This is a transcript of SYS Podcast Episode 538 Re-inventing the Western with Joe Cornet .
Welcome to episode 538 of the Selling Your Screenplay podcast. I’m AshleyScott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger with sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I am interviewing writer, director, actor Joe Cornet. He was on the podcast in episode 531, where we dig into his early career and how he was able to transition from a career outside of the entertainment industry to inside the entertainment industry, writing and directing his own feature films. So definitely check out that episode 531 if you want to learn a little bit more about Joe’s background. But today he’s on the podcast to talk about his new Western feature film, The Wide West, where he introduces sumo wrestlers to the old Western mythology. So, we dig into this film and how this all came together, as well as some of his other projects. He’s got a lot going on, including a novel based on his own experiences in the entertainment industry and how some of his favorite films shaped his career and his writing. So stay tuned for that interview. If you find this episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leaving a comment on YouTube or retweeting the podcast on Twitter or liking or sharing it on Facebook. These social media shares really do help spread word about the podcast, so they’re very much appreciated. Any websites or links that I mentioned in the podcast can be found on my blog in the show notes. I also publish a transcript with every episode in case you’d rather read the show or look at something later on. You can find all the podcast show notes at www.sellingyourscreenplay.com slash podcast and then just look for episode 538. If you want my free guide, how to sell a screenplay in five weeks, you can pick that up by going to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. It’s completely free. You just put in your email address and I’ll send you a new lesson once per week for five weeks along with a bunch of bonus lessons. Teach the whole process of how to sell your screenplay in that guide. I’ll teach you how to write a professional log on and career letter and how to find agents, managers and producers who are looking for material. Really is everything you need to know to sell your screenplay. Just go to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide.
So now just a quick few words about what I’ve been working on. So, this is the last episode before I begin shooting my feature rom-com. We begin production October 27th and we’re going to shoot for three weeks. We completed casting last week and now I’m really starting to focus on some of the more creative decisions. I’m going back to all the locations. In fact, I’m going to go visit one of my locations after I record this podcast and just start really getting a hard look at these locations. And then I’m going to go in and start to tweak the screenplay to really match the locations that we have. Starting to come up with a shot list. This is going to be a rough shot list. I’m starting to work with the actors, putting together the costume, book, production, design, all of that sort of stuff, which I find sort of fun because that’s really, as I said, sort of the creative part of this. And this is super low budget. So, we don’t have a production designer, a costume designer and all this stuff. But hopefully I’ve allowed myself enough time to kind of do these positions. And it all comes down to sort of my vision as the director. I mean, I feel like these are creative decisions that are interesting and fun to do. There’s not, frankly, a lot of production design. Obviously, the costumes, it’s a modern day. So it’s not like there’s really a ton to do. It’s really, for the costumes, it’s a matter of just working with the actors and using the clothes that they have to sort of bring these scenes and bring this vision together. And most of the production design will be where we rented this great bar. It’s a fantastic bar. It’s got a lot of just atmosphere and stuff. So there’s not going to be any production design. That’s like six of our days of our 15-day shoot, so a little less than half. So a lot of the stuff is sort of already ready to go. But I’ve got to create like, this is a young guy. He’s like a 25-year-old guy. So I’ve got to create a bedroom that looks like a 25-year-old guys and a living room that looks like a 25-year-old department. That’s about the most in terms of the production design. But again, these are interesting things and these do relate to the screenplay. They do relate to the character. So, it should be fun putting all that together over this next month, the final month, as I said before I start shooting. I’m still looking for some extras on November 11th and November 12th. So, if you live in Southern California or free either of those days and want to help me out, please do email me info@sellingyourscreenplay.com. That November 11th date is going to be up in Ventura. Just it’s the southern end of Ventura, the city of Ventura right where the 126 and the 101 meet. And then the November 12th day. I found this theater. It’s really, it’s a cool old theater that’s kind of been shut down and it’s by the Camarillo Airport. So, a little north of Los Angeles. It’s a huge theater that apparently was built. It’s like a sort of a decommissioned military base and they’ve got this huge theater that’s not being used. So that should be a good location. It should be easy to shoot. There’s plenty of parking and sort of just out a little bit away from town. So, there’s not going to be a lot of problems or any issues we’ll be able to shoot there all day. So, as I said, I’m definitely looking for some extras. If you have any interest in helping me out, definitely drop me an email info@sellingyourscreenplay.com.
