When the Plan Falls Apart… Follow the Path Instead | Michael Cain

0:10 Welcome to the Holly Hughes Podcast, where creative people talk about life outside the corporate box. Today, the Holly Hughes Podcast is welcoming Michael Caine, an award-winning film producer and creative change maker who's turned storytelling into a force for impact. Welcome, Michael, It's so good to see you. Great to see you too, Ollie. Long time. It's amazing, like the relationships that even though they're old and maybe not so kept connected, there is still this story thread that we have. Because I started in the business and you were one of the first people I worked with in film and TV actually. So how, why don't we start with that? Like how did you start on your adventure in all things film and television production?

0:56 Was that like when you were young, you were like, I have to make movies? Was that a thought you ever had? Yeah, I always love movies and and growing up in a little town in North Carolina, Albemarle, we had a drive in screen that was like a the 10 minute walk. And as a little kid, that's the way I experienced the world and usually climbing underneath the barbed wire fence and sitting next to a pole unless my parents would take the station wagon there. That's I love movies and grew up, moved to Dallas and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre terrified me like the week before I read. But that was the thing like I lived in that world of watching films and when I started choosing my career, I actually went into commercial real estate back in my 20s. But Radio T VS what I started out doing and I actually, Lou Down and Phillips and I were in acting classes together. So and we would, I wouldn't say compete for roles cause I'm monotone and he's a much better actor. But it was pre La Bamba.

2:04 And so kind of seeing even Helm going off into film, you know, there was always this OK, that exists. But I was doing commercial real estate and making a bunch of money and in my 20s and they, it sort of took me off path for a while. And luckily the entire SNL scandal happened and everything went under and they to our country and they repoed 10 investment properties that I had at the age of 26. And that's when you find out your base, like you figure out like what you're about is when you lose everything when you really couldn't have done anything different. And so it was the best thing that could have ever happened. And I spent the two years figuring it out. I had a a girlfriend at the time who invited the head of the film school over for SMU for dinner.

3:00 And her dad was vice president of Club Corp that owns 200 country clubs. So he came and so he said you should apply to the American Film Institute. And I knew that the American Film Institute is where David Lynchwood, Blue Velvet sort of was, that there's that kind of movies out there. So I applied to the American Film Institute, didn't get in. I applied to ask him. You didn't get in. Was on a sailboat trip in the Virgin Islands with 11 people on 242 foot Morgans and went out into a dinghy into the middle of the ocean and said God tell me what I should do because at that point I was like $200,000 in debt and lost my house, lost my car, lost my girlfriend, lost everything other than my parents.

3:49 No reason to go back to America and went out in the stingy and I literally heard a voice say film like out in the middle of nowhere in the Virgin Islands and I said OK I should figure this out. So I went back and we were about to buy a club in Deep Ellum with two buddies of mine, and I got a message from my mother that AFI had called the American Film Institute. And I called them up and they said if you can be here in two weeks, then we have a place for you. Because somebody dropped out. And all these years later, if they hadn't dropped out, I probably wouldn't be in film the way I owe.

4:33 It I love that, but I love that you actually listened to the message. So many people wouldn't. I ended up in LA cuz I called Chanticleer films cuz I knew a friend dated a guy who got a job there and he was really good looking but not the brightest. Maybe he was like really nice, but like I intellectually I didn't whatever. I was like, well, if he got a job there, I could get a job there. And they said to me, if you can cut here Monday, you can have an internship. I'm like, I'll be there. It was Thursday when I just like left my roommate three months of rent and landed on in the living room floor of my friend's apartment in Burbank and just went borrowed car borrowed Thomas guide.

5:15 I had no idea what I was doing, but I was like, OK, opportunity, I'm going I. Think that's the best way to do it? I didn't even know the people who I moved in with and they lived in Redondo Beach and I was going. To you landed in the bubble. Nice. I I literally like someone I'd met one time who'd said, if you're ever out, come stay with us. I'm living on their living room floor on no mattress. And there was an earthquake and the winking next to me fell and hit the ground. This is night one living there. On Sunday, I had driven to the American Film Institute, and there was like 30 minutes.

5:55 I'm like, OK, this isn't so bad. And then on Monday, I drove in. There was an hour and a half and I was like, I have to move now like this. You have no idea. You just know you got to go sometime. I love that you like did it because if people are just listening to your voice and they don't know who you are, you're very steady. I'm sure you got ruffled. I'm sure you did. But those aren't my memories of you. Where is when you work in production, There's usually high tension. Now, knowing that you had that many losses, I didn't know that about you either because I have that too. So I lost my home in a fire, and then I lost my home in the Northridge earthquake. I lost everything, no place to stay. So when you are in those places of well, you got nothing left to lose.

