I spoke with a great collaborator, teacher, filmmaker, and friend Aaron Bartuska a month or so post release of his excellent new B&W mumble-core skater flick The Yardley Boys.
I met Aaron in film school nearly a decade ago (wow!). He quickly made an impression on me as an already sharp, confident filmmaker who knew how to get shit made. It wasn’t until I had a class with him where we honed our story pitching skills that we became better friends and seemed to gravitate toward eachother’s sensibilities.
Fast-forward to now and of the four feature films Aaron has made, I’ve been a small part of 3 of them: providing music for his found-footage horror thesis For Roger, penning the end credits song for The Yardley Boys, and most recently co-writing the yet-to-be released Philly hangout epic These Are My Friends!
Aaron’s an amazing energy with an endless passion for movies and it’s been a joy to collaborate with him. Lucky for students at Aaron’s old high school, he’s now teaching film there and can pass along that infectious energy to the next generation of filmmakers. I wanted to catch Aaron hot off the release of The Yardley Boys to get retrospective.
Watch above or read a condensed version below!
Topics discussed:
Treating your creative work like homework
Teaching Lady Bird in a Catholic School
That just because you show a movie, it doesn’t mean you agree with what it’s saying
Aaron’s new movie: The Yardley Boys
How having students inspires you to make better work
What baseball and micro-budget filmmaking have in common
WD: Did you have sch— work today?
AB: Yeah. You almost said, “did you have school today?” A lot of people do that, which is fine. I do it too.
WD: And why do they do it? Because you’re a—
AB: — school teacher. High school educator of juniors and seniors. But it’s always funny when people do that. But yeah, I had school/work today. Went well, came home, took my little nap that I need to survive, and now I’m talking to you.
WD: I was going to say, because you teach film, how do the other teachers consider you? Do you feel like there’s any difference in treatment? Or is it a similar mutual respect subject-wise?
AB: A lot of other teachers have curriculum's built, a lot of other people in their department that they literally need to feed into. So there there are certain subjects, like my buddy Sean teaches teaches bio, and bio comes after a certain class and then leads right into another class, that could be the next semester, right? And so if he hasn't gotten through a certain amount of material, he's kind of not only screwing the kid over, but also screwing over the next teacher, kind of setting them up to have to do a little more work than they initially would have had to do. Or a different starting point than they would rather be at.
With me, I don't have a lead-in. I don't have a follow-up. Even if I do, it's me getting the kid again, right? This year we did add two more film courses taught by another female teacher that have been going well, but aside from that, like the past two years that I've been doing it, it's just me.
And I can get the kids to really... wherever they want to get.
WD: There’s not an AP Film.
AB: Exactly. There is an advanced film that I’m trying to get running, but it hasn’t run in a while. Not enough people people have signed up or not enough know it’s available as an option. I think for next year I have six full sections of film and so then there's just no room for the advanced course, but in terms of the other teachers… there's the jabs. There's like, oh, can't you just put on a movie today? and I’m like yeah, kind of, but that's never just what I'm doing, right?
I teach film production and film studies. I'm not a big “clip show guy,” so I do like to show the movies in whole and we just preface it with information, some historical context and maybe some info about what I want them to look out for here in this specific film, and then we follow it up with a with a 40-minute discussion. It could be a whole day of class where it's just watching, you know, the middle chunk of The Godfather.
WD: Right.
AB: So not much required for me there, but I do need to make sure I'm on point for those discussions.
Then in film production, it's sending the kids out to film or they're sitting in the room and editing and once I've given them all of the groundwork, and it's a very jack of all trades, master of none sort of course. I can't get too deep into anything, but it does function as a workshop as at a certain point.
So literally if I was teaching any other subject, I don't know if I'd be able to do it. I do feel very fortunate about that. I don't think it's any less work. But it is a different kind of work and it's using a different part of the brain in the way that the class is for the kids. It’s using a different skillset for me to teach and it’s using a different skillset for them to absorb.
WD: Right. And it’s not even the ideal timeframe for a course like this? I’m guessing it’s like 40 minutes ish?
AB: It’s 80 minutes.
WD: Oh, so it’s two periods?
AB: School’s broken into 40 minute blocks, but the film classes are two periods technically.
