Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Strictly Business, the podcast in
Speaker 1: which we speak with some of the brightest minds working
Speaker 1: in the media business today. I'm Andrew Wallenstein with Variety,
Speaker 1: Adam Sandler, and Jennifer Aniston reunite in the sequel to
Speaker 1: the Murder Mystery franchise, out this week on streaming. To
Speaker 1: direct the movie Netflix turned to my next guest. But
Speaker 1: Jeremy Garrilick is not just another writer director. He also
Speaker 1: has built a really interesting business that began with a
Speaker 1: pretty unorthodox transaction. He bought a high school. We'll be
Speaker 1: back with Jeremy in just a minute to find out why.
Speaker 1: Now we're back with Jeremy Garlick, the director of Murder
Speaker 1: Mystery two, which is out now on Netflix. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Strictly Business. So I think listen may not necessarily be
Speaker 1: familiar with your name, but they know your work. You've
Speaker 1: done everything from direct that Kevin Hart comedy, The Wedding Ringer,
Speaker 1: doing a script polish on The Hangover, and of course
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about your American high movie series
Speaker 1: in a moment. But is it safe the same Murder
Speaker 1: Mystery too? Is this sort of like the biggest project
Speaker 1: you've ever done. This is one percent the biggest project
Speaker 1: I've ever done. This is the biggest movie I've ever done,
Speaker 1: for sure. Okay, And how did you come to direct this,
Speaker 1: especially because you've got your whole interesting side business going
Speaker 1: with American High Yeah, it's a great question. I got
Speaker 1: a call out of nowhere from agents saying do you
Speaker 1: have any interest in directing Murder Mystery Too? And I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do. That's simple. Apparently I was on a short
Speaker 1: list of possible directors that jen Aniston wanted to meet with.
Speaker 1: I knew and I worked with her on the film
Speaker 1: of The Breakup, which was your big break right. You
Speaker 1: wrote the script you I wrote the script of The
Speaker 1: Breakup with Jay Lavender, who was my co writer and
Speaker 1: co producer. We co produced it. Vince Vaughan was a
Speaker 1: producer on that movie, and we we got it to
Speaker 1: Jennifer Aniston and she said she read the script and
Speaker 1: she wanted to do it. And we made that movie
Speaker 1: a long time ago, and jenn and I have he'd
Speaker 1: been in touch ever since, and I've always wanted to
Speaker 1: work together. And I got that call out of the blue.
Speaker 1: It was a nice call to get. Yeah, I mean Hey,
Speaker 1: it's nice to have high powered friends like that. Now,
Speaker 1: this was the first time you worked with Sandler? What
Speaker 1: was it like working with someone? I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a comedy legend too, So Adam Sandler was my hero
Speaker 1: from the time I was growing up. Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 1: When I was in high school, all I wanted to
Speaker 1: do was write jokes for Adam Sandler. I walked around
Speaker 1: doing Billy Madison and in fact, my sister, my older sister,
Speaker 1: won a raffle to go to Saturday eight Live. I
Speaker 1: was in I think I was fifteen. I went with
Speaker 1: her to Saturday Night Live and were they were doing
Speaker 1: one of those They were doing a skit where they
Speaker 1: were using our seats, so we had to go stand
Speaker 1: on the side. And I was standing on the side
Speaker 1: of the stage and all of a sudden I look
Speaker 1: up and it's Adam Sandler and um he was. I said, oh,
Speaker 1: what are you dressed up as? And he said, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm doing UM. I was like, are you doing weird?
