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Joe Knetter: From Horror Novels to Hollywood · Cinema Yūgen

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G'day. That's right. It's that time again. Time for Cinema Yugen.
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Welcome back, Yugenites. Another week's Cinema Yugen. This episode, Joe Netter.
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From a young age, Joe immersed himself in the horror genre, loving the feeling
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of being scared and creeped out.
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Lucky for him, the 80s were a powerhouse time for horror films with the advent
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of the home video market.
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Joe watched everything he could get his hands on, taking in the craft of proper storytelling.
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While most kids his age were reading
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children's books, Joe found solace in Stephen King and Clive Barker.
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It was a natural progression for him to begin to
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write as a way to share the
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emotions he felt with others his short
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story about a plane crash garnered him the attention of
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the school psychologist he thought his brutal survival about death and survival
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while well written was something that needed to be addressed in counseling what
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joe took from it was a feeling of making an impact and affecting people something
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he continued to do through his career with films like Blind,
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Pretty Boy, That's a Wrap, Space Wars, Quest for Deep Star.
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Garden of Eden, and Brute 1976.
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And Joe has worked with Paramount Pictures as one of the writers picked to finish
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George Romero's last zombie epic, Twilight of the Dead.
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Please welcome him to Cinema Yugen, Joe...
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G'day, Joe. Hey, thank you. It's good to be here.
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I was waiting to see who you were bringing up, though, when you were referring
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to somebody as a master, because I was like, oh, cool, who are we going to be
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talking to? But I guess it's me. That's you, mate.
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You're a master. Thank you. You're doing well. You're doing really well.
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Last year it's it's as a matter of fact last year i did a couple of interviews regarding two films,
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that uh that you've recently done one was uh space wars of course the quest
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for deep star and the other one near the end of the year was 12 to midnight bronzy,
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robert bronzy movie which i enjoyed immensely ironically both starring sadie
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cats i love that line of sadie's i actually got to tell her i don't know if
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i got to tell her that but uh in uh,
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In 12 to midnight where she shows up at the door near the end.
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Yeah. Dorothy goes, it's okay. I haven't come here. Fuck you.
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Well, I'll, I'll be honest about that. Do you know the script I wrote changed
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a little bit by the time I shot it.
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That was the work for hire thing in the script I wrote.
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She actually did. Fuck him. Like that was kind of throwback.
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I mean, they had a whole conversation with bronzy and a towel and then it cuts
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kind of fades out and fades into them in bed together.
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They're naked kind of under the blankets but so that
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was they they actually changed that a little bit uh you know
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i liked you know the classic bronson he gets the girl
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yeah yeah that's where i went with it
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i love how they went with the gun too like they used the
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uh they got a gun similar to the one he uses in
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the in death wish for the for the end of it where he
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goes after the the werewolves bronzy and
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where i like to think that if bronson had lived a bit
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longer he might have done a werewolf movie yeah i
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think that's kind of what they're doing with the bronzy stuff because that
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was the the first thing i've done with him and
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i think they're trying to just kind of fill in maybe movies bronson never did
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yeah yeah and uh it was fun yeah yeah it was it was a fun project to write for
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sure yeah sure and and uh i really loved deep star as well especially since
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all the callbacks to a lot of great sci-fi they love,
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like Star Crash and Battle Beyond the Stars and all the good stuff,
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all the stuff that people have.
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We put a lot of Easter eggs in there because, you know, the whole goal of that
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movie was not to be a Star Wars ripoff, but to be a Star Wars ripoff ripoff. That's right. Yeah.
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The Star Crash. In the grand tradition of Star Wars ripoffs,
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he's a ripoff of the Star Wars ripoffs. Yeah.
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You know, the director of that, Gato Setien, is amazing. He loves that stuff.
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Yeah. It was a privilege to get to work on that with him because I grew up on
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all that shit and people aren't really doing it much anymore.
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And we have something in common. And we've both written like Michael Paré movies.
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Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. You've worked with Michael Paré. Mine's up on the wall
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there, the Righteous Blood, which was a Western. Okay. Very cool.