WD: Well that’s great in some ways. [But] maybe if you’re doing a more discussion-led one, then I’m sure that 80 minutes could drag for some students. But to be able to watch a full, or close to it, film in there, that’s good.
AB: Well, and it has been interesting too, because I know the film side of it, but learning the teaching side of it has been the challenge. There are little tricks. If you have kids for 80 minutes, you don't want to be doing the same thing for more than 20 minutes. You kind of want to break it up into 20 minute chunks.
For example, I show Get Out, and the first half of it is 70 minutes, and I can show that in an 80-minute block, right? And then I'm left with just 30 minutes to 40 minutes for the next class. So I start off with those 30, 40 minutes of the film, and then we have a 20 minute discussion about— I use it to teach social commentary and also horror tropes and stuff like that. So we have a little bit of a conversation about like, what was going on in the world when this came out? How is this effectively made? How is Jordan Peele playing the beats of the audience?
If I've done my job right, I will have that last 20 minutes set up for a breakout activity or a discussion board online that they can work on. If I'm talking at them for more than 20 minutes, then I'll lose them. No matter how engaging I think I am, I will lose them. Same thing for if I just let them do an activity for 20 minutes, half the kids are done in 10 and then they go on their phones…
WD: Well, we've had a couple conversations about how you'd think that teaching movies in particular would be something that is a joy for kids to be able get away from these other subjects, and that they would be able to pay attention to watching movies. Watching a movie— it's entertainment. But still you've had some troubles, depending on the class, with attention spans.
AB: Well the fact of the matter is if they're being sat in a room and someone older than them is telling them to do something— it's work. No matter how fun or relatable I try to make it, there's always the kids that are going to be into it from the get, but for the other kids who are just filling an elective slot in their schedule, or they had minimal interest but they literally thought we were just binge watching movies, where they could choose the movies… I don't know what they think.
WD: This might be more work for you, but have you ever done anything where you give them the illusion of choice by just saying like, oh, we have these three movies that we could use to talk about social commentary. Then they can vote so that they have a little more agency or something.
AB: I've done things like that, like a lot of times I like to do a holiday movie, if it coincides. We'll watch a horror movie for Halloween, watch a Christmas movie for Christmas. We watch a rom-com for Valentine's Day. Usually, I'll give them an option for that. And then I can figure out how to frame it in whatever we're doing.
That's a great thing if you're showing a good movie, usually you can use it to talk about almost anything that you need to.
But yeah with certain things there is just a built-in curriculum, like for the shot-for-shot project where they literally have to remake a scene from a movie. We always do The Social Network because it’s locked down shots, fast talking in rooms and it’s easy for them to emulate. Although this year I’m adding Lady Bird to that and it’s very interesting because it’s a Catholic school too.
WD: Yes. I was going to ask about how that has been with what you can show. I know you have them sign things.
AB: Yeah, I have them sign a permission slip. Typically, I'm getting juniors and seniors, so most of them are 17 anyway, but just to [save] my own ass I have him sign a permission slip and it's in the weirdest movies [that] will get flagged. Since before I went there, the school's been showing Pulp Fiction and that's fine. There's literally drug use and profanity and a gimp scene, right?
WD: Yes of course!
AB: I had to fight to get Lady Bird because it's a Catholic school and they have those set morals and there is also a whole side of it where it's a protected environment from certain things going on in the world, right? Lady Bird has things like there's a scene that mentions abortion in a not so glamorous light and that got flagged and I had to fight for that to be included.
And even still, I showed it today and I had to in class say, look, we talk about this all the time, just because we're watching something doesn't mean that you need to agree with it. We're trying to get the greater point of the story where we can relate to things. Some of the best movies of all time are about characters who we don't morally agree with. Again, kind of just to cover my behind if any parent wants to come after me. I shouldn't have to be giving a content warning to Lady Bird, but it's Lawrenceville, New Jersey, man. It's a bit of a bubble.
WD: I think that's a good thing, that you're having to teach that just because we're showing something doesn't mean that we are agreeing with everything that's going on in the storyline. Or even if we think the movie's good, you know?
