SPEAKER_00 0:03

And now Sir Andy here from the film side broadcasting from Redanna Siscad2 in Canada, and you are listening to Nirvana the Fan in the Show, the podcast, the podcast all about Nirvana the Fan of the Show with Kit Michelle and Steve.

Michelle 0:26

Thank you, announcer Andy. Hello and welcome to Nirvana the Band of the Show, the podcast. The podcast where we watch and talk about Nirvana at the Band of the Show. I'm Michelle, and I'm joined by my two spooky co-hosts.

Steve 0:40

Skella Steve.

Michelle 0:41

Scary Kit. Oh, how frightening. How are we doing, folks?

Steve 0:45

I'm a little scared. It's a little spooky. I heard a wind. There literally was a bat outside my window about an hour ago. Not a joke. There really was one.

Michelle 0:54

How seasonally appropriate. Today we are here to talk about a very special um seasonal episode of the show. But before we jump into the show, I thought we would do um what we always do at the top of these episodes, which is check in on the plan. Check in on our whiteboard. So first and foremost, I don't think this is even on the whiteboard anymore. Have we gotten any uh legal mail? Any seasoned assists?

Kit 1:20

So glad you asked. No, we've gotten nothing. In fact, I think when I opened up our P.O. box that definitely exists, um, I just heard sort of like an ominous whisper, but it didn't sound legally threatening. Okay. Just just bodily threatening. Yeah, great.

Michelle 1:36

Well, that's fine. Have we heard from any of the dream guests that we've collected on the show so far?

Steve 1:42

I will run through the list. Matt.

Michelle 1:44

No.

Steve 1:45

Jay, no. Jared?

Michelle 1:47

Not yet.

Steve 1:48

Uh beloved German filmmaker Werner Herzog. Well, technically. Technically. You said the voicemail doesn't count.

Kit 1:55

I say a lot of things on this podcast.

Steve 1:56

That's true. And uh the Canadian arm of the International Space Station.

Michelle 2:00

I heard about a different space station that had a hook where its arm should be. Isn't that scary?

Steve 2:07

Oh. I was making out with my girlfriend and we just heard it come from space. Oh fuck! The lights are flashing. Oh what is going on? There's spooky spirits in the room. Who is this?

SPEAKER_07 2:20

Hey everybody, how's it going? I'm Andy Appel, as uh co-DP on a bunch of episodes of Nirvana the Band, DP of the book. I was also a writer and editor on Nirvana the Band, the TV series.

SPEAKER_04 2:32

I am Tristan Zarafa. People call me Triz, and uh I'm the visual effects supervisor for all things Zapruder, um, including this episode, the book.

SPEAKER_06 2:44

And I'm Kurt Mobb and I am an editor and a writer, but we didn't do a very good ghost voice, I don't think, any of us. But we're supposed to do a damn uh okay.

SPEAKER_04 2:53

Like old English.

SPEAKER_07 2:55

Old English. You guys have seen the others?

Steve 2:57

Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:59

Such a good I mean I think you could just yeah, yell boo, and we're gonna boo, boo, boo. Boo.

Michelle 3:05

Any ghost, any voice could be a ghost voice.

Steve 3:08

I've been dead for ten years. This was uh uh Statler Waldoff Marley and Marley situation. Guys, thanks for coming.

SPEAKER_06 3:20

Thanks for having us. Yeah, very cool.

Michelle 3:22

This is so exciting. I am so delighted to have you join us for this episode in particular. Um uh because I have uh quite a lot of questions, and we will get to those in a few minutes, but know that they're coming.

SPEAKER_06 3:35

Also, apologies if there's lots of that of us talking over each other, because I know it's a lot of guests, but it just seemed so fitting that the three of us would all talk about the book because we put a lot of our uh time and energy and and love into this episode. So we're jumped at the chance to be able to chat about it.

Steve 3:53

That's what I wanted to ask. I know, because like, you know, Kurt, you responded and you were saying, oh, the three of us really want to talk about this one. So, like, I mean, besides you worked on it, like what makes this one so special of all the stuff you've guys worked on together?

SPEAKER_06 4:04

I think because truly, I mean, every episode of Nirvana the Band, we put so much time into, but for whatever reason, this seemed like maybe it took up a bit more time and more resources. Um, well, because of all the, you know, the the like practical effects and the planning and and the type of shooting that we never usually do, which is like in a studio and you know, multiple elements per shot often. So I think it just required a lot more probably planning and effort before we would shoot anything, which is so the opposite of what so much of the show is, you know?

SPEAKER_07 4:35

Yeah, it was really like the most, as you said, planned up. Like I feel like we storyboarded like, I don't know, 40% of the episode. Which we didn't storyboard any episodes of the show at all. And that was this was one like we were months ahead, like trying to figure this thing out, even a year ahead, maybe. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:52

We showed up on set with like a binder like this thick of every single setup that we had to record on that particular day in the studio that had like every single light position figured out where every camera was going to be. There was a lot of like forced perspective, so there was like a lot of math that we had to solve and and proof before we got there. And I I think, Andrew, there's probably like 80, 80 shots in that episode.

SPEAKER_07 5:19

Yeah, I actually found I found a binder recently. I was flipping through it, and um, yeah, it's a it's a it's crazy. It's like to think that anything of that show, other than your work, Tristan, like in that show ever had that like like a binder that you could put together of us like planning things. Uh and this episode, yeah, just it was something that the three of us, it was in the three of our heads for uh such a long period of time, like this episode.

SPEAKER_04 5:44

But but there was also no other way to shoot it, right? Like you couldn't you couldn't actually take on that much volume and complexity on a whim, right? And um a lot of our process in Nirvana the band the show, including the movie, is kind of setting up um ecosystems and sandboxes so that Matt and Jay can perform within a controlled environment and have the freedom to do whatever they need to in the moment with the camera and know that they'll be and we will be uh safe in post. Uh and and so that's an interesting kind of philosophy that we've all kind of conjured together over 15 years of working together.

Michelle 6:27

I would love actually if we could back up for one second. I would be so curious to hear how the three of you got involved with Matt and Jay in this like bigger project in general.

SPEAKER_04 6:37

Mine is probably the least impressive, maybe. But I joined the squad uh during uh the dirties. And um they came to me basically saying um we can't show this movie because we have legal issues. And the legal issues are that there's um particular um branding of architectural stamps in blueprints, and the only other way that we can actually debut this movie is if we remove the branding. You're a compositor, right? And I said, uh yeah. And they had been in my apartment visiting my roommate, and I was always playing video games and like in my own silo, but they had pieced this together, and so I said, uh on a whim, yeah, no, no problem. I'll I'll paint out these issues. And they're like, okay, but the only catch is it's do tomorrow and we're debuting tomorrow. And so I just got to work and um erased this stuff, and that was my first foray, really, into meeting the squad in a professional way. And we just hit it off. I mean, I knew what I was doing at the moment, and uh I had a very niche um skill set, and I complimented them, and we Matt Miller and MJ and NJ uh are you know sold to the earth, and that's how I was ingratiated and and kind of we never left.

SPEAKER_06 7:55

Trizzy didn't say what video game you're playing when they would come over and how good you were at it. I was just about to say Trizy was a like a world master player of a certain video game.

SPEAKER_04 8:05

Call of Duty, Modern Warfare. I was in the uh I was in the top 100 in the world uh for two years running. So what was your specialty? I was uh no scopes headshot master uh with a side rifle.

Steve 8:21

Okay, I'm glad it wasn't speed run no Russian. That would just really make the vibe really uncomfortable.

Michelle 8:28

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_07 8:29

Yeah, for me, it starts. I was in film school at Humber College, where I went to school with um Kurt Lobb and Rob Highland, and we actually lived together, Kurt, Rob, and I, with also I think six other guys or seven five other guys, what six other guys in a giant five five house. And um, I was this is how long ago it was. Uh I opened up Facebook, so using Facebook, and a friend of mine from high school, shout out to Jasmine, had posted on my Facebook wall, uh Andy, you should be in Nirvana the Band a show. And this was I had no idea what that sentence meant. I was like, that's the most ridiculous sentence I've ever read. I was like, I have no idea. And so like I think I commented or whatever you did back then, commented on the po wall post, and I was like, I have no idea what that means. And she sent me a link to Nirvana the Banda Show, uh, the website, the old website. And instantly I just like yeah, fell in love with it, thought it was incredible. I was like, this it was so inspiring in film school to see these two people making this, to see these like group of people making this web series, and uh Rob got really into it and he went and bought like the web series DVD at I think it was Silver Snail at the time, and uh brought it to our house, and we were screening it kind of down there. That's I think when you we started trying to show everybody that all of our film student friends this crazy show. And uh yeah.

SPEAKER_06 9:54

I think I watched a couple minutes. Uh no, you know what? I remember being like, what is this? I remember you like nothing. There was a joke that really won me over in episode one, and it was I've been guarding this bridge for five minutes, and I was like, okay, I think this is funny. Yeah, yeah. But I don't know if I finished watching the first episode with you guys. Yeah, I think I got up. I don't know, yeah. Anyway, uh, but then our film teacher at Humber was Matthew Miller, who we found out was producing The Dirties, like Matt Johnson's debut feature. But before Do you remember how we found that out? Because you saw them at the movie?

SPEAKER_07 10:33

No, no, well, there was that, but before we found that out, a friend of ours, John Ratronus, was making his final year films and he had written, it was like two ragtag guys, and Matt Miller said to him, He's like, Oh, you should try to get Matt Johnson and Jay McCarroll for this or whatever. And and he was like, You know them? And he's like, Yeah, I'm producing Matt's new movie. And that kind of like opened all of us being like, Oh my god, he knows these guys who we've been like obsessed with. And because at the time it was a very small, you know, yeah, very Toronto-centric, very small.

SPEAKER_06 11:05

Andy and I, maybe our friend Aaron, went to the old apartment from the web show before we found out Miller was involved around Thanksgiving, and we bought like some pies and we were gonna give it to them. Yeah, yeah. But we had never met them. We're just gonna knock on the door. No one answered, but uh anyway. Did we leave the pies or did we eat the pies? Um, yeah.

Michelle 11:23

Uh devastating.

SPEAKER_06 11:25

But then you guys ran into Matt and Jay like at the theater, right? At Jackass, Jackass 2, I think, screening it.

SPEAKER_07 11:32

And just as fans went and talked to them, right? Nice. While Rob bought them tickets, Rob went up and was like, I'm we're such a fan of you guys, and uh you brought a lot of joy to our film school house. So I I want to buy you, I want to pay for your movie. And I remember Jay going, looking at Josh Josh Bowles was beside them, and he looked at Josh Bowles and went, the perks of being in a Toronto web series. That's perfect.

SPEAKER_03 11:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 11:56

But then it was really through Matt Miller when we started working uh with those guys after film school. Um we did some assistant editing and then uh some camera operating, Andy and I on the dirties. I think it was like the final reshoots of the dirties.

SPEAKER_07 12:12

It was like Kurt and I shooting all of those. I think like Jared was out of town for those. So yeah, we shot like I remember the the blueprint. We shot the scene where Matt is showing Owen the blueprints, that scene. And that was like for me the moment where I realized what the collaborate collaborating with these guys was gonna be like because it was it was really amazing. Like we were all, I think it was you, me, Owen, Matt, obviously, Matt Miller, and Evan Morgan, right? Just sitting in that room shooting him. I think the original intention of that scene was to just shoot Matt going through his plan on the Blu-rays. Like, I mean I'm not no Blu-rays on the blueprints. Like it's just it was just gonna go through like what his plans were, and I think it was either you or Owen working. We're like, Well, what am I doing in this scene? And so we had all kind of come up, and I remember being like, Well, what if Owen just like says nothing? And I remember Matt being like, Oh, that's it, that's what the scene is. Like, oh, we have to zoom in on Owen, do all, and then it was just like this fun, you know, because I wasn't thinking about what that meant for the movie. I was just in the moment, I'm like, Well, what if like I really believed my friend? What if I believe Kurt was telling me he was a psychopath and he's gonna he's gonna like he was lit convincing me he's actually wants to kill somebody. I probably wouldn't say anything for like a few days, like there would be no reaction to that. And uh anyway, that was just one of my moments of realizing, oh, this is like such an insanely wicked collaborative experience, like all of us just pitching ideas, and and that it was it was great, it was so fun.

