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Rewinding Memories with Film Editor David Napier · Cinema Yūgen

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G'day, that's right, it's that time again, time for Cinema Yuge!
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Music.
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Yes, Cinema Yuge, ladies and gentlemen, Yuge Nights, welcome back this week.
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Bit of a treat i got to catch up with uh a little piece a friend and and a piece of of my,
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cinematic journey past when i came out of film school and started trying to
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make short films you know to make a reel to get attention to get some work to
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start a career when you're young and dumb and don't really know what you're
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doing they teach everything in film school about,
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filmmaking, but not really how to hustle and actually get films made.
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Luckily enough, I had the help of a lot of great people. One of these people was Mr.
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David Napier, my guest. David is known for editing the 2018 film Occupation,
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his shorts, which he was making when I first met him, The Art of Farewell,
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great film, and Bogeymen,
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another great one.
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He puts a lot of passion into his films and personal projects.
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He is an avid cinephile, a wonderful gentleman. I have lots of great memories
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and learned a lot of great lessons.
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Sitting in the cutting room in David's two great cutting rooms that I remember quite vividly.
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And we cut my early short films together and we talked about movies and here
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we are, about to do it again.
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And ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to Cinema Yugen, the worldly,
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wonderful and wise David Napier.
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So how long ago were you at my place doing your edit?
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Actually, that was where I was going to start off, actually,
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was I've got it here. The Lizard King. Oh, my goodness.
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It's all digital. Look at that. It's a...
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It's a Betamax. There you go. It's a Betamax. Look at that.
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That's the one that went off to Tropfest after we edited it.
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And I went to, I knew a bloke who worked at a TV station to put it on a,
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because that's how you. Not cool.
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That's how you used to have to send it to Tropfest was on the.
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Oh, I know it. I know it well. I've got a box of them still upstairs.
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On the tape like that one.
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But yeah, that was, what do we got there? That was 2001. and one that was the
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last time I was at your house there in Petrie Terrace when you were at Petrie Terrace.
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Bloody hell. And you had that really great, I don't know why they didn't use
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it, you had that really great Indiana Jones poster in your.
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Yes, the 10th anniversary poster. It's still on a wall out somewhere.
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We're sort of about to start renovating the house so everything's come off the walls at the moment.
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And you had a big quad of Saving Private Ryan above your.
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Yes yeah which was what do i call that one
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the academy the academy quad because it had all the academy awards
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nominations under it wow you've
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got a great memory because i tell you i can barely remember last
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thursday let alone i can still remember
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your other place too that was was a couple of blocks over because
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we did we edited one of my first short films there and
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you had the mickey mouse telephone it's still
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here hang on there he is yeah that's
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him yeah because i remember walking i
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always wanted one of those uh those that
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was at red hill that was that was in zigzag street at
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red hill yeah yeah and then we moved over to petri terrace yeah yeah very nice
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yeah but that was that was yeah i went in 2001 so that was 20 20 years ago and
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skipping ahead i've just come out on blu-ray Oh, fantastic.
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The Vampire and the Vigilante starring Michael Paré, Emily Whitcomb.
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Terrific. So, yeah, that's, yeah.
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So I have progressed, David.
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I'm sure you have. I don't know if I have. It sort of, it takes time in this
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world, doesn't it? Oh, my God.
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If someone had said to me, Ian, it would take 20 years to go from go to woe. uh.
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Sometimes it works best when you don't know the odds, as Harrison Ford once
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said, never tell me the odds.
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Yeah, well, yeah. No, look, I had a spin out the other day when I went to vote,
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at our local school, the Stafford State School, and the voting room was in the hall, the school hall.
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And I stood there, and they're wondering what the hell I'm doing and just standing
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there looking, you know, standing agape there for a while.
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And I said, I did the very first song in front of an audience on that stage in grade three.
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And that was the first I performed in front of an audience and that kicked off
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50 years of show business. Yeah.
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And boy i felt i felt i felt
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nostalgic and very old at the same time
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oh yeah i mean it's it's like when i pulled that tape out
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i remember leaving the the queensland school of
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film and television like two years prior to that and i remember because i remember
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because the bloke had a great name his name was skevos mabros and i remember
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him saying to us as we were leaving he says you know you'll probably make a
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couple of short films and that'll be it and we'll never get it from you again.