Speaker 1: Are you dressed as? I was like, are you dressed
Speaker 1: as weird Al Yankovic And he said no, no, that'd
Speaker 1: be funny though He's he was Gary Delabate Howard's Dern Show, right,
Speaker 1: and he was in So Sweet and I had met
Speaker 1: him a couple of times playing basketball, and we had
Speaker 1: talked about working together a few times in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: In Los Angeles when I was out here, you know,
Speaker 1: I was at Sony. I would play at the Sony
Speaker 1: a lot of All of a sudden, Adam Sandler which
Speaker 1: up in the so Many lot and he was playing
Speaker 1: basketball with Adam Sandler, which was pretty incredible. I had
Speaker 1: written a script a while ago that he had read
Speaker 1: and we met on that he liked and wanted to do,
Speaker 1: and we had always talked about working together. And now
Speaker 1: I had to interview to direct the movie. And what
Speaker 1: is it like interviewing with Adam? Saying, I mean you're
Speaker 1: talking about interviewing with Sandler? Yes, okay. So I had
Speaker 1: gone through, I had pitched my take on the movie.
Speaker 1: I had met with all the different producers. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of producers on this movie. I had met all
Speaker 1: the producers. Then I met with Netflix, had met with
Speaker 1: Jen and then I had to do the final meeting
Speaker 1: and interview with Adam. And I kept on getting text,
Speaker 1: Oh it's going to be tomorrow at eleven o'clock, he's
Speaker 1: gonna call you the next day. It was like on
Speaker 1: Thursday at two o'clock, he's gonna call. And this kind
Speaker 1: of went on and on for a couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: and then I got a text that said something like, hey, Bud,
Speaker 1: you're around. I said, yep, any any time, and then
Speaker 1: he FaceTime and me from the golf course I was in,
Speaker 1: I was in Kazan, I was in Syracuse, New York,
Speaker 1: by my house, and I walked around and he was
Speaker 1: in between holes. Just we were talking about life and
Speaker 1: kids and really nothing to do with the movie. At
Speaker 1: the end of the at the end of the college
Speaker 1: was like, all right, let's do this. This will be fun. Hey,
Speaker 1: that's what it takes. Not bad. Did he remember you
Speaker 1: from your basketball days? He did, he did. He did
Speaker 1: remember me. He remembered me from my basketball days. He
Speaker 1: remembered me from a few times that we had spoken
Speaker 1: about business. And he definitely he checked me out for sure,
Speaker 1: because I know a bunch of people who were who
Speaker 1: he had called ahead of time, and yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: It was obviously a dream come true to be able
Speaker 1: to work with him. So what was your approach to
Speaker 1: the material, because what I remember from Murder Mystery the
Speaker 1: first one is it's the mix of who Done It,
Speaker 1: but it's also kind of silly comedy. I mean, are
Speaker 1: you staying in that vein with number two or did
Speaker 1: you do something different? Yeah, it's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a genre bending movie. They wanted this to be more
Speaker 1: more of like Taken and a little bit more action. Eka,
Speaker 1: So I really and worked off of Jamie Vanderbilt script
Speaker 1: and Jamie created a He wrote the first one and
Speaker 1: he created amazing characters and did a great job with
Speaker 1: the second script two. When I came in, I really
Speaker 1: wanted to build upon what he had initially put in
Speaker 1: there and did a lot with the romance between the
Speaker 1: two of them, really try to push the comedy and
Speaker 1: really try to push the action a lot. And James
Speaker 1: was actually incredibly helpful during the entire process. We worked
Speaker 1: together and yeah, this is so when you watched this movie,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say what genre it falls into it
Speaker 1: exactly because there's definitely a who Done It, there's definitely
Speaker 1: an element of action. There's a huge element of action,
Speaker 1: and of course there's a romance between Adam and Jen
Speaker 1: and yeah, and it's funny and the thing I remember
Speaker 1: about the Breakup movie was also somewhat of a genre bender,
Speaker 1: where it seemed like it was a typical romantic comedy
Speaker 1: and then it gets a little dark towards the end.