So anyways, needless to say, these are all the things I’ve been working on lately and will continue to work on for the next few months. As I said, we’re shooting October 27th for three weeks till November. I think like 13th or 14th is our last day. And then post-production starts. And a great thing about a micro-budget feature film like this, there’s no super rush, but that’s definitely part of the creative process as well and some of the most fun part of this. You’re really putting the movie together. You really feel like you’re building this movie. So that’ll be, it’ll probably take six months or a year to really have a polished completed film. But that’s, again, it’s really part of the creative process. And I find just going through and watching the various cuts of the film, giving notes to the editor. I feel like that’s, it’s a very concrete process. And as I said, you really feel, you really kind of can feel the weight of all of that work that you’ve done, getting these shots, getting everything together. So again, that should be a pretty fun process. Even though it’s probably going to take six months or a year. Anyways, that’s what I’m working on. So, stay tuned for more updates. Now let’s get into the main segment. Today I am interviewing writer and filmmaker, Joe Cornette. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome back, Joe, to the Selling Your Screenplay podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Joe Cornet
Thank you for having me. As always, Ashley, I appreciate it. And I thank you for your continued support.
Ashley
So, just a quick note for the listeners, you and I talked back in episode 506 that we talked a lot about your origin story, how you got into the entertainment industry and how you got some of your early screenplays produced. So, if anybody has interest in that, definitely check that out. I’ll link to that in the show notes. But today you’re here to talk about your latest Western film, The Wild West, which you directed and starred in. And also, you have a number of book projects that you’re working on. So, we’ll dig into those as well. So just as I was preparing for the interview, I started to research The Wild West starring Alexander Noweski. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about him. I actually had him on the podcast years ago, probably five years ago. I mean, he’s just a really interesting guy. Obviously, he’s just a real sort of like Schwarzenegger. He’s just a guy that just kind of is just a blot of personality, just a get-or-done kind of guy. But maybe you can talk about how did you meet him and how did you develop a relationship with him and ultimately work on this film with him, which he was not only a star, but he was a co-writer of this project as well.
Joe Cornet
He was a co-creator and he was also the producer as well, one of the producers, but my origin story with Alexander is kind of funny because we had a mutual friend, Sean Murray, who’s a great composer of music, film, soundtracks, and he’s got, I can’t even tell you how many films he had scored in the last 30 years, even he’s lost track, and he’s done a lot of major scores like for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and just a whole ton of great credits. Anyway, he and I were working together on my third film, Promise, so this is several years back, and he thought it would be a good idea for me to meet Alexander, and so we met, and this was sometime in late 2020, and we just, we hit it off, and Alex and I, and we started discussing, let’s make a motion picture together, and at first I pitched the idea of another Western to him, and he listened, and he was very intrigued by the idea because, as he put it, you know, who would imagine him in a Western? But he came back to me and he said, I’d like to do this, I’d like to tackle this genre, but can we reframe it so I can, I can fit in, in my image, in the way I present myself? I said absolutely, so we came up with the story, and the great Craig Hammond wrote the script, and that of course became Gunfight at Rio Bravo. That was our first film together. The Wide West is our fourth film together, which will be my seventh feature film that I have in international release, and the way that came about was about a year and a half ago, one of Alexander’s very dear and closest friend, Andrew Freund, who is the head of the USA Sumo Association, and he travels all over the world representing Sumo wrestling, and between him and Alexander having a conversation without me one day, they thought it would be, what if we were to incorporate the idea of this ancient Japanese art and sport into a Western context? And we kind of use this as our template. Back in the early 1970s, there was a very famous movie with Charles Bronson, Elaine Delaun, and Toshiro Mafuni called Red Sun. That dealt more with samurai and ronin in the Old West. It’s a cool movie. I advise anybody to check it out. So we all got together and we figured that, well, you know, there was a true story in 1907, a contingent of Sumo wrestlers came to this country to meet with Teddy Roosevelt, and this really happened. And we thought, wouldn’t it be fun if they got stuck in some dangerous gambling town, their train breaks down, and they got stuck in the middle of, you know, a lot of problems. And so that’s basically what we did. And we also have some martial arts in there because there’s Kaz Kobayashi, who plays the manager of the Sumos in the film. He is a great