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And I said, well, thanks for the vote of confidence. Why did you say that?
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And then he said, well, you know, that's just the reality. He said,
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you know, you leave film school, you'll make a couple of films and that'll be
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it and you'll go on to be an accountant or something like that.
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It's so true. And I'll tell you what, the accountants of this world have got
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a darn bigger, downside bigger house and nicer car than most of us. Oh, that's bloody true.
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When I visit my accountant, I go, geez, I went the wrong way. I went the wrong way.
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I could have been sitting in this nice air-conditioned office,
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you know, playing with figures instead of trying to get movies made, which is.
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Oh, look, it hasn't. I mean, I've come dangerously close to selling real estate
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at one point, but I've never had a job outside of some form of show business.
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So I suppose I count myself lucky for that, you know.
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Jack of all trades, master of none, obviously. Interesting story.
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Sorry, I was listening to a podcast earlier this morning and they were talking
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about Lisa Marie Presley.
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As everyone has, apparently during COVID, written a memoir, written a book,
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and of course she's passed away, but memoir is going to be posthumously published.
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And it was interesting, in one part they said that when her son passed away,
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she wanted to get his tattoos, the same tattoos that he had. Why?
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And apparently, in an excerpt, she got a tattoo artist around and he said,
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oh, that's a very touching thing. Do you have any photo reference?
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He said, I'll do you one better than that. And she took him into another room
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and she had her son actually on a bed of dry ice, but she'd had him there in
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her house for a couple of months.
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The rich really are different, David. They are very strange.
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Oh, my goodness. But that made me think of the short film that you had just
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done, which was The Art of Farewell.
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The Art of Farewell, yes. The
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little film that sort of seems to have had a life of its own. Yeah, yeah.
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Yeah, wow, that's an amazing reference. Yes, that was, what was that,
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2001? I think we made that.
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It was, I think, because I remember that when we met and we were editing my
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first short film, I think that you had just put it in trock first, that.
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That was 2000. It might have been 2000 or 2000.
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It was their first drama that they'd ever had, their first serious film that
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had been sent in because Topfest was always a sort of gaggy type.
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Right, yeah, jokes and stuff like that.
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And my great friend Buck Buckingham wrote it, and we shot that.
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Honestly, we shot that on the smell of an absolute oily rag.
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We had a – in fact, the genesis for it was there was a guy up in Brisbane who
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is now teaching in Melbourne by the name of Darcy Yule.
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And Darcy said to me one day, I think it must have been at Cupix,
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the old screen resource centre that used to be over at Gabba,
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which is now just opposite – exactly opposite my post house,
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which I run over at Gabba Post at the moment. So we're tiny.
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And Darcy said to me in the corridor, I've got some 16 mil short ends sitting
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in a fridge somewhere that I won in a competition and I've got nothing to do. Do you want them?
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And I immediately phoned up a DOP friend of mine, Brendan Williams,
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and said, Brent, I've got some 16 mil stock. What can we do?
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And phoned up Buck and said, what can we do? And he said, let's do this.
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So Buck had penned this little short and thought this would be perfect.
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So we got this old, Brendan's a great DOP.
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In fact, I'm going to have coffee with him next week. And we got the oldest,
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crappiest Arri BL camera, this 16mm camera.
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And it had something wrong with its pulleys or something inside.
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So it was making this sound all throughout because it was a really quiet film.
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And it was making, it was like those IMAX cameras you hear now.
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It was making this as it worked. And we said, okay, we'll fix that in post.
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Don't worry. You know, we'll blimp it and what have you.
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And so we shot this thing with the and we shot it over a couple of nights and
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it all went beautifully. and the performances by Damian Garvey,
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who's gone on to much bigger and better things. I think he's in Nautilus at the moment.
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And another old friend of mine, David Clendenning, who played the old Jewish guy.
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We did it over two nights. And then we got the film processed.
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I think Kodak did it for us for free. And then we got the post lounge, I think.
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Oh no, beeps on that one to do the Transfer for free.