Speaker 1: I mean that was something back in the day where
Speaker 1: you didn't see romantic comedies go there. And I'm just curious,
Speaker 1: you know, how did you get a studio to take
Speaker 1: the leap with material like that at the breakup or
Speaker 1: a murder mystery the breakup? Oh, so the Breakup we
Speaker 1: wrote a pretty um we wrote a pretty great script,
Speaker 1: Like as a team, we wrote a pretty great script,
Speaker 1: and we wrote it on spec and we went out
Speaker 1: to every studio and Vince had just come off of
Speaker 1: wedding Crashers. I think so he was. He was definitely
Speaker 1: a hot commodity. Yeah it was. He was couldn't have
Speaker 1: been hot. And we went out with it and every
Speaker 1: studio wanted it. Almost all of them said, well, we
Speaker 1: want this, but we want you to change the ending,
Speaker 1: which was the dark part. We won't spoil it for
Speaker 1: those who haven't seen it. I read to end those
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago. Hey, it's still out there. I remember
Speaker 1: getting a call from Scott Stubor, who was the head
Speaker 1: of Universal at the time, and that was the head
Speaker 1: of Netflix, and he said, I love this script so much,
Speaker 1: and I want to do it here, and I don't
Speaker 1: want you to touch this ending. This is the perfect ending.
Speaker 1: And we ended up going with Scott Steubert at Universal
Speaker 1: and we shot it. And after we shot it, we
Speaker 1: tested the movie and I remember the head of this studio,
Speaker 1: I think it was Ron Meyer at the time. We say,
Speaker 1: I think his line was have them get together at
Speaker 1: the end and you get back the brink struck in.
Speaker 1: So we ended up having to go and reshoot an ending.
Speaker 1: We should reshot two different endings. One it was a
Speaker 1: big Hollywood ending, it was pretty ridiculous. And then we
Speaker 1: shot what's now in the movie, where there's kind of
Speaker 1: a there's a glimmer of hope at the end that
Speaker 1: maybe they'll get together at some point in time. But
Speaker 1: at the time, when you had dark endings like that
Speaker 1: or endings that weren't the perfect Hollywood ending, testing doesn't
Speaker 1: people don't love those endings. But I'm so happy that
Speaker 1: we stuck with that because over the years I received
Speaker 1: so many emails and comments about how much people appreciated
Speaker 1: that ending because it was so true to life. And
Speaker 1: I'm curious. You know, you've worked on a lot of
Speaker 1: films since then. Do you feel that Hollywood has become
Speaker 1: more or less risky in terms of the kind of
Speaker 1: creative decisions that you know back then that was so
Speaker 1: courageous for a movie like that. Is Hollywood still friendly
Speaker 1: towards that kind of material? I think Hollywood itself is
Speaker 1: not friendly to that, is less friendly to that kind
Speaker 1: of material. Right now, everything is algorithms, right, but there
Speaker 1: are companies like A twenty four or our company, American High,
Speaker 1: where you where you're seeing a lot of original thoughts
Speaker 1: and original visions that are kind of outside of the
Speaker 1: Hollywood system. We'll talk more about American High. We'll be
Speaker 1: back in just a moment with Jeremy Garrelck. We are
Speaker 1: back with Jeremy Garlick. He is the director of the
Speaker 1: new Netflix movie Murder Mystery Too. Let's talk American High.
Speaker 1: Murder Mystery Too is separate from that. This is this
Speaker 1: is really it's one of the more fascinating stories I've
Speaker 1: heard in terms of taking an unusual entrepreneurial role to
Speaker 1: making movies. You bought a high school in Syracuse, New
Speaker 1: York walk back towards what made you do something like that?
Speaker 1: What was the point of it? Thank you? I was
Speaker 1: I had just finished shooting The Wedding Ringer with Kevin
Speaker 1: Hart and Josh Gad and it tests that one tested
Speaker 1: through the roof at the time, and I was everyone saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: what do you want to do next? What do you
Speaker 1: want to do next? I said, I want to do this.