martial artist himself. And we have some great sword fights with him in the saloon and elsewhere. And one of the two Sumos we have in it is an expert at with a bow and arrow. And believe me, we exploited that as well. So we’ve got a lot of different elements that are not normally in a Western. And I defy you to tell me when the Sumo has ever appeared in a Western. And initially, when this idea was put forth to me, I thought, we’ve got to be very careful here. Because if we don’t present it the right way, you know, all of a sudden, we’re in Mel Brooks land, you know, we’re like the saloon fight at the end of blazing saddles that spills over into the MGM musical stage set. So Craig Hammond, again, along with Andrew Freund, concocted the story, Craig wrote the script. And I thought it was pretty good. And so with some minor changes to it, we filmed it. And I didn’t know what we were going to wind up with, I had a pretty good idea. But, you know, I was very concentrated on not making this look silly, but also doing it for the hoot that it is. And when we premiered it in LA, we actually had a screening for it at the Japan LA Foundation back in May. I was not sure what the audience would say. And we had like, I don’t know, 300 people at the screening. And they went wild. And a bunch of audience members came up to me afterwards and said, oh my God, this thing is a hoot. It’s crazy. It’s wild. It’s chaotic. I’ve never seen anything like this before. And so I was very pleased with what we had. And I’ve gotten a lot of nice notices about it. And it’s just a wild ride. It’s very different from anything I’ve ever made. It’s very different from the real Bravo franchise movies. It’s very different from my horror stuff. It’s very different from my early Westerns, which you know that I tried to make very kind of more serious classic traditional statements in my first three Westerns. This throws all that to the wind and it’s just wild.
Ashley
So, you made a comment, you know, these guys wrote the script, you read it, you liked it. Maybe you can speak to that a little bit. Um, specifically what do you like? And I asked the question sort of in a general way. Like, I know there’s people listening to this podcast that are screenwriters, and so if someone has wit written a Western, um, maybe you can just give us some just general advice and then specifically, what were some of the things that sort of hooked you with this particular screenplay and story?
Joe Cornet
Well, I think the hook for me, and hopefully the hook has been for the audience these last few months that it’s been streaming, is just the sheer uniqueness of having these two internationally-renowned actual sumo wrestling champions that are known in the sumo world. I mean, these guys are superstars in that world, and there are superstars in Japan. And I think that I think the hook was just it was so unusual, putting these guys in the context of a Western basing it on a true story, which it actually happened. Now, what happens in the film for the main body of the film, pure conjecture and fiction, you know, but we thought, let’s get these guys into some action. And we did. And so that I thought that that’s so unusual, that that was what sold me on doing it.
Ashley
And are there some specific things when writing for this genre? You know, when I talk to horror writers, you know, there’s just, you got to have a scare every 10 pages, like comedy writers, you got to have, you know, four jokes per page. Maybe you can just speak to some of sort of the tropes to a Western like this. And there’s things like, as someone who’s never written a Western, never been involved in a Western, like, you know, like having one horse is okay, but having a scene with 10 horses, that just blows the budget up. Are there some things like that that you can sort of give us as someone who’s done a bunch of Westerns some tips? How do you get the most bang for your buck production wise with something like this?
Joe Cornet
Well, I’ve been very lucky because I have a lot of connections to the equestrian world and with various western towns and sets and you know, from here to Arizona to Texas. And I’m lucky, luckier than most because of these connections I have, I have certain breaks and I could I could produce more economically because of people that I know, but I would say if you’re writing a Western now, if you’re writing a Western say like my third film Promise and I was very much it was very much on my mind to create a spaghetti Western flair to it as my homage to a to, you know, my favorite of the western genre really is the Italian Westerns, but I love John Wayne too and I love Kerry Cooper. So I wanted to give a nod to that, but I also wanted to have the traditional elements that you would find of good guy, evil guy in the middle, you know, sort of I used to treat it like iconic mythological characters and I’ve said this to you before that I often liken the Western genre to Greek myth because you can take many of those mythical stories and transplant them into the Western genre very easily because they, you know, two thousand years ago, they were reflecting the same themes that Western movies when they are at their best try to do. That’s what I was trying to do with a prayer for the damned incident of guilt Ridge and certainly with promised and I wanted that epic feel and look and I knew how to write it by that time and I knew what I could get my hands on and what my budget would be.