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Everything back then was done with old TV mates with cartons of beer, basically. Right.
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Because they were running post companies then with telecines and what have you. Sure. And then.
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And I was just learning to edit on Avid, you know, and Cupix had this archaic
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Avid system, which had, you know, two gigabytes of storage. I remember.
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And it was only then we found out that that sound was the take-up reel not working properly.
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And so the speed was running anywhere between 18 and 24 frames a second.
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So nothing synced up. Right, right. Nothing synced.
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I had to, in the Avid, eventually replace every word of dialogue in people's
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mouths one word at a time to sync the thing up.
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Yeah. So it had a troubled birth.
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But then it went on to, it won Best Screenplay at Tropfest. Yes.
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Tony Collette was one of the judges that night. Yes. And it was funny.
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I heard through another friend who was a driver for her six months later.
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He was driving her on some film set in Sydney, and he said, oh,
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a friend of mine's film was in Tropfest this year.
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And she said, oh, which one? And he said, oh, The Art of Farewell.
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And she said, oh, tell your friend that I voted for his film,
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and it was the boys that rolled me.
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So that was nice to know. Yeah. But here's another, I mean, I'm probably waxing
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too lyrical about this title, funny little seven minute film,
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but here's a really interesting story.
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I got this email years later.
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You don't know where these things end up, right?
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So it ended up on one of the streaming, early streaming cable networks in the
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States that showed, the Sundance Channel, that showed short.
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And I get this email from this Christian university in, oh, I don't know,
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Omaha, Nebraska, or somewhere in the Midwest.
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Right. And this lovely lady said, oh, I'm wondering if you can send me a copy
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of your film, The Art of Farewell, so that I can use it as part of our religious studies. I said, sure.
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I said, look, as a query, where did you find out about this?
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And she said, oh, it's in a book. And I went, what?
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And so she sent me the pages from the book and it's a book on religious films,
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and this guy had done a whole section on the art of farewell saying one such film that,
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clarifies the jewish experience and blah blah blah is is a little film called
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the art of farewell and it went on whatever and that and i was chuffed about
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that but then the best thing was in the back of the book.
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It had all of the films that were mentioned in the book. So it had a glossary of all the films.
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And it was all in alphabetical order, taking out the the.
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So I was sandwiched between, so the little Art of Farewell,
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David Napier was below Armistad, Steven Stolberg and Armageddon and,
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So I was in the middle of Spielberg and Bungalungs, you know, him.
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Yes, the Bayhem. Bayhem, that's right. Yes, Michael Bay.
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And that made my year. That did.
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You know, so I can only imagine what it's like when you do these mega films,
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you know, the way the big directors do, and everybody in the world sees it, and you go, wow. Yeah.
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I feel like you've made it. One day. But it was a great little film.
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Yeah, no. Great. I remember, and it did look good too.
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And the same with your other one. I remember I didn't see, what was the one
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you had World War I uniforms in? Was it Boogeyman?
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Oh, the World War II one. Or two.
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Boogeyman. That was our first. I remember you playing the, I never saw the film,
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but while we were editing my first short film, He showed me the trailer for
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it, made a trailer for it. Oh, yeah.
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And it had the music cue from the American president. The American president.
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God, you've got a good memory.
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Yeah. Yeah. That was our first stab at Trotfest. Yeah. Yeah.
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Our first stab at Trotfest, a very silly film, and that was –,
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That was 20 crazy people running around. Didn't you say you learned those costumes
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were from the Thin Red Line? Yeah.
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All of the guns and Japanese uniforms and all of that were from the Thin Red Line. Yeah.
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And a friend of mine who's still a great friend, he was the chief fire officer
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down at the Land Warfare Center at Kanungra.
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Right. The army base down there. And so he, he arranged for us to shoot down there.
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And I mean, talk about, talk about, you know, again, getting stuff on screen,
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the, the section that we shot the film in was this tropical jungle section that they called the VC camp.
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And it was basically set up during the Vietnam war to train guerrilla warfare.
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So it had all these little huts and tunnels and all that sort of stuff.
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It was the best film set you could get. And it cost us nothing.