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Michael's a great guy. Oh, yeah. Top bloke. Top bloke. He's been on the show.
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But listen, I was doing a bit of research and going back through some of your
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old interviews and there was a story that you brought up about being on Twin
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Peaks, being there on the last day of Twin Peaks.
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And it brought to mind because you also tell the story about being,
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being there for the last performance of Sid Haig.
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And it reminds me of a documentary I watched and reviewed recently for Film
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Threat, which was about Catherine, the log lady.
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Okay. And she was, have you seen the film? I know Catherine, the log lady. No?
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No, I haven't seen the documentary. Well, if you're a Twin Peaks fan,
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definitely check it out. Excellent. Yeah, I would, I would love to.
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Yeah. Wonderful. I'm a huge, huge Twin Peaks fan.
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Yeah. Yeah. wonderful doc and and really moving
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because she was actually dying she was you
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know probably a lot like sid she was actually dying at the
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end but she was insistent on being
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in the return or the
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season three whichever you prefer and the
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documentary is intriguing the fact that how they were the
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how they were going to get her from where she was
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because ultimately she couldn't go anywhere it would
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have killed the shifter so they ultimately end up coming to
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her and david lynch directed her via skype oh
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wow that's amazing so yeah incredible film definitely
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it's i think it's i think it's it's it should be
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coming out uh soon it's finished on the festival circuit
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but i know katherine the log lady an incredible story
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incredible woman i i i had
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no idea that she was also a professional camera assistant and focus pullers
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yeah she was focus puller on like the wrath of khan oh wow yeah no idea that's
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amazing that was huge but definitely when you see an ad for it or if you see
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it it'll probably come out in america first before anyone else but.
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I know katherine the log lady will definitely be something yeah i'll enjoy i'll
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definitely add it to my list because yeah you know i love twin peaks so much
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and you know i i spent that whole season and just trying to be a background extra on that show,
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just to say I was in that role. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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I got super lucky, super lucky to get the last day.
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No, I would totally, I would totally be the same. Yeah.
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It's the, the juice of even sort of getting to talk with some of these people.
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Sometimes one of my, one of my great, I was very fortunate.
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One of my, my all time heroes was Tim Thomason, who I got to chat with a while ago now.
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But yeah, it's, it's, it's strange
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because I got given his phone number and the
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person who gave it to me didn't sort of say when to call
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him just if you want to talk to him call him so i'm
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sitting there looking at the number and i go i'll just
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call him so i found out what the time difference was so i call him and next
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minute there's jack death on the phone i think the first thing out of my mouth
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goes hey you sound exactly like you do in the movie yeah as if as if somehow
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he would sound different but uh yeah completely different no but i mean sometimes
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they Sometimes people do,
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but he is what he is.
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I met him. I was lucky enough to meet him a few times on the road at the convention
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circuit, and he was always super cool.
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Oh, yeah. I wish his mate had a lift, too. What was his name?
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Brian James was his best friend.
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Okay. And I know he passed away some time ago, but that's another cat I would
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have loved to have, especially to talk to him together because they had a long history together.
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In fact, the first time they met was when they were both signed up for the one
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branch of the armed forces.
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And he met Brian because Brian was sitting in the back of a truck,
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smoking a joint or something.
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Wow. And so he climbed up in there. Yeah, we're in the army now.
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Yeah. And bonded them for life.
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That's great. But no, fantastic stuff. So yeah, I imagine after all that,
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like we were saying before, life in the movie business is quite perilous.
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And of course, in Los Angeles recently, you've laid with the fires and strikes.
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And I suppose you're just waiting for the river to turn to blood and the locusts to show up, right?
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Yeah, it's pretty close to that. I mean, you know, the start of it was COVID.
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You know, we fully recovered from COVID and then we had all the strikes and
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then the fires. So it's, this city's taken a beating, but it will come back.
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The key I think is just to weather it out, you know, to find a way to keep existing
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out here and not give up, you know, because so many people.