SPEAKER_06 13:38

It's it's also cool in those moments where normally we shoot so much nonsense, and in any moment you don't really know if we're gonna use it. But I feel like that was one of those times when we all thought, oh, this will be in the movie. Then it was.

SPEAKER_07 13:50

Yeah, it was like, and uh yeah, I remember yeah, I remember Matt being like, and just slow zoom in on oh, and it doesn't make any sense that the camera guy would know that this is a moment. But that's kind of like it works, you know, entirely in that anyway.

SPEAKER_06 14:02

And we shot the ADR moment where Matt's making those bird sounds, the seagulls, that's right. Yeah, we shot a lot in like one day. Yeah, anyway.

Michelle 14:09

That's so cool. It's it's so interesting to hear like what like a lovely collaborative process. And like I think Luca talked a lot about this too, that just ideas can come from anywhere, and y'all are all building off of each other constantly.

SPEAKER_06 14:23

And the book is really the ultimate version of that. And so we did commentary tracks on different episodes, and um, I know Matt and Jay were the first to say it on the one for the book. They were like, they were not in charge for most of that shooting that episode. It really was like Andy and Trizy on set. And so that was great. It was like everyone was giving ideas and and um really taking leadership over it. And uh yeah, I think that's what would make the episode feel special to me. And I think it's cool whenever this group can kind of show like our filmmaking chops more at the forefront. Because I think usually part of the charm of watching it is like, oh, this feels like it's so like barely held together and it's so scrappy. So I think it's fun we when we can be like, no, look, we we can do some great looking stuff too, hopefully.

Steve 15:11

Watching it earlier today, like that was kind of my takeaway. Was it was uh it felt like you had almost built up enough like free willing collaborative experience points that you could like cash in for this thing that kind of breaks the mold that was more plotted, like was more like directed, obviously, like to hit certain jokes kind of had to be in there already, I assume, just based on where it was going. And it really kind of looking at from a more critical, and not just I'm enjoying the show lens, was like, oh, this seems to be a bit of a culmination of this collaboration you've been building for a season and a half. And I thought that that really comes through.

SPEAKER_07 15:48

I also think that like after the bank aired too was a big thing for us where we're like, oh, like people are okay seeing these characters just like they like the characters, so you can just put them in wild situations, and that's ultimately like that is the joy of this. You know, is like like they don't, it doesn't always have to be and like the the bank, I think, proved that to a lot of us in the moment.

SPEAKER_06 16:10

I don't know if people have talked about it much, but the bank was like the initial pilot idea for the show. If we were only gonna be able to do one episode um to then get Greenlit, it was gonna be the bank that was like the first pitch MJ had to all of us. And our response really is the squad was like, uh, isn't this kind of like so different than everything that's come before it with Nirvana the Band? Like, obviously, they take it to crazy places, but that's so extreme. And uh that's I think that's why we're like, uh, let's leave it for the finale, maybe we can get away with it. And then it was a big debate amongst us too, whether or not we should end the episode with the like, oh, did it really happen or not? Or did Matt kind of coordinate it all like with some, you know, in the way that we do that black and white flashback that some of it was faked, but we we just didn't know if we were gonna get away with saying, Yep, that was reality. And then we did it again with the movie. It's a lot of fun to do that with these characters, and that's a way of kind of raising the stakes and and what we can do and and challenging ourselves as well, you know.

Steve 17:11

Do you guys each I know this is kind of a silly one, but like, do you have a segment on the book that is like your baby?

SPEAKER_07 17:17

For me, if it's like it's hard to pick because I feel yeah, I feel very yeah, I feel like the whole episode feels so much of us, you know, it's so much of our voices in it. And I'm trying to think. I mean, the I I'll I know what I know the shrunken Jay is my idea, I know that. And that was, but that was like it was never supposed to be an anthology. Like I had pitched that as a full full episode idea where where I was like, Jay gets shrunk down and he's got to survive in the apartment. Not a good full episode idea, I recognize. Uh, but yeah, but as an anthology, I think it does work because we basically we would do these like writing retreats for the seasons, and part of it is you pitch like we pitch all these ideas and we'd have like hundreds of ideas written out. And yeah, one of mine was Jay gets shrunk down, and Matt uh has to clean the apartment and almost kills him or whatever. And but but the whole idea of the anthology, I think, was Matt's idea, right? I think the idea of like doing a treehouse of horror or Jay's game, perhaps, yeah. Um, but we knew we wanted to do a Halloween episode that was incredibly important to us. So yeah, I can't think of a key moment for me that's like Werewolf too. I'm sure you led the charge on a lot. Uh Andy. No. No, no. I want I wanted uh that was Matt's idea, werewolf. Yeah. But but I had I had like American Werewolf is like one of my all-time favorite movies, so I was able to like help the language of it a bit, but but I um no, I I wanted, I don't know if you remember, I wanted to do like a real scary ending, like a new horror, like something like sweet, like there's a there's a picture in the house on the stairs of my like great great grandfather. It was like on the and I had had this, yeah. It's like my he's uh uh Fraser uh Duncan Fraser is his name. And he was on he was on the um there's like his old black and white portrait of him, and I had like pitched like that, he should like this guy should come out of the portrait for the end of it. And it was like the them dealing with this like actually scary thing happening.

SPEAKER_06 19:12

It was it was the wrong pitch, but um if I had to pick one, I think the shrunken stuff, just because we spent so much time on it. But I was trying to remember who would have pitched Van Pelt. Was that you, Trizzy, or do you remember?

SPEAKER_04 19:25

I was trying to remember that too. I think that was uh I think it was a symptom of you and I talking late at night. I think there's a Jumanji play here with Van Pelt, and they wanted to have to cast them, Jonathan Hyde. Or wasn't there like trying to get him and then suddenly that became like an unrealistic thing? And then we started talking about lifting him from the actual.

SPEAKER_06 19:50

Yeah, which is funny because if that became the plan, that's so bizarre. Because you'd think that that would have been the reason we'd want to do it, you know? Because who would have thought, like, oh I know what horror movie we need to do. Jumancha. Everyone's Halloween favorite. Jumanji.

SPEAKER_04 20:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 20:05

So it is bizarre. But uh, I'm happy we did it.

SPEAKER_04 20:09

I remember I remember combing through footage with you for quite a while. And uh I mean, in my 20-year career, I think the Van Pelt moment is probably one of the highlights. Um I think you're gonna say the only time I've comped Van Pelt into a um I think it was just an extraordinary out-of-the-box solution to like uh a a real problem. Like, we there's no way we could afford to hire Jonathan Hyde and getting a look-alike wouldn't do justice, and and there would be nothing better than getting the actual like fan pelt from the actual movie. And so we knew what the geometry of that living room was, and so Kurt and I just sifted through the footage together and found elements of him, and then we concocted a plan of like how he could enter and navigate through the room using the sampling idea. And we were trying to get him through the front door, and it just didn't we didn't have the footage to support that. And so that's when we figured out that we could get him to enter through the side door and actually make his way to the kitchen and have this showdown with with uh MJ. Or sorry, Jay. Yeah, you know, yeah, now I'm confused because it was invert. But um yeah, so for me, I think like that was probably one of the highlights of my career. And and it's such a good comp.

SPEAKER_07 21:33

It's so fun good comp. Like it's like that especially him coming into the kitchen is like no no, I'm I'm tooting our horns here, but I think him coming into the yeah, it's that is really good. Yeah, that comp is is is great. I did think of something, and it's more after it was my I remember being like because that episode's is kind of not canon, right? It's the only one that doesn't have uh uh the the the header in front of it. Um I say it's not canon. Wait, we kind of that was our idea, right? It was like not canon.

SPEAKER_03 22:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 22:03

But I mean, but I had said Reddit will be very excited to hear you confirm that. Oh shit. Okay. But the kind of we we did the idea was this isn't a canon episode, but I had said the for the rest of the season, that picture that Van Pelt shoots on the back should remain the broken picture. Like it has a bullet hole in it. So for the whole rest of the season, that picture in the kitchen has a bullet hole in it. Oh incredible. Anyway, I thought that was that's a fun. Maybe they did have this crazy night.

Michelle 22:33

Well, I'm it's so funny to hear you say that like Jumanji classic Halloween movie. That was a movie that like deeply, deeply terrified me as a child. And so I feel like I've finally gotten recognition that it is a horror movie if you watch it in the right mindset.

SPEAKER_07 22:48

The idea of Van Pelt is horrifying too. Like this guy who will haunt you to the ends of the earth. The original it follows. He's the original Apollo's. He is the that's where they got the idea.

Steve 22:58

My brother made me throw out the book we had after seeing the movie, because we had the original book, Jumanji, and he was like, Can't do it! Nope. And like made us throw it out.

SPEAKER_07 23:08

Because it scared me. That was gonna be the book, like in it in the like drums.

SPEAKER_06 23:17

For who finds it next. You know what? The the body swap moment, uh, something that I realized in doing these additional features for the Blu-ray that's gonna come out, is I was reminded that I really wanted to both bleep Matt when he swore and to hear Jay swear when they're in each other's bodies. But we don't we don't have Jay Swear. We we bleep Matt, but we don't have Jay Swear. But it's in the additional features.

Steve 23:42

So it's such a big laugh moment to have the bleep switch with the body swap. So it does not go unnoticed. It always gets a huge chuckle out of me. Um, I have a bit of a like esoteric question for you guys. Like something I always think about with the show is like how you use spaces. Like, be it like the someone being across the room, kind of putting a distance between them, or like when they're super close to each other, or you know, like in the movie where obviously you were shooting around and editing in like the old and young, like how much do you guys think of the physical space when you're like setting up for stuff, or is it kind of found while you're doing it?

SPEAKER_07 24:18

I mean, this episode again is one where it was probably way more that was way more of an important um task for us to figure out where everything happened because there wasn't gonna be so much comping, things like that. But but normally, unless unless it's a very planned moment we're trying we were trying to match something too. Um honestly it's just like if it's just improvise, if it was just Jay and Matt improvising, you kind of just find the best angle at in the moment, you know, and you let it run. Because sometimes we'd run for like, you know, two hours or whatever, and just like rolling for two hours straight and just finding moments. Um so yeah, geography didn't really matter most of the time, but it mattered when you would come back to actually finish the episode. Then you would really need to start thinking about where you were the first time you did it.

SPEAKER_06 25:04

But the movie Kurt and Tristan can speak to. I was just gonna say, so often it's funny that we kind of plant them in certain spots, like by the whiteboard by the piano, but it really is because we'll reshoot it and we need it to kind of match uh over every reshoot. Because uh just as you were saying that, Steve, I'm like, why didn't we like have them go in the kitchen more or go upstairs over or go downstairs? But I think it was that it's just like a function of I don't know, i it being harder or something to match at a at a later time. Or maybe it's because we also just like so rarely get to even be in the house. It's like you get kind of a scene or two normally, and then you're out in the world. Like Andy said, I think it's just letting Matt and Jay do the thing and kind of responding to it.