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So you know that was that was a
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great little experience as well and there
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was we had to the truck we used in
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the show broke down just before we got the final
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shots so it had to be it had to be sent away it cost 10 grand that was the most
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expensive it cost 10 grand to fix the gearbox and this thing and we needed it
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because it was the hero truck right and during the week that during the week
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that we weren't down there, we had to leave our set up.
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We had a tower and a gate. You know, it was a camp, a Japanese POW camp in the forest.
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And I get this call from Peter, my friend. He said, oh, look, do you mind?
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The SAS are doing some training down there this week, and I'd like to use your
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tower for target practice.
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Would you like? Is that okay? And I said, yeah, hey, anything to make it look
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as real as possible, you know.
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So we got back to when there were bullet holes in everything and then it was great.
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Yeah, that was, yeah.
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They were fun. I mean, making those, it was amazing what we could wrangle for
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next to nothing, you know, the filmic firepower just from people that just wanted to make a film.
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And, of course, it was great, too, because all of my short films have been shot
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on film, which was a great lesson.
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About, you know, I mean, these days everything's shot on digital. Yes. Well, not ever.
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Spielberg still shoots on film and, you know, Nolan and a lot of them.
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But, you know, it teaches. These days a lot of younger directors,
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even for their short, and being in post, I know this for a fact.
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They just let the damn thing roll.
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And, you know, okay, reset, don't cut, don't cut, reset. And so you're just
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scrolling through these endless bits of people standing around, resetting, whatever.
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Whereas with film, every time you said action and every time you said cut, you saved money.
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So it was great training to be able to use that process as opposed to,
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yeah, just leave it roll and see what we get. Yeah.
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And that was the odd thing because I learned all that coming out of film school.
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But, of course, by the time I was coming out, the DV thing was coming in.
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Mm-hmm. And I remember the last day there and Lester Crombie,
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who was running. Lester? Yeah. I haven't seen Lester for years.
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Yeah. And he took me through and he showed me the first bay of computers that
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they had got in with Adobe Premiere.
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Oh, wow. And I had just done a budget for the short film that you and I edited in my first short film.
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And I think to do it on film, outside of film school, which you've got to pay
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for it all yourself now, it was going to cost like $12,000, and then I went
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to Cupix, which was a great place in those early days. Yep.
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And I forget the man's name who introduced you to me to you.
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He used to do sound and look after all the equipment.
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Now I can't. Oh, that would have been.
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I want to say Phil something. It was Phil. No, no, Mick Collis. Mick Collis. Mick.
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Mick. Big tall guy. Yep. Yep. And he was great. He says, don't worry about it.
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These digital cameras, look, Steven Soderbergh's using it.
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Danny Boyle's using it. Let me show you.
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Take five minutes and then i said well that's great but i don't know how to
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i know how to edit but i don't know how to edit that's okay i know this bloke
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and he gave me david napier call,
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he knows he'll help you out you know
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tell him the captain sent you as they used to say yep yeah
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but yes i was really odd
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learning all that and then wanting to go out and
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make a short film on film and then finding out that you know
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okay but yeah so thank thank goodness
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i you know so yeah i just came
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out of film school to go back to film school learn all the new stuff
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well yeah but it was it was that cusp wasn't
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it it was the big changeover i mean yeah you know
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i started and and i sort of came when i was getting
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in it was just right on the on the wave and you
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know people were experimenting with it they didn't
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still take it seriously digital was for making wedding videos
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and well you know i mean the
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thing the fact of the matter is now you know you can cut a feature i mean i'm
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i'm cutting a feature on this laptop at the moment right los angeles and and
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i've got i've got three suites at work and sometimes i sit in there but other
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times i sit out the front under the under the the gazebo sort of thing and just
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do it on the laptop you know.
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When i started because i started in tv as a kid right singing and dancing and
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on a thing and when i started in
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television in the mid 70s mid to late 70s
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one you know a two inch quad videotape machine
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was the size of that wall right
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and everything you know it was that thick
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it was two inch wide and and and and
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those machines you know you
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had i mean channel nine had six of the damn things up
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there it was like walking into the bowels of the enterprise you know
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because the whole hummed from these machines
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yeah and i just you know and an
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hour of television would be on a on a
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spool that weighed 10 kilos and
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you know now an hour of television is on a thumbnail drive this big it's just
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it's amazing how things watch those extras when they were doing like the two
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towers and they talked about how weather digital had like a terabyte of storage
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And I've got one of those on my desk that cost me like 20 bucks.