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And like you said in a lot of your other interviews that I listened to prior
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to this, like that is the, that's the, that's really the formula for success.
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Like I, I get asked a lot as I'm sure you are, you know, what's the secret to
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making it in movies. And that's the, that's the only secret sauce I can really
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give up is don't, you know.
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Yeah. That was, that was actually something very early on.
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Sid Haig told me was never have a backup because if you have a backup,
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it's going to become your number one thing.
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So I've never had a backup. I've just made it work.
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And it's been super difficult like
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this last you know year has been really
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fucking tough but you know you hustle you
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find ways at the end of the day if you're
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able to pay your bills and survive it all you're a huge fucking success
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out yes because it's almost impossible yes
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i think i think a lot of people like you were saying uh and
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one of your other interviews that you know a
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lot of people and of course a lot of people know a lot of
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people who've gone out to los angeles and and returned with their uh their head
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hanging low do you think do you think that's ultimately because they go out
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there to try and get famous and rather just become a working professional at
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what whatever trade they're pursuing whether it be acting or writing or.
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Directing i think it's it can be a bit of both i
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think anybody that comes out here to be famous is just fucked
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from the beginning because that's something that's just you
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know that's a a lottery ticket type thing yeah yeah
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that's struck by i think sort of stuff yeah even people
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that come out though just wanting to work it's so fucking hard it
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takes years to kind of develop a group
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and a reputation out here and most people
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just can't weather and survive it because it is so expensive
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here you know i i started in
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the minnesota scene i'm from minnesota originally yeah and
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i i like your accent yeah minnesota yeah
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i have a little bit of of that not quite
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as fargo yeah i'm south minnesota so
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the accent isn't quite as strong i mean you go
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up north you really get the fargo yeah you know and occasionally
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my accent will slip out yeah but you
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know if the group that came out here from minnesota so many tried and
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and most ended up going back and i don't
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fault them for that you know it's it's much easier to live
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in minnesota and and survive and this is a
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you know this is a tough life for me i was lucky that i raised all my kids prior
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to moving here so i could come out here with no real responsibilities other
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than right yeah because you really need that you really need that time because
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ultimately especially for the screenwriters is that these scripts don't write themselves. No.
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And if you don't have the time to like a lot of people that I've spoken to over
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the years that, that are trying to do it, say, look, I just don't have the time.
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And I said, well, look, you got to make the time, you know, you've got to,
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if you don't have scripts to show, there's no, you know.
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Yeah. I always have, I have 12 on standby all the time.
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And more often than not, if I am pitching, it, it ends up being something else.
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And then I got to just pull something out of my ass.
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And I'm lucky that for me, I can write really quick.
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So I can pull something out and buy a few days to write it and then send it.
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I'm the same. That's, that's ultimately how I got my start.
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Like you, I started off, I was writing scripture a long time and then just sort
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of hitting the wall because I couldn't get anyone to read anything because like
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a lot of people that start off, I was just a kid with a script and no one knew who I was.
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So regardless how good the script was, and because like you,
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I got a lot of the classic notes saying like, this is good, but we don't want it. Yeah.
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You know, which is a terrible note. It's a terrible note because they're not
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telling you that you're bad and they're not telling you to quit,
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but they're just telling you that this isn't it.
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Right. and so the the the
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real stamina comes to go back
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to the anvil again well okay that wasn't it maybe the
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next one's it but what
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you don't get is by doing it over and over and over regardless whether these
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films get made is you're actually getting better and faster as you say far being
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being fast is a gift i mean i basically got my start in screenwriting because
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like you i can knock something out over a weekend if need be. Yeah.
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And that's where I'm at. Because I usually try and keep one ready that's every
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genre, horror, action, Western-
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Yeah no okay maybe not musical but yeah
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i was gonna say i'm i can write one but no musical
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if you hold a gun to my head i will do it but you
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know yeah it it doesn't get it's just
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songs in between the dialogue yeah and you
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have someone else write the lyrics and the music so you're really just setting
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story and and setups but i i
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agree i think that's key is just have plenty of stuff ready and
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yeah you know you know as abraham
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lincoln once said you've got to prepare because one day your chance
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will come and i would rather i would.