6:44 That's a giant part of like the losses are so much about what build your character. And if you take those as learning lessons and you go, all right, I know what it's like to lose everything. And that gives me actually an advantage over a lot of people who don't. You want to go like that's cool, but when it doesn't work out, you got to keep going. You can't give up on your dream. And I, that's always been one of the things that I feel lucky about. It could even be a bit of an issues that I never give up on anything. My as my wife will sometimes be like, please give up on that. So it's interesting because you don't really get retrospective about your own stuff until somebody asks you.

7:26 And I started looking at the things that I've been lucky enough to do because I really feel like there's a lot of people who haven't been as lucky. I've been in the career more than 27 years, but literally looking at all of it, I just think when most of it has just been like there's a path and with the path and the path may vary, but it's still part of the flow. It's like being on the river and you're still going down that path. At times you may go off a bit, but as long as you know where you want to go and you're willing to sort of vary so that you're not just stagnant, I think that's that's the key for a lot of us. There's things like your home burning down.

8:08 For some people, that would be it. They'd just be like, oh, I'm finished. And I think that the the people who get where they're want to go are the ones who realize that's just part of this journey. And there's the highs and the lows. I think that's part of like how I evaluate people though, right? So like, I'm pretty quick to be like, how real are you? Like I loved LA, Like when I left, I was, I really went because it's not a place I wanted to raise my child, right? This is not the environment I wanted her to be in. And you know, LA life is a whole other thing and, and I wanted to be a mom, which is very much not an LA mentality. It's the one exceedingly traditional thing about me is that I really wanted to be a mom to her and not worry about, you know, the actor who loses their script or what happened on location. I was like, I'm letting that go.

9:00 I waited a long time to be a mom, but the storyteller in me always still existed. It just had to like shift gears. In which way will I tell story? So when you decided film school and you loved film, did you want to set the mood? What made you get into producing instead of directing or some other cinematography? Because I think you have an eye. Like you have a really good visual eye for setting and story. So that would have been an option for you as well. I actually because I was a photographer all throughout high school and into college and love photography and applied actually to the American Film Institute as a cinematographer. I must be psychic.

9:46 They called up and said we have a place for you as a producer and granted our only thing I said to get into the American Film Institute was a letter. I I had no giant resume. I told them how me working in commercial real estate, that I was used to putting together deals and I was used to getting parties to work together, but that I also had an I where I could spot like an amazing opportunity or a story. Because you know, if you're getting a property and you're going to turn it into something else, you're basically a story teller. But if AFI had called back and said, cool, you're in the cinematography program, I would be probably a cinematographer now.

10:30 But I think that's the element of fate that comes into play. And it's the flexibility of going, OK, so that's where the path is leading me. And I've gotten to do second unit cinematography on film, so I've gotten to direct things. All of those came to starting out as a producer. And I love the role of producer. I mean, I love being with creative people and helping them meet their goals and helping a director guide them through. And if you remember when you and I work together, we oversaw a lot of the post. I think learning editing is such a critical piece to being a great everything director, producer, cinematographer.

11:13 Because if you understand when you're filming to go like you're only going to need it through this bar or by the way, while you're here, should you get this? Because that's what a good producer does, is they are backing the director and saying what about this? And back in the day it was film. It wasn't like, you know, data like now it's not a problem. Then it's short ends. What are you going to do? What are we, what can we grab? How much is left in the can? Like all of those other. But those scrambly thoughts I actually kind of really enjoyed. But I think one of the things that you have as a gift, even you must recognize it because you've mentioned it a few times, is you are really good at pulling people together and having them work for you. You are a really good leader.

11:59 You're not overbearing, but you have, you know, demands. It's an an amazing skill and, and I think more people in the world could use it right now. But you were really good at making people want to work for you and then having them be loyal. Well, that's weird, but I don't know if you could even read that. Let's see my daughter's pieces that are better in here. But I've always felt like if you go into things with a certain amount of respect for everyone and knowing that the the final goal is that we all have to look beyond sort of our issues to get there. There was a great administrator at the American Film Institute, the one who actually called up and said, we have a place for you.

12:45 And I watched her later as a director and a writer. We're just going to war. And she was like, you are going to, you are going to film, you'll be shooting tomorrow morning. You're going to keep going. And she never allowed that sort of this isn't going to happen to enter the equation. There was like, it absolutely will happen. And we will be showing this thing in a week. And I learned a lot from even just that one moment with her, which she was always respectful and she always treated people with kindness. And I think, you know, learning 50 below budget films that we started out working on, you know, those were it was right like short ends. It was, you know, do we have the money to do this? Can we cheat this?

