00:00:00
Speaker 1: G'day everyone, welcome to Conversations. Have you ever wondered how the movie industry works? You know, we see the movies on the screen, but do we see the work that goes into assembling the cast, the talent, the finances, and what sort of business it can be? Well, you need to listen to our next guest. Alexia Malocky is my guest today, and Alexia owns a company, or was the founder of a company called Little Studio Films, which is based in Los Angeles, and it virtually puts movie people and investors together. And she's written a book called Hollywood Money Traps, What Every Investor Needs to Know. But leading into this book, there's lots of exciting stuff to talk about with Alexia's story as well. So she joins us from LA, Alexia Maloki. Thank you for joining me. How are you?
00:00:48
Speaker 2: It's so wonderful to be on your show. Like it gives me more of a motivation to come to Australia now. I love the Australians. I have to say it once again. I know we said that. of camera, but I work a lot with the Australian creatives and, you know, some of my best friends are Australian. It's so lovely to have you. I mean, I'm here to answer any questions and of course, speak about my journey, which is pretty unique. I mean, I wouldn't really call myself a movie producer just by title. Cause I do so many things. I wear like a Disney on hats as you know. So yeah.
00:01:19
Speaker 1: Well, I'm really intrigued in the story that this little girl who comes to America from Italy with her mom, but we'll get to that. I mean, just tell us about the book initially.
00:01:29
Speaker 2: You know, it was one of those, and you'll probably relate to this because I'm sure you've seen the movie Jerry Maguire, right? With Tom Cruise and a sports agent, you being an athlete. So you remember in the beginning, he had this moment of breakdown, breakthrough, where all of a sudden he started questioning the ethics of the industry he was in as a sports agent. And having been on every corner of the industry, from distribution to production to finance to championing storytellers and talent, I have seen so much. And I felt it was time for me to blow the lid on certain things that I had witnessed and by writing a bit of a memoir of sorts. It's not really a memoir because it's not my entire life, but it's just like moments, key moments in my career in the industry and savory and unsavory things that I've witnessed because people think Hollywood, there's this big myth about Hollywood and people don't really know what it's about. And so I started telling some of those stories and in telling the stories and I was like, wow, I'm actually educating filmmakers and also investors on how to come together and actually create successful films without, pardon my friend, screwing one another, you know, because when you don't know each other, sometimes you may intentionally or unintentionally make the other party lose. And so it's like, I have to write it. And it was in a dark moment of my life a few months ago. I literally whipped it up in a month. And it was my third book. You know, I had my parent who is my business partner and my best friend who was in the hospital having life-saving surgery. And I started questioning life.
00:03:08
Speaker 1: That was your mother.
00:03:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. And she's well, God bless her. She's doing great right now. But in those moments, I was like, what's the meaning of it all? And so I just wrote it. I felt I had to protect the money as well as the creatives because there's nothing that gets created in anything without the money and probably in sports too, right? You need the owners of the sports teams in order to be able to go and play sports. So the money does matter and we need to respect it. So I wrote the book about educating the money on, you know, how to like partner up with the right people.
00:03:44
Speaker 1: Well, I was going to finish with this, but you finish with your book. You say Hollywood is full of people who arrive in enormous dreams, very little knowledge. They get burnt. They get lost. They ended up in lives that kept on orbiting the real ambition. This is your words. It's full of fraudsters. and opportunists and the merely incompetent people who consume the energy and resources. Tell us what you really think.
00:04:09
Speaker 2: Right. Well, I mean, here's the thing, you know, everybody wants to make it in show business. Let's not, you know, let's be honest about it. I mean, I don't think you probably get that a little less in Australia, but in the U S everywhere you go, even if it's somebody was a chiropractor, he has a dream to be an actor, right? Or, oh, I think I'm a writer or I'm a singer. Everybody, even if you're not in the business, they have this bug to be famous or to be part of Hollywood. And there is a lot of filmmakers who are talented, but are not really doing them homework. And then they go to everyone and say, hey, give me money for my movie. And my movie is going to be like the Oscars. And it's going to make $ 100 million in the box office. And a lot of those mom and pop investors, because this is really what I wrote the book for. Obviously, the big money managers of Wall Street, they have business managers, attorneys, they have all kinds of people who are vetting the process. But, you know, it's somebody who wants to be part of it because they think they're going to be on the right carpet with like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. And then they're giving their life savings or selling their house. And then they don't know what the heck they're doing. I felt like I had to give them some sort of a simple And I chose to do it with a little personal story so that it's not like, well, here's I am teaching you about the business. It was like, look, I've been burned too. And I've been at it for 35 years and I keep getting burned. So, yeah.
00:05:37
Speaker 1: We'll get to that because you do talk about a movie project that everything lined up. but it just fell apart at the end. But I want to come back to the little girl who immigrated from Italy with her mom. Can you take us back to that? What part of Italy and what led to your mom deciding to come to America with her daughter?