So, I wrote it specific for that. When we come to something like this now, I didn’t write the screenplay here. Craig Hammond did and he did a fine job as always but with something like this, you’re in a different territory altogether because yes, we have a lot of the mythological themes of good versus evil, honor, love, duty, things like this and that’s certainly exemplified in Alexander’s character who was actually kind of different because in this one, he’s not it’s not that he’s not heroic in this one. He’s truly playing like all ends against the middle and he’s truly out for himself and he plays a gambler and instead of being like he was in the two Rio Bravo films where he’s like out to get the bad guys no matter what at no, you know, at his cost, you know, this guy is a little bit more. He’s not duplicitous, but he’s a little bit more darker but not in a sinister way. Now, I played the villain in this which was a first for me. I actually played a villain years ago in a smaller film than I had a great time with it, but this is the first time I’ve actually played a villain and I got to tell you actually I loved every second of it. I’d get on set in costume. I’d walk around the town set with my gang. You know, I get the feel of it and I really had a good time and I tried to play this guy a little bit more kind of differently than just a traditional mean-spirited sinister villain. I mean, he’s sinister, but there’s an insouciance about him and sort of he’s very different from other villains. So when you’re doing something like this and you’re incorporating the Japanese elements, the Japanese culture elements, there’s a sumo wrestling match in it to settle a bet. The sumos get involved in the fight against the bad guys. Again, this is now you’re outside of the realm of what I was writing with the movie say promise because you’re just in different territory entirely. You’re in you’re in what you’re in Western land, but you’re in this wild kind of like who would even think of sumos in the Old West and indeed it did happen. Maybe not the way we portrayed it, but you know, so I think you have to be with something like this even more careful. uh then approaching say a traditional western or a spaghetti type western or something like that because like I said it’s a balance that you have to do and um you have to really be careful because it could very easily slip into parody and I think we basically pulled it off.
Ashley
So, you mentioned once you got the script, you liked it, but there were still a few changes before you shot it, especially since you are a writer yourself.
I wonder if you can give us some specific examples of what were some of those changes you made to get into production? Were they just technical stuff? Was it more production slash budget changes? Were there tone story changes? You’re talking a lot about tone. So I wonder if that was part of some of the changes, making sure you get that tone right.
Joe Cornet
The tone didn’t change but you know with every film you make on whatever level of budget you’re working with you have your script and then you have what you actually shoot and very rarely, you know, I was lucky with Promise every word that I wrote is on that screen you know um but you know things happen sometimes you lose actors sometimes the set situation changes sometimes there’s just not enough time to get everything that is there so you need to you need to be accepting that you’re going to have to what was it William Faulkner said kill your darlings and uh and edit and sometimes you have to edit out of necessity either for time or budget or whatever I mean you know I’ve had situations where not many but where actors their car breaks down they can’t make it that day so we’ve got to shoot around it which means that when they do show up we have to eliminate portions of things with this there were changes that were made um onset but the basic structure of the story remained intact there were a couple of characters that were cut and they were cut for not economic reasons but maybe story economy to make because one of the ways a thing like this has to has to do has to form like is it has to just rattle on just very boom, boom, boom, boom, boom it can’t you can’t get into a lot of sidebars and different character you know offshoots and things like that so some of that had to be cut. Whereas I was always a big fan especially when I was doing my earlier films of giving these long sidebars of dialogue to like characters that maybe only had one or two scenes but it was interesting, it was character, again it was tone with something like this it needs to crackle on like a like a freight train and just boom
Ashley
So, once you had your package together, you had your actors, you had your script, you’re the director. How do you go about getting something like this finance as an independent film? Obviously, you have a track record of Westerns. Did you guys go back to those same financiers? Did you have those relationships? Maybe you could just speak to that a little bit. Just how do you get something like this green lit?
Joe Cornet
Well Alexander and I have our own little sources and secrets for finding funding for these projects and largely we produce these projects by ourselves. We do have sources for outside funding we utilize that on this one but we have a pretty good system because one of the important things to remember when you’re making any kind of film is not just to have a strategy for shooting the movie but a complete you know from A to Z strategy meaning you have the pre-production schedule you have the production schedule you have the post-production and you have the strategy of distribution already in place basically before you make the movie.