13:28 Can we figure out a way? But there was also the occasional the character that go beyond and to be rude to people and my whole thing be like, no, that's not going to happen here. That isn't who we are. We're better than that. We're always going to be the set where people enjoy themselves and where people feel like they're contributing and they're respected. And I think that's the one of the big lessons that I've tried to impart throughout is that, you know, our time together is going to be pleasurable. Even if it's hard, it's still going to where we're going to look over at each other and be like, OK, yeah, we're doing it together. I like how you just just paraphrase it like, well, it'll be hard because production's brutal, right? I don't actually know what it's like anymore because my storytelling now is on paper or, you know, podcasting, whatever written words.

14:22 So I'm like, really curious because what we'll just call them low budgets. We started in the low budget world. I remember working with you when we had one in prep, one shooting and one in post, right? But so many talented cinematographers learn their craft there. So many huge screenwriters came through art boards like these people. It was a stepping stone back in the 90s, right? And nowadays I'm kind of curious, this doesn't really exist, right? There's, there's not like a season where things get shot. There's the business is radically changed, right? How did you evolve with that? So how did you go from, let's say low budget Cormanesque kind of Red Shoe Diaries stuff that we worked on to these bigger projects? It's.

15:10 Just part of that going with the flow, you know, and and earning trust and particularly people with the money sitting there and going, God, they deliver on time, on budget looks fantastic. I can sell it or it's sold already. And so I'm able to do it. But if you think about it, I'm just doing David Dobkin is one of the directors and we gave him his first narrative short, you know, and that was something at the time for him that he was ready to do it. He done like his great NYU film and but this was like the first thing where he got paid for. And so now to have him go on and doing Wedding Crashers and Shanghai Knights and Stick and you know, the Vince Vaughn series that's on, it's like we got to help people get started. And I think that Wally Fister worked with us on a project, and Wally went on to win an Academy Award for Inception as the cinematographer Janice Kaminsky, who went on to win for Schindler's List.

16:17 I didn't mean to do that, that the Mario Fiore, all of them were people who they needed somebody who respected them and who saw their talent to support them. And I always felt lucky to be that piece of the equation. And it's the same thing with film festivals, Like film festivals really, you are, you're looking out for people and you're both this conduit between the creator and the storytellers and the public in the audience. And the, the most exciting moment for me is as the lights go down and I've already introduced the film and tell them that, you know, I'll see you in an hour and a half on the other side. We're going to meet the film makers and have a conversation because I know what they're about to go through. Like it's the part of the equation that's so exciting because if you get it right, they're changed forever. You know, it's one of those.

17:13 And all that was a bit accidental for me because as I was doing the Rodger Corman ish films, we did 22 in three years, delivered from concept to delivery. But I came out of that sort of disillusioned. Like these aren't the kind of films I want to make anymore. Like, no offense, but I I need to sort of focus on something bigger. And my mentors at the time, Denise Dinovi, she's the one who, well, Chris Taylor, her former husband, they were polite and nice to everyone. They were going to get the job done, but they were working with like Tim Burton and Michael Lehman and really visionary people. And I think that was something I really learned from them was watching that between her and Michael Brahman, who produced Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and the Heidi Chronicles and six films for TNT and Amblin.

18:10 And they both said you should do those Corman films. They were the like, that would be what I would do if I were where you were. Because you're going to meet film makers and help them in their careers and you're going to learn budgeting, you're going to learn distribution, you're going to learn all of it and then go off and do something else. The reason I went to film schools because stories of hope for what I wanted to do. It took me a long time to get back there, but I didn't. I'd help the Santa Monica Film Festival start. I just loaned them a three quarter inch deck in ATV and 30 folding chairs and that was their first festival. And I got a call. My dad. I had cancer, flew back home the next morning, found out that it was the kind of cancer that wasn't.

18:56 He wasn't going to make it from pancreatic and literally changed my world. So two weeks later, I'd sublet out my apartment in Santa Monica and had moved back to Dallas into the room I grew up in as a kid and to take him to the hospital every day and take him for treatment. So that was another one of those like tragedy. You said this, make the best of what tragedy? And for me, being next to my father every day was the best thing I should possibly do and had an idea because when you go with the American Film Institute, people in Dallas are very respectful of oh, OK, here's somebody and David Lynch, Darren Aronofsky, Walling Fister, all these people.

19:42 But they wanted to hear what I had to say about their movies and Kit Carson. He wrote Paris, TX and Breathless and was from Dallas. And I pitched this idea of what if we started a Film Festival in de Battle and the punk rock district from the 80s and the jazz Blues district from the 30s and 40s. And that was sort of like the beginning of all of it. But it was also the beginning of not thinking about me. Only up to that point, I was in that Hollywood circle of like, I'm making money, I'm making movies, I go to dinner parties and there's Seal and, you know, like Heidi Klum and. They're they ask you what you do and you're at the point where you're kind of going like, oh, I make mayonnaise commercials because you're so tired of talking about what you do in the industry because everyone thinks you're a producer, you'll hire them.