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Rather have a ton of stuff that that no one really cares about
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ready for that hour where they say like hey we
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really like your stuff have you got anything else that you might
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like yeah as a matter of fact i got
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a box right you gotta have you got to have stuff ready and
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you know and it's like a drawer full
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of you know just random ideas yeah
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i have i have a digital drawer and and you know
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some of my favorite things i've ever written that i think are my best have
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never been made and i've been hired to
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write things before that i i i'm not particularly proud of
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but sometimes you have to pay the bills
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you know and you got to things and it's part
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of the reason why i formed my company with marcel walls
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who directs a lot of my stuff is so we could
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kind of control our own thing because yes so much
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happens with the work for hire scripts where you know you're handing something
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off and then it's changed numerous times and by
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the end it's not exactly what you wrote but
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every review is going to blame you for it exactly yeah
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the script yeah that's the first thing they say oh
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yeah the script is terrible whoever that guy was yeah well we live in a time
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where because everybody can type on line everybody thinks they can write so
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that's the biggest thing now that gets blamed is the writing yeah and i i know
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i mean i tell people that i write movies and they look at me funny.
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You know if that had happened like years ago that would have been cool but now it's kind of like well,
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Yeah. What else do you do? Juggle plates?
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Out here, especially, because anywhere I go, everybody's a writer.
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Oh, yeah. Oh, God. I can only imagine in Los Angeles, like the Uber driver. Hey, I got a script, man.
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Yep. And that happens. That 100% happens.
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Especially when I, you know, formed the company. We just had a movie hit deadline
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yesterday that we shot that's getting released this year.
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And the amount of people that wrote me yesterday just pitching projects is insane.
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And you know anybody that does any research knows that
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the stuff i'm producing i'm i'm writing i'm screenwriter
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that's what i do yes so it's always it's always tough
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i mean i'm always nice to the people that send stuff but you
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know i formed a company to do my own thing you know it's it's yeah it's what
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you know that's i mean that's ultimately what you work to is is is to find some
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way to for all intents and purposes preserve something of your writing because
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like you said when you're writing for money, when you're writing to pay the bills.
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It's touch and go that what you write will survive, you know.
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It's almost always like 12 to Midnight, for example, you know,
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there's four accredited writers on there. Yes, yeah.
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And, you know, and when I wrote it, it wasn't a werewolf movie. Oh, okay.
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It was to be a kind of serial killer thriller, or kind of like 10 to midnight,
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which was kind of what it was based on.
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Right, yeah. And it transitioned over time to a werewolf thing.
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I mean, it's a fun movie. I've seen it.
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You know, I don't always watch everything that gets made because more often
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than not I get frustrated.
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No, it's good. It's good. But I had fun with it.
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It's one of the better bronzy. Yeah.
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And since then I wrote another bronzy movie called The Caretaker,
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which was shot in December with Bronzy.
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And then Daniel Baldwin-
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Yeah. The caretaker going around. I wrote one. I wrote one that's been made
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recently. It's called the handyman.
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The handyman. He's a handyman with a past.
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Well, I just wrote a one called the pool girl for the same people.
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So it seems to be, that seems to be what we're trying to catch.
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Yeah. We're all trying to catch that wave of, of the working man and the beekeeper.
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And yeah, there's a beekeeper too.
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There's a skibbity toilet movie for God's sake.
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Yeah. it's it's i'm excited for that one though i scratch my head joe because
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you know there's guys like us racking our brains to come up with cool shit and
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all we need to do is put a head coming out of a dunny and uh yeah and then you
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got it boggles my mind it boggles because you,
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never know what's gonna hit yeah if you
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and i have sat and come up with that and looked at it and
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go yeah no one's gonna read this who wants to
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see a whole movie about a head coming out of a toilet but
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yeah yeah but somebody did yeah and
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that and that kind of stuff is just it's so random what's
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going to work and what's not going to work like i
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said some of the movies i've done that i'm super proud of just didn't
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find an audience at all and uh other ones
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that are kind of meh to me for whatever reason get
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some play um you know i've been
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lucky i got multiple things coming up i'm super excited about i
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have a movie called pretty boy coming out through
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lion's gate on may 27th which is cool considering we
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shot that five years ago wow it's been on their
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shelf for five years waiting to come out yeah covid
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really messed messed up all the distribution stuff because
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i mean i had a film that was made uh with another
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one with michael parry that was made in late 2021 and
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that didn't come out till last year so yeah well everybody.
