This is a transcript of SYS 478 – Making A James Bond Documentary With Matthew Bauer.
Welcome to Episode 478 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger with sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I’m interviewing writer-director Matthew Bauer, who just did a cool documentary film called The Other Fellow. It’s a fascinating story about having a famous name. In this case, the name James Bond affects people in their real life. Matthew goes into the whole story about how he put this film together, made it happen, and how he’s been able to market it and get some traction with the film as well. So, stay tuned for that interview.
SYS’s six figure screenplay contest is open for submissions, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. Our regular deadline is May 31st. If your script is ready, definitely submit now to save some money. We’re looking for low budget shorts and features. I’m defining low budget as less than six figures. In other words, less than 1 million US dollars. We’ve got lots of industry judges reading the scripts in later rounds, we’re giving away 1000s in cash and prizes. We’ve had a number of options and sales from the contest. And this is only our fourth year. So, we’re getting a nice bit of traction with these scripts. There’s also lots of producers looking for high quality, low budget scripts that are short, we have the short film category for these scripts, so 30 pages or less. If you have a short script that’s a low budget, definitely consider submitting that as well. If you’d like to learn more about the contest, or check out some of the industry judges that are participating, just go to sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. If you find this episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leave me 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’ll find all the podcast show notes at www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/podcast and then just look for episode number 478. If you want my free guide How to Sell screenplay in five weeks can pick that up by going to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. It’s completely free. 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. I teach the whole process of how to sell your screenplay in that guide. I’ll teach you how to write a professional logline and query 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 let’s get into the main segment today. I’m interviewing writer director Matthew Bauer, here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome Matthew to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Matthew Bauer
Thank you, Ashley. I’m a longtime listener of this. It’s really cool to be here, actually.
Ashley
Well, thank you. Thank you. So, to start out, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background. Where do you grow up and how do you get interested in the entertainment business?
Matthew Bauer
I grew up in Adelaide in Australia, which is a town in Australia. And I was always like the movie kid, I actually used to tape Entertainment Tonight at 3am every night and watched it the next day. And that was my kind of source of movie. And then when I was there, I discovered the Bond films. And that was my kind of big intro into cinema loving. And especially like the twisty thrillers of the 1990s were a big kind of thing of kind of elevating me into a certain kind of, especially the thriller genre, the usual suspects was a very big moment for me, because that was the first thing that made me sit forward in my chair and go, Oh my God, you know, this movie really did a number kind of on me, and then kind of on from that kind of the kind of lost and 24 were really big ones for me. And I always kind of like that stuff that kind of grabs you and throws you in different directions. And then throughout high school, I was that kid who was like, you know, making short films in the AV club with me and my mates, you know, jumping off balconies at school trying to make action sequences and that kind of thing. And then what happened was when it got to kind of college time, NYU, which is the you know, famous New York Film School program, they decided to do like an international school of the NYU film program. And it was called Tisch, Asia and it was in Singapore. And it was designed to be like a carbon copy of the New York Film program, but in Asia, and with kind of much more of a focus on kind of international world cinema but kind of still with that NYU ethos. And I was one of the was accepted to be one of the kind of founding members of the very first class of that school. And that was a really good training for me, I think, as opposed to the kind of the New York program which is obviously quite sort of New York and me America centric. The program there was kind of in a way, shitshow is not a word I want to use. But because it had just started. It was a little kind of we were figuring it out as we went along. And so, we had to learn how to get like a permit to film in like a national park in Singapore, for instance. Whereas at the New York school, you could have just asked someone in the class above your one of your teachers, and they would have said are called Jeff at the parks department. I think that instead of doing documentary work these days, that made me very confident. Just being like, Okay, we’ll do a shoot in Sweden, for instance. And we’ll, we’ll get insurance for that. Yada-yada. And I think that year taught us a lot about how to kind of do international work on the fly, I would say.
Ashley
Now, I’m curious. A couple follow up questions. So, number one, you’re in this town in Australia, there’s not like a bustling movie industry, correct me if I’m wrong. And so how do you sort of I mean, and I say this as sort of someone that comes from the similar situation, I grew up in Annapolis, Maryland, there were no real artists of any sort that you could kind of look to as sort of a template. How did you sort of figure out that this might be a career or it even was a career and just have the competence to sort of move it to that next level and go to Tisch?