20:31 And suddenly I was like, oh, I'm taking care of somebody with cancer. And it started a whole and then I'm taking care of film makers by starting a Film Festival that raises money for cancer. And so that's the journey once again. Wouldn't mind decision. It was like the film Voice in the Ocean. Sometimes you just listen for what the planet tells you to do. By the time I left, I had become what I didn't like, right? I was bitter. I was right. I was like, I took my sabbatical from LA when I was like 28, and I was just bitter and burned out and wondering why everyone just like me in the job I was in when I didn't want the job I was in.

21:13 They're like, but you're so good at it. I'm like, then how do I become bad at it? What am I missing? And I definitely don't think I had grace enough to schmooze. Like I just was like, I just worked 18 hours. I'm tired. And I remember like looking like, how is he always so fucking easygoing? That always was so surprising to me. I had this memory of it was at whatever those B movies we were doing at in your corner office. And then you had this deck of cards that had images and had just started therapy and you're like, come on, Holly, just pick an image now. I don't know why you said this to me. Like I picked it and it was like a camera lens. I just started hysterically crying. You were like, oh, that was not what I was expecting. But I think for me it was the beginning of turning inward and learning that how I knew to work, how I modeled because my dad is very much an alcoholic.

22:10 He's sober now, but he's an alcoholic workaholic. And like, I only knew work ethic from from him. I only knew that you burn yourself out and please until you can't do it anymore. And then you wake up and you do it again and you shove everything down. And I think I started realizing I couldn't shove it down anymore. And when I saw that lens, I was like, Oh my God, I felt so exposed. And your face was like what is wrong with you? You poor girl, please leave, Please go away. I wouldn't have kicked you out. There's no way. No, no, no. But I remember this is the horror on your face and I was like, I have lost all control of my eyeballs. My thing is, and I'd always say to people as this is me when I'm happy, this is me when I'm angry, this is me when I'm excited.

22:54 And the the crazier things get, the more me I recount, the more it's sort of like centered and grounded. And although I always like watching and my dad, my mom and dad were entrepreneurial and owned the Mako auto painting in Garland, TX. And then my best friend Chris Smith and I would work their summers and things doing Bondo and paint. So once again, like you're kind of like, OK, I know what, what my, my things are. And at one point after I lost everything in real estate, I was working at a potato chip factory because it was the highest paying job I could get at Borden's potato chip factory.

23:36 But I was like the one they loved to make fun of because I was like one of the two white guys pushing this cart through this with a giant stack of potato chip boxes. And you had to work your way under stuff and through things and it and it snagged like 4 times. And by the time I finally get to the final thing where I'm putting it into the room, the top box hits the roof and knocks them all down again. And I start punching these boxes of potato chips. So potato chips are flying. And literally, I finally stopped. And the Polish women who were sitting there are looking at being like, what's just happened.

24:19 And then I had to pick up all the potato chips with all the boxes while it kept backing up in the stack. And that lesson taught me like, don't get angry. Don't do things. But then you're going to have to correct later. Just stay like this. And so it was a giant lesson at my lowest point. I thought it could give me lower after I'd lost everything. And I was like, Oh no, there's there's more lows, there's more prices, there's more to chips. I kind of like the visual. I can even smell that. That's the full sensory story. So wait, I want to get back to your film festivals because so you pass off the Santa Monica 1, you create deep alum and you have this mission in it. How long did you run it and did was it like blurred as you go? Was it more successful than you thought? Or was it you were like, well, that was interesting. Well, I reached out to Albert De Quoi, who's the guy who started the Santa Monica Film Festival.

25:22 I remember there was a film, 6 String Samurai at the time that had kind of been discovered by his festival. I was like, hell, there's something to this, like you're discovering new talent. And so I reset to him. I asked for his guidance. And then I told the Deep Ellum people that King Hollis and Edwin Harris and James Phallus and a bunch of people. And I said, I want to do this Film Festival in Deep Ellum. And everyone said I'm in. Everybody said I'm in. Nobody said, by the way, I'll pay for it. I. Was waiting for that part. Yeah, Candy Smith and Chris was like, all these people said they were in. And so suddenly I was starting this philanthropic venture that had a lot of film makers support.