Speaker 1: I want to do it in orated high school comedy,
Speaker 1: like the movies I grew up on Fast Times at
Speaker 1: Ridgemont High and Poor Keys and of course super Bad
Speaker 1: and all the John News movies. And the studio response was,
Speaker 1: we can't make this kind of a movie. And I said,
Speaker 1: I don't understand. If we're you know, we could make
Speaker 1: this movie for five, five, ten million dollars, And they said, well,
Speaker 1: you still have to spend twenty to twenty five million
Speaker 1: dollars to put it out there, and if the movie
Speaker 1: makes seventy five in the box office, which would be massive,
Speaker 1: it's still not worth that risk when the same studio
Speaker 1: is doing Spider Man, right. So this was the philosophy
Speaker 1: at the time from all of the studios. So nobody
Speaker 1: wanted to make these So I was trying to figure
Speaker 1: out why and like, why couldn't we just do this
Speaker 1: on our own? And I started just read. I started
Speaker 1: telling everybody all I want to do, every agent, every producer,
Speaker 1: all I want to do is make high school movies.
Speaker 1: I want to find this R rated high school movie.
Speaker 1: We started getting all of these submissions, and as I'm
Speaker 1: reading the high school movies, they all have the same sets.
Speaker 1: It's always it's a gym, it's the auditorium, it's the
Speaker 1: local diner, it's the classroom. And having been on a
Speaker 1: bunch of movies Spittrol Schumacher for a while, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: the locations are It's are so expensive. There's such an
Speaker 1: expensive part of making a film that I wonder if
Speaker 1: we made instead of just doing one movie, if we
Speaker 1: made three high school movies and we just said everything
Speaker 1: it was the same same location. And I try to
Speaker 1: like run the numbers as to what that would would
Speaker 1: save us, and it ended up saving about a third
Speaker 1: of the cost in terms of the production cost. So
Speaker 1: then I was just thinking, if I were to just
Speaker 1: own the location and can completely control the location, we
Speaker 1: could store all the equipment there, we could have all
Speaker 1: the production there, we could house people close by, We
Speaker 1: could make a pretty expensive looking, high quality film for
Speaker 1: a third of the cost. So I started googling, you know,
Speaker 1: I literally just started googling how to buy a high school,
Speaker 1: like high schools for sale, and um, many high schools
Speaker 1: were for sale, there were a lot of them. And
Speaker 1: I was looking in tax incentive where there were tax incentives,
Speaker 1: and I was looking in Detroit, and I was looking
Speaker 1: in Georgia, and I got one one popped up on
Speaker 1: my loop net account. In loop I've not heard that.
Speaker 1: I was a little plugged for loot neet. I hope
Speaker 1: I can get some some free membership from loop neet
Speaker 1: on that um. But it was in Liverpool, New York,
Speaker 1: and it looked like the perfect John Us town and
Speaker 1: a perfect John Us thing um building. And I just
Speaker 1: remember Will, who was my assistant at the time now
Speaker 1: my partner. We hopped on a flight and we flew
Speaker 1: to Liverpool, New York, which is a suburb of Syracuse,
Speaker 1: and I said, this is this is it, like this
Speaker 1: is where we're going to make this happen, and um,
Speaker 1: I bought this, made an offer, bought the school for
Speaker 1: how much we have to ask it's public, it's public records,
Speaker 1: so it was a million we we I bought it
Speaker 1: for a million dollars. Wow. It's one hundred thousand square
Speaker 1: foot building on eight acres a lane. So coming from
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, where land and buildings are very expensive, it
Speaker 1: seemed like a pretty incredible deal. Did you get backers
Speaker 1: to help you with this investment? I took out a
Speaker 1: lot of yes. I took out a lot of loans,
Speaker 1: went into a lot of debt and was able to
Speaker 1: do it. And then once I had the high school
Speaker 1: and this business plan, I then went to a handful
Speaker 1: of different investors and backers and initially made a deal
Speaker 1: with Mickey Ladell or ld Entertainment, who was just incredible
Speaker 1: who when I pitched him this idea, he was like, great,
Speaker 1: let's do it. And but I would imagine you may
Speaker 1: have pitched this elsewhere and people might have thought you
Speaker 1: were nuts. I mean, this is different I did. I
Speaker 1: pitched it to a bunch of places and everyone thought
Speaker 1: I was nuts, and everyone asked to see the scripts.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, let's see what the scripts are,
Speaker 1: and Mickey didn't even Mickey was just like, I trust you.