Alex and I are very lucky because we have a great distributor who works with us and is to some degree you know gets involved early on in the process in helping to figure out how to shape this production so they can more readily market it you know like they will often come back and say you know while you’re doing this we need more action sequences because we could sell it better you know things like this. So one has to be mindful of that when making any film something like this kind of sold itself because you know when the distributor heard what the story was it’s like wow that’s crazy I’ve never seen or heard anything like that let’s you know can’t wait you have to have an overall strategy and we have that in place in every production we go into and like I said we have our own sources for funding and we finance them ourselves you know we like to be truly independent filmmakers in the truest sense of the word.
Ashley
Gotcha. Gotcha. So, let’s talk about what you’re working on next. What are some of the projects that you’re working on? I know you, when I talked to you last time, you had a number of novels that you had put out. So maybe you can speak to that. What are you working on next? And what is your project’s horizon look like?
Joe Cornet
Well, I’ve still got my book A Prayer for the Damned is available on Barnes and Noble. Okay, it’s doing very well. And I am working on my second book, which is actually the book that I set out to write initially. But I instead wrote this one. But the book I’m writing now, which is as yet to be titled, and I will be handing it over to my publisher within the next 30 days, hopefully getting it out for a Christmas release, is basically a sort of memoir of me and how I came into this business and, and snippets of what my various careers were over the previous couple of decades, and how I got into this and how I sort of got into the filmmaking. It’s always been a hobby of mine, because I’ve always loved cameras and photography and things like that. But I’m going to tell the story of what I did and what happened to me and how it worked for me interspersed with my life when I was in my 20s and my 30s and, and then also chapters about films that influenced me. And these are not like, like I always like to say the AFI top 10 films ever made these are these are some unusual choices. And but these are films I’m not saying that these films I will write about are the greatest movies ever made. These are great movies that really heavily influenced my vision, how to write, how to act, how to direct and…
Ashley
Can you give us an example of one of these films?
Joe Cornet
Well, one of them is Cape Fear, the original Cape Fear with Robert Mitchum and Greg Peck. That film has intrigued me ever since I first saw it.
Ashley
That one might be an AFI Top 100 film.
Joe Cornet
It might be, but I’ve got my quick list is right here, Rashomon.
Ashley
Okay, yeah.
Joe Cornet
Charade, with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, The Great Escape, Papillon, Cartoon, because I wanted to have a big epic 60s, you know, widescreen film. Of course, I have to throw Orson Welles in there, but I don’t have the usual suspects like Touch of Evil, which is a great movie, one of my favorites, or Citizen Kane, Magnificent Ambersons. I chose F for Fake, which is a great movie. I highly recommend anyone check that out. Patton, The Roaring Twenties, For a Few Dollars More, It’s a Mad, Mad World, Doctor Strangelove, Eight and a Half, Some Like a Hot Sunset Boulevard, Network. I even have the Blues Brothers in there. So it’s a smattering. Now, I don’t know how many, like 10 more on my list. I don’t know how many of these are going to make the cut. I’m going to try and hold it to about 10 movies. But like I said, they’re not the usual suspect movies. They’re just films that informed my vision. And you know, that’s pretty idiosyncratic list.
Ashley
So, what happens to a book like that? Is it some way going to be a film project? It’s going to be your memoir and eventually it gets turned into a fictional film of some sort.
Joe Cornet
Well, I don’t know if I don’t know what the salability would be for a film version of my life as such, although it’s been pretty, pretty interesting ride so far. But I, I’m looking at this purely as to book, and sort of, if it can help anybody, my story is very unusual, as you know, how I got into this, how I started making films, and who I started making films with. I mean, I’ve made films with Don Murray, Eric Roberts, you know, a whole host of people that just were wonderful to work with. And I never would have thought this was possible, you know, 20 years ago. But here I am, and I’m still making them. And I’m grateful and appreciative and blessed and humbled that people actually want to watch my movies. And by the way, this, this one, the Wide West has a hell of a cast. Check out our, our, well, the great Carrie Goodwin is in this one. And she plays a very interesting role. Tatiana Nava, who is very good. Check her out in this film. As I said, Kazuko Byashi, and our two Sumo’s are just great. But we have a whole host of other folks in it, Nick Bailey, who plays the town judge. And of course, Alexander is very different in this. So it’s a very interesting treat for people that are used to seeing our normal stuff, because this is going to take them down a whole different side road.