26:06 And I called all my friends up, like David Dobkin and Steven Nemeth and all these people in Hollywood, and I said, I'm starting this Film Festival, raise money for cancer. Do you have a film that I could play? And do you have something that I could share? Would you come in? And they all came in. And so the first Deep LM Film Festival, I also was one day sitting there on the stairs, like on the verge of tears because my dad was in all he had cancer, he was getting worse. And the whole reason the Film Festival even happened was I was driving down the road, my dad and they said I had this idea of starting a Film Festival to raise money for cancer relief, not Cancer Research, but relief to help people pay their bills.

26:46 And my dad said, you have such little time left in the world, Michael, and you ought to figure out a way to make other people's lives better. And so in that car that day, I was like, I guess I'm creating a Film Festival. So I am between hanging out with him and doing the Film Festival. And all these people came in and we were at the school theater in Dallas. And suddenly was I found people's radar that Deep Island could do this. And so everybody kind of didn't took it up a notch. But on the meantime, I was dealing with my father. He made it to the Film Festival for one screening. He was so I'll and he passed away on January 9th, was buried on my birthday, January 12th. And by the way, during that time I met the first volunteer for the Deep Island Film Festival was my now wife, whose mother had passed away with pancreatic cancer. And she came in to volunteer for me and I interviewed her. And I had to leave the interview at Saint Pete's Dancing Marlin and go to the bathroom and bawl like a baby and then come back out there cleaned up and continue the interview and that. So all these like gifts were coming also with these things beating these wonderful people, being there for my dad, not thinking about just me.

28:03 But it was like a change in course. But it was still in the same river and it's Deep Ellum. We did it for seven years. I got to reach out to Bill Paxton, who we I worked with that he had Billy Wild one, one false mood. You know, it was one of those where I really found my place, which was amplifying other people's gifts. I love that. Did you could they help you get money? Would they let you use their name? I know a lot of especially actors are quite protective. It's and now versus then like now it's social media is a whole other thing because social media wasn't like what it is now. So it was very different way of promoting things.

28:44 Oh, and I'd left out the one moment, which is I was broke and I had no money and the Film Festival was coming up and I. You were broke again. I don't believe that. Well, putting on a Film Festival is not a what to get rid of. It's kind of like documentaries. You're sort of like everyone thinks, Oh my God, you're, you're hanging out with all these celebrities and you're doing all the stuff. You must be wealthy. And the reality is, no, you're wealthy differently. There's the internal, external and eternal rates of return and this. Wait, so are you in the Producers Guild? Did you get in the DGA 'cause you're a producer, so you're not DGA, so you don't have that pension to fall back on either? I haven't ever even tried it, although I've helped people get on there. Because I joined the PGA, I mean, I was in the room when it was 25 people.

29:30 I was like, I don't know how I got invited, honestly. Like I was like, I mean, I had just worked on some stuff producing for Sony. And I don't know if someone said something and I admit the right, for the one time I met maybe the right person who's like, come on into the room. And they were like, I think my dues were like $200. They were nothing. And I was like, yeah, give me the PGA. Everyone's like the pro golf. I was like, no, it's the Producers Guild. So it was just starting. And so I live in North Carolina now. And when my family moved here, I didn't give it up. Like my Eagle was like, I worked 18 years, 18 years. I'm doing all sorts of stuff, right? That I, I wanted to keep that. And like, I got, what was it Frozen?

30:11 I used to get screeners when screeners were DVDs. And then my daughter just thought I was the coolest thing ever because I had the DVD Screener of Frozen and everyone's like, all the kids in the neighborhood were like, oh, that's so cool. And I was like, awesome. And then I, I gave it up and my husband's like, Are you ready to give it up yet? You know, you haven't actually produced anything in years. And I was like, yeah, I could let it go now because Netflix has everything anyway. Well, that I've never gone for it. They would probably give you like a Halo and a Gold Star. Are you kidding? I had a film that was up for APGA award a few years ago, Tower, that we helped them raise the funding on. There was a great documentary that Keith Maitland and Susan Thompson did, and I got to go to the PGA dinner, which was exciting.

31:00 But any time that brought me back because that day that I was broke, when you think about those things, they called Rich Goldberg. Rich loaned me the money, ultimately gave me the money to produce that first festival, along with my brother, who also gave me one because we were a nonprofit. And they didn't give it for that reason. They gave it like, because I needed it. And I think I've always been blessed to have people like that in my life. You stepped up at the right moment. But yeah, that Film Festival, the next thing that happened now that festival was I got approached to make a documentary called TV Junkie, and TV Junkie is the documentary that took six years to raise the funding for. So while I was doing the Deep LM Film Festival, not getting paid, I was also doing a documentary that couldn't get funded. And so it was just a matter of losing things like, OK, we don't have insurance now.