SPEAKER_04 25:46

You we're always shooting the episode in in two legs, right? You shoot what you think you your the plan is, and then you discover what the show or the episode actually is and edit, and then you shoot the complimentary pieces, right? So you're always thinking about space in two different times, and then where it fails, like visual effects will come in and correct uh you know, continuity on the whiteboard. You know, it's like, hey, the delivery of this particular line was so good that we can never recreate it. So Tris, can you come in, give us an extra mileage on on that take by fixing the whiteboard and making it work sequentially? And so there's always this kind of like piecemeal, we're always floating, you know what I mean? There's never like a strict guideline because I don't think magic is born there, you know, and we're always complimenting like the best takes all the time. And I think that is the magic of the show, and what keeps it so fresh all the time is people are relentless about that. You know, once there a certain energy or lightning is in a bottle, then it's protected the whole way through the pipeline.

Steve 26:49

All of your parts come through so clearly on these episodes. Like I I know people mostly talk about like Matt and Jay, but like you can feel that camaraderie, the way that the camera like locks in on emotions. That's normally the part I like to talk about, is kind of like the emotional core of scenes. And like, you know, the way that like the edits will move things together or the effects. I just like it's really great hearing like how much love you guys put into this because it does come through.

SPEAKER_06 27:14

Oh, that's great. That's amazing. Yeah, and hopefully the show does a trick of kind of catching you off guard with those things, you know. Like, I think that's an advantage we have with something that feels so silly otherwise, is that hopefully we can kind of lean into maybe um like shortcuts in getting to I think those emotional moments because we can really uh ham it up and be cheesy with them, but somehow I think they're effective.

Steve 27:41

I've done it on this podcast, but I am uh not afraid to admit that I've cried at many episodes and the movie.

Michelle 27:47

Okay, so in case anybody listening hasn't watched in a while, uh on the night of Halloween, Jay finds a cursed music book hidden in the house. He and Matt have to work together to attempt to restore order. And opening titles for this one are a beautiful homage to The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror. I think that is it's really wonderful, and I loved seeing sort of like the show landmarks, and I know they're Toronto landmarks. I have not been to Toronto yet, but so I am appreciating them lovingly through the lens of this show. But I've talked at length about how much I wish I could have visited Honest Eds and was really touched to see the graveyard or the gravestone for it.

SPEAKER_06 28:27

Shout out to the the shy kids who made that. It's a group of filmmakers in Toronto they animated that sequence for us. And shout out to Honest Eds again.

SPEAKER_07 28:34

I do miss it. That intersection is a piece of shit compared to what it used to be. It used to be so beautiful and it was so cool to like it's like the first downtown intersection. I when I moved to Toronto, they stepped out and I'm like, this is so sick. And now it's uh there's the big condo there.

Michelle 28:50

So this episode opens up with Jay playing the goosebumps theme song, complete with tiny little dog barks, which is great. Um, and then Matt comes down and is ready to go trick-or-treating.

SPEAKER_06 29:02

I was gonna say a little fair use fact, I think, is that we wanted to play the goosebumps song on the piano. And then I think the way where they were like, okay, you can is by just putting that stack of books beside Jay's piano. I'm pretty sure that's how it works. Yeah. Which is so funny. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 29:16

And we tried to, we tried to books that have some thematic connection to the episode, too. So if you if people will dig into that, you could see there are like if you know your goosebumps catalog really well, you can you can figure out the way that you guys sneak in those fair use arguments.

SPEAKER_06 29:33

I mean, maybe goosebumps comes after us now that they hear that this is what our defense is if they tried, but yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michelle 29:42

Yeah. The RL Steiner state is gonna be absolutely yeah, yeah, yeah. I assume so. Yeah. I don't think okay with it.

Steve 29:54

We can never play his voice memos because they are just really inappropriate. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Can I just say that Jay's favorite pillow that Matt dumps out is disgusting.

SPEAKER_07 30:09

Yeah, when he's a big giant, he references the ripped pillow.

SPEAKER_06 30:14

That was one of these scenes where I think they both were doing really well, and we had five different versions of that opening that were all really funny and great, and it was hard to narrow it down to what we went with.

SPEAKER_07 30:24

I can't remember if I had shot the like trick-or-treating with him first or or the uh or that scene. I can't remember. Do you remember, Kurt? Do you have any? I just so long ago.

SPEAKER_06 30:37

Um I don't know. Did we do two different Halloween shooting this episode, or was it all in one? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 30:43

I mean, all the how all the trick-or-treating stuff was one Halloween. That was the first one. I think it was like one of the first things we shot for the episode was Matt Trick. Because we knew we needed you needed some real world element to like start everything off. So that's yeah. Real Halloween, real trick-or-treaters, the probably the creepiest I've ever felt shooting a show. Yeah, crossing the park.

SPEAKER_03 31:04

And I was just like, oh god.

SPEAKER_06 31:06

Yeah. And I think we all assumed if we we were shooting people answering their door, standing in their house, that we would have to blur them or get their permission. But I think it even went as far as like, oh, if you open your door to the public on a night like Halloween, then you're inviting yourself to be seen, which is like a lot of things.

SPEAKER_07 31:24

And if you put goosebumps books before it, you're allowed to show their own. Then it's all good. Then it's all good. Yeah, you could basically start anything with goosebumps books.

SPEAKER_06 31:32

We're gonna find out there was never a lawyer in the public that enjoys MBA what's allowed. And yeah.

Steve 31:39

Matt works on vampire rules. If you open the door to him, he gets whatever he wants.

SPEAKER_06 31:43

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Michelle 31:44

I just I love some of the reactions when he's trick-or-treating from the other adults that are that are just like loudly and blatantly like, what are you doing out here? And then and then Matt's response of like, I thought it would be a bunch of cool old people like us, kills me. So good.

Steve 32:02

I love that old man that look at first that looks with at Matt with such pity and just gives him some candy. And you you just you could see the look in his eyes of just, oh, you poor boy, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_06 32:13

I know, but you know what I think we've talked about is that you look and you're like, oh this poor guy, but also it is something this is kind of scary when you have someone like wearing a mask, you can't really see them.

SPEAKER_07 32:24

The raw footage is actually like kind of frightening. Like, people are like there's we we enter, we have the cute kind of interactions, but there are some people that are like like very off. Like, is this guy is this gonna be like a home invasion style scenario? Like this guy, he's just because he's got that mask off, like it's hilarious, but it's so off-putting, it's so weird, and like and and there'd be these long gaps where Matt would just like trigger treat and just stare at them through the mask for like an incredibly long, and it's just like uh oh, this person is getting like uncomfortable, you know. That's you're watching their door slowly, like you know, close a little bit in between them.

Michelle 32:59

I would close the door to that mask. I I was so sad to see it appear again. It's my least favorite prop.

Steve 33:05

The Grim Reaper of Death. If I was that kid, I would be in heaven. I I was thinking about that. Like when he just turns like it's like, oh, Spider-Man, you have the Grim Reaper of Death. It's like this is the coolest man I've ever met in my life. Yeah, yeah. As an adult, it's terrifying, but as a kid, it's like, who's this spooky fellow? Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I I want to grow up to be like him. Uh totally like a quick tangent. Kit, you mentioned to us not uh all that long ago that this is like one of your favorite ones. What what about this that's especially you?

Kit 33:35

I love this episode because it's it's so different from all the rest, and I love the practical effects of it. Like all of the other Nirvana the band episodes feel very grounded, even though like things keep escalating, but this is just sort of like such a it's so beyond the realm of reality and it's so fantastical that it's so fun. Like, of course Jay's gonna shrink down and now he's writing on a potato chip. Like it's just very whimsical and delightful. And I love the sequence of American Werewolf. Like the practical stuff in that is fucking phenomenal.

SPEAKER_07 34:04

Which showed Kostanski. Yeah, Steven Kostansky is a filmmaker in um in Toronto, Winnipeg-based filmmaker. Um, yeah, who crazy VF crazy uh uh physical effects artist, like uh unbelievable stuff. And I've yeah, I've shot two of his features and uh really amazing filmmaker. Yes, yeah, Tristan worked on what one as well. You worked on we worked on Psycho Gorman together. Yeah, yeah, and Steve has an insane skill set. It's uh yeah, he writes, but he he created that.

SPEAKER_04 34:34

He writes, he directs, he does all of the character design, builds everything physically himself, then also does visual effects when he needs to.

SPEAKER_07 34:44

It's like yeah, he's a VFX artist as well.

SPEAKER_04 34:46

He's one of the most impressive Canadians there is. Yeah, yeah. Shut up.

Steve 34:50

And I think I think that's why Psycho Gorman has had such a huge devoted cult following.

SPEAKER_07 34:54

Yeah, he's crazy. And yeah, he he did the whole werewolf transformation. I believe there is a shot though that Kurt U VFX'd, right? Yeah, yeah. Is that is that okay to talk about?

SPEAKER_06 35:03

But do you want to keep it secret? No, yeah, we can. It's funny, just like within Premiere, which is the program I used to edit, or that we all used to edit these episodes, I did a few masks because I we did lots of great stuff of him kind of first turning into the werewolf and then kind of the end result. But there was a few moments where I wanted to show more of a transition, so I think I stretch his hand out a bit or his fingers out at one point, and then also have his face, yeah, it's no covered.

SPEAKER_07 35:28

Yeah, because we had we had a hand stretch like um prosthetic that Steve had made. It was like a puppet that you know, it was like Steve operated it and brought it in to the shot in front of Jay's face, and it stretches, but it doesn't like it just didn't give us the full range to sell it, you know, as this full full um extension of his hand.

SPEAKER_06 35:46

Um that was a great feeling when I showed Tristan those shots in Premiere and he said, they're great. Let's use them. I wasn't expecting it. That's not always the answer you get from Tris.

SPEAKER_04 35:58

Well, I gotta say, that's another like magic trick that this this film collective has is that everyone wears so many hats here that like when I get in trouble, I can look to people like Luca or Kurt or Jared and just say, can you do some visual effects? And they all are able to at a very high level. And so it's yeah, uh I don't think you'd be it it's hard you'd be hard pressed to find a group of people that that have that kind of level of ability, you know. So yeah, there's no ego. Anyone anyone can do anything uh with this one?

SPEAKER_06 36:33

And I learned it all from Trez. And vice versa, Kurt. Working on Operation Avalanche. You learned how to the effects from me?

SPEAKER_04 36:38

How to approach how to approach sequences as a filmmaker, and yeah, I mean half my work is is you know passing the ball back and forth between you and Bobby, and you know, so that's cool.

SPEAKER_06 36:52

Okay, thank you, Trez.

Michelle 36:54

While Matt is out trick-or-treating, Jay is at home, he's cleaning, he finds uh an incredibly cursed looking book an event, and it's a music book, of course. Um he puts it on the piano and starts playing, and the lights start to flicker, and Jay drinks. Um Tiny Jay is so wonderful. I know we've talked about it a little bit already, but it I was just so delighted by this whole part of the episode. It's so funny. All of the like practical effects of the like big stuff around him, incredible, like taking refuge under a candy wrapper, perfect. I love it.

Steve 37:34

The sequence also makes me really want a Jay Evil Dead film because people would be deadites all around him, and he would have no idea. Just all of his friends would be mutilating each other, and he would just be like, Oh, what's this thing? It's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_07 37:50

That's funny. I've always said that he that my description of what the Viceland series was, uh, I always like would say it to uh Matt and Jay, but they that maybe they just weren't fans, but I always felt like the web series is Evil Dead, the Vice Land series is Evil Dead 2. Like that was like what I felt it was, you know, because it's like it's a it's a sequel to like things happen that like the Vice Land the web series did happen, but we've totally retconned a bunch of stuff, just like in Evil Dead 2. But uh no one ever clung to that. I thought that was a great description of what Vice Dead was.