Matthew Bauer
Yeah, I’ll tell you, really not the turning point for me was so I actually went into law school after high school because you know, that thing where you kind of go, all my mates to go into medicine and things, and I should go find a real career. And I’d been doing that for a year. And actually, weirdly enough, one year of law school taught me so much about Film Producing that I kind of a lot of that, you know, knowing how to do contracts. And that kind of thing actually was super useful later on. But I actually went to I was a member of commanderbond.net, which was one of the biggest James Bond websites at the time, I was on the forums. And the first time I ever visited Los Angeles, the first night, I went to, like a gathering of all of those Bond fans, and there’s still some really cringe worthy photos on the internet of all of us, you know, holding out fake guns and do those. But that night, I met a guy called John Cox who was a Hollywood screenwriter. And I met another guy who worked in like marketing at Miramax and suddenly, I was just with people who worked in the film industry. And I kind of said; Hey, I’ve made all these short films, and was always my dream. And for these LA people, they were like, Yeah, we do that. It’s just our job. And that kind of made me go ha, okay, this is actually, you know, a career for people. And yeah, and then that kind of led to me applying for NYU. Yeah, but yeah, that was the turning point. Because at the time in Australia, it was considered one of those like pipe dream kind of jobs within the town. I live in Australia, and now she has a massive movie studio that does a lot of Hollywood productions. But you know, I always say is, you have this the kind of joke like your Mulholland Drive, when Naomi Watts arrives in Hollywood with the big dream of making a big and everyone’s got that kind of thing of like, that pipe dream of the small-town actress making it big in the film industry. Well, every film has 100 actors and one director. So, you know what I mean, it’s an even kind of crazy a dream, I think sometimes to have to figure out a way to do it.
Ashley
Yeah, I’m curious. So, as you went to NYU, what was your sort of career ambitions? Do you want to make documentaries? And this is going to get into the film that you’ve just finished? Or did you want to do narrative, you know, just more feature films?
Matthew Bauer
Yeah, I was always funnily enough, I’m actually staying with my old classmate for MIT, you Hunt West here, and me and him got close because we were kind of like the Hollywood kids. I love the Bond films and he loved them Michael Bay films. And so, we kind of because you know, you have other kind of more Tarantino-esque kids. You know, I can’t tell you anything about 70s Italian horror cinema, you know, but I can tell you everything about 24 and James Bond, and he was the same for like, Michael… you know, Michael Bay, it’s quite brave at a film school to go in and say my favorite director is my Bay. And so, with that was always kind of my kind of angle on it. But yeah, I was kind of wanting to go into that kind of thing. And then when the idea for the other fellow cropped up, it was a documentary so I kind of shifted into documentary mode. We’ve thankfully done a documentary class at film school. So, I had some idea on also going to documentary. I was bringing a certain sensibility to it and a very cinematic sensibility. I wanted this to be a very cinematic picture, and you’ll see in this film, particularly in the reenactments we did, we cast really real actors. You know, if weirdly enough, we cast the late great I agree it’s in who’s president Logan on 24 in one of the key roles and you know, some really top British actors there as well and we shot our reenactments like they were Hollywood films, not shaky camera, black and white Dutch angles sort of style.
Ashley
So, let’s see. I think that’s a good segue to get into The Other Fellow. Maybe to start out you can just give us a quick pitch or logline. So, what is this this film all about?
Matthew Bauer
So, The Other Fellow logline. Our tagline is a film about men, real men named James Bond. The logline is “an energetic exploration of male identity by the lives adventures and personalities of men named James Bond.” Yes, log lines and tag lines are very important to us because the reason why is because the name The Other Fellow is a James Bond in joke, if you’ve seen On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, George Lazenby says about Sean Connery as James Bond, this never happened to The Other Fellow. And what he means is this never happened to this other more famous James Bond. And if the audience doesn’t get that, then they kind of need our taglines to help them over the line of what the film is about. But yeah, my film is about real men around the world who was somewhat in that same position of George Lazenby, which is because their name is James Bond, they are constantly living in the shadow of the cinematic James Bond was obviously one of the most well-known, probably the best-known nonreligious name in the world, but also attached to the world’s longest running media franchise. And the film explores in particular, what it’s like to have this connection via your name to a media franchise phenomenon.