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Overbought everybody panicked and all the distributors overbought
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and we live in a time where people are you know
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giving up movies for like nothing so it's
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really easy for distro to pull in a lot of movies because they're not really paying
20:09
shit for them and then it becomes a you know it just sits there waiting so which
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can really fuck things up because we can't sell foreign until we have a north
20:19
american release so like pretty boy taking so long to to come out has really
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helped back everything for our investors And I like my investors to make their money back.
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I'm one of those. I don't bullshit my investors. I'm honest with them.
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And, you know, not everybody out here is like that. You know,
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you'll have the people out here that tell you, oh, you're going to make millions.
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It's like, no, you're not.
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You know, hopefully you'll start making some money in a couple of years,
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but, you know, it's going to take some time.
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Well, like you say, the sensible place to aim for is like you said on another
20:50
interview that when you can pay your bills doing what you do,
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then that's a pretty huge success, you know, a hundred percent,
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you don't have to have another job and the writing is the side thing when the
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writing is the thing that's, that's pretty successful.
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Yeah. I've, I've been lucky that, you know, the 10 years I've been out here, I've made it work.
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And it's certainly been some years really, really, really tight and really tough.
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And I got, you know, during COVID, I got really lucky that I got hired to write
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a homeschool program that were all educational videos, but there were three,
21:26
three page scripts from kindergarten through senior high teaching every subject.
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And that's still writing you know it's it's not
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the creative thing i want to do yeah but i
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i could get creative because it's kids teaching kids on you
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know i slipped a lot of little horror references in and and i
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think in in six weeks i wrote a thousand of them
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from everything from you
21:49
know kindergarten to calculus so but to me that's
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still writing you know it's still yes yeah
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i mean like yourself I write everything you know
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film reviews are written for newspapers of write scripts
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written books you know because you and I sort of came up through
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the same way I started off in books
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too because when I couldn't get anyone to read the scripts you
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know I was crying in a beer with a friend saying oh this is
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hopeless shit and he was
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like well why don't you just start turning some of the movie ideas into
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books and you know how you can hear things from a friend that
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you can't hear from like your parents or anything yeah i
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was like yeah and he said well because maybe you'll get back to the movies through
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the books so it was prophetic in many ways and and that can really happen i
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mean i started with the world of fiction and i did a lot of horror conventions
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i mean i wouldn't be you know a screenwriter without doing that and making all the connections i did.
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You know not even that the books were any good but i got to meet a lot of people
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in the horror genre because I was a lot of fun.
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I liked to party and I kind of was kept around because of my partying ability.
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But then I met a lot of people and used that. The world of fiction really dropped
23:02
out. There's not much money there anymore.
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I'm lucky that the last book I wrote was with Adam Green, the Eye Survivor,
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the book from Victor Crowley.
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And prior to that, I hadn't written anything in years
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and i i don't know i'm sure i'll go back to
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writing at least another novel or short story collection at some
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point but it's just a different way to write it takes a lot longer and there's
23:28
just no a lot more words than the script yeah yeah i mean i did get lucky though
23:33
because the book i was most known for was a novel called zombie bukkake um i
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did like two years ago I'll get a pretty good deal in Japan for it. Oh yeah.
23:42
That kind of blew everybody's mind based on my zombie porno book.
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That's the thing with writing you do, Hey, with scripts and books,
23:50
like some things, sometimes these things, they don't come off when you actually
23:53
do them, but yeah, you know, somewhere along the line, you meet someone who
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asks you, Hey, do you have something like.