Speaker 1: I trust that you're you know, just from what you've done.
Speaker 1: I believe in you. I believe in this vision, and
Speaker 1: if you want to go do this, let's just go
Speaker 1: do this. And he was able. He basically started writing
Speaker 1: checks and we started making these low budget high school movies.
Speaker 1: But I'd imagine it's not so simple to walk into
Speaker 1: a town in Syracuse and say, hey, I'm just going
Speaker 1: to start making movies here. Okay, so this is probably
Speaker 1: a podcast in and of itself, but yes, I the
Speaker 1: school is located in the village of Liverpool, which is
Speaker 1: a small village. It's a suburb of Syracuse, and there's
Speaker 1: a there's a mayor of Liverpool, and there is a
Speaker 1: board in Liverpool. And I had purchased the building and
Speaker 1: we were ready to go, and we were told that
Speaker 1: we couldn't make these movies because it wasn't zoned for
Speaker 1: commercial use. I said, so, okay, so this plan already
Speaker 1: starting off. Not so again. I said, what's a zoned for?
Speaker 1: They said it zoned for a school. It's zoned for
Speaker 1: either a trade school or or high school. I said, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to let's start a school. And we then
Speaker 1: went around to all the local university Syracuse University on
Speaker 1: a doga community college. When we went around and we
Speaker 1: pitched all of these colleges on what we were going
Speaker 1: to do, and we partnered with all the colleges to
Speaker 1: create internships where these students would come and they would
Speaker 1: work on our films and we would whoever was coming in,
Speaker 1: whatever producers, actors, directors would be the teachers and the
Speaker 1: mentors for all of these students, and we became a
Speaker 1: qualified trade trade school. That's just genius. But what we
Speaker 1: were doing it just to solve that initial challenge of
Speaker 1: you can't do business here. And what the result was
Speaker 1: was we created a local crew where there really was
Speaker 1: no local crew before. And the school is now a
Speaker 1: huge part of our business. We've I think we've we've
Speaker 1: had over one hundred crew members become union crew members
Speaker 1: having gone through our academy training program. So it was
Speaker 1: an accidental solve that resulted in um in a huge
Speaker 1: part of our business model. So fast forward how many
Speaker 1: years now as American hyve in operation five years and
Speaker 1: you've made how many movies over that time? Wow? That
Speaker 1: that is a very good question. I think close to fourteen,
Speaker 1: maybe fifteen, and COVID was COVID was was a struggle
Speaker 1: because nobody was making movies during COVID. We actually were
Speaker 1: think we were the first movie to movie studio to
Speaker 1: go back into production during COVID. And if you were
Speaker 1: all of these movies on Hulu, no, So the first
Speaker 1: one was bought by was Sony. It was distributed, bought
Speaker 1: and distributed by Sony called Holly Slept Over. Then there
Speaker 1: was Banana Split, which was universal. Then there was there
Speaker 1: was the Ultimate Playlist of Noise right Um. Then there
Speaker 1: was a movie called Big Time Adolescence which was bought
Speaker 1: by Hulu at Sundance. C Davidson was in that one
Speaker 1: from Saturday Night Live. Jason Orley wrote and directed the script.