AB: If a movie's preachy about things that I agree with, it's still not a successful movie if it's beating me over the head with something. It also does help them have autonomy too in the production class when they're creating their characters. These kids should be able to tell stories about a drug deal gone wrong. They don't even know what that means yet, necessarily, but it's the way they've seen it and they are emulating it. They're practicing it and they're getting something out of that. Half of the guys in my class's favorite movie is The Wolf of Wall Street and they don't even know what the message of that movie actually is yet, right? They just think Jordan Belford's cool and I'm like, just watch it again in your early 20’s man.
WD: That's interesting, too, because, back to that thing of, just because a movie is showing something doesn't mean it's saying that this thing is good. You could say that, and then the person, whoever's watching it, is going to take it in however they're going to take it in. You hear it with Wolf of Wall Street, you hear it with, American Psycho, that people will watch these movies and then look up to these lead characters and in kind of a strange way when it seems obvious that they're not to be looked up to.
AB: I started film studies this semester off with Goodfellas and that is a movie that spends its first hour making a lifestyle look like the coolest thing ever. And then spends its second hour tearing that down.
A lot of the kids had either heard their parents talk about Goodfellas or they had watched Goodfellas and they were like, oh yeah, Goodfellas makes being in the mafia look bad-ass. Then we talk about it and it's like, no, not really. Just Scorsese is pulling you into this lifestyle to show you how intoxicating it can be and also then to show you how much greater the fallout can be and I tied Goodfellas into faith which the admin board loved. Because it's easy to, Scorsese was almost a priest, right? He's a very faithful guy. This guy made Last Temptation of Christ. He made Silence. He has obviously grappled with faith throughout his life, or his relationship to it. I think that's in Goodfellas too. How you can you can frame it in a way— alright, the life of sin is intoxicating, but even still at the end of the day it's not all it's chalked up to be.
So yeah, some of the hoops I have to jump through are are unique to the setting, but it's nothing that I'm not game for, and I'm never being disingenuous, right? If I'm not drawn to talk to the kids about their faith, I'm not going to do it just because I teach at a Catholic school. The best thing I can do is be open and honest with them as much as I can about [what] my life was like where they are and what it's like now and why movies matter, why expressing yourself matters. Those fundamental things don't change just because our background's different or our political affiliations. Or I don't agree with their parents, essentially.
WD: Well, the main reason why I wanted to have you onto the newsletter is because you just released The Yardley Boys via Split Tooth Media. I think it seems like it’s been getting a great response. I loved the movie since I saw a rough cut of it and I’m really excited that it’s getting into a little bit of a wider audience in this way. How are feeling about that?
AB: Yeah, I'm feeling good about it. You know I was sitting on it for a while. The creation of The Yardley Boys wasn't even a choice. It was something I had to do to, just to remind myself why I liked making things and [to] see if I even still liked making things, right?
Shot that movie August of 2023, so after my first year of teaching. And it was kind of just a way for me to see if I could practice what I preached, right? I’d be sitting in the classroom telling the kids, go shoot something this weekend. And I hadn’t been doing that. I wanted to get out and do that. So we shot this movie in five days, edited it within the month after. It was done for over a year before it got put out and then I reached out to Brett Wright at Split Tooth, he's the editor-in-chief, and asked him if he would give it a watch because I knew he had similar interests. He liked some of the films that I was inspired by. So I sent it to him and he liked it, but importantly he got me in touch with some other people he thought would like it more. Through those people I built some connections and relationships and [it] ended up working out that one of those filmmakers, Jordan Lissy, made a film and he sent it to me to watch. I wrote a Letterboxd review about it. And then Brett saw it and was like, hey, do you want to do the actual review of this for Split Tooth?
So all this stuff is happening where Brett sees the film, other people are seeing the film, I get asked to start writing for Split Tooth, do a couple articles for them and then I think around January I was venting to Brett and his brother Craig about not being able to find a home for this thing, or what it was even, where would it live? Went 0 for 30 with festivals.
WD: I think for those who haven’t seen it yet, it has an interesting runtime too, which I think is an annoying thing about these— I mean sometimes a 50-minute film will get in somewhere— but it definitely makes it so that it lives in this weird in-between space and doesn’t have much of a place, even when there’s already the hump to jump through of a lot of competition as well.
AB: I think I should rebrand it as a pilot episode. I think that would have been the smarter call.
WD: Right, that’s true. Submitting it to like Sundance-pilot-whatever.