Ashley
Where did this idea come from? It sounds like you’re a big James Bond fan, just in general. But where did the idea for this documentary come from? What was the genesis of it?
Matthew Bauer
So, I never know I’m not a brainstorm. I remember once at NYU, they said, today, we’re going to write down 10 ideas for films. And that never computed for me personally. But I think it’s combination of things I was in the early days of Facebook, I was a member of a Facebook group of people with the same name as me, you know, those kind of things, Facebook you’ve never done before. And like, you know, when you try and sign up for Ashley Meyers at Gmail, and it’s already taken, and you go, oh, there must be another. Ashley Meyers out there. And then if you tried to sign up for Ashley Scott Meyers, and it was taken, you might go is someone trying to impersonate me, you know, and I think we’ve all had that thing where we receive an email to the wrong person who has our name. And so, we would talk about things like that, like who’s got the Matt Bauer Gmail, who’s got the Instagram handle? And I think somewhere in there I went, what if your name was James Bond? And you were asking these questions. And so, it wasn’t so much about Oh, my God, I bet these James Bonds have to put up with a lot of Martini jokes and stuff, which they obviously, I was kind of more interested in about how this would cause a lot of kind of unexpected problems and the kind of things you wouldn’t think about. And definitely, whilst the film does cover all the Aston Martin jokes and that kind of thing, in the end is kind of more about the kind of weird almost sci-fi effects that happen, and particularly where the film I’ve got to avoid spoilers too much, but especially the fact that when your name is James Bond, you’re impossible to Google, you know, you found on search engines and things in the way that a normal person would and that stuff became the main sort of narrative thrust.
Ashley
And that’s so funny you say that because I think I was just the right age when Gmail was created. And a lot of these things like Twitter, because I have Ashley Meyers at Twitter. I have Ashley Meyers at Gmail. And it’s exactly what you have. In fact, I get so many Ashley Meyers, wrong emails, I have a canned response that I just send back now. Because some of the stuff is like medical docs, I feel bad just deleting it or bills and stuff. And so, I have to send it up. And then also this resonated when you pitched it to me because, again, obviously a man named Ashley, all of these other Ashley Meyers are all women. So, there’s always this gender issue with my name and other confusion.
Matthew Bauer
A lot with this film is that actually weirdly, it’s not just men named James Bond. It speaks to people I keep hearing something new every day from people we talk to about it. We spoke with a reporter in Australia called Josh Gay, right and he’s a straight man who has spent his entire life receiving homophobic abuse, but on a more emotional level it’s given him a real kinship with the gay community. And I think people, everyone we in society think a lot about how its skin color and age and that kind of thing affect our perceptions. And as well, but I think we often don’t think so much about actually what our name does. And I think that’s what this film outside the bond thing sort of really explores.
Ashley
Yeah. So, let’s talk about the writing process of this. I’ve never done a documentary. So, I really don’t even know what the writing process looks like. I did notice on this on IMDb, you have a writing partner, Renee Van Panivas. And I’m curious, so maybe you can just describe what is the writing process look like? Do you guys start to kind of come up with an outline, then you shoot stuff, you start to edit it? And then you go back out, shoot more stuff? I just really just what is what does that mean being a writer of a documentary? How is the process of what does that look like between you and Renee?