Speaker 1: And we then made our deal with Hulu to do
Speaker 1: got It eight movies for Hulu. And now we're learning
Speaker 1: that you were doing more for them. Yeah, we have
Speaker 1: one more with Hulu on the original deal, and then
Speaker 1: we have another slate. We just closed a deal to
Speaker 1: do another slate of films for them, which we're really
Speaker 1: excited about because we've had a pretty amazing working relationship
Speaker 1: with So. How looking back at you know, you took
Speaker 1: a really interesting risk. Did it play out the way
Speaker 1: you thought it was. Did you learn things that maybe
Speaker 1: you weren't even expecting. This played out so differently than
Speaker 1: anything I could have ever imagined. I didn't really have
Speaker 1: a full plan when I was going into it. I
Speaker 1: was kind of like, Oh, this could be this could work,
Speaker 1: this could be fun, and we'd go make a few
Speaker 1: movies and see if this works. This could be a
Speaker 1: fun thing. I was going to do them out a
Speaker 1: little bit higher of a budget and with the hope
Speaker 1: of everything being theatrical, and then theatrical basically was killed
Speaker 1: during our first release of Banana Split, and Big Time
Speaker 1: Adolescents were supposed to be theatrically released and they were
Speaker 1: so Banana Split came out the week that Tom Hanks
Speaker 1: announced that he had COVID and the NBA was canceled
Speaker 1: right about March twenty twenty, I want to say yeah.
Speaker 1: And then Big Time Adolescence was scheduled to come out
Speaker 1: theatrially two weeks later, and that basically changed our entire
Speaker 1: business model into just stream a streaming business model. The
Speaker 1: biggest thing I probably didn't expect was the impact on
Speaker 1: the local community and economy. Um. I've had so many
Speaker 1: people who are in Syracuse who who've wanted to be
Speaker 1: in the film industry who just didn't have the opportunity
Speaker 1: because they can't leave Syracuse for you know, family reasons
Speaker 1: or financial reasons, and people people who have been working
Speaker 1: with us now for four or five years. And what
Speaker 1: he didn't expect is that now every there are so
Speaker 1: many people who depend on us. How people to employ
Speaker 1: there full time? Probably ten okay, but we're consistently making films,
Speaker 1: so people make the bulk of their their living just
Speaker 1: working on our movies, which is a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: pressure because I I've had people say, oh, thank you,
Speaker 1: we can now have a family. My wife is now pregnant.
Speaker 1: Now we could feel good having your family, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh God, don't put that one on me. But that's
Speaker 1: the thing that I didn't I didn't expect to have
Speaker 1: the impact on the local community and feel like that
Speaker 1: was now my job more than actually making the movies,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. Sure, I feel more of a
Speaker 1: responsibility to continue to make movies for the local community
Speaker 1: and local economy then I that would have ever dropped
Speaker 1: up now is every movie that you're doing in American
Speaker 1: high in that sort of teen friendly vein that you
Speaker 1: set out to do, or do you branch out or
Speaker 1: so for the most part, um, the movies we're making
Speaker 1: are in the teen space, sort of the John Usian
Speaker 1: type films, but with a diverse cast and telling stories
Speaker 1: of characters that would have been in the background and
Speaker 1: John you use movies or like the butt of the
Speaker 1: joke and having them be the main characters. We have
Speaker 1: branched out if a script jumps out at us as
Speaker 1: being particularly special, like, um, we did a film called
Speaker 1: I Love My Dad, Yeah right, with Patton and James
Speaker 1: Morrissini wrote in and directed. It was just incredible and
Speaker 1: it was just one of those scripts where I started
Speaker 1: reading I couldn't put it down. So so we did
Speaker 1: do that film, and we will branch out if there's
Speaker 1: something special, But for the most part, we're doing high
Speaker 1: school high school stuff. That's our main focus. And describe
Speaker 1: the market today for those movies, because you were saying
Speaker 1: earlier that financially there was a time where Hollywood was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this doesn't make sense. Now I assume in the streaming
Speaker 1: age it makes a lot of sense, or maybe it's
Speaker 1: still to sledging to get these done. It's all tough.
Speaker 1: Everything's tough. It's not easy to get a film made
Speaker 1: at all. Every movie we've made so far has been
Speaker 1: a miracle and has taken a lot of work. I
Speaker 1: what I know is that people still like watching these movies.