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There's a whole thing on YouTube now of these guys finding old silicon graphics
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machines and tearing them down and rebuilding them and using them.
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And, you know, they've got some of them have got like, you know,
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ooh, 512 megabytes of RAM. And I remember there was another, what was it called?
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I can't, what was it called? Quantum?
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There was a Queensland government set up an animation training school or something.
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Right, right. I've been built in there.
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This must have been the early 2000s. And that had rooms full of these silicon graphics machines.
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And these things were like $40,000, $50,000 computers back then. Yeah, yeah, sure.
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And now they couldn't drive the graphics on my freaking iPad. So you just sort of...
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It's just, it's nuts. It's nuts. Yeah, I mean, it definitely,
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in the last 20 years, the leaps and bounds as far as tools are concerned to
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just, it's night and day.
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I mean, I think about that last week in film school, learning it all that old-fashioned
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way, and it seemed like the next month, it had all changed. Yeah, it was all over.
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It just kept changing, you know. Well, it's like that story at ILM that,
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well, I don't know who it was, John Knoll or somebody, when they saw the very
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first compositing tests on a computer of compositing,
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it may have been the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park or something.
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He walked one of one of
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them walked into the optical printing department which
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had this three million dollar optical printer
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that had been designed and developed since star wars
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over 30 years of research and
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development to create the best optical printer ever
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and he walked in and went that's going
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in the garbage tomorrow it was obsolete overnight
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you know have you seen that documentary about
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the dude what's his name steve williams it's called jurassic punk it's on no
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i haven't yeah it's on tubie so you can watch it you can watch it for free cool
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yeah it's about he's the guy who actually he's the guy who actually did all
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that stuff like they talk about you know
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james cameron was i went to dennis mirror and he said we can do it well this
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is the guy who actually did this is the guy who sat actually had to do it yeah
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this is a guy who sat at the computer and actually did the work.
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I'll have to look that up.
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Yeah. I love all of that. It's called Jurassic Punk.
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Steve, Steve Williams is the bloke.
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And, yeah, he's even got the mouse pad that he used, and you can see the mark
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where he wore it out, you know, doing all that. Oh, wow.
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I forget which one. I think it was for Terminator or The Abyss,
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one of them. I think it was for Terminator 2 because he did the liquid metal.
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Yep, yep. 2000 character. But that's a great show, that great documentary.
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It's sort of a look at the other side of the business and sort of what happens
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when you commit political suicide in Hollywood.
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By sort of saying, look, these guys take home all the Oscars and all the credit,
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but I'm the dude who actually did the innovation.
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Yeah. You know, so it's that kind of story, but, I mean, look, he's still the guy.
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Like, he's the guy that had to sit at the computer and find a way to do it.
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So, I mean, it's – But there's so many of them in the whole film process, you know.
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I mean, I'm constantly amazed how little prominent colourists are given.
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You know, if you look at a Marvel picture or anything and you've got thousands of things going.
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I like the fact, look, I was just saying about the Lord of the Rings extras,
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how they actually showed some of Andrew Lesney's footage without colourisation.
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It looks crappy. It looks like something you would film with your mates on a camera.
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Yeah. And, you know, you see, you know, you've got all the front of film credits
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and it's the editor and the composer and all of that.
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And you're dead right. I've seen colourists turn the most average-looking shot
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into something that looks glorious.
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And yet they're buried two-thirds down the scroll.
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And, you know, because, I mean, it's a real create.
27:24
I suppose in the old days it was more like it was more technical it was more
27:28
colour timing and whatever, but it is an incredibly creative task and it elevates
27:34
pictures from, you know, it can elevate the most bland shot into something.
27:40
And sound too. Sound is, you know, sound, it's funny, isn't it?
27:46
Picture, when you're shooting a film and when you're posting a film.