00:05:58
Speaker 2: Wow, thank you so much for asking. I came when I was 15 and a half. I know I'm dating myself, but yes, I was 15 and a half from Milan. My mother was getting divorced and actually she was divorced and then she met a gentleman from Texas and they were going to get into a business of doing an Italian shopping center of all things, because there was none of that back in the late 80s. And so she said, do you want to go to Los Angeles? And I said, hell yes. I mean, I grew up watching Happy Days. I grew up watching you know, series like you probably know them, you know, like Dallas and Dynasty and all of that. My dream was to be in an American high school and wear the cap and gown and, you know, just go to prom and do all the things that they do in America. And all of a sudden it was surreal that I literally found myself, you know, doing my senior year in an American high school.
00:06:52
Speaker 1: In L.A.? Yeah. So you went straight to L.A.
00:06:55
Speaker 2: Straight to L.A., yeah. The land of the palm trees, yes. And the sunshine.
00:06:59
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it doesn't sound like you had too much trouble adjusting to life in Italy. I mean, you had the English language.
00:07:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was fluent. I was already fluent in English. You know, my mother raised me with an English nanny, so I got to speak the language. And then we used to go to the States a lot for the winter in Florida. And so I, you know, went to language like, you know, they have in Italy, they have those specialized schools where you can kind of graduate to be a translator and interpreter already like. at a high school level. And so I learned to speak a lot of languages early on. And so for me, it was pretty easy. In fact, I found myself being actually a better student than most Americans in school because I knew how to spell and they didn't sometimes. It was fascinating.
00:07:48
Speaker 1: So what part of Italy did you come from?
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Speaker 2: Milan, Milan, Northern Italy. So, yeah.
00:07:54
Speaker 1: It would have been hard though. Milan is such a, an epicenter of fashion and culture. I mean, did, did, did you miss that?
00:08:03
Speaker 2: Not really. I loved it here. You know, I don't think, well, maybe now it's different, but I don't think back then, or, you know, when I entered into my twenties, I would have the opportunities in Italy that I would be having in the United States, you know, in America, you can be anybody, you can just wake up one day and say, I'm going to be an NFL, you know, football player. And, and, if you work hard at it, you're going to get it done. And you're going to have the people that, you know, if you have the work ethic, so they will facilitate that for you. Obviously you have to have the talent, but in, in Italy for a woman, I mean, they will mostly say you are either a secretary or a PR person, or you're like in fashion or they won't really take you seriously as a founder, especially in the nineties or the 2000. Now it's a little different. So I'm very blessed that I'm here. I'm very grateful to the country that literally took me in and allowed me to dream and do all the things that I did, although I didn't go far for it. It didn't come by chance.
00:09:08
Speaker 1: I understand that. That emanates through your writing. But it seems you integrated so easily into school, and school kids can be so cruel. How did you avoid all of that?
00:09:20
Speaker 2: Well, I have to tell you, Graham, the fact that I was Italian made me a hit like without even trying because everybody was. But the first is you're going to laugh at this because of the two things that people ask me in school, in high school. First of all, they asked me, what do we dance in Italy in the discotheque? And they said, do you dance with the opera? And I'm like, no. He says, oh, you have Michael Jackson? I'm like, of course I have Michael Jackson. So they thought I was some kind of an alien. I don't know with this idea. And then the other thing that they were asking, it's funny. It's like, do you shave? and i'm like shave should yeah should i be offended like oh because italians are very hairy and i'm like.
00:10:06
Speaker 1: I would have been offended.
00:10:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was pretty insulting, but that's okay. You know, I was young. I didn't take it personally.
00:10:14
Speaker 1: My guest on Conversation today is Alexia Malocchi. I want to call you a film producer, but I know it's much more than that. And she's written her book, amongst other books she's written, called Hollywood Money Traps, What Every Investor Needs to Know. But it's a journey through Hollywood, and we'll... continue that after the break, back shortly. Welcome back, everybody. My guest on Conversations is Alexia Malocchi, and that's an exotic Italian name, I know, because the young lady was born in Italy, moved to America with her mother when she was 15, integrated immediately into society. Did I read you speak six languages?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually, well, I'm working on my seventh, but yes, currently I speak six languages, and A few came easy. My mother is Greek. So I spoke that language, obviously, when I started speaking as a toddler. And the same thing, Italian. And then, you know, as I said earlier, we had an English nanny. So that's already three right there.
00:11:19
Speaker 1: That's three.
00:11:19
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then my grandmother was Swiss German. So I got to speak, obviously, also German. And then French in school and Spanish in school. So that's it.
00:11:31
Speaker 1: Yeah. Did I read or did I hear that your mother was the daughter of a Russian prince? Yes, she was. Well, you're going to tell me that story.