Speaker 1: My kids who are My oldest is thirteen. All of
Speaker 1: his favorite comedies were from before he was born. So
Speaker 1: there's a market out there. It's just about figuring out
Speaker 1: a way to get it to this market. And that's
Speaker 1: what we've really been pushing to do. And you described,
Speaker 1: you know, John Hughes as someone who kind of loomed
Speaker 1: as an influence for these movies. I'm curious due today's
Speaker 1: teen movies. Are they just a completely different sensibility than
Speaker 1: back then or actually it's very similar. You No, I
Speaker 1: think it's it's it's very similar being a teenager's universal. Um,
Speaker 1: it's the same. You know, teenagers want the same thing
Speaker 1: now as they did back then. They want they're discovering
Speaker 1: who they are. There's you know, it's all about first
Speaker 1: It's the first time you fall in love, it's the
Speaker 1: first time you kind of discover your parents aren't perfect.
Speaker 1: The first time you you try alcohol, or you try drugs,
Speaker 1: or you you steal a car and driving into a
Speaker 1: lake or whatever that thing is that that's your first.
Speaker 1: The technology has changed, and the storytelling has the logistics
Speaker 1: of storytelling has changed because of technology. Um, the voices
Speaker 1: have changed because there are a lot more opportunity for
Speaker 1: people of color, um for for um, for people of
Speaker 1: the LTQ community to have a voice. But it's still
Speaker 1: all about discovering who you are and finding love and
Speaker 1: you know, feeling loved and popular and um. So it's
Speaker 1: it's all universal. It's just it's just updated logistically. But
Speaker 1: it's interesting to hear you describe kind of this diversity
Speaker 1: because it makes me think back to those teen movies,
Speaker 1: which we're not only kind of lily white cast wise,
Speaker 1: but like some of the things you watched you watch
Speaker 1: now some of the jokes they got away with then
Speaker 1: that were racially insensitive, and it's just sort of like it.
Speaker 1: Political correctness did not really exist in the Hughes age.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious, do you feel the weight of that
Speaker 1: as you're making movies today. Do you feel you have
Speaker 1: to be in too narrow a lane? Um, I don't
Speaker 1: know if we have to be in too narrow a lane.
Speaker 1: It's definitely I definitely feel it because we want to
Speaker 1: be telling stories a modern stories, and the modern age
Speaker 1: is political correctness. The it's definitely a challenge. It's definitely
Speaker 1: a challenge comedically for someone like me who was raised
Speaker 1: on Porky's and some of you know, some of the
Speaker 1: John Use films, which are just crazy. If you go
Speaker 1: back and you watch them, you're like, oh, my gosh,
Speaker 1: I can't believe they said that, or um, so it's not. So.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot. There's a big learning curve for
Speaker 1: for people my age who grew up that way, which
Speaker 1: is why I really love having first time directors and
Speaker 1: first time writers. In fact, we've had I think nine
Speaker 1: or ten first time directors and many of them female,
Speaker 1: queer people of color, and I'm I'm watching them and
Speaker 1: kind of providing the kind of the tools for them,
Speaker 1: but I want to see their voice. I want to
Speaker 1: see the story told through their eyes, if that makes sense. Totally. Now,
Speaker 1: to bring the conversation full circle, and we talk about
Speaker 1: something like murder Mystery too, which is not necessarily in
Speaker 1: the vein of the American high stuff. Do you do
Speaker 1: that kind of movie because you don't want to be pigeonholed.