Steve 38:20

I think it's a perfect description, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 38:22

Thank you, thank you.

Steve 38:24

It's like when we tried to describe what Evil Dead 2 was to Michelle and be like, don't worry, you don't need to watch the first one. It's a little unpleasant.

Michelle 38:30

I saw never seen the first one, but I have seen Evil Dead 2 and really had a nice time.

SPEAKER_06 38:35

It's such a it's so good. When Jay's looking through this book for the first time, there's a couple pages of things that we don't do. Did you guys catch those?

Michelle 38:45

I was gonna ask about that. I I was trying to like freeze frame and see if I could like uh piece out the Latin.

SPEAKER_06 38:51

One of them is the image of the uh terror dog from Ghostbusters, and we did have a plan and we shot stuff for that moment, and the other one is like static on a TV for poltergeist. And we definitely I don't know if we shot anything for poltergeist. I think we yeah, maybe not, but we did for Ghostbusters, and the plan was to have like all the faces that are on the wall of different posters and everything to start talking. I forgot about it. Everyone starts talking. Oh yeah, we shot it, it was inside it.

SPEAKER_07 39:21

Yeah, that's right. And that's when I that's why I thought about bringing that picture to life. A hundred percent.

SPEAKER_06 39:26

Yeah, oh my goodness. Yes, yeah, yeah. But of course, it's fun and great that there's these extra pages that we don't do because it would have been probably lame if it's like, yep, everything you saw when you flipped through the book. Yeah, and like what is that?

SPEAKER_07 39:38

They go like what they go into the TV. I guess you couldn't make if we see what's in the TV world, like go into the TV.

SPEAKER_06 39:44

Poltercaste like what is poltercaste? What is the poltercaste? Maybe it was that. Oh, I think this is what it was. Is that in a big scramble, it was like play a bunch of stuff, and they keep like switching it up.

SPEAKER_07 39:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, and it was gonna be like a rapid fire.

SPEAKER_06 39:56

Yes, until they finally land on whatever it was. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:01

Why did we bail on the talking heads on in on the streets?

SPEAKER_06 40:04

I think we realized that it wasn't as good as other things. Like it just felt, I don't know, like Phil.

SPEAKER_07 40:10

Oh, I know the werewolf was like a last like it was the last thing decided on. Yeah. Yeah, because we didn't know we didn't know what the final moment was going to be. And then Matt was like, Jay turns into a werewolf. Yeah, yeah. And like originally we did talk about like, is it gonna be uh Lon Cheney Jr. werewolf, you know, like universal classic werewolf. And then it's like, no, it has to be like a Rick Baker style transformation, right? Like it can't be it can't be a like a crossfade transformation that would just give that would do nothing for people.

SPEAKER_04 40:41

I also seem to remember maybe it was a legal issue with the use of the images on the wall potentially occurred.

SPEAKER_06 40:49

Really? Like to manipulate them was to get us in trouble?

SPEAKER_04 40:52

Yeah, I think there was something along the lines of that. Really? But don't quote me on that.

SPEAKER_06 40:57

That's interesting. Also, shout out to Adam Belanger who made that book, our production designer.

Michelle 41:02

I was about to ask, was it one of you?

SPEAKER_07 41:04

Well, I think he hired an artist to do the artwork in it. I don't know who the artist was. But uh yeah, the the book itself.

SPEAKER_04 41:10

Yeah, and the major big props. Yeah, that's right, the giant props, yeah. Like all the big candy and the wrapper and uh the water balloons we had the pelt Jay with.

SPEAKER_07 41:21

He filled those up with water.

Michelle 41:23

That was one of my other questions was how how did you accomplish the the spraying? And water balloons is not what I was expecting.

SPEAKER_04 41:30

Yeah, it was like 5 30 a.m. in the morning after filming like 36 hours straight, and we were all on a scissor lift throwing these water balloons at poor Jay from like we had to go up like 60 feet uh because they weren't breaking. And so they would just like he just hit Jay with a water balloon, and it would just be like half a liter of water, and it would just not break, and it would hit everyone was so tired. So we had to go higher and higher to make them snap.

Michelle 42:02

Wow. And this was inside a studio?

SPEAKER_07 42:05

Pie in the sky, I think it was. Still there. John Candy's first job was at that theater. That turned into Pi 1.

Steve 42:12

So when it came to the studio stuff, was that just like did you recreate sets or was it just kind of the stuff to then be composited in? Like what was that space for?

SPEAKER_04 42:22

We basically built the tabletop that or sorry, not the tabletop, the uh piano bench.

SPEAKER_07 42:28

Piano bench, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:29

Right. And so anything that Jay was interacting with in the footage from the Matt Johnson side, we would then build a massive prop. Um, and Jay could interact with it. And then the raindrops, obviously, the the water spray gun from MJ, uh, which is kind of cool. And the potato chip. So when he jumps off, that's my favorite part of this whole episode is the potato chip. Who's shooting him in the face with the the vacuum or the the air blower?

SPEAKER_07 42:58

With the leaf blower?

SPEAKER_04 42:59

Yeah. Is that MJ? Probably.

SPEAKER_07 43:01

Oh, do you remember the whole we had a whole thing where where he was gonna put him on his hand and spin him around, yeah. The room, yeah, and it was gonna be like a gravitron style thing. We we did shoot we shot Jay like up against you know a green. I think I think what had happened is we were like, oh, this really should have been like a giant hand. Like we should have built a giant hand, but there was no time.

SPEAKER_04 43:22

It was like a well, I think we did a comp for a post-roll.

SPEAKER_07 43:26

We shot, we definitely shot it, and we like, yeah. But I think it just it also probably slowed down the momentum of the moment. Like, why would he all of a sudden just start gravitroning Jay?

SPEAKER_06 43:35

Also, not just like slowing down momentum, but we also did have these time restrictions being on Vice that sometimes we just had to cut stuff to meet our runtime. So I feel like something like that could have survived.

SPEAKER_04 43:49

Yeah, that's true. We also had a mechanical bull on the green screen stage, and so when this is so crazy, and like you would never be able to do this in any Other production, hey, can we strap your main actor on a mechanical bull with no cables and just make it go crazy? And so that was for the uh the the duster. And so when Jay is like whipping around like this, he's actually reacting to like g forces of a mechanical bull that is like on a maximum, you know what I mean? And then we would take that footage and then we shot the other side of that with a physical um duster with Andrew, Andy, uh in the set.

SPEAKER_07 44:32

Do you remember going scouting for mechanical bulls, Tristan? You and I went like to different country bars or bulls. We did. We were like, because we were thinking, we thought, like, could we have to shoot it in this bar? Like, might we have to shoot this in a bar, you know, somewhere and put green screens up? Yeah. But I don't know.

Michelle 44:47

We've I when you say scouting, were you testing out the mechanical bulls yourself, or are you just watching other people? We're a little bit close. Andy probably gave one around.

SPEAKER_04 44:57

I can't remember.

SPEAKER_07 44:58

I can't remember long ago.

Steve 45:00

I just like the idea of Andy having records all around Canada of just that's mechanical bowl rides. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:08

We also had the strap, the the the way that was shot in the apartment was that the camera, which is like a $50,000 camera, we strapped that to the bull as well.

SPEAKER_07 45:17

And so we just our main actor and the camera for the day was just a crew who like now are very like top tier, but at the time, like like people who were not like like at the height of their level being like, oh yeah, strap this to the like like a key grip is like just strap that to the bowl for me, you know. Like, like uh yeah, we we're all you know, it was a lot of uh green crew, and it worked though. The camera didn't fly off the bull.

Michelle 45:43

No, and it looks great, and like selfishly, I think I'm glad that you had to cut the hand spinning thing because the shot of Jay climbing onto Matt's hand and just like doing uh Burt Reynolds by the fireplace pose is is so good. I think maybe my single favorite. The D Dominion in this episode.

SPEAKER_07 46:04

There it is.

Michelle 46:04

Oh my god! There it is.

SPEAKER_06 46:06

Andy, Andy is holding the vision, this is an audio part. Oh, thank you. Let's not say, let's not say what it is.

SPEAKER_07 46:15

Everyone's going, ooh.

Michelle 46:19

I'm I'm holding up I think it's a a grand tradition of this podcast that we forget that it's an audio medium.

SPEAKER_07 46:26

I'm holding up the little Diva J. I I I I have I have it.

SPEAKER_04 46:29

So you might you might think that might give people the wrong impression. Like w when he's in the hand, there's only one shot where we're actually using that 3D printout. And the idea was was that because we had 80 shots already, and like I'm a one-man band at the time and doing all the composites myself, we needed to live potentially in this, you know, tangible kind of 3D printout kind of little J. And so we had all these different poses painted and printed out, which was like a really cool, you know, little thing to have at the end of the shoot.

SPEAKER_07 47:03

But also some of those shots made the cut, which is Yeah, this is like this is what he k like kisses. He kisses this little guy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:10

But before that, climbing onto the hand, like that's all like a that's all real. That's a lazy Susan, if you're allowed to say that anymore, sorry, um, rotation thing that was all timed with um I think that we had a a rig or something on his palm so we could understand what the rotation speed was.

Steve 47:28

Well, yeah. I I I need to ask, and you don't have to answer this, Andy. Like, where does Tiny J live?

SPEAKER_07 47:33

Oh.

Steve 47:34

Is he in like a butter dish?

SPEAKER_07 47:35

Like, is he in a display? Yeah, he's in a freeze put him. I put him in an ice cube in the freezer. He's just like on a block of ice, so they chip him out every Halloween. Uh no, uh he he stay he's on, I have like a little mantle up here, and he just sits there. I I since have been putting him in uh like a little tube because he he his hand broke. His little his little hand broke, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:56

Which I think say inside the paper mache and just turn the like some fan bought those, right? I think so.

SPEAKER_07 48:04

Like on yeah, yeah at the yard sale a long time ago. Yeah. Um no, I don't have those paper mache heads.

SPEAKER_06 48:11

Uh speaking of that little J model that is in the show, we're so lucky that we made a show where we could just get away with showing this janky, like you know, you know why, you know why we get away with it?

SPEAKER_04 48:24

Because in my if I'm like pump my our own tires here, we don't shy away with complex things. Like him doing his little pirouette on the piano, yeah. Is extremely complex visual effects, right? And getting him onto the hand and doing that spin is like we've proven to everyone who's watching the show that we can do these things and we're not shying away.

SPEAKER_07 48:45

So, you know, it's also a matter of yeah, narratively engaging enough that people aren't looking at those seams, you know. Like that's that's the other trick. If it's enjoyable, then people are going to be able to do that. Sure.

SPEAKER_06 48:56

But I mean, even if we worked on a different movie or show that wasn't this, probably we would still be like, ah, I think we need to try to make that a little better, you know. But I think this just lets us show.

SPEAKER_07 49:06

Yeah, there's there's there's one that I'm I'm like, um, there's one hilarious one where you see Jay like just standing on the piano. You know what I'm talking about, right? It's like one shot where it's just like it's clearly the 3D printed Jay, just like frozen standing on the piano. Like that, it's very I see it all the time. Every time I watch the episode, I'm like, that's hilarious.

SPEAKER_06 49:27

Did you three notice it when you watched it?

Steve 49:29

No, I've never noticed it. It took me about like three watches. I used to watch episodes four times before I record, but I just haven't had time lately. It's not until like the third time when I start to notice the little things. Because, you know, I think of what Tristan was saying was like you guys show that you can do these complex things, you care to do these complex things, and you buy enough goodwill that I think the brain just forgets the little bits. Like when you were talking about like, you know, there was the Ghostbusters thing and all that that never happened, like that inadvertently ends up, and I I had a note about this, like, I love that Jay is just like delighted going through this book because it makes the horror of what happens to him hit so much harder. But if he just was like page one, dude, do oh fuck, it wouldn't hit as hard as him like going from delighted to defeated.