AB: Yeah, or release it as a miniseries. Break it up into like six chunks.
But yeah, 55 minutes long, so not really super marketable. It’s kind of in that no man’s land of 40 to 70. But Split Tooth was super game to release it. Brett and Craig ended up re-watching it and Brett liked it much more than he did the first time, which is something I’ve heard, that people like it more on their second viewing, maybe because they just know what to expect more. They said, we’ll roll out our modest red carpet and give it an online release and got one of their best writers to write about it, Bennett Glace, because he’s a former Yardley resident. And he was like, what? Someone shot a movie in my hometown? What is this? And he ended up liking it too.
So yeah, they put a lot of heart and a lot of effort into that release [and] rollout. And it’s had a nice reception. It isn’t out there getting a ton of attention, but it got almost 70+ reviews on Letterboxd. It’s got a couple thousand on YouTube. Some people have been reaching out to me with some nice comments and it’s been a really nice experience. Obviously, you always want more and more people to be able to see it, but the quantity of people seeing it has been far exceeded by the quality of the feedback and the thoughts on it. Everyone who’s been watching has been really nice about it, and even if it’s not exactly their cup of tea, they have been vocal about just what it means to them. Even people who haven’t liked it are like, I think it’s inspiring that it exists.
WD: It’s interesting, in comparison to For Roger, which is a film that we worked on together, where it had a little festival run as well— I guess more people probably got to see it, than this one? Or not necessarily?
AB: Well, I think more people got to see it on a screen. I think more people got to see it without the prerequisite of knowing who I was, right? That's the different thing too is a lot of people, in order to see The Yardley Boys, most people know who I am and a lot of people went into For Roger with horror festivals.
Horror— they like to spearhead little indie projects. There's really no huge genre community behind something like The Yardley Boys, but For Roger had that extra bump of: this is a horror film, it's niche and so that got in front of more unsuspecting viewers.
WD: But I guess what I was thinking about is just that it does feel like For Roger was a bit more polarizing or that people were more vocal if they didn’t like it and if they did like it.
Whereas it seems with Yardley Boys, at least everyone who I’ve been poking around at the Letterboxd reviews and everyone who’s seen it, like you said, even if it’s not their cup of tea, they’re still very complimentary of it. It has a charm for sure, which I felt watching it too.
AB: Yeah. Thank you. I think that was it. It was just the perfect synergy of all of us getting together for five days and just making something honest. I really didn’t try— well I guess I shouldn’t beat around the bush— you and I shot a feature a year before this that is still yet to be released that I’m working on, Will, I promise. June 13th. Not like a public release or anything. But that film was a ton of moving parts. We pretty much stuck to our script.
WD: We shot ourselves in the foot by writing something, that was the goal, but was writing an ensemble film. But we had a huge cast, such a huge cast.
AB: I think all in all, 150 to 200 people were involved in the making of that. And it was shot over five weekends over a summer. I was working an office job in Jersey City. This was right before I got the teaching gig. Or I think I knew about the teaching gig, but hadn’t started it yet.
It felt like a “prove yourself” kind of moment. A last ditch effort to make something of this scale while everyone who wanted to work with was still local to Philly. So that added its own pressure, but in a lot of ways too— I know I’ve said this to you— it was kind of like running a summer camp where we were filming in someone else’s house. We knew we had to get things done. There wasn’t a lot of room for, and I think these are self-inflicted wounds, but there wasn’t a lot of room for improv, because we just needed to get this done because we have X crew member or X cast member.
It was a very intense experience for me and obviously still isn’t out so it’s a longer post process on this. I’m very proud of that movie and I’m excited for people to see it. I think it’s a great movie. Very different. It’s totally different than The Yardley Boys and totally different from For Roger too, so I think that’s fun too, that there’s just three completely separate things.
But the goal with The Yardley Boys was to distill the filmmaking experience down to, okay, I don’t need work weeks in between, we don’t need people coming in and out the door at all moments. Let’s get together with some friends over five days— I think it was 7 or 8 people total— and just shoot something. There was not a lot pre-pro. It was very of the moment in a way that I feel, just by design, [our film] These Are My Friends! wasn’t able to be.