Ashley
So how does a book like that work? How long do you spend working on it? Um, and then it goes to the publisher. He gives you notes and you do a round of rewrites?
Joe Cornet
Generally, it goes something like that. With my first book, I put it together, gave it to my publisher, and he had only minor suggestions of which I incorporated. And something like this, I would imagine he would probably work a little bit closer with the with the actual edit to have it be a good length, but not overly long, and certainly not indulgent about me, but, you know, my adventures, which are a part of this, and these films. And I’m and one of the things that, in fact, interesting, you asked that because one of the problems with film books, books about film, okay. And I’ve got a bunch of them here behind me.
Ashley
I’ve got a bunch of them as well.
Joe Cornet
And but one of the downsides of doing a book like that where you’re talking about great movies is every author practically who writes one of these things gives the boring synopsis of the movie and just to stage, I think, how the author is going to then talk about the film critically. I’m going to steer clear of that. So, if you haven’t seen the film, I’m going to write enough. Like if I’m writing about eight and a half, for instance, I’m going to give you just enough on Fellini and just enough on the production. But I’m not going to board the reader with the plot. I’ll let the reader, if he or she has not seen the Fellini film, go out and explore it on their own. So, I’m going to talk about it more from a visual standpoint of why something like Fellini’s eight and a half means so much to me. Why on the opposite end of the spectrum does a movie like Cartoon with Lawrence Olivier and Charlton Heston mean so much to me. And I will explain from that angle. And my publisher actually, I was already going this way with it, but my publisher also suggested, please dispense with the boring synopsis of the movies that you talk about. So, anyway, this should be completed in final draft form very soon. And like I say, hopefully get it out in the stores by Christmas.
Ashley
Perfect. Yeah. And I have to have you back on the podcast. That would be fascinating to do a deep dive into one of these films. And then it will sort of lead into the rest of your book. But we’ll have to we’ll have to circle back early next year and we’ll do another episode because I’d like to just hear some of your thoughts on some of these movies. Probably not eight and a half was never one of my my favorites. But some of these other movies you mentioned, I think, are, you know, I’ve seen them and they’ve impacted me as well. So it’ll be interesting to hear your thoughts.
Joe Cornet
Well, it’s like, you know, Steve McQueen is one of my favorite actors, okay? But you can talk about Bullet, which is an obvious choice because it’s a great movie. You could also talk about The Getaway, which is one of my favorite Peckinpah films because it’s a great movie. But every film book that includes a chapter on McQueen talks about Bullet. And if they don’t talk about Bullet, they talk about The Getaway. So, I’m thinking, okay, in a case like this, why not Papillon? Papillon influenced me. When I first saw that as a kid, I’m like, my God, what a story. And he’s so perfect in that. And nobody really talks about that movie. That may have been one of his finest acting jobs in his career, you know? So that’s where I’m kind of taking a different approach to these films.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. So, when we were preparing for the interview, you had mentioned a book, The Last Lawman, that you were involved with the author. Maybe you can just tell us quickly about that. It sounds like a fascinating story by a fascinating guy.
Joe Cornet
Well, my very dear friend of a number of decades, Nils Gravelius, who is a published author himself, he’s written a lot of crime fiction, he’s written all kinds of articles for various journals and publications, and he happens to be one of the leading private investigators in the United States, and he’s done a lot of important case work over the years. He used to be a Pinkerton man when he first got started, when he first got licensed, and he spun off onto his own and he’s had an amazing career. So, he has written a book which is going to be published in June of 2026, and it’s called The Last Lawman, and it’s his story, it’s his memoir. He talks about growing up, he talks about his career in the United States Army, he was in army intelligence, he was stationed in South Korea for a while, he has a very a lot of interesting stories about that, but then he talks about his cases he worked on, and he has different chapters, like my favorite is What is a Psychopath, you know, so he goes through various levels of criminality, and he uses his own case work to describe, okay, what is a psychopath? Okay, I worked on this case, and here’s this guy, okay, and I am in it sort of tangentially, because not that I was necessarily involved in any of these cases, but in some ways I was, and I’ve known this gentleman for so long, and I have such a degree of respect and admiration for what he has done with his life and his career and the people that he has helped, and I think, and I have an advanced copy of the book here, and I have read it, and it’s gripping, it’s a page turner, and it’s all true, okay.