SPEAKER_06 50:20

I I think that's always Jay at my favorite, is like when he thinks things are working out great for him, but as an audience, we know that's not the case. Whenever he can be really happy or smug.

SPEAKER_07 50:31

There's nothing funnier than somebody who's like, I'm this is going so well, and then they like you know, can't kiss him in the face or something. Like, that's the funniest thing in the world.

SPEAKER_06 50:40

And what a different uh moment it would be if Matt was the one who was shrunk. He would probably be like, Okay, great. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 50:47

This is we're gonna use this, get a show at the Rivoli. Like he would probably yeah.

Steve 50:51

I actually had that thought today, and I was like, Matt would end up riding a tiny mouse into battle to try and break into the Rivoli or something like that.

SPEAKER_07 50:58

Andy and I both remember this at the same time. You go for it, Andy. We were gonna do a spider battle. He likes uh Jay was gonna fight fight a spider in the head. He was gonna like fly that chip into the head, and there was gonna be a like the um incredible shrinking man, right? Like he was gonna fight this uh spider. And Kurt, you ended up working on a shrinking show after this, too. I did, yeah recently.

SPEAKER_06 51:18

Yeah, called The Miniature Wife. And it was great because when I did a interview for it, I was able to be like, I actually got some experience with this genre. Shrinking the shrink drum genre. Um, yes, so check it out. Thank you, Andy.

SPEAKER_07 51:35

Yeah, also Honey I Shrunk the Kid's not a horror film. Not nah.

Steve 51:42

Honey I blew up the kid is way more story.

SPEAKER_07 51:45

That movie rocks. I mean, they both rock, but that movie Freaky Friday. Also not a horse. Wait, did we do any horror movie? Uh uh American Werewolves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You did you manji? But American Werewolf is a is a is a comedy, like a pretty hardcore comedy, too. Oh, yeah. So yeah, yeah.

Steve 52:00

The part where like Matt thinks he's about to get shot and he goes like 9-11 was an inside job, investigate building seven. I was like, I really appreciate that you guys were reserved enough for him to not go on a John Landis helicopter rant.

SPEAKER_07 52:17

Oh, geez.

Steve 52:20

Because the first time I watched it, I was like, they're doing American Warew. Oh no, are we going there? Actually, oh no, only 9-11.

SPEAKER_06 52:27

Yeah, I'm glad we didn't do that. You know, I don't think I knew about that until right around shooting that episode. And I think it was Jared who told me because he was working on the show Cursed Films. Cursed films, yeah. And learning about something like that is pretty crazy. Yeah, we told me, I'm like, how did I not know this?

SPEAKER_07 52:46

Yeah, that's like a truly horrific story. Yeah, it's it's it's unbelievable. Yeah, yeah.

Steve 52:52

You guys can Google it yourself, listeners. I don't want to go through today's Halloween Google.

Michelle 52:58

It's very spooky.

Steve 53:00

Do you remember how he showed up at one of the funerals and gave a speech? Anyway. I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_07 53:05

No, it's the footage is on it's on YouTube. You can walk crazy.

Steve 53:10

Sorry, I can't do one episode without me sharing cursed knowledge with our listeners.

SPEAKER_07 53:13

Yeah, yeah. I think he literally says at the funeral, he's like, but don't worry, film lives forever. Ooh, boy. Yeah, it's anyway.

Michelle 53:23

Yikes.

Steve 53:24

Andy, thank you for joining me. That's I'm not the one main actor.

Michelle 53:29

I do want to talk about the Freaky Friday um bit of the show because I I love seeing them play each other. They're so good at it. It's like it's so fun to watch. They are clearly having a lot of fun just like doing full impressions and like really inhabiting it. Um, I I think that's a really fun little bit of the button.

SPEAKER_07 53:52

Gotta put Jay over too, because Jay, I think, really kills it. I think, yeah, yeah. And because he's doing like he's because in the reflection, it's like it's Jay's voice, like re play as trapped in Matt's head, that then cuts directly to Jay as Matt going, this is great. And it's just like that is like a a great, I don't know, really like a testament to Jay's acting ability. That little moment is is is really great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 54:17

That shot as well, the freaky Friday moment where he's looking in the reflection. I think was one of the last things we shot for the episode. Because we did that whole sequence without that moment. It it started differently. And then it was a pretty last minute edition where we thought, oh, we need to really make it clear out the gate here and use the parody like as much as possible.

SPEAKER_07 54:35

And that reflection ends up being so funny because it like it warps Matt a bit in this way. Like, oh I think has that real like tragedy like face on him. The tragedy mask. Oh, yeah. Oh, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michelle 54:48

The big frown. Yeah.

Steve 54:50

Matt in Jay's body immediately picking up the hat because he can't think without it, makes me laugh so hard.

SPEAKER_07 54:56

There's a few gaps though, I feel, don't you guys, where there's like like he can play piano, but but but Jay doesn't have his handwriting. You know what I mean? Like, where's the where's the rule?

SPEAKER_06 55:07

Totally just because Jay couldn't do it. I know. But I'm but I'm saying, yeah, yeah, but I know it's so funny that how we'll just give up and be like, ah, that's just what we got. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 55:15

That's one of the best for as an audience member. I'm I'm laughing at the fly on his forehead and not thinking about things. It was a gift, you know. The fly was the gift.

Michelle 55:24

Was that just totally random? That it was, I was like, they can't have planted a fly, but like maybe that's positive. But it has nothing to do with anything, it's just there and delightful.

SPEAKER_07 55:37

Land it on his head. And the house did get gross, like sometimes. Yes. Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_06 55:44

I was gonna say, like, MJ's a good sport too, to lean into that. There's a fly on me and I stink and all that. Yeah, that was great.

Steve 55:52

Yeah, I've always wondered what what what it was like to be in that house with so many people doing all this.

SPEAKER_04 55:59

It was amazing. If I if I can jump in and just say, uh, I've never in my life it it felt like a frat house at times, if I'm being completely honest. Um, because you were shooting on the main floor, editing bays were the entire second floor, and visual thefts was in the attic, and it was so much energy in that house all the time. But also one of the most creative places I've ever been in my life. Um and yeah, there's just a synergy. I really think it was a moment in time that it'll be hard to replicate, you know.

SPEAKER_06 56:32

It's lightning in a bottle, really. You know, we were working on so many episodes at once. It was pretty nuts. Like in and in all our different like editing rooms, with probably four or five episodes being edited, you know, at any time. And Tristan upstairs doing the effects, and then they're downstairs shooting something for some episode, and lots of back and forth of like running up to look at something as they're about to shoot a scene that comes after that. And it was yeah, it was a lot of fun. And and and so many of us were friends before that, like Andy and Rob and I. And so that was really cool to to then get to work so closely. For two years or whatever it was.

SPEAKER_07 57:09

I th I can't I usually say about three if I count like starting in the old office. Yeah, you know, where we started writing and stuff. But yeah, I think about for like like three years, it was entirely it was just like that was entirely my life, you know. Like I would we often I slept there many nights, like slept in those fucking bunk beds and and like you know, just like with like many eBay. And the the the crazy thing too is like there'd be times where you know uh there'd be gaps where like other people would like like the crew like crew and even Matt and Jay would kind of be gone doing something else for a while, like sometimes weeks, and it would be like me, Rob, Kurt, Tristan, Sean Bloom, our assistant editor and and title designer on certain things, and it would just be the us in that house for like big chunks of time, too, just like trying to make episodes to be able to show everybody when they come eventually come back, you know? And uh and that's like yeah, so it's it really like I think of that house, yeah, as just a it's a key moment in my life of of basically just living there at 107 Shaw, like that was that window of my life is I see that building when I think back to it basically.

Steve 58:16

What has it been like for you guys to kind of reflecting on that time, like in the context of this much larger fan base you've picked up in the last year? Because so many more people are discovering the show, so many more people are talking about it, you know, like way more than when I first got into it. So, like, what has that been like given that it seems like this was such a formative time for you guys?

SPEAKER_04 58:36

It puts a weird emphasis on like season three, you know, because people have a lot of questions, and I'm interested to know like what comes of that, you know. There there's still a little magic to be had and experienced by this new community and the old community at large. And so I I don't I don't struggle with that, but I I often think about it, you know. It's like Nirvana, the band that show the movie was an amazing expose, and um it was so fun to relive that energy.

SPEAKER_06 59:06

But there's this heavy season three question mark everywhere um that you know Yeah, I uh I was gonna say it's it's such a great gift to be able to have people be interested in the stuff that we worked so hard on back then. Because I don't think it's something that you always get with your work, you know, and and I don't think any of us necessarily expected that. So you know, we were so proud and are so proud of the of these episodes and the show, and so yeah, it's just really cool to see people watching it and people like you guys like doing this podcast now that this many years later, it's it's really special.

SPEAKER_04 59:45

We still get questions like on my Vimeo page and on YouTube or in Instagram, people are like, How did you do the X, Y, and Z kind of thing, you know? And it's there's nothing in my career that has ever lived the that long, you know, and so it's it's quite special.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:01

I feel like we would say even during making the show where it's like because like you know, as it was coming out, we knew it wasn't it hadn't, you know, there were the the intense fans from before and then fans of the dirties, like there were the Matt had got a whole new kind of influx of fans after the dirties, and uh and and probably what one new fan after Operation Avalanche. And uh he uh we're going into um into the series, so we knew it wasn't really popping as it was coming out. I think I think some people had an expectation it was going to. Some people were like very much like we're gonna be on Leno. It was Tristan, it was Tristan. It was Tristan, yeah. No, no. Um but I think a bunch of us are like I and I remember it said by multiple people. I know I said it, like just being like, I think this is like a if it ever finds an audience, it's like 10 years down the line. Like we would sit, we'd say those things because it was just like it felt like one of those, you know, I was an arrested development fan. I was a fan of like these things where like it felt like something that I'm like, oh, this just isn't the right, it's not being seen properly yet. And uh that's the problem, is that people don't have a way to see this thing and watch this thing. So I I don't think I like I knew like I knew the movie was doing well, but I don't think I clued into it until I was like asked to come in and do the uh commentaries. Like I really I was like, oh, we're they were releasing this on Blu-ray. Like that's and that was like the first time that was like very exciting to me, being like, Oh, this is great, like this thing that I kind of like you know a thought would be maybe you know, I'd always have my the little Vimeo links we got after it, you know. I was always like, there's the show I spent, you know, three, four years of my life on right there, and it's on my Vimeo. Um, but uh in a password protected link. And um I uh but then yeah, getting to do the commentaries was just like, oh shit, there's gonna be a Blu-ray, like there's gonna be and then and then of course that announcement of the uh it being on streaming on Disney Plus and and Hulu and stuff like that. I was like, oh shit, like people actually are going to get to watch this thing that was my entire life for a few years.

Michelle 1:02:05

I think it is amazing as someone who's watching it for the first time right now to be like watching it with no nostalgia that like it is delightful to watch this does not apply to everything from 10 years ago that I have watched, even things that I'm re-watching, like with the bit of like, oh remember when I saw that. And it's and it's so nice, and it's like doubly nice to talk to people who have worked on it and see that like you all have such vivid memories of putting it together and coming up with these ideas, and that it's something that you still love and are psyched to talk about.

Steve 1:02:39

Totally. And I'm just really glad that this was one of those like secret obsessions of mine that Kit and Michelle didn't know about, and then I got to spring it on them, and now we're here podcasting with you guys. Sweet.