24:00
Whatever it is and he goes a matter of fact
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and then they read it and it has a whole nother life so
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yeah well that was that book because that book
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started as a joke because i used to do readings at war conventions and
24:12
stuff i do like an hour-long thing and i was
24:15
dared by a friend to use the word bukkake as much as
24:18
i could during my hour i did you know what bukkake means yes
24:22
okay so you'll know how ridiculous it was
24:25
so i just went on stage and made up this this novel i
24:28
was writing called zombie bukkake which wasn't real and then
24:31
i got contacted by the history channel because they
24:34
wanted to interview me for a documentary they were doing on zombies which i
24:37
thought was someone fucking with me there's no way but
24:40
sure enough they flew me to la wow there you go i'm credited
24:44
on screen author zombie bukkake on the history channel
24:47
and the japanese book deal was the same i just randomly got an email from a
24:52
company in japan wanting the book out of the blue and i was like now somebody's
24:55
fucking with me because it's the same publisher that does stephen king over
24:59
there and all that and i was like there's no fucking way but and those are kind of the.
25:05
The crazy things if you just stick it out that can kind of
25:07
come full circle you know i never would have expected to make any money on that
25:12
book and and i did all like randall frakes once said to me who randall frakes
25:16
the writer of hell comes to frog town once told me he said just keep writing
25:20
write write write write write write that was his when i interviewed him many years ago i,
25:26
said what's the secret you know for screenwriters he
25:29
said just keep writing right when you're not getting paid right at night right
25:35
whenever you know because yeah unfortunately when you're trying to make it in
25:39
this game you need you need the work you need stuff on paper just like a painter
25:43
needs to make paintings to become an artist of any note,
25:48
it's all fine.
25:50
It's like you said, people come to you with a lot of ideas.
25:53
People come to me with ideas for films too. And I said, well,
25:56
why don't you write it? You sound very passionate about it. You've thought about it, obviously.
26:01
Why give it to me? Write it yourself, you know? Yeah.
26:05
I think that's what people should do. I do my own thing.
26:10
Because it's definitely, as you know, when it's a project of your own and then
26:16
something that you're passionate about, it has a flow to it.
26:22
Whereas if it's someone else's idea, you're trying to fit inside a box.
26:26
And I don't think people fully understand that aspect of screenwriting.
26:32
When it's something that's yours, when it's a spec or when it's something that
26:35
you're going to produce yourself,
26:36
there's a different mindset as opposed to something that,
26:41
you know, I mean, yes, you do pour the same passion into something that you're
26:45
being paid right for, but ultimately you know that it's not going to stay that
26:50
way because once they buy it and like you say, they take it away,
26:54
start adding ninjas and werewolves and whatever. I mean,
26:57
yeah that's fine i don't mind ninjas or werewolves but
27:01
as long as it's you know no i mean it can go through so many changes from the
27:06
script to you know who they cast to who's you know putting the movie together
27:10
and yes you know that's the beauty of doing your own thing because you get to
27:14
control that because you know the the work for hire gigs i get sometimes there's
27:19
a very detailed treatment.
27:21
Sometimes i'm given a log line there's two sentences yeah right
27:24
and then i've got to just run with it and i would have
27:27
loved to have worked i would have loved to have worked in that time with
27:29
the canon pictures back when they used to make a poster first
27:33
and just give you the poster write a movie for it yeah that
27:36
would have been amazing you know that doesn't happen that's kind of cool i actually
27:40
would i actually would do that if someone said hey look we've got some art but
27:43
we need like a script yeah well because you're going to be completely creative
27:48
and come up with your own thing and you know danny bilson actually told me a
27:53
story him and paul de meo who wrote.
27:56
Trances and eliminators and and a
27:59
lot of those early charlie band flicks and he.