I’m very grateful for the experience of having directed both of these, because in a way Yardley Boys was not made under realistic circumstances. I can’t think of a time going forward where I will be able to give up five days to just make something with my friends again, where no one’s getting paid, where we’re just doing that, right?
WD: I was interested how the teaching played a role in the making of Yardley Boys. You were getting into the practicing what you preach kind of thing… I think that’s really interesting and admirable. In teaching, there’s a lot of learning yourself what you have to do and so I’m curious where all that is taking you for the next type of projects that you want to make.
AB: I was very inspired in my first year of teaching in ways I didn’t even realize I would be. One of my students, Heather Jones, she turned in a project that was just her life in Yardley over the course of a day. It was very raw and very honest, in a way that you can only be if you’re not thinking about being a filmmaker, you’re just actually turning the camera on yourself. She cast her own family and friends in it. She acted in it herself and it woke me up. It made me want to be that type of honest with something I made, which was something I don’t think I had done yet.
At first, in college, no one was making things, so I wanted to be the “let’s just go shoot stuff guy.” Everyone was waiting to get permission to use equipment and then spending months on their scripts and I was like, no, let’s just make stuff. We’re here. We have people. Let’s do it, right? That’s kind of what led to the first two features.
After that, I think both of us were caught up in the 9-to-5 monotony of just having a job we had to wake up and go to and that’s what These Are My Friends! was kind of born out of. But I think I had always been making films sort of more practically. It was in practice. It wasn’t really looking into any deeper part of myself. I think those can be pulled from those films in certain respects, but I don’t know if I was ever intentionally doing any introspection with those.
That’s what I wanted The Yardley Boys to be. It was as simple as texting the guys: Bobby, Drew, Jake, Matt, CJ, to be like, hey, I have this idea for a film about a missing cat. I also want it to be about skating. I don’t know anything about skating, but you guys do. And I want you to play the two characters you played in These Are My Friends! Essentially they are exaggerated versions of yourself and we’ll improvise it. We have this seven page outline and we’ll just do it.
I tried to treat it the way I was teaching my students. My students do not have a realistic time slot to make the projects I’m asking them to make. They have to do accelerated pre-pro, accelerated production, accelerated post. They have basically a week for the whole process of one short film. I wanted to hold myself to that too. I was like, okay, I’m not going to spend a lot of time writing this. Two weeks of pre-pro tops. I think I was producing another short film at the time. So I wasn’t even really focused on the pre-production of this. Then we just shot it over five days, had it edited in a month after that. Then I was like, do I submit this for a grade? What do I do? It felt like a school project. Going forward, that’s definitely how I want to do things.
I feel like part of the issue too, that I ran into with For Roger, and now that I’m running into with These Are My Friends! is it’s so hard to stay the lone motivator in your own project for an extended amount of time. It’s very hard to stay interested in something that you had to say three years ago…
What was so freeing about making The Yardley Boys was just, I had this to say. I said it. I got it. It’s done. This represents me. It still took a year to put out there, but I’m still very much in the same scenario. That’s a film about being stuck in your hometown, feeling like you can't grow up. I’m grown up, but I am seeing my parents more than I thought I would at 27. I’m not complaining about that. I’m teaching at my alma mater. The main group of people I talk to are 17 and 18 year olds. It’s a movie about being stunted, not in a negative way, but just in a “this is what my twenties would be” sort of way.
WD: I was going to say that it seems like you’re Soderbergh-ing it a little bit. I always hear he’s got the edit. They shoot and he has the edit somewhere.
AB: That’s the whole Ocean’s 12 thing. Matt Damon comes up to him on the second to last day of production: how do you think this is going to cut together? And he’s like, you want to see it? He pulls out his laptop and he’s already got an assembly cut.