Ashley
And is this something you’re thinking of trying to adapt into a screenplay, some of these various stories in his life?
Joe Cornet
Yeah, I would certainly. That is certainly one thing that he is discussing now. I don’t know if he would like me to tackle the screenplay. I would certainly love to do that for him. But yes, we have had discussions about making this into some kind of a limited series. On the other hand, he and I are also working on a crime caper film set in the early 1970s, gritty, hard as nails, tough. We concocted this story over lunch one day some months ago. And I was so smitten with the idea of doing a movie like this. I thought, my God, this could be this could be my getaway. And so I’m working on that screenplay. And it’s called Inside Out. And that will be very interesting. And we’re hoping to definitely produce that one first. And of course, I continue, as you know, to work with the Mitchum family in developing the two projects that were created, the two original written projects by John Mitchum, younger brother to Robert. And that is the first one is Songs of History, which I think we’ve talked about on your show, which is chapters of the iconic folk songs of America dating back, you know, the last 200 years and the stories behind them. And that’ll be told in sort of a chapter format. And that would be something like a limited series, I should imagine. Or maybe we’ll sell it to somebody like Angel Studios or something that could show it in chapter form. And then, of course, John Mitchum wrote a great book called them Ornery Mitchum Boys. It’s a hell of a read. And it’s about John and Robert growing up, coming out to California, riding the rails, getting involved with all kinds of adventures. And they’re kind of almost accidental stumbling into achieving literally the American dream because both of them became very prolific actors. They had different types of careers, but they both worked constantly from the day they were hired in film. And it’s a very interesting story.
Ashley
So, I’ve been asking a lot of my guests lately about AI and their thoughts on AI, and especially as an independent producer, just what are your thoughts on? I mean, especially too, since you’re an actor, and I think actors are definitely going to be part of the disruption. And so, maybe you can speak to that. What are your thoughts on AI? Good thing, bad thing. What do you think it’s going to do to the landscape, and just as an independent producer, how do you think you’re going to digest it?
Joe Cornet
I think it will necessarily change a great many things in some ways it already has. Is it a threat? I’m not sure I’d call it a threat but it kind of is. I mean if they could when you look on any kind of social media and you see all these amazing AI recreations and like I saw one the other day of what was it if they had made the Avengers or something like that in the 70s and they had all these 70s actors like Bronson and Eastwood and Gene Wilder and Farrah Fawcett and it looked so damn good and I thought – oh, shit this could be. I’m not afraid of it but I think we should be cautious about it. The studios have long wanted to get rid of writers for instance.
Ashley
Hmm. And see, as a writer, I mean, as a writer/producer, I look at, and I’m in the process of doing some casting out. This is something I don’t hear talked about. And I’m going to throw this out to you since you’re a producer, but also an actor, one of the things actors are missing in this whole thing is in the entire equation of producing a film, the actors are the most difficult to deal with. Y ou know, sag is difficult to deal with. I got my crew lined up. It’s no problem. And I do think that there’s something to be said for like, as a producer, I’m sitting here thinking, if I didn’t need to hire a bunch of actors, it would just make my life so much easier. And part of that is because actors are difficult to deal with. Now, some of it’s not their fault. I mean, you’re dealing with a lot of people and different things crew. It’s more of just, you know, mixing and you can just about put any guy in there as you’re, you know, it’s, it’s easier to slot people in and out. So I get some of that. But like you’re, you doing Westerns, I can see it would, it’s not going to be long before AI is good enough to do like a six second, you know, establishing shot of the town with some horses and some carriages and some this, and then you, and then you shoot the, the actors, the real actors in a saloon. You know, you go, you have the establishing shot and then you’re in the saloon and it’s sort of, you could get it to match up, but that’s an expensive shot. Seeing a bunch of horses go down. It’s a six section shot that costs, you know, half your budget and you can do that stuff with AI. So I think there’s going to be a sort of a marriage there where, and certainly in the next few years, you know, that that’s going to be helpful for independent producers.
Joe Cornet
I agree and we’re already there because as I said, you see this, you see some of these silly things on social media. And I frankly can’t believe how authentic they look, you know, and so it the technology is only going to get better. That’s a very interesting proposition of, you know, saving certain budgetary aspects.