28:02
Told me that they charlie band's place was like that
28:05
too like they got a poster i think i think they got the poster for
28:08
eliminators and had to just write the script
28:11
based on the the artwork well they would they would take
28:14
it to the the film markets and they would pre-sell it yeah
28:17
yeah hey we've sold this movie we need a we
28:20
need a script now yeah and it you know
28:23
that those days are kind of over with yeah unfortunately
28:27
you know it's it's yeah i mean i i would have loved to
28:30
have been around in those those days yeah because everything's
28:33
shifted so much with streaming and you know
28:35
it's and it's constantly evolving and it's trying to
28:38
stay you know not even it's
28:41
trying to stay the same but it's changing it's always
28:46
changing and adapting and yeah and that's
28:49
why it's always hard when when people ask you like
28:53
for ways in you go well what worked for me is not going to work
28:56
for you yeah because the time in
28:58
which you came up and the time in which i came up and the
29:02
circumstances surrounding that and the circumstances in the
29:04
industry surrounding that were completely different from now yeah
29:08
and and of course as opposed to when we both came up there are so many things
29:14
now online competitions for screenplays and things like ink tip and all these
29:20
ways that you can get exposure if you you know of course you got to pay for
29:24
some of these things so you know yeah you got to pay for kind of all of them um.
29:29
And, you know, it's, we just live in a time where it's easier to make a movie.
29:34
So everybody's making movies, but you know, what I loved about,
29:38
you know, the eighties, seventies is it was hard to make a movie.
29:41
So no matter what the movie was, they were professionals doing their best. Yes.
29:46
Nowadays, there's just so many, you know, I, I support creativity in any way.
29:51
Don't get me wrong, but there's so many people making terrible movies that just
29:55
take up space on the streaming platforms. And, you know, people will make just
30:01
terrible things that sit next to good things.
30:04
And it's really easy to get lost in the shuffle.
30:08
Yes. It's like Harrison Ellenshaw once said, he said, Shakespeare never had
30:12
a word processor, but now we have word processors, we have no Shakespeare's.
30:16
Yeah. And that's completely accurate. Yeah.
30:19
And I think the lion still exists because, yes, anyone can write a screenplay.
30:25
Anyone can write a book. Anyone can publish a book.
30:27
Anyone can make a film but like jeff goldblum
30:31
said in jurassic park just because you can doesn't mean
30:33
you should you know no i i get so
30:36
many things pop up in my facebook of you know
30:39
ads for the the ai writing you know write a
30:42
book in 20 minutes and i'm like what the fuck that's
30:45
not writing like there's going to be no life to that
30:48
and but people are doing it you know i know
30:50
people that have had screenplays submitted to
30:53
them that within the first page you can
30:56
clearly see it's ai written and it's just
30:59
going to get thrown out anyway but it's just
31:02
it's funny you bring that up on on the film threat podcast
31:05
the other day they were talking to the filmmakers who have
31:08
done it's an all ai generated trailer it's called karen unleashed have you heard
31:12
about that yeah i've seen i've seen it yeah and he was talking about you know
31:18
ai as a tool and someone i forget who brought it up in the conversation but
31:24
they said something really interesting and they said that.
31:27
You have to know how to fly a plane before you can turn on the autopilot.
31:32
Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. A hundred percent. You know,
31:35
I'm not a fan of AI because it's, you know, potentially could fuck things up for all of us. Oh, sure.
31:42
Well, it's already going to get rid of like a lot of copywriter jobs and some
31:47
of those really brief like writing blurbs and stuff like that because, you know,
31:52
if they can, like you say, if they can do that themselves, they'll just go to chat,
31:56
cheap et and give me 200 words about
31:59
this house or this you know yep and it's going to come up and it's it's going
32:05
to be okay you know art is certainly i see all the art popping up now that is
32:09
clearly ai generated so artists are struggling and that kind of shit drives
32:13
me nuts because like we use artists for our movie posters and we pay them,
32:19
But, and you can get great art for, and it's not ridiculous amounts of money.
32:23
And I just don't. And it's unique.
32:26
Yeah. And it's, and it's yours, you know, and there's going to be no lawsuits.
32:29
There's going to be no trying to figure out where it came from. Exactly.