WD: I mean I think that’s a cool lesson to take away. It’s not necessarily like you’re rushing, because [The Yardley Boys] doesn’t feel rushed, but it does feel like you’re trying to complete an assignment. You’re giving yourself deadlines. I think a lot of people work better that way. So you think that the next projects you’ll do, maybe not the same five days thing… It will at least be with the same sort of momentum oriented strike while the—
AB: — Iron’s hot. Yes. Well, you know the goal is obviously be a director on bigger projects at some point, but in terms of indie filmmaking, I can’t think of a better way to do it. When you don’t have money, it’s like capturing a moment in time. If I want to go out and take a picture of the sunset. It’s like, I have less than 30 minutes to do that and get a good picture. Or otherwise I have to wait till tomorrow and then it’ll still be sunset, but the sky is going to be different. So I don’t know if I could have made a film about what it felt to be at that moment of my 20’s now. I actually know it for a fact: I couldn’t make that film right now. So it is about like you said, striking when the iron’s hot. I don’t know what it was that was motivating me, because even Bobby, Drew, I love them to death, but it wasn’t like they were like, let’s all give up a week of our lives and do this idea that you’re not even fully articulating to us. They’re supportive. They’re filmmakers too. They’re endlessly supportive. But up until the day before we started shooting, Bobby was like, so what’s the film? And I was like, I don’t know.
So for them to give up that time, and you have to sell people on just you. You just have to be like, yeah, we’re making this thing. Just trust that I have it right, or I might not have it, but we’re going to do it.
WD: I mean, I feel like you've always had that since I've known you in college. The “we're going to get this done attitude.” You're not selling people in a deal making way, but you have it, an energy that's like, yeah, we're going to make this. And so people just come along and it's been great to see.
AB: Thank you. It’s been helpful. It’s helpful when you can say, like for For Roger, that was my senior thesis. I don’t think if I hadn’t made the 70 minute, two character, character-study summer after freshman year of college— which we didn’t even talk about yet, but that’s called Epilogue— which I barely even count as a first feature, but it is an exercise, right?
WD: My girlfriend’s been watching this novelist talking about novels, and he was saying your first novel is the novel you’ve written after you’ve written the first three novels. I think you could say that maybe about filmmaking too.
AB: Well, These Are My Friends! then!
WD: I do feel like you’re hitting a new stride with Yardley Boys in terms of distillation of what you’re good at or an awareness of what you’re good at or something.
AB: Yeah, it came really naturally. I’ve been stressed on every other production I’ve led, but I was never stressed on that. I think yeah, they way to get people interested in making an 88 minute horror film for my senior thesis was hey, I’ve done this. And then the way to get 150 people interested in making a party movie over five weekends in the summer of 2022 when Omicron is at peak was like, hey, I’ve done this. Doing tests, wearing masks. Then The Yardley Boys thing was okay, I don’t even need to say that we’ve done this, you guys know me. And I got you on the next thing.
WD: Total trust.
AB: It's so funny that you brought up the Soderbergh thing, because I was referencing that in real time on set. Because Matt Herzog, who helped co-produce, co-shoot the film. I was like, hey, I'm going to have this edited by the time we're done shooting. And that's not exactly how it ended up happening. We were all sleeping at the same house. I could show them “almost dailies,” but cut together. I was showing them stuff that we shot on Monday, on Wednesday. And they were like, this is working.
WD: I think it’s a good lesson and takeaway for really anyone, and I’m always finding this too, is keeping the momentum up, keeping yourself interested in the thing that you’re making is the challenge. Because these things take so much time, to make films. I’m writing a screenplay. They take so much for various pieces to come together. So you have to find ways to keep the spark alive and I feel like that’s an interesting thing to think about how we shot These Are My Friends! which was we have a whole week of work in between and then we go back to it. Like you said, it was a luxury to have the five days in a row [for Yardley Boys]. If you can work on something a little bit every day and try to inject something new or get some new enthusiasm in there bit by bit, rather than having these chunks where you’re broken off from it, I feel like it goes a long way.
AB: I will say that I am very fortunate to be in the scenario I'm in currently where I have a job that is a constant reminder of what I want to be doing in a way that isn't soul sucking. I also am done at 2:30 every day and have summers off. For anyone who is working a nine to five year round, or even worse, someone like Bobby, who is slaving away on sets as a costume PA every day. I can totally see how your drive or to do anything film related in your free time is just gone. It's easier said than done, just because of the cards I've been dealt at this moment in my life.
And it is interesting, too, thinking about how These Are My Friends! was a necessity because I just needed to get away from that 9-to-5 job. But then Yardley Boys was a necessity because I needed to prove something to myself.