Ashley
Well, I’ll give you an example for this film that I’m doing. It sort of has a Tik Tok, you know, element to it where the guy’s trying to be a Tik Toker. So I’m using a lot of the Tik Tok aesthetics as an example. I have a scene where a bunch of extremely attractive women come in and hand in applications at this bar. They’re all applying. Well, getting extremely attractive women in L.A. is costly because they know they’re attractive. Super attractive women are always working. So, I’m going to do it like a tick tock bit where you have the guy in green screen basically narrating the thing. And I’m going to get AI to just create still images. And we’re just going to flash through. And this is a common thing that we see on tick tock, where someone narrates a bunch of A.I. images. So, I’m going to use that for, you know, 15 or 20 seconds instead of hiring, you know, three or four super attractive women and shooting that scene. It’s going to save me quite a bit of money on the budget. So, I’m just going to incorporate that in there again, more and more. I think those are going to be some of the choices that people make. But it’s really a budgetary thing. And I had an actor that read the script reach out to me and he was sort of offended by this. But as a as an independent producer, you know, I just need to save money. I just need to create the best movie I can create. And I’m going to use every tool that is in my arsenal to do that.
Joe Cornet
I think that’s smart. And I think that you just summed up probably the most intelligent way to deal with AI is don’t necessarily look at it as a threat, but look at it as another tool in your box that you could utilize. And as I say, it will continue just to improve, improve, improve. So, something like what you just described is is actually attractive, you know, for
Ashley
Cause we’re producers though, because, and we, and it’s our money, you know, we’re the ones raising the money. We’re the ones producing it. So just, just that, you know, the, the, the money savings, if I can create the same movie for half the cost, again, I’m not trying to put anybody out of work. I’m not trying to change the world or anything. I’m just trying to make the best movie I can make.
Joe Cornet
You bet. And, you know, when and I’ll deal with some of these themes in my book, because when you look at some of these films, I’m going to talk about, you know, like, I look at movies I watched growing up, and there would be no way to make many of those films today. It just you could, but you know, you would have to have some exorbitant budget, like, how could you make a film like Lawrence of Arabia today?
Ashley
Yes, something like Wizard of Oz is a film that my kids really love. I think it’s one of the best films ever made, but you couldn’t make Wizard of Oz. Just you would have the social pressure of mistreating the little people. You would have just, there’ll be so many things that just wouldn’t work about that movie today, but it does stand as just one of the great, I mean, great screenplay, great acting, great production value. But I don’t think it could, I don’t think it could be made today.
Joe Cornet
I mean, and yeah, and how could you match that MGM production value in that film? I don’t think it would be possible. No.
Ashley
Yeah.
Joe Cornet
so prohibitive budget-wise and there again, there becomes your sort of, I guess, AI contribution as you just outlined very intelligently.
Ashley
So just quick to sum everything up, how can people see the Wild West? What’s the release schedule going to be like for that?
Joe Cornet
The Wide West is currently, I think it’s still streaming on 2B, double check me on that. But it’s about to, we’ve got it on a new platform. And I’ll send you a link when I get that from Alex. He just announced it the other day and I apologize for not, but all you have to do is just punch in the Wide West, W-I-D-E, the Wide West and it’ll show up and all the streaming platforms will show up for it. It’s currently on Zoomo Play, I’m sorry, it’s currently on Zoomo Play and it’s going to get, the DVD release is just about to happen and you know.
Ashley
And so what’s the best way for people to keep up with you what you’re doing Twitter Facebook Instagram anything you’re comfortable sharing I will round up for the show notes
Joe Cornet
Absolutely. On Facebook, I am on Joe Cornet, C-O-R-N-E-T, very easy. On Instagram, I am San Rafael Productions, S-A-N-R-A-F-A-E-L Productions. And those are the two best places. I’m on X too, but, you know, there’s so many platforms to manage and sometimes daunting. Yeah, like, where am I getting the most bang for my buck on social media? And I seemingly am still getting my best watch on the old standbys of Facebook and Instagram.
Ashley
Perfect, perfect. Well, Joe, I appreciate you taking some time to come and talk with me again. Good luck with this film and good luck all your future films. And I look forward to having another chat with you sometime soon. Thank you.
Joe Cornet
I appreciate everything and thank you for your support of all the movies, no problems, everything. It’s always a pleasure.
Ashley
Always a pleasure. We’ll talk to you later. Thank you. Bye.
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