Matthew Bauer
I think process is a nice way to describe what is a somewhat haphazard process to be fair, I mean, all I say is what we did with this film was we started out initially shooting a number of guys called James Bond. And then during shooting, actually, most of the main cast you see sort of popped up during shooting. So, for instance, a man in Indiana was arrested for murder, named James Bond, and we ended up kind of interviewing him in prison. So, he sort of became a big part of it. But I’ll put it this way. I remember when we graduated film school, one of my best teachers, Catherine Lindbergh, she said to us, don’t rush out and make a first feature straightaway. And because she’d actually sort of done it herself. And she’d seen a lot of her other students do. And I’d seen a lot of my graduating class do that, where you go out and use and you get somebody together for the script, and you finance it independently, and then you shoot for 30 days. At that point, you’re out of any money for reshoots. So, you’re really stuck with what you have in the can. What I enjoyed about documentary is that this film was made over the course of about 100 shoots over a number of years, each one of which cost about $250 of you know, weekend camera hire. And what we would do is shoot, edit, shoot, edit, shoot, edit. And slowly over time, a film sort of started to take form. There was one specific story in the UK, which ended up being a kind of real structural linchpin for us. And it was basically where all of my characters, I’m having to avoid spoilers, but all of my characters are kind of having to deal with this force, and sort of dark force, if you will, of this James Bond phenomena on their lives, then we found one character who actually managed to take that force and switched it around and use it for goods in a way that allowed them sort of save their family in a way that became a real structural sort of linchpin for us. And so we kind of cut around that. And then we got to a point of reenactment where we went, Okay, because a lot of the story took place in the Second World War. And there was this whole murder storyline, and this whole stalker storyline. And of course, we couldn’t film those things. Another part was the original James Bond, the ornithologist whose name Fleming stole, to name a character. And that was in the 1960s. So, we tried using archive and that didn’t work in the edit at all. And so, we went into the reenactment area. And so specifically, my co-writer, was very active in writing those reenactments. And even though they’re not spoken word, there’s a dialogue, and it’s reenactments, if there was a lot of work getting those correct and where they were in the edit. And so together, we ended up with about a 130 minute long edit. And I then at that point, did the thing which I would recommend anybody does, which is go; okay, now we need to get a really good editor who can come in and look at what we have and kind of get it together. So, I found a really good editor about two years ago called Lesley Posso, who is a genius. And she wasn’t like a James Bond fan, or anything, you know, she just came in and took what we had, you know, and I used to have like, these giant mind maps on my wall of 20 different characters and how they work together. She actually just looked at what we had and came back to me with a one-and-a-half-page long beat sheet. And she was like, I think this is your film, you know, and then I said, Okay, go for it, do a rough cut of that. And we’ll see where we would go. And weirdly, that beat sheet that she came up with. That was the film and I think sometimes you need that editor to look at everything you have, and go as long as they’re good to go. ‘I think this is it.’ And yes, she was the one who kind of did the final nailing of the exact structure of it.
Ashley
Gotcha. And so that that was a question I had was what does the structure of a feature documentary look like? I mean, in narrative fiction, there’s the breaking, you know, the inciting incident the plot one act break the midpoint and those sorts of things. How is documentaries typically structured?
Matthew Bauer
Yeah, I mean, I was taught all of that traditional screenwriting stuff and I actually am a believer in it. And I think especially on a first film, I wasn’t really trying to break wheels here do you want I mean? I think your second film is the point when you might want to break the rules after learning them. Yada, yada. So, for this, yeah, this film actually does follow a pretty even though hopefully the viewer never notices. But this does follow up pretty traditional, sort of three act structure, except you’re actually jumping between different characters who are kind of taking the ball and going. I think the fun structural thing, what I would say the difference between feature and documentary is, as I said, I was always a fan of films that had that big final twist in them, like the usual suspects or the night Chalon films. The thing is, in documentary, you can’t really do a final twist. Because, you know, when you sit in a shinan film, it’s like, oh, that M Night Shinola. He got me. You know, if you do that in a documentary, where you’re supposed to be following a story of real people. And the audience is going to go, why bother? You know what I mean?
Ashley
Yeah, it feels almost it feels like a cheat almost.