Michelle 1:02:50

To take a step out of uh Love and Compliments Corner. Um Freaky Friday moment, they play another song on the pianos, they hear Bongo's Van Pelt, the scariest man in the world, comes out and they switch back.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:03

Did did I already bring up about how suddenly he has paint all over him, Van Pelt? Did you notice that? Yes. No, because of course in Jumanji that's what happens to him. And at the end of the movie, he's covered in paint. And so we had to just roll with it.

Steve 1:03:20

I assumed he tripped over the art attacks then. Melted candy all over him.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:27

And did everyone get the art attack reference? I guess can are you are you can you guys are all Canadian? No, none of us.

Steve 1:03:33

I'm New York, born and raised.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:34

You didn't you did that? Was that just so the dumbest thing you'd ever seen in the list?

Steve 1:03:40

I was I was on I was on Google.com this morning looking up what Art Attack was. So I was like, this music bop is a bop. Let me go look up what the hell this is. Yeah, it's so fame today.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:51

I found out the UK show that what we got in Canada growing up was huge for us. Like really, really big deal.

Steve 1:03:57

It was one of those things I could tell, like this was a childhood obsession.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:01

Oh yeah, every like, yeah, Art Attack is a I mean, has there ever been an Art Attack doc? There should be, right? Because it like it got went through pretty and like I think that Neil Bushman or Buchanan. Buchanan Buchanan. Neil Buchanan, uh Neil Bushman was a guy my dad worked with at the green eleven. Different guys, different guys, yeah, different guy. Uh Neil Buchanan was um he was in a punk band, like in his youth. Yeah, he was like a hardcore punk punker, and then got hosting this children's art show after that. Uh and yeah, and the show went like became huge. So you even see like there was like the head. There's this character called the head. Is it in did did is it in the finished episode? Oh, we had it in some rough in the rough cut. It used to cut to the head because he would talk to this like statue of a head, it's like, hey folks, it's me, the head, and he would just like be this head on a pedestal. And the early seasons was just an actor, like with his face painted, like like like stone. But then the later seasons they'd made this like incredible prosthetic puppet head that was like really cool. And I think we cut to that one, right? We cut to the cool one, yes. Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:04

Yeah, which I I think we just fully couldn't get away with. That would have been really strange for you to see that in the episode if you had no idea what art attack is. It's drippy.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:13

Every so often I do have to do a Google search for what's up like Canadian, super Canadiana stuff.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:19

But art attack, he'd always do things that you could do at home with supplies you could find, like Lou Roll, which was toilet paper rolls. PVA glue. Yeah, PVA glue. And but at the end of the episode, he did his big art attack, which was big out in like a field or something, and then you would see it from above. I guess it left enough of a mark on all of us that we thought for sure we needed to do it in this episode.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:40

I'd originally pitched, do you remember my original art attack pitch? Uh Shrek. I did, I made, I made, yeah, it was Shrek. That's true. I had like like Jay Jay makes Shrek. He makes like a really good p like uh uh out of nerds, like nerds candy. He makes Shrek, and the Shrek out of Licorice is just saying, Hey donkey. That's what the Matt back and forth is gonna be just looking at this thing that said, Hey donkey. Uh but I remember it was, I think it was Tristan. You're like, that's too good. It was so good. It just looked good. Like it was like it has to kind of look bad. Like it's like that looks it looks too damn good. Yeah.

unknown 1:06:14

Yeah.

Steve 1:06:14

I was really worried for our boys when I think the thing that really made me jump the first time I saw this was when he shoot Van Pelt shoots at the piano, and there is like the like you see it hit the wall and hit the picture. Like I do think that adds some genuine danger to that moment.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:30

That physical aspect of the practicality of those effects were it makes it visceral for sure. And that was a big thing that uh Andy and I were hell-bent on, you know. Yeah. Even and and we we really leaned into that. So when Van Pelt walks through the the living room and kitchen divider, right? We and yeah, like I am physically walking through there casting shadows, and when he shoots the gun or the muzzle or whatever, like we did interactive lighting, we we did a burst of uh air to get napkins and things to fly in the air. The the this tangibility and and practicality was a big deal for us. Even opening the door and having smoke come in.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:13

Um well that like magic light was there in order to connect everything, right? Because Van Pelt is in daylight footage. Exactly. And that's stuff. So it's like we needed we needed some like beam of powerful magic light. Just it works. Yeah, yeah, but it works narratively, it really does. So yeah.

Michelle 1:07:30

The physicality, I think when you talk about Jay dancing on the piano, I there's no like weird shots that I could have possibly noticed because I was so focused on like the piano keys pressing down a little bit, but not enough to make a noise. I was like, how how did you accomplish this?

SPEAKER_04 1:07:47

When we were talking about getting Jay on the piano, I it was always part of the well never part of the plan to have the keys actually be moving by virtue of his weight. But in the planning between Andy and I, and I think Kurt, it became evident that we needed to figure that out, and it became a big complexity for the day. And actually inspired a like a a weird screen screen um shoot that we had to do.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:15

You gotta explain the rig, it's so cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:18

So we basically measured out what the piano key size would be in real life, and we got Adam Bellanger to order like a bunch of dirty mattresses to come in and be delivered. And so we built physical piano keys with plywood on top of these um mattresses so that there would be spring in the step of uh Jay when he's doing his little dance. And um then we got the level of depression of each key, and we were able to shoot elements in the actual apartment of those keys going down the to the same l degree um based on his weight. And then we were able to animate it was we shot plates of each key being pressed down, and then we were able to animate them in sync with his performance. And we would know if he was down here, if this was the water line, and then up here, like we would have the same depressions baked into the green screen plate. Um and to be honest, I didn't think it would work out as well as it did. It works so well.

Michelle 1:09:24

It does. Yeah, it looks so good.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:26

Um, I remember that late night of getting the shots in the apartment on that piano. And Tristan, were you just using your finger or did you have like a stick or something? Remember this? You're pressing down on the keys. I remember vividly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:09:39

And where is that stick now?

SPEAKER_06 1:09:41

Let's see it. Let's see it.

SPEAKER_07 1:09:43

It's in a block of ice. I have the thought. It's in a block of ice.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:48

But yeah, like I was saying at the beginning, there's so much more in this episode that was like getting all these different steps and different elements to any one moment, which is like, okay, Tristan, now we need you to press on the key with the stick.

Michelle 1:10:00

I feel like I've seen productions that I assume have like much higher budgets than you guys did for the show, that look way worse. Because I think like if they're just like, oh, we can throw whatever amount of money at these effects, we don't have to think about them like being placed in the real world. And and so like it's so it's so cool to hear about like the level of detail and how much you were thinking about what to do to place this in the real world with what you're doing.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:29

But that comes just out of the philosophy of the show, right? Like it's a survival instinct for us. Like, if we're doing visual effects, they have to be seamless in every other episode, right? And hopefully we achieved that. And so for fifth you know, years and years, we would be doing visual effects and then scrapping them, starting again until we got it right. And we figured out that physics is everything. Do not try to sim anything in post. Like it it will will never be as good as the the practical kind of onset raw um behaviors of humanity or humans in their performance. And like we did that with the banner. We we tried to sim that. We s we literally did composites for like six months and then hit the delete button and redid it practically um for that very reason. That was wonderful. We learned the lessons so hard. Sorry, Andy, go ahead.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:24

No, that would say that's a that's a big core memory of mine too, is going to that fire. It's like you mean Keenan, yeah, like shooting that the f the flame. Yeah, it was so fun.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:32

But on the book, it's like, okay, so we we apply all those lessons that we've learned over time, but now we're in this exaggerated zany world where we're allowed to also break the rules, right? And be a little less um kind of rooted in reality um when we don't need to be. And so it was a nice liberating kind of exercise for us too at the same time.

Michelle 1:11:54

And that's I think what the werewolf transformation too is so cool to watch and to like know that that's like full-on, like long-term prosthetic makeup um is is rad that you like fully committed to.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:11

Yeah, that was shot in two big chunks too. I remember like we we did we did Jay as the werewolf first. Like that was the first thing we had done is he his uh werewolf fit. And um, and we shot a whole day with that, like going out and shooting all the like him as a werewolf running around. Uh, and then it was like I think months and months later we did the transformation.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:34

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:34

Oh that's my memory of it. Yeah, yeah. Also, you know what? I I'm scrubbing through the episode right now, and something we didn't talk about, but is I think really cool, is when Matt's got the magnifying glass on Tiny J.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:46

Oh, dude, you're on the same wavelength. Yes, I can't believe we didn't talk about this. I was gonna bring that up and be like, no one ever talks about that.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We talk about it in the commentary a lot.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:56

Oh, yeah. So don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:58

You gotta buy the blue. You gotta buy the blue.

Michelle 1:13:02

We all already that's one of the moments I mean, like, from my end as just a viewer, uh, we've talked a couple of times about like I love seeing the moments that are like big like memes within the fan community. And that's licking the lips. Matt with licking his lips through the magnifying glass is a huge one. Um, and I had been like waiting and wondering to find out what the context for that could possibly be. And I think this is the best answer it could have been.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:33

Matt has cuteness aggression. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's what's happening.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:38

It was a technically weird thing to shoot. Um, because we were you were utilizing like an old visual effects technique called rear projection. That was like a borrowed idea. But if you want to know how we actually did it, that's basically the first retina display uh that Apple ever um produced, which is like so many pixels in an uh in a screen that it's like hard to note where where the pixel is. Right. And we're like, well, I might be able to buy this thing on pre-order, right? And we might be able to play a composite of J on the rug and then actually play the composite and then have go over the shoulder of NJ and have the actual composite be refracted through the glass. Um, and whereby we would never be able to render that kind of physicality or object track the magnifying glass. So that's all practical physics, right? Of of refraction and of that performance. And it was on a loop, right, Andy? For like that perfor every every J down being magnified was on a loop, and and MJ would just like shoot many different and every time it looped, he'd start again kind of thing until we got what we needed. Which is a cool out-of-the-box workflow. Now people do like virtual rolls and or big projection, rear projections, but that was like a borrowed idea.

Steve 1:15:07

I was gonna say, you were doing the volume before the volume existed. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:11

Yeah, we probably would have done this on a volume, right? Like if we did this now.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:14

Yeah, you might have, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:16

Yeah, might have, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:18

But now that we've done this, like uh, you know. It was the first time we ever nested uh composite into shot photography. And we actually did that again in Nirvana Band, the show of the movie, uh, where we had bar patrons watching live composites of uh the top of the Sea and Tower. And so all of those people are reacting to what they think is a real event, which was like kind of a unique um planted kind of visual effects trick.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:47

I I remember you doing something really cool on Avalanche where you were trying to in order to get the handheld shake of a composite, you put the image on the screen and then you I don't know if you just did that for mapping or if you actually like well, every time people do visual effects, they do these like really computer like that. They're the same, it's the same like three mo motions, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. For handheld shake. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:12

So in that project, what what I came up with was well, I'm just gonna play this with no camera shake, and then I'm gonna record as if I was the camera person in the moment and just see what happens. And then I'll track that literal motion and then apply it back to the composite, and it worked exceptionally well. Um, it had a natural kind of vibe and a sway and um micro vibrations, and you know, it's again very tactile and tangible.

Steve 1:16:38

I watched that movie for the first time like two weeks ago, and it looks incredible.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:43

Well, I'm glad you said that because uh, you know, it's one of those like shows that I don't I it took a lot out of us at that time in our lives. It does look good though. It's a good looking movie.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:53

Yeah, it does look great. I think we just there were so many false starts and just redoing things in that movie so long where we did not know if we would make it through with something that was uh showable. And then we did, I think, in the end. But uh yeah, I'm very happy. Yeah, yeah. I think we just learned a lot of lessons on that that hopefully we took with us on stuff like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:13

And we collected a lot of new creatives as well during that process. Like that's where Bobby came in uh to the fold. And uh so yeah. Love Operation Avalanche, don't get me wrong.