32:33
You know, it's just, everything's just shifting so much that I,
32:38
I hope it doesn't go too far.
32:40
You know? Yeah. Well, unfortunately the genie's out of the bottle.
32:43
So. It is. it it's it's look a lot of things joe it's going to fall down to
32:49
human responsibility isn't it yeah and in that case and we're not the most responsible
32:54
creatures we're not the most.
32:58
Not not at all and another big thing sorry i
33:02
was gonna say the only thing we can do is just keep doing our own thing and oh
33:05
yeah you gotta find some audience yeah you
33:08
gotta keep swinging for the fences and hope you can
33:11
hit one out of the park at some point yeah but i
33:14
have three things coming up this year that are coming out and
33:17
you know the hope is i'm proud of all three of them
33:20
but the hope is one of them hits you know it just
33:23
takes one yeah like like you said uh in another interview i listened to you
33:27
yeah it only takes one project to take you up to that uh you know as you're
33:31
climbing these ladders it only takes one to take you up to the uh you know or
33:36
a good review or enough exposure to take you up to that next level.
33:40
And all of a sudden you're, uh, you've gone from swimming in a pond to swimming
33:44
in the ocean and, uh, yeah, it's exciting. Yeah.
33:48
But, uh, another thing that I've had, I've had some cool projects that I can't, I can't talk about,
33:54
but I know you probably can't talk about it much, but I saw that you're involved
33:59
with the twilight of the dead, the unmade Romero picture.
34:03
Yeah. I'm super, super excited about that. with
34:06
brad anderson directing mila jovovich um that's
34:10
huge that was that was a when we
34:14
sat down to write that you know we got to watch some videos of george
34:17
in the pool kind of coming up with concepts and when i
34:20
opened the final draft to start working on
34:23
it you know it was where he left off and that's
34:26
incredible talk about you know
34:29
pressure uh wow but i i think we
34:32
did exhilarate right like a hundred percent that's
34:35
one of those moments where you're sitting there going how the fuck did
34:39
i get here and i do now you
34:42
know and it's and it's so bleak it's it's the bleakest of all of his dead movies
34:47
it's so bleak i love it that's awesome so i'm super stoked about that that's
34:51
got a good budget brad anderson's fantastic i'm a huge fan of session nine that
34:56
could be the huge one that there will be the one and uh you won't be taking
35:00
anyone's phone calls if that one hits.
35:02
I'll still take the calls, but I hope that one,
35:05
I don't know how it doesn't hit, but again, you don't know.
35:10
The only thing you do is make the best movie possible and just hope it finds
35:13
that audience. That's true.
35:16
Well, Joe, mate, everything you've done, I've enjoyed and everything you're
35:20
coming, I'm very excited for.
35:22
Thank you. I'll put all the relevant links to Joe's stuff in the description.
35:27
Check out everything he's got going.
35:29
Joe, thank you for being on Cineveugan, mate. It's been a wonderful job. Absolutely.
35:33
It was very nice to meet you. I wish you luck in your future endeavors as well,
35:37
you know? Oh, thank you, mate. Yeah.
35:39
The handyman is coming. He's a handyman. The handyman is coming. With a past.
35:44
There you go. And that's the caretaker's coming. He's a caretaker with a past. With a past.
35:50
And some people come into his world and muck things up. And just like the staith,
35:55
he has to take them all out.
35:57
Yep. From the end of the movie. Exactly. The caretaker.
36:02
I think we're playing the same kind of thing that's awesome
36:05
anyway mate we look forward to all of the stuff you got
36:08
coming and thank you thank you for being on the show mate thank you for having
36:13
me it was a pleasure yes the mighty joe netter what a great guy what a super
36:19
scribe check out all the links in the description joe has a lot of cool stuff
36:24
on the boil can't wait to see it.
36:28
Check the links in the description.
36:31
And as always my little Eugenites, thank you for listening to us on Spotify
36:37
or wherever you choose to listen to your favourite podcasts.
36:40
I'm Kent Hill and until next time, you've been listening to Cinema Eugenics.
36:48
Music.