Speaker 1: You want to be a director and a writer or
Speaker 1: a producer who's going to do other things, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think I did this movie because I
Speaker 1: got a call that Jennifer and Adam want to meet
Speaker 1: for me to direct a massive movie for them. It
Speaker 1: was a dream come true and I definitely could not
Speaker 1: say no to the opportunity. Sure, and if those opportunities
Speaker 1: come along, I know I'll weigh them out based on
Speaker 1: against what I have going on at American High. Being
Speaker 1: able to do these bigger films is definitely helpful for
Speaker 1: the American High model because it allows me to get
Speaker 1: it allows me to continue to make connection ends with
Speaker 1: cost and with crewe to have to learn more on
Speaker 1: how to make these films. So many people who are
Speaker 1: doing these larger movies want to come and work on
Speaker 1: the smaller, fun indeed films that we're doing. So it's been,
Speaker 1: it's been. It's been really helpful. It's been, and I'll
Speaker 1: continue to do them move forward if they let me. So,
Speaker 1: you know, a murder Mystery too could lead to a
Speaker 1: Murder Mystery three. Or you're doing Sandler's next project or
Speaker 1: Asison's next project at some point do you have to
Speaker 1: pick a lane though, or it's like, no, I gotta
Speaker 1: keep minding the American High Store, I can't do X.
Speaker 1: Or there's room for both. There's definitely room for both.
Speaker 1: I am incredibly grateful to have the greatest partner in
Speaker 1: the world, Will Phelps, who started as my assistant. He
Speaker 1: flew with me that night to on the Red Eye
Speaker 1: to go look at the school and has you know,
Speaker 1: he kind of had to take on a lot of
Speaker 1: the responsibility while I was doing some of the I
Speaker 1: did a show called Best Work Weekend Best Worst Weekend
Speaker 1: Ever on Netflix in LA while we were getting American
Speaker 1: High off the ground. So he really took on a huge,
Speaker 1: huge amount of responsibility. And he's an incredible producer and
Speaker 1: I have a lot of faith in him. If I'm
Speaker 1: going to go off and do something and take time,
Speaker 1: that good stuff is gonna happen. Is there a next
Speaker 1: level or a next phase for the American High business?
Speaker 1: Do you buy another high school and another part of
Speaker 1: the country or I don't know, at a junior high
Speaker 1: I mean, how does it work? We actually have been
Speaker 1: we've been we've been keeping our eyes open for another space,
Speaker 1: potentially a university a college so that when we graduate
Speaker 1: from high school we can go into the college space.
Speaker 1: We've been looking at various states again with tox incentives.
Speaker 1: One of the challenges with the upstate New York, which
Speaker 1: has an incredible incentive, it doesn't have above the lineup incentive.
Speaker 1: If so you're kind of limited to the amount of
Speaker 1: the size of the film you can make up there.
Speaker 1: That being said, there's a bill now that the Governor
Speaker 1: hokel is recommending a budget word includes above the line.
Speaker 1: They will be voting on that in April, and if
Speaker 1: that happens, and I hope it does, we're gonna try
Speaker 1: to really build an upstate New York and not necessarily
Speaker 1: look out of state. So American High could become American University.
Speaker 1: It's like you're building in an entire American cinematic universe.
Speaker 1: That was actually the initial That was actually the initial
Speaker 1: concept was to have American High be the the universe.
Speaker 1: It was a cinematic universe where the extra who would
Speaker 1: kind of be the nerd who is thrown into the
Speaker 1: locker in one film, was actually the star of night.
Speaker 1: And we were going that was the initial pitch and
Speaker 1: something we're hoping to get back to very soon. But yes,
Speaker 1: it's funny you bring up the American Eye Universe, which
Speaker 1: is something that we've been talking about for many, many years. Well,
Speaker 1: congratulations both on Murder Mystery Too and the renewal of
Speaker 1: the Hulu deal. Can't wait to see what movies come
Speaker 1: from you next, Jeremy, thanks for taking the time out.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Andrew. It's good to talk to you and
Speaker 1: it's so good to see it. This has been another
Speaker 1: episode of Strictly Business. Tune in next week for another
Speaker 1: helping of scintillating conversation with media movers and shakers, and
Speaker 1: please make sure you subscribe to the podcast to hear
Speaker 1: future episodes. Also leave a review in Apple Podcasts and
Speaker 1: let us know how we're doing