27:52
Picture reigns supreme. It's always, you know, pictures have got to look great,
27:56
the editorial's got to be great everything's got to be great and so like what
27:59
about sound oh yeah we'll get them to do that later you know it's always given
28:03
a bit of a short shrift by filmmakers,
28:06
but obviously in post it's incredibly important we've got we've got some great
28:11
little sound facilities in brisbane that do fantastic work on again on budgets
28:16
of you know tiny little budgets But again,
28:21
it elevates, you know, it's all, it all adds a difference.
28:27
It adds those layers. I mean, a film straight out of the camera is pretty bloody awful.
28:34
It stops start. Well, film, video, whatever.
28:37
It stops start. It stops start. It never kind of works. The actors never do the same thing twice.
28:43
Things don't cut properly the first time because somebody's arms up here,
28:47
somebody's arms down there and whatever.
28:49
But then as it goes through the process, all
28:52
of those disparate elements all just start to meld and and hold together and
28:59
then build upon and all of a sudden you've got a watch of watchable film you
29:03
know it's it's amazing how it's i mean you know not all of them it's amazing
29:07
what you can fix in post huh oh precisely but you know i got.
29:12
Yeah well normally normally it's
29:15
with a lot of money yeah i got
29:19
some great advice and it was you know from i've met
29:22
that many big people in in the film
29:25
business over the years but i had a film called
29:29
the war of jenkins ear that that
29:32
went to the hollywood film festival and and
29:35
competition and whatever so i went i'm going to that because it was a it was
29:40
in 2003 i think and it was being held at the arc light cinemas the old cinerama
29:46
cinemas in los angeles and that so i i mean that year was quite notable because
29:52
it was the year The Room premiered.
29:56
And I remember Tommy Wiseau walking around the bar and the coffee shops and
30:06
that with his arms full of all of these what did they used to call them?
30:11
The Room brochures. Okay, right, right.
30:15
And handing them out. come see my film, come see my film.
30:19
And this is before he became a huge, you know, the disaster.
30:25
I know, I know. And that was quite amazing.
30:28
But I went to that festival and because through an old filmmaker friend of mine
30:35
who's sadly passed away now, David Hanna,
30:37
I met the son of Michael, mental blank, Michael, Michael, I was going to say
30:46
Michael Crichton, but it's not Michael Crichton.
30:48
The Archers, Michael Powell, right?
30:53
Great old filmmaker. And his son, son used to live down Tweed Heads or somewhere.
30:59
And we knocked about a while because I was sort of in awe of it.
31:03
His mother in, mother-in-law? No, his stepmother is Thelma Skudmarker.
31:09
So she could, because she met Michael Powell when Gorsese was championing Michael
31:17
Powell's British films in Los Angeles and they got married.
31:21
So through that connection, I got an invite to visit Thelma in Los Angeles.
31:29
Oh, yeah. And so I went, I was in LA for this festival.
31:33
And one night I got the call sort of saying,
31:36
oh, we're down here at, i don't know it must have been deluxe
31:40
or something down down outside of
31:44
hollywood it was these big old land buildings drove down
31:47
and got there and i got there must have been sort of eight o'clock at night
31:51
and going through this door there's a door that says it's just got the front
31:56
on it the aviator production office and walk through and it's and it's all there
32:02
are there are people sort of in
32:04
the other rooms there but the rest of it's quiet and then
32:07
i walk past the thing and it says mr scorsese i'm thinking
32:10
holy crap i'm really here this is a
32:13
real you know production office from
32:16
major film which was the aviator right and i
32:19
walk around the i walk around the corner and thelma is there with her assistant
32:23
editors and they're all having burgers and onion rings and she says david and
32:28
and there she edits on heavy works which is a variation of the light work system
32:34
and the system had gone down.
32:38
So she couldn't show me any of the footage, unfortunately.
32:41
But because of that fact, she didn't have anything to do. So we just sat and
32:45
chatted for two hours. That's fantastic.
32:48
And I said, okay, because she won, what, three Academy Awards or something for
32:53
editing, for Raging Bull and things like that, you know? Yeah, yeah.
32:57
And I said, what advice would you give, you know, a nascent editor?