31:55 OK, well, we don't have car insurance either. OK, we're moving to a smaller place, but we're doing the developed Film Festival. So it was one of those where it's like the gift of doing the festival. And ultimately that led to us putting together a plan, doing the AFI Dallas International Film Festival and starting the Dallas Film Society, but working with the American Film Institute, where I got my master's. So you never know where things lead you. Like, you have to just sort of be open to the bigger possibility that things can lead out. And that's always the lesson for me. When you're I'm like, I want to put those pieces together in my brain. And so when you're creating a Film Festival, you're leveraging your relationships in a not a bad way. You're using the people you know best because it's LA. You're reaching out to people, you know to create something that has meaning for you.

32:43 And I like that you it's cancer. It's like help for people and not research for many reasons. That means something to me personally and I didn't know that. So I like that'll make me cry, but it's very touching. And I, I like that because I think again, people who maybe aren't freelancers or people who are in LA back in the day, you know, before the Internet and you did things when you were out of work, you would turn off this or get the low, you know, electric bill. I don't make enough money, electric bill. Like I would do all of those little Jigger jaggers because you have to manage what you have and somehow be able to get to the job that you're hoping to get sort of thing. But then you have this Film Festival. So are you just connecting people and opening the door to movies and helping choose the movies? Are you collecting people who then choose the movies and then do film festivals make money for anybody or is it really a charity?

33:38 Most of them are nonprofits, including, you know, if you think about the Sundance Film Festival being at the top of it, that's a nonprofit that puts it on. So there are certain benefits of people who want the tax benefits of making a donation. There's corporations who want to get involved because they know it's been to the community or, you know, like local ones or national ones. And the profile of the festival, the better films you bring in and the better venues that you provide with the bigger audiences that you get, gets people to finally go like, OK, I get that. We should do a grant for this. What they'd say. The 20th Film Festival for the Dallas International Film Festival is coming up in April.

34:21 And it's grown into, you know, an amazing festival. We put that together originally. Like Todd Wagner, who's partners with Mark Cuban, recommended a man named Lanier Timberland. He was Ross Perot's best friend and he raised hundreds. Of OK, that's how I was going to ask you. How did you connect with them? Honestly, the Deep LM Film Festival, we kept just chugging along and basically I would go off and work with David Dobkin doing like music videos for Ridley Scott's company and commercial and take that money. And then every year I would apply toward what we needed for the Deep Ellen Film Festival, whatever gap there was.

35:03 And the second year, the Deep Ellen Film Festival, nobody thought we were going to do it because I'd disappeared to take care of my dad and the press. Everyone just thought like, what was the one and done? And then I come back finally after months and I'm like, I'm going to do it. They're like, oh, we don't even have sponsorship for you anymore. We thought you were not going to do it, which made me angry. And that's the one thing my whole life, if you can give me angry, we're all going. Oh, yeah. OK. And so all of us got together. We got Peter Beard, the famous photographer from New York to come in, kick Carson with Paris, TX. Showtime came in, all these people. And suddenly, like, New York Times was writing about us because we had an art exhibit with 99 pieces of Peter Beard in town.

35:51 And Sarah Bullock came in because we were honoring one of her best friends. And she came in and found out that it was for cancer and her mom had died of cancer and said that suddenly was a nerve that got struck where people were like, well, this isn't just a Film Festival. This is raising money to help people with cancer now. And I would actually deliver the checks and King Hollis would film me delivering checks to people. It was such a rewarding path. But this group of people, we all stayed together and it was an all volunteer Film Festival for seven years. So all the people that worked on it just volunteered to put it on as we would pay for the venues and we pay our stuff. But because it was cancer relief, people were sort of like, OK, we can't hit you too hard. And so by the time we brought in a consultant and we put together a plan to create a bigger Dallas festival because Deep Dal would become rough, it had become like a kind of a slightly Dang area of people through it.

36:54 So it was a little scary. But by the time we did that, Owen, I'd made that movie TV Junkie took six years to put together. And a woman, beautiful woman, Ruth Much stepped in because she didn't want her children to get through addiction. And we made this documentary out of 3000 hours of footage that a man had filmed his whole life from 15 until 50. And everything was in there, everything that are all the warts, all the good, the helmed winning awards, him doing crack cocaine had the birth of his children, the death was his mother. Like it was all raw and in there.

37:35 And that film won the special Jury Prize at Sundance. And HBO ended up picking out then it was part of the addiction series. And once again, I'm like, films can create change. They can create. And the Film Festival allowed you to magnify other people's gifts. And that film gave me the taste of what it was like. But once again, like these weird paths. The night that we won the Special Jury Prize, I call my mentor Lanier Timberland and tell him and he goes. Well, the Perot family, Ross Perot family and Target just came on as founding partners for the AFI Dallas. I finally make a movie.