Steve 1:17:25

I say this complimentary, I promise. I do enjoy that your your arc is kind of very the Muppetsy, where you're gonna put on a show and you keep picking up new members along the way, and it keeps getting bigger and better, and I find that very delightful.

Michelle 1:17:40

I do also love that towards the end of this, we we sort of return to the heart of the show, which is um using whatever is going on to go to show at the Rivoli. It wouldn't be an episode if we didn't at least make an attempt. Um, and also I love that in this uh non-canonical episode, they simply just get one.

SPEAKER_07 1:18:01

But they don't get to perform it. Yeah.

Steve 1:18:03

I do like when Matt kind of turns into like a real wheel or a deal, and he's like, he could tie up and fuck your wife, yeah, whatever you want.

Kit 1:18:12

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:18:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:14

It's really good.

SPEAKER_07 1:18:16

And that's all they needed to do to get a show at their crazy. That's all they needed to do. With a werewolf, with a werewolf. With a werewolf. Yeah, who's gonna fuck a werewolf? Yeah, yeah.

Steve 1:18:25

Werewolf erotica was very popular now.

SPEAKER_07 1:18:27

That's the that's a I used to say like that is like there are people that'll be crazy into this. So the fact that Jay is bothered, you're gonna be fine today.

Steve 1:18:37

I know multiple writers who uh funded their creative pursuits of various types by just writing Werewolf Veronica because it made so much money on self-published Amazon.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:50

Since we're all giving ideas and stuff all the time, you can lose track of who uh pitched what at any time. But I do remember pitching the Scare the Rivoli plan for this episode, which I thought it was funny that they write Scare the Rivoli, and then Matt is the one scaring the person in front of the Rivoli.

Steve 1:19:07

It's one one of my favorite bits is that Jay being delighted like clapping his hands while Matt jumps up from behind a wall. And whoever that first guy that you k you guys catch just kind of looking at dead Jay is just such a perfect response.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:24

Yeah. I remember we really didn't have a lot of reactions to that uh to pick from, so we got lucky that there were some usable ones in there. Yeah.

Steve 1:19:32

I'm curious, like with the like reaction shots, right? Like how many to how many like do you guys tend to sort through before you pick which ones are the best? Because I assume you get quite a few people being like, what the fuck's happening?

SPEAKER_06 1:19:45

Yeah. Yeah, usually we get spoiled with lots of great stuff. But yeah, maybe sometimes it is hard even to know who to pick. But it's funny how just the nature of being like, Well, this is it, this is what's in the episode, I think makes something funny because it's like, well, that's what really happened, you know. But I'm sure both of these moments, it I mean, the big tell is if you don't really see the thing in the foreground, or if it's not all part of the same shot, there's a really good chance it is not real time, you know. Um so even that man at the end that like kind of shrugs, Jay, Jay maybe isn't even laying there in that moment. I don't know. I don't know. But um yeah, I think it's like anything else in the episode where there's lots of experimenting and you'll have certain placeholders that come and go. Yeah.

Steve 1:20:29

I really love that man on the bus that Jay's just kind of staring at.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:32

For the armies thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what? I look at that and I'm like, are we being Braddy? Is that like close to being bratty for this guy, like getting right up close to him?

SPEAKER_07 1:20:43

I think there are brattier moments than that, but I I I know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:47

Yeah, yeah, I think it was not movie just sitting there.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:50

It's like and I know I remember the story. He signed a release, but I remember he wasn't stoked about signing the release. Yeah, yeah. Which is like, you know, that happened a lot. There's a lot of people in the show who were like not exactly that excited about signing the release, but uh Matt Grayson had a had a way of disarming people and forcing them to sign the release.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:12

Shout out to Grayson.

Michelle 1:21:13

Yeah, do you get a lot of people who like straight up refuse?

SPEAKER_07 1:21:17

All the time. We always had people straight up refuse. That happened all the time. I remember getting like yelled at at the Eaton Center. Someone just like screaming at me in my face. Like, what are you doing? You're fucking you're just trying to humiliate us. Like, I'm like, I'm not, I'm just shooting this. I'm doing the beat at work. I'm just at work, I'm just at work. Yeah, that well, that was always the that was always the thing. He's like, I'm just working here. I'm just I don't know what you guys do. I did get kicked out of Wonderland, though. I was the one who got caught at Wonderland. Oh everybody else didn't. Oh yeah, I got caught by the security. They like they caught me and they're like, Whoa, and they they they had me. They were like in front of me, and I'm like, oh fuck, I'm done. Like I'm cooked. And I think um they did this hilarious thing though, where they said, you wait right here. We're gonna go again. And they turned around and I just booked it. Like I ran, I turned away to the water. I'm like, Why would you call me wait here?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:06

Like 10 minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve 1:22:13

I had to happen at a movie theater once, and like, we're gonna call the police. I'm like, okay, bye. Exactly. Cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:20

Amazing.

Steve 1:22:22

Uh Canada's Wonderland or is that like a Disney situation where you're not allowed to film?

SPEAKER_07 1:22:26

So we did, it's a crazy gimmick we did there where we we we did go in in the under the guise of being vice news. So we had the right to be there uh because we had it, we had an hour, a two hour or one hour time block to um so crazy. We had a two-hour time block to film a vice news segment that was promotion for Operation Avalanche. Hilariously. So I was wondering how that happened.

Michelle 1:22:52

We watched that and we were like, this is so.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:54

What is that's the reason we're at one? That's how we get our cameras into Wonderland is for that. So we're filming, we filmed that Vice News Operation Avalanche segment, and then we we tell our lia like the the the handler that we're like, you know what, we kind of just want to hang out here, go on some rides. Just such like such a funny thing. We're just gonna hang out, go and they're like, of course, enjoy the park. And we um went outside, uh, because you have to go through like security and stuff. Um, we or we went to the bathroom and we stuffed all our cameras into backpacks that Grayson took, and then we left, like we were putting the cameras away in the car, and we went and like put them away and then came back in, went back into the bathroom, took all the cameras out, and kept shooting um for another five hours or something like that in Wonderland with with a and also like the element of having a third character that we had to navigate as well the whole time. So it was a it was a very that one was a wild experience.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:49

You guys did something similar for Star Wars too, right? Where you went in as though it was a promotional thing for Vice.

SPEAKER_07 1:23:55

Yeah, oh that's right for the premiere, for the actual premiere part of it. Yeah, because we shot we shot over a few different screenings of of Star Wars, right? And um, but the first one was during the premiere, we went, yeah, as Vice doing a segment with a stand-up comic named Tim Gilbert, who I've since got to know, like after all of this, uh, which is so funny. Um, and he yeah, the idea is we were shooting this Vice thing with this comedian who had no idea that and he I remember him being like annoyed because he's like, Why are you shooting those two guys in the behind me all the time? He was not uh but he he knew too. He was like he he had known about the web series, and he had he wasn't like you know, wasn't a spring chicken.

Steve 1:24:37

So is there anything else on this on this episode that we haven't hit yet? Any beats? Uh very last shot of Jay.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:44

Or no, it's not the last shot, is it? Let's see here. Yes. Uh the to the bobbin about yeah. That was a discussion too, like whether or not we actually have Jay basically lay almost naked in Bellwoods with the bullet holes, or if we comp it out of that shot ultimately. That's right.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:01

Yeah, I went and shot Jay across the street of the house, like just him lying with his clothes on, and then yeah, comped him into the final shot. Um and there was discussion too, but was like I don't I don't wasn't too long because I think it was pretty clear we were all but I think there was a mil moment of discussion about the ending with the blue moon from like from uh American Werewolf. Like because that's the only one that doesn't end with our sting, right? It's the only episode.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:27

Oh yeah, it might be.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:28

Yeah, yeah, that ends with like a different finale is silence, I think. That's right. But yeah, that's the only time we use something very artistic, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:36

Very artistic. Yes, that's right.

Steve 1:25:39

Another one that made me cry. Yeah, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:41

Um that's good. I it I like it that when people have an emotional reaction to that one, because uh sometimes a lot of the other reaction is what people are like what's that ending? But I like because if people have an emotional reaction, then it's like, yeah, that's exactly what was trying to be got. Like this is this is the beginning of an ending, you know, and like that's some people don't get that. That blows my mind.

Steve 1:26:02

Having watched that before the movie was announced, I was like, Oh wow, this is a great way for this show. I love to end just me sad.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'll also say, I think we all agree maybe we wouldn't have done that if we knew that was the end of the show. Maybe we still do a version of it, but we were certainly setting it up for something.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:22

To me, the the bank, which uh I was an editor, I also edited the bank, and that I feel like that as well as Kurt Kurt edited as well. I felt like it was so funny because that to me, if you had to end the show, the bank would that like that'd be a fine ending, right? Like to me, it just like feels so crazy, and like it ends with them high-fiving, and it's just like you it's so great. Uh, but then I don't know, I do also think there is something, especially now that it's been so long, the ending of the finale. To me, I think the finale is like an emotional gut punch, and it's always blown my mind that some people don't feel that way. But I I don't know. To me, it's just so it's like the end of you know, you know how the like the British office ends, like so sad. Yeah, yeah, it's like it's just like I loved like that. Is like one of my favorite things about uh like short runs of television shows is you have this ability to actually like crush people in the final moments, and yeah, I don't think that we don't do a comedic sting at all, though, at the end of the finale. Yeah, which are like on the office, you get that like he gives that Dolly Parton quote, which gets you at least laughing at the very end of that finale. So maybe we should have done that. I would I would say like one little stupid gag at the end of it. Yeah, yeah.

Steve 1:27:32

Maybe just as a fan, I will tell you, ending it on like, oh man, like actually is perfect. Like, because I think you then end the movie with kind of the reverse of that. Like it's oh man, this is sweet. Like, it's just I find the core of this show for me, and you know, can't speak for anybody else. Like, the thing that always gets to me most is like those emotional beats. Like, I love the jokes, it always makes me laugh, but like what's kept Me, I'm a famous TV hater. There's only like 10 TV shows I like. Um maybe 11. But like with this one, it's it's just that emotional hook is why it's so special to me personally.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:14

I think it's works really well that we were able to do the movie after that and and then end it on more of a message of like they're these guys are gonna do this forever. But I wonder for sure if we knew there wouldn't be another season if if maybe we would have went closer to something like the bank, you know? Uh but I'm happy we didn't.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:29

I'm like, I feel like it's so funny because I I'm kind of realizing now that I think I'm of the belief narratively that they shouldn't be together. Like uh you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I feel like I do I was such I feel like I always have like sided I side with the Jay character often. I always have. And even when we were like writing, I would kind of always like be thinking more about Jay. I just feel like there is and and Jay is a total dick in the show. Like, you know, he does like he he he is a he does crazy stupid things, but I think he is being like incredibly manipulated, you know, all the time in the show, and he's he is he has this ability to I mean you did in the movie, it's something we choose to talk about in the writing, the show, too, where it's like Jay has this like he's like a a musical uh um genius, and it's like he has this ability that he could go on and become whatever he wants to be, but he is totally uh tricked by this person who needs him to continue doing his thing. And I feel like ultimately I would always I would see that as like as sometimes as really dark, and so to me it was like it's a really sad ending, the the thing, but it's like we're leaning towards they need to figure this out. Maybe they could still be together, but they do need to address this, like you know, what the buffet does, right? Where it's like they need to address that there is this kind of um there is this manipulation happening that um is really dark, actually. Yeah, yeah.