33:03
Sure. And she said, don't cut for continuity. Always cut for drama.
33:10
If somebody's hand's up here in that take and down here for the next,
33:14
nobody cares if the drama's good.
33:17
Right. And I've taken that for the last 20 years and never,
33:25
Unless it's some action thing where it's really important or it stands out like
33:30
the perfect. When it's going to be distracting.
33:34
Yeah, yeah. But if it's not distracting, don't sweat it.
33:37
As long as the drama is good, nobody's going to notice if, you know,
33:42
the cigar is here or there or there or whatever. Right.
33:47
Or if his hair's damp in one, like Russell throws.
33:51
Precisely. Or if it's raining slightly, you know, because so many films,
33:55
I mean, particularly lower-budget films and that, you can't control the weather,
33:59
and sometimes it starts raining and people go, we can't shoot,
34:03
and you go, well, we've got to.
34:05
But it'll look different. You know what? If they notice the rain,
34:08
you've lost them anyway.
34:12
It's sort of crazy stuff. What a crazy game.
34:18
But there's something that compels you from the beginning and you follow your
34:25
dreams and they lead you to some weird and wonderful place.
34:30
Well, I mean, you're writing screenplays now for Hollywood productions, aren't you? I mean.
34:35
Well, yeah, little tiny Hollywood productions. But as I said to someone a long
34:42
time ago, a movie's a movie, mate. I wanted to be in the movies.
34:46
That's great. And a podcast about movies too. I mean, I. We trust.
34:53
Yeah, well, you know, I sometimes listen to a lot of, I go through blocks of podcasts.
34:59
When you're sitting in the car, you're listening to, you know,
35:02
something, there's an absurdist comedy one that I used to listen to that was
35:07
fantastic called the Meat and
35:10
Dairy, what was it, the Meat and Dairy Corporation or something like that?
35:14
And it just weird shit, you know, just very strange.
35:18
But but as you just held up your blu-ray and said i've got a first book after 20 years.
35:27
Hopefully fingers crossed i won't i won't believe it
35:29
till i'm standing on set but i'll be directing my first
35:32
feature next year wonderful a proper
35:36
well by all accounts a proper you know
35:39
sort of expensive feature film well
35:42
yeah also bloke david and before
35:46
we run out of time you know i thank you
35:49
for taking this time to have a chat to me and i thank you for being kind to
35:53
a young fellow who was trying to movies and stuck with it so i mean that's the
35:58
that's the key to it all is uh don't give up well i mean yeah that is and you
36:02
know what you've just got to keep just one little story One tiny little story before we wrap,
36:08
I had the absolute good fortune in 2000 and no, 1983,
36:16
a long time ago, as a young puppeteer, because I was a puppeteer in another
36:22
age, flying to New York, turning up.
36:27
Having coffee with Jim Henson.
36:29
And the man welcomed me in as if I was an old friend and sat there and talked to me and whatever.
36:38
And I thought if, and at that time he was huge, you know, just on the dark crystal and whatever.
36:43
And I thought if Jim Henson, one of the most famous people in show business
36:48
at that time could take a 19 year old kid from Brisbane and,
36:53
and, and spend time and chat and whatever, well then all the other.
36:58
Shall we say, self-absorbed people in, in show business, you don't need to know,
37:03
you know, and I figured if, if he can do that, well then everybody's in the
37:08
same boat and you're just going to encourage them all the time.
37:11
Yes. David Napier, great bloke, man on the rise.
37:15
I can't wait to see all good things,
37:18
anything cinematic that comes from david he
37:21
was a great bloke and as i said to him a very kind
37:24
man to a young kid starting out
37:28
at the beginning of a cinematic journey and that kid was me and so thanks for
37:36
listening once again ladies and gentlemen follow the links in the description
37:41
and And make sure you check out David's work when and where you can.
37:46
He's a top bloke. He's a filmmaker. He's a top filmmaking bloke.
37:51
And as always, my little Eugenites, thank you for listening to us on Spotify
37:57
or wherever you choose to listen to your favorite podcasts.
38:00
I'm Kent Hill. And until next time, you've been listening to Cinema Eugenite.
38:06
Music.