it all the time because all of us, we all get anxious and we want everything to happen all at once. And the thing I tell them is it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. And then you've got to be willing to go the distance, and it's not. If it happens overnight, well then, hallelujah, but it almost never does, and it's a marathon. And if you're not ready to run the marathon, then don't get involved with it, because it's a long, long and winding road, as the Beatles song said.

Longer. I love that. That has been such a great conversation, Jay, and in parting with you before we part, where can the listeners find you? Do you have any Instagram handles, any sites that you would like us to share with them so that they can look you up and get to hear more of your great words of wisdom and keep up with your work?

Well, I'm on Instagram, which usually is me posting pictures of my dog, but then I'm also on Twitter, where I'm usually griping about some political thing or another, but every now and then it drifts into movies. But yeah, anybody can find me on that, and it's Dog Skip on both of them. I'm Dog Skip on Twitter and I'm Dog Skip on Instagram.

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