Matthew Bauer
Yeah. And so, what you see a little bit in documentary is there’s a midpoint twist, rather than an end twist. So, if you look at something like I’m probably going to spoil some things here, but if you look at something like the imposter, at the halfway point, you realize that the story of thought it was this guy tricking this family, you realize that actually, the family may have been the ones been behind the child’s disappearance, in like, say, searching for sugar man. At the midway point, you find out that actually, this person you thought was a dead musician, may actually be alive. And so yeah, for this film, there is a very significant midway turning point where the film, it’s where the film is, thought you were getting in the trailers, suddenly actually disappears. And then the real story of the film actually takes form. Yeah, and I don’t want to reveal what that is. But structurally, that was probably the biggest part for us is how we did that reveal. And when and I originally wanted that reveal to happen at the end of the film, because I was trying for usual suspects thing. And actually, when you look at documentary, you’re like; No, that’s not how it’s done. And the reason is, yeah, because you don’t want to deceive your audience in like a real-world thing.
Ashley
Okay, so once you guys had and have cut of this film that you were you were happy with, what were those next steps, you guys entered a bunch of film festivals? And maybe you can give us give us a little bit of sort of the sense of scope. How many festivals did you enter? How many did you get into? And then how did you get that go about helping you secure distribution?
Matthew Bauer
Yeah, so we were trying to get a cup sort of ready for film festivals. And so we were actually the thing which I now regret, to be honest, is we were trying to get the entire kind of post-production sound and everything done before we went to festivals. And actually, after we’ve got into festivals, we then decided to make some changes to the Edit, which meant we then had to do a lot of that post sound stuff again, to do it again. And I would advise anyone else, it’s that get that cut, ready for festivals. And then just with your editor, and maybe the sound guy for one day, get the sound as good as you can. But don’t do the whole mixing and everything until you absolutely have to. But yet we speak specifically for documentary. Obviously, you know what it’s like there’s 5000 film festivals, which one you’re going to submit to? To be honest, I always say this, I think most of them on Filmfreeway are an absolute scam. They really are. And you know, I would actually love to make a documentary about this. I think Filmfreeway really needs to look at it at some of the festivals that are on there, because a lot of them are these kind of like almost fake monthly Film Awards, which are just there to get $200 entry fees out of people. But so anyway, you have to kind of figure your way through that. And so, what we use is the Academy Awards has an Oscar qualifying list of the Oscar qualifying documentary festivals, because most documentaries don’t have a qualifying cinema run for the Oscars. So, if you win the top prize at one of these about 30 festivals, you then get Oscar qualification and so that was our way to kind of go okay, these are the top 30 documentary film festivals that we want to hit. And so we just started going down that list and submitting for those once we got into and I think we got rejected from the first two and we got accepted into The third one, which was dot edge in New Zealand, and because I’m Australian, and it’s close to New Zealand, and that worked for our world premiere, and since then, yeah, we’ve done a few we’ve continued submitting to that list. But then also kind of via our sales agent had been submitting to some other ones, we had our US premiere at the Austin Film Festival. And that was because one of our producers, other short films was playing there. And so, we kind of used to contact there. So yeah, it becomes kind of various, but it can be hard, it’s the hardest thing we have is, you know, we have a spreadsheet of the festivals we want to submit to. And it is actually a lot of work getting down to the 10, you’re going to submit to that month and try to work your way through and like a lot of the better film festivals, especially in Europe, and not on film free Friday and that sort of thing. But you know, you only have so many $50 submission fees that you can send out. So, you do have to kind of pick those quite carefully.
Ashley
Yeah. So, I just like to wrap up the interviews just by asking the guest, is there anything you’ve seen recently that you thought was really great or even not so recently, just something that maybe was a little under the radar that you can recommend to our screenwriting audience?
Matthew Bauer
Yeah, I always see this question on your podcast, and I always got, I’m going to struggle with that. Because it’s very rare that something absolutely like grabs me and goes, I absolutely love this. I always kind of say, if people who watch their watch on streaming, I always tell them to watch the Jinx, which is the lives and deaths of Robert Durst, which was like a kind of a five-part documentary series for about like, eight years ago. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but…
Ashley
I have seen that. Yeah, I do remember watching it. It was excellent.