Steve 1:30:03

Yeah, yeah. Well there there's that thing where like um Matt ends the buffet having to carry this thing he did to manipulate Jay and like never tell Jay. And then the movie ends with Matt never knowing that he died for Jay and Jay having to carry that. And I do like that beat of like each of them has this like really weighty secret that the other one may never know. Yeah, that just kind of haunts the back of their head.

SPEAKER_07 1:30:30

The crazy thing is season three has to address, right?

SPEAKER_06 1:30:33

I mean the pitch before that, like randomly, if season three ever happened, like through one of the episodes, Jay gets a little mad and snippy and mad, and he's like, You you died for me. You know, and he's like, What? It's like yeah, like where we fucking are like he just opens up buttons really quick.

SPEAKER_07 1:30:49

Yeah, you died for me. Yeah, yeah. So I know and it's as a total Jay, like smug like he holds that as like it's such a like yeah. We actually you uh you did die for me, so there's that is good, that's really funny. Um, so we would do these, like we would do these retreats at this cottage, and that's some of my very good memories of the show, too. Is like those writing retreats we did. Yeah, we did it for the first season we wrote in the first office, and then the second season we wrote in this cottage, like all the like we spent a week or 10 days or something, I can't remember, in that cottage, and then the third season we went back to that cottage and wrote the third season, and it was like the original version was like eight episodes or something, right? Like we had it eight episodes, and then and then and then it got sliced down because of Vice. Well, you mean per season of being no no? I feel like when we went to the cottage and wrote season three on the writing retreat, yeah, that it was we it was an eight episode run, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had the whole thing thing map there, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I feel like that went we we do we address things we're talking about right now. I feel not not obviously not the movie stuff because we didn't know what was gonna happen, but we we we addressed like buffet questions and yeah, things like that.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:56

But I feel like that never like because it got truncated. Also, I don't know if we mentioned it on like commentary or not, but the reason why oh man, I can't these are so many spoilers. Never mind. I'm not gonna say it. I don't want to start.

Michelle 1:32:12

It's okay. Yeah, yeah. You're building so much suspense. I can't wait.

Steve 1:32:16

Anything you need us to cut, we will cut.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:28

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then yeah, 100%. But then we kind of were like, yeah, it's like too like predictable or cheesy or like what another show would do. And a similar thing happened on the web show where when um Jay's been dating Matt's sister, Jay thinks Matt's gonna break up the band because of it. They shot it that way, and then they're like, ah, this just doesn't seem like it's our show. Let's instead make it be about we golf or whatever it is that gets them to break up. Yeah, it was that was kind of our version of it. Oh, it's gonna be this, and then we decided, uh, this isn't too easy or something.

SPEAKER_07 1:32:58

It's true, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, did you do the buffet commentary? Because I know raw, the Rob, the editor of that episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That episode, yeah, I gotta you gotta shout him out for that episode for sure, for the buffet. I feel like he like he just only owned it in such he owned it, yeah, and just had a a real deep emotional understanding of what had to happen. And yeah, it's just it's so good. I love yeah, I love I love that episode. I really love the buffet.

Steve 1:33:22

Michelle, do you want to ask your favorite question?

Michelle 1:33:24

Um, I do. Do you guys have anything that you'd like to plug? Any projects that you're working on in front of the band or otherwise?

SPEAKER_06 1:33:32

The miniature wife. I did that show, The Miniature Wife, check it out. Um I'm trying to think of anything that's coming out. I'm working on this Vice movie that Zuckerberg's doing.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:41

We're currently working on the Vice movie.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:43

That'll be coming out next year at some point. Um, what else is fun?

SPEAKER_07 1:33:48

I shot a uh fan film for a very uh famous horror franchise that'll be out of the still, it's directed by Jason Eisner. He wrote it and I went to Dartmouth to shoot it and um where he's from. And uh it was very fun. We shot it all in Super 16, and it was a crazy wild little experience, and it's like some of my favorite footage I've ever shot. I'm probably hyping it too much, but uh, but uh it's a weird little thing. It's like only like three minutes long, and it's gonna come out next week. Awesome. Or this week, maybe. The score is just being finished. I'm stoked.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:26

And if you're a fan of Hunger Games, um I did I just completed that and that'll be coming out in November. Um that's uh a thing that And what is that? I imagine yeah, I just did the last year on that and vice.

Michelle 1:34:42

Um I wasn't gonna bring it up, but then you brought um up another young adult franchise that you've worked on. Uh I was I was peeking through your IMGP, Tristan, and I saw that you worked on one of my most beloved films ever, which is Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2, uh one million years ago. And uh thanks. Thanks for whatever you did on that very similar.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:08

Welcome, I was a very perfect movie. Uh junior compositor at the time, and uh yeah, I had a lot of fun. Uh I thought you were gonna say Final Destination. That's that's the one that I popped for. Also a good one.

Michelle 1:35:20

I've heard you were done that and also uh there was at least one of the Now You CDs.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:25

I shot that in Hungary uh a year and a half ago, so that was that was fun.

Steve 1:35:30

I did enjoy looking like going through uh Tristan's INDP just forgetting this. And I was like, Michelle is obsessed with uh with uh Twilight. My wife and I are obsessed with the expanse. I guess you've just worked on everything we love.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:43

Yeah, I've been around for a while. It's like 20 years and counting, so it's uh it's been a tremendous uh career.

SPEAKER_06 1:35:49

You did so much of that before we worked with you. So I remember really thinking, like, whoa, Tristan's a real guy, yeah. So I think we felt like we were in good hands with you around for sure. Yeah, and 100%. I think obviously like on Operation Avalanche, we were like, Whoa, what maybe we can do this and that, just knowing that you were part of the team. And then I think it really did inform what how we went into Nirvana the Band the Vice series, because suddenly we thought, oh, if we can think it up, maybe Tristan can pull it off. And so I think that's what led to kind of almost every episode having some kind of big stunt or something.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:22

And thinking outside the box and just, you know, yeah, yeah, it was cool.

SPEAKER_07 1:36:25

And this episode by far being the most amount of any episode.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:28

Yeah, definitely not the hardest, but definitely the most volume.

SPEAKER_07 1:36:32

Yeah.

Michelle 1:36:32

What was the hardest one?

SPEAKER_04 1:36:34

Uh I would say the Daredevil title sequence brought me to my knees. Um I almost jumped off the balcony of the attic. And I'm not great. I had to I I had to call my friends in to come help finish that because it was so complex. Basically, they said, did the Daredevil title sequence. I said, Okay, no problem. And then I looked at it and I was like, oh my god, this is all like very complex fluid simulations. And the guys who or and and gals who did it, like basically won an Emmy for it. Like it's it's not a joke, right? And uh they're like, Can you do it? And I said, I'll try. And I wasn't uh an FX artist at all, and so I had to learn new software to like try to figure this out, and I was doing it the wrong way, using the wrong tools and sending everything because some of these shots were like a thousand frames long, right? And you can simulate to 999, but if the the that thousandth frame blows up, then everything the whole house of cards falls apart and you have to restart. And I was just on this like boot cycle of like not good enough, not good enough. Oh, it's breaking here, and it really was a dark time for me in that attic. Um, but we figured it out, you know, we got it done. Thank you.

Steve 1:37:54

It does, it looks great, and it makes me laugh every time to see Matt's hat get made out of the Daredevil title sequences.

SPEAKER_07 1:38:01

We I should I I shared briefly that attic with you. Do you remember Tristan? I had I was in the I was in the edit bay and I was kicked to the attic for having too much fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:10

Bring you bring you to the dark side.

SPEAKER_07 1:38:12

Uh I was told, yeah, I was having too much fun and I had to go to the attic. You got sent to the principal's office. I had to go sit with Tristan.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:18

The other very complex sequence was the banner, just because we had to do it twice, you know what I mean? And uh it just wasn't good enough out of the gate, and we had to figure out how to make it sell. If we didn't get the audience in that moment uh at that part of the show, like what were we doing? Or you know, it wasn't gonna bode well.

Steve 1:38:38

So if you guys had to pick like an episode that you like either think is underloved or like you love especially besides the book, what do you think it would be?

SPEAKER_07 1:38:49

Home improvement season two. Um probably that's the moment we tell Wilson's dead. That's when you see Wilson's deck, and it's just above, it's at the above the uh fence. Yeah. Oh, I thought it was a hole in the door that's above the fan. I think somehow it's above the fence. But uh uh no, uh I've the bean is like I always say the bean is my favorite episode. Uh and I think a lot of that has to do with like my memory of us making it, because that was actually the first episode we finished, and it was like it felt like everything everybody was just focused on that one, and everything was firing on all cylinders. But I do think it's a it's it's like uh is it appropriately loved? I don't know. I think people do love that episode.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:34

I I think it is like literally genius uh editing. Yeah, it's it's very, very I don't know if if Kurt, maybe you'll agree with this, but I think the name, the beam, like that that's all used to be that comes from like that's a deep cut in my family. Like we are a coffee loving family, and we refer to coffee as bean. So we'll call each other up and say you want to go grab a bean. And that was just something that I brought into this house, and it kind of grew legs. Um it was during Avalanche, right?

SPEAKER_06 1:40:08

During the office, bean maybe editing in Trizzy would yell bean, and that's when you knew.

SPEAKER_07 1:40:15

I remember I remember Trizzy pouring a cup of coffee once, going, Who made mud? And then we had a whole thing because Boozy, Josh Bowles, who we called Boozy for a long time. Um, he was in there, and I never forget this for some reason because you were like, Who who who made mud? And it was your was he was it you was it you he called baby? Yeah, Kurt, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he called like this is a deep cut. Boozy would call Kurt Baby. Wow, and yeah, and Tristan was like, Who's who who made this coffee? And Boozy's like, it's baby's bean, brewed by booze. I thought that was I it's in my head, I hear it all the time. Baby's bean, brewed by booze.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:54

Yeah, one time some of us were at the Fantasia Film Festival, and I said, Guys, if we were all the Spice Girls, who would be who? And then right away they all said you'd be baby, and that was the end of the combo. Yeah, and then I just called me a baby. I remember that. Yeah. Which hey, I took. Uh, I like that. I got I got the answer I was looking for, but no one else could decide anything. Um, I think an underrated episode, maybe you know what? I really like these guys love the bean, the blind side and the big time. So run of three that we finished kind of first, and we premiered them at TIFF. And I guess I always got a soft spot for those three. So any of those that don't get the love they deserve, maybe that's what I'd say. Maybe like the blind side and the big time.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:36

I would say the big that I'm gonna change my answer to the big time. Yeah, Trizy, are you gonna change your answer to?

SPEAKER_07 1:41:41

I love the big time, but uh Yeah. I think the beat is my favorite, but underappreciated is the big time. I think I I think that episode is is yeah, it's pretty special.

Steve 1:41:52

It's one of our faves, yeah.

Michelle 1:41:55

Thank you guys so much. This has been so wonderful. It's been so great to hear your stories and all of this amazing background knowledge. And it was so nice to to hang out with you for a little while. And I don't think there's anything left to say other than uh nothing like a good feeling. Nothing like a good feeling.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:11

Nothing like a good feeling, nothing like a good feeling, nothing, nothing like it.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:14

The last one who says it always what happens to the like a good feeling? What happens?

SPEAKER_06 1:42:20

Dude, you're gonna find out.

SPEAKER_07 1:42:21

You gotta send this email to ten friends.

Steve 1:42:35

Thank you for listening to Nirvana the band The Show the Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. You can email us or send a voice memo to NirvanaThepod at gmail.com. And we're also on Blue Sky and Instagram at NirvanaThePod. Our website is nirvana the pod.com. Our show is edited by Kit with additional help by John. Special thanks to Anne Meadows for our logo. Oh, and Matt and Jay, if you're listening, we'd love to have you on the show.