38:15 I get to see the festival path and all that. And instead I have to decide what I'm going to do. And we were going to launch it within a year and a really big Film Festival at. Least you had the money. I mean, that's a lot of money back behind you this time. At the time I had a bus, like a transit bus that we bought from hippies that we would drive around as a billboard. And I literally had to like, cut it off, sell the bus and move into offices that the pro family owned and and have a suit ready to wear every day because Ross Perot might walk in with Lanier. It was once again like a different path on the same river. And so, but it was always like helping film makers and storytellers connect with an audience. And suddenly we had two, two and a half, $1,000,000 to do an event in Dallas.

39:12 And we had Lauren McCall and Sydney Pollack and David Lynch and Morgan Freeman and everybody coming into the very first festival, and they said if we had 10,000 people show up, that'd be great. We had 30,000 people show up. I find as you're like talking about how movies can really impact, I keep thinking about rage bait. Our people are inundated with 1 1/2 seven seconds to 1 1/2 minute crafted, addictive stories. How does the voice of a longer narration fight that? Like, how do we draw people's attention?

39:53 Cause like, even the movie theaters around me are closing. That's a huge thing. I I do think film festivals have a place there because they create community and what happens is you don't need everybody in a town to go to a movie. You'd love that and I'd love to see cinema coming back, but at the same time you need these organizations. That create this fan base for people to the theaters because the communal experience of watching films is huge. I mean, the comedy or romance of horror, you know, it's so different when it's magnified around you and you feel the tension of the people around you. But that's what I've always loved about film fest, you know, having now started, well, like 4. Wait, maybe 5?

40:40 Wait about 5? Want to tell us about the new one? Do you want to tell us about the one that's coming now? Well, we're in a critical month right now and at the last Film Festival I started was Earth X film and it was an environmental Film Festival because I really got into impact media. I began to really feel like if we let's just focus on what's the outcome of this movie so that that journey led to starting Earth XTV. And then my 6 year old came up to me and said, Daddy, why don't you ever come home at night? And I literally was like, OK, and this is COVID and all that. So we moved to Colorado and I had no idea I was going to love Colorado as much as I do.

41:22 And getting here, for the first few years, I just focused on my daughter being in Montessori school. But I thought of being in Montessori school. And so I met the parents of the Montessori school and that place called the Lyric Theater came up for sale here in Fort Collins and had an outdoor movie screen where 500 to 1000 could sit at 3 screens, indoor concerts, all this. And so it got me suddenly out there, I don't want to do things outside of Fort Collins anymore. And I'd produced a concert at the United Nations. The largest stage ever built. I'd done a concert was Robert Redford and his wife's in Dallas. I fell in love with all the filmmaking community here. Denver has some incredible boulder and then Sundance announced it's moving here and the last Film Festival that I had started, Dallas really was best of fest and best of fest. North Texas with two other people bar wise Emily Hargrove and we started a Film Festival that was 27 film festivals work together to create one Film Festival. And so we asked everybody to contribute one film or 1 short and do agree to cross promote it. And so we had two of them.

42:34 And then COVID happened. But the second one, big crowds, the small Film Festival like the Asian Film Festival suddenly had more people that knew it existed. But the Black Cinematique for the LBGTQ festival kind of got some of the benefits of being involved with the Dallas International Film Festival and Earth X Film. And so the Melbourne of Galapura started thinking about that idea for Colorado and put together a plan and there's 40 plus song festivals in Colorado, but just recently presented it to the people including Sundance and Denver and all these groups and said let's do this in Colorado. So I would say by the time this airs, that will be a fact and it will be something that is going to happen in 2026. And what it'll do is further create a community of the Film Festival community so that we're not programming on the same date, so we're not competing for things, but we're collaborating because as you said, movie theaters are having a hard time. Film festivals are having a hard time. People are sort of like, well, I should hold on my money and not sponsor that local Film Festival. And what we're trying to do is create a collaborative element where all sudden people go, what if I sponsored all the festivals?

43:54 What if I I'm just doing one? I'm going to start covering more festivals. So that film we have Telluride and we have Sundance and in Denver and the other 40, we have the ACT Human Rights Film Festival in Fort Collins, which is the best human rights Film Festival in the country. And so the thought of getting them all working together to create something bigger than us, that's what I love to do. And tell your ride's hard to get to. Let's just be honest. Let's just tell your ride is beautiful. It's hard to get to. Yeah, the they have a thing called original thinkers there that a good friend of mine, David Holbrook, does. And I'm always like so hard to pay for a room there.