Matthew Bauer
Yeah. When anyone ever asked, I’m always like, if you want to see the best thing ever. Watch the Jinx. Yeah, I think in terms of documentary and in terms of the kind of stuff I like, which is like a thriller, documentary that has incredible twists and turns and incredible reenactment work in that as well. Incredible, like investigative journalistic stuff. Yeah. Have you ever seen the Jinx? Watch the jinx. From 2023, I don’t know right now.
Ashley
Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah, no, that’s a great recommendation. I second that anybody hasn’t seen that. Definitely check that out. How can people see the other guy do you know what the release schedule is going to be like for it?
Matthew Bauer
The film is called The Other Fellow, people get this. A lot of people do this all the time. They call it the other guy on the fly. So yes, The Other Fellow. Weirdly, there’s something about it that causes that to happen. I don’t know. But it happens all the time. But yes, The Other Fellow is currently playing at cinemas here in New York, it will be playing in cinemas in LA but I think after this is I think that will have already happened. Som where you can see it is on it’s available on Apple TV. Amazon Prime video, it’s there on just like YouTube. You can watch it. It’s on Vimeo, Vudu, spectrum, Comcast, all that kind of places where you can get to get on demand content. It’s there. Yeah. And otherwise, if you go to our website, Willie a bit like your name, we actually do have everything The Other Fellows, we have Facebook slash The Other Fellow, with a slash The Other Fellow Instagram slash The Other Fellow or TheOtherFellow.com. You’ll find links on there.
Ashley
Perfect. Yeah. And we’ll round that up for the show notes as well. So, people can just click over to that. Matthew, I really appreciate you coming on and talking with me today. Good luck with this film. And good luck with all your future films as well.
Matthew Bauer
Awesome. Thanks very much. It’s a pleasure to be on.
Ashley
Thank you. We’ll talk to you later.
SYS’s from concept to completion, screenwriting course is now available just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/screenwritingcourse. It will take you through every part of writing a screenplay, coming up with a concept, outlining, writing the opening pages, the first act, second act, third act and then rewriting and then there’s even a module at the end on marketing your screenplay once it’s polished and ready to be sent out. We’re offering this course in two different versions, the first version, you get the course, plus, you get three analyses from an SYS reader, you’ll get one analysis on your outline, and then you’ll get two analyses on your first draft of your screenplay. This is just our introductory price, you’re getting three full analyses, which is actually the same price as our three-pack analysis bundle. So, you’re essentially getting the course for free when you buy the three analyses that come with it. And to be clear, you’re getting our full analysis with this package. The other version doesn’t have the analysis, so you’ll have to find some friends or colleagues who will do the feedback portion of the course with you. I’m letting SYS select members do this version of the course for free. So, if you’re a member of SYS select, you already have access to it. You also might consider that as an option, if you join us via select, you will get the course as part of that membership to a big piece of this course is accountability. Once you start the course, you’ll get an email every Sunday with that week’s assignment. And if you don’t complete it, we’ll follow up with another reminder the next week, it’s easy to pause the course if you need to take some time off. But as long as you’re enrolled, you’ll continue to get reminders for each section until it’s completed. The objective of the course is to get you through it in six months so that you have a completed power screenplay ready to be sent out. So, if you have an idea for a screenplay, and you’re having a hard time getting it done, this course might be exactly what you need. If this sounds like something you’d like to learn more about, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/screenwritingcourse. It’s all one word, all lowercase. I will of course, a link to the course in the show notes and I will put a link to the course on the homepage up in the right-hand sidebar. On the next episode of the podcast, I’m going to be interviewing filmmakers John Irwin and Brent McCorkle. They just did a feature film called Jesus Revolution, starring Kelsey Grammar, they’ve worked in the faith-based family genre for a while now and bring some really significant insight into that whole genre. It’s not a genre I know a ton about but it’s definitely a genre that I would say is underserved. So, if it’s something that you think you could write, well, this is definitely something you’re going to want to listen to and really take heart and what these guys say they’re really earnest, transparent guys, and they give a lot of great information next week. As I said, they talk about this new film Jesus Revolution that they have coming out, but just talking about their careers in general and kind of how they got to this position that they are now writing and directing these sorts of films. So, keep an eye out for that episode next week. That’s the show. Thank you for listening.