For example, when I was working at the videography gig in Manhattan, that I eventually got fired from, I had no desire to do anything film related when I got home. Not only was it a nine to five, I was being kept late every day. I was working for someone who, now with life experience, I realized was just maybe not a good communicator and I wasn't giving them everything they needed. But at the time I was like, this dick doesn't know what he wants. There was no way in that environment I would have been able to create something good or meaningful.
The majority of film jobs that are out there are like that one where you're making a product and you are doing the shell of the thing that you love doing, but without any real gratifying reward, other than financial.
WD: So I guess the advice is go become a teacher.
AB: Well hey, the world needs more teachers. I was really depressed in 2021/2022, just because I felt like I wasn’t contributing to society in a meaningful way, and now, for all of the shit I deal with and for all of the day-to-day issues or complaints I might have, at least I know I’m making some sort of difference in some kid’s life. If you’re thinking of becoming a teacher, that should be reason enough. Free time, and it gives you summers [too]. But do not do it if you want to make a livable wage.
WD: Can we talk a little bit about new ideas that you’re working on now? Are you thinking about The Yardley Boys production route? Or are you thinking about a mesh between other ways that you’ve put together productions?
AB: I think there's a way to make something higher scale that still has that mentality behind it. I'm very excited about the thing that you and I are co-writing— I guess we'll just call it a mumble core biopic. But aside from that, and that would be another thing where there would be more moving pieces, but I would want to treat it as something with room to breathe, rather than over scheduling ourselves and then having having to deal with that.
I really want to make a baseball movie. Aside from people, family, real world issues right now, the two most important things to me currently are movies and baseball. I also think they are very similarly, I don't want to say emotionally manipulative, but they kind of have the same effect on me, where they're the only two things that can make me cry right now is a good movie or a good baseball game. And there's something there.
I wrote a review of Eephus after I saw it where I was like, I’ve seen my Dad cry three times— at his Mom’s funeral, his Dad’s funeral, and after Field of Dreams. There’s just something there. And there’s something untapped, I think, in male vulnerability.
I don't know if we were trying to get at this, but it came through anyway in the Yardley Boys of just like two guys’ inability to convey their feelings for each other to each other, even if those feelings are just like I love you bro. I think that is also a huge part of baseball, it's sports in general, sure, but baseball there's something uniquely American, in that idealistic version of America. Just like building something and getting together. Anyway, I want to write a baseball movie.
WD: There’s a specific element of communicating in baseball that’s different.
AB: Yeah. And there’s so much time to think. You’re alone with your thoughts.
So those two are the next two things I’m thinking of writing. I also do want to get back into horror. I mean, I’m going to put this out there into the universe to hopefully manifest it a little bit, but in an ideal world I’ll have made three more features below $5000 by the time I hit 30. It’ll be that mumble core one, the baseball one, and then a horror one.
WD: Maybe you should kick up the budgets a little bit so some money can come to you. *laughs*
AB: Ok yeah, five million dollars!
WD: Be careful what you wish for… But I like that a lot, that’s great.
AB: I’m reading a book, I’m writing an article on it. It’s a filmmaker, Jake Mahaffey, and he’s been working in the industry for 30 years. Or on the outskirts of the industry, just making micro-budget films and things like that. He wrote a textbook on micro-budget filmmaking. A lot of that has given me some great lasting lessons too. If it hasn’t been teaching me things then it’s been reaffirming things that I already felt and just needed validation on, which is it’s okay to not have money. That can actually make your film better and more creative. If you’re in a scenario on set and something isn’t working, that should be your dream opportunity. That’s an opportunity to talk with the actor and figure out a new, better way to make it work. And if you’re not doing that, then you’re only holding yourself back.
WD: It’s an opening. Talking about baseball… Someone’s open that you didn’t see. *laughs*
AB: *laughs* Absolutely. It’s getting me excited to shoot something else, reading that book.
WD: It’s very optimistic sounding.
AB: Yeah, it’s reinvigorating that drive for independent films, from someone who’s been through it and who isn’t talking down to you. So I’ll have an article out about that on Split Tooth in the coming weeks if anyone is interested in checking that out. Micro-budget Methods of Cinematic Storytelling. Great tool.
And it’s not in a Save The Cat sort of way. It’s not telling you how things need to be. If anything, it’s just opening up doors. It’s a book that’s on the shelf looking at you saying, hey, I’m open!
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