44:36 Well, it's, I love going there, but I this festival, actually the first one will be in Fort Collins and then we'll be in five other cities. So we might end up doing something and tell you, right. You got to combine it with their Blues Festival. There's bluegrass, there's a huge festival there. And then you know what? You should have a bunch of podcasters show up and have these amazing conversations with the storytelling. You invite me, I'm there. I'm not like, no joke. I love it. I think for me that being a writer and having my critique group or like my friend, really my trusted people, like all over, but it's very isolating, right? I'm in my head often alone arguing or trying to figure things out and I just not the collaboration and mania of film, right?

45:24 So I was like, especially after COVID and you know, my kids old enough to like for me to step back. I'm not a helicopter parent. I really want her to discover who she is. That's my job, right? I was craving community. I was creating connective conversations about, hey, where were you? How did you get it done and how do you do it now? Because I turn off my phone at least an hour before I go to bed. I unplug it in a room in my office so it's not even near me, so I can decompress. Because the doom scrolling and what politics in general or the world in general wants to tell us about everyone is you bad, you evil, you this, you that. Because you might not agree on something and then it like spins out of control.

46:10 When in reality, I think, especially as storytellers and like why I always say I'm not in the corporate box is that we see and experience the world differently and we want to build community and I want to reconnect with that feeling of, Oh my God, I can help you do that. I love helping. Who do I know that I can maybe hook you up with and how does that get better? And then Oh my God, did you have an idea for me? That's amazing. I I retell the story of I interview a memoir surname is Judy Goldman. She's in her 80s and her newest memoir just came out and I've been struggling with this one memoir. I literally have three books and draft on my desk and I was like, I just can't find the thread. Judy. I just can't find it. And she's from South Carolina and she's Holly. You're writing about home.

46:57 And I was like and 12,000 words like I just had my spine. So I think in connecting and reconnecting with people that I do know and that I don't know there's, there is that positive force for change in a good way in, in a creative way, in a way that's more positive. And that's the best way to fight, I think the darkness out there. And so I think like when I'm like listening to you, knowing that you're still stable, even though now I have an image of you punching and chewing chips that like that you don't know when you help someone where it's going to lead. And my ego's not involved in it. I was helping people for many years, and they would have these amazing successes and I would get these lovely notes. And I was like, Oh my God, that mattered. It mattered.

47:47 And not because anyone knows. And when I do nice things, I'm not like on social media, like, hey, you know what I did Like, I'm not that girl either. So I like knowing that there's more of that. And that's what I want to build here. You're doing it, which by the way is great because that's the thing I always like. So many people are like, I have a great idea, but then they don't do it. I've always loved the fact that people come to me later on and they're like, by the way, that thing that you did 20 years ago, I really appreciate it. Like, that was a big moment for me and it's happened over and over. I was just at a Film Festival last weekend, but somebody came up to me at the opening night party and just said my film played at your festival 20 years ago. And you were so kind and so nice. And I really like just remembered that and the the movie we were doing a film we just released called the Melody Maids movie about a group of high school girls. They're brought together by a charismatic music teacher who starts singing for the military and they're flown all around the world.

48:51 We brought 20 of them back together for the screening in this big room to standing ovations. I was like, that's the best moment for me is to see these twenty women get their due. And I look at those moments and that's been my space lately, is it's all sort of congealed into impact. And so always thinking about how it changes. I'm working on a docu series with two Jane Monks that will premiere in January at the in LA. And then it's going to be on Apple TV and it's on perimenopause. And it's called balance. And I'm the barrier for me because I'm like, I'm not a woman, but I know what men should know, what this is. Men should understand what's happening with this because 100% of the population are affected by it. You know, I feel blessed that the river has led me to where it is now and that I don't know where it'll lead in the future other than if I can put together this event. And I, we're doing a Stanley Marcus documentary, The Man Behind Neiman Marcus.

49:58 And it's fascinating. Like I said, he's Jewish. And that that was part of what was the allure to me was a Jewish man in Dallas, TX who literally stood up and said, this is what class is. This is how we elevate the city. We're doing a podcast with Texas Monthly on it, so I'm learning podcasting now. So again, a new journey for us all. Who knows right now the the most important things for me are my beautiful wife Molina and her company in three make Media matter and my 2 little girls who are 10 and 12. You know, they're the future. And I think all this leads toward Here's the future.

50:41 I think you are proof that living creatively and with purpose can shape the world, so I want to thank you for that. But before I let you go, I have to ask you my favorite question, which is if you came with a warning label, what would it be? I thought about this a little bit, but to some degree it's like don't come to me with an idea if you don't want it to happen. I love that. Many people have ideas but they don't really want it to be. And I'm sort of like, if it's a great idea, I'm going to kick into gear. So just be prepared. You'll see the reality of this thing in a year or two years and I won't give up on. I love that.

51:21 Well, thank you, Michaels for spending this hour with me. And thanks everyone for listening to the Holly Hughes Podcast. See you next time. Thank you all. Thanks everyone.