00:11:43
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, we are descendants to the imperial family of Russian. My mom's father was second or third cousin to the Tsar from the Sheremetyev lineage, and he was a very eccentric man. personality who had to run away, obviously, with the revolution and move to Greece. What was interesting, and maybe that's where I got the artist bug, he was a world-renowned concert pianist and musician, and he was also an art curator and collector, and he donated Faberge eggs to the New York Metropolitan, and he had Kandinsky paintings, so he grew up in He also had a coffee shop that was for the artists and it was called Petrograd in the heart of Athens where like all the artists used to hang out. And so I think I must have gotten it from him. It must be in the G's.
00:12:38
Speaker 1: But it's such a story because it didn't end well for the Tsar and his family. And he's got direct lineage to that. And those Fabergé eggs are fabulously delicious. expensive i mean did he have means was he was he rich uh.
00:12:57
Speaker 2: He probably was but i didn't get any of them sadly sadly he didn't leave me anything he was very he was donating things everywhere but i have to say and i don't speak a lot about my my quote-unquote blue blood because you know in america there is a sting there are everybody's account and everybody is something and then you know you can say whoever you say you are nobody really does any digging and as you know most of the people that are the real thing they don't really broadcast it you know it's it's like it happened it's part of my lineage I'm proud of it but I'm more proud of my grandfather not his royal blood but more about what he accomplished in life which I felt was remarkable and you know I got a little bit of him hopefully.
00:13:43
Speaker 1: We mentioned your father. Your father doesn't figure prominently, other than the fact that your mum and he had a divorce and you came to America. Can you tell us about your father?
00:13:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, no. My father has been always shown into my Facebook feed and in my social media, but not so much in the business. But I do credit, he was a very well-known ad man. He was like the real original madman, Jon Hamm character in Mad Men. You know, he had... two of the biggest advertising agencies in Milan. And I actually, when I was in school, I used to go there and watch him do the creative meetings with the commercials and all of that. So I learned a lot of the marketing skills on how to market a movie or how to position a movie from him. Because even when I would visit in the summer, sometimes I would go and be his intern, quote unquote, for the PR division of his company. And then I got to learn how to before social media was there. So no, he definitely made a mark on me in the business side. Did I get along with him as well as I did with my mother? Most likely not, but he's now passed on and, you know, he rest in peace and, you know, he's given me lots. And so I'm grateful for that.
00:15:01
Speaker 1: Were you an only child?
00:15:03
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:15:04
Speaker 1: So just the marriage breaks up and I guess that's always unpleasant for everybody and can be tempestuous. Sometimes it can be amicable, not often really. So why, how did America come up? Did your mother have connections here, family here that made you decide?
00:15:23
Speaker 2: Well, you know, she was going to do some business here and we just had to, we didn't want to run away. It's not like we ran away, but I mean, we wanted to, my mother wanted to give me an opportunity to do something with my life. And she didn't feel like I would go far in Italy. And, uh, you know, in the, as it always happens in divorces, like you said, they never are truly amicable. We literally had to leave with nothing, you know, to come here, but she really wanted to give me the opportunities that I found through my career. Like, as you read, I didn't even really go to university. I started working right off of high school and, and, uh, I never regret that. I call it the school of hard knocks, you know, and I think the school of life is even more important than the school filled with degrees. In today's world, I'd really take you nowhere unless you're a doctor or a lawyer or a scientist.
00:16:20
Speaker 1: But you came with so little. I mean, the legend is you came with $ 5, 000 and a couple of suitcases. It must have been tough. It must have been tough for your mother.
00:16:31
Speaker 2: It was. It was. But thank God, you know, she had lined up opportunities, obviously. So, you know, when we went, it wasn't like, hey, let's see how we can survive. I mean, she did have, you know, business opportunities. And, you know, those obviously panned out pretty quickly, you know, within the first few months. And I was so excited. I think, you know, when you're younger, you're so oblivious. Nothing is really... an obstacle when you're getting the opportunity to live the life that you watched on television as a kid or you know you've been to the movies I mean I got to meet so many of my idols you know people that I grew up with you know and it's just to me it's still surreal like I get more excited about meeting people that marked my childhood than say if I were to meet I don't know Tom Cruise you know it's just the people that that marked certain areas of my.
00:17:24
Speaker 1: Life and I'm like oh Who springs to mind? Who was the biggest heartthrob you had when you were a teenager?
00:17:33
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I mean, there weren't even people that I idolised, like, you know, I had a crush on. Like, for example, I got to meet Don Most. who was on Happy Days, you know, he was the funny guy with the red hair. I don't even remember his name. And it was weird. I brought him on my podcast, you know, because, you know, I have a podcast as well. And I interviewed him and it was surreal for me to go, oh, my goodness, I dreamed about meeting people like you. And here you are. You know, I had Finola Hughes, who was in, as you know, staying alive with John Travolta. And she was british um you know she's been a star of general hospital for years and years and i grew up watching that movie i must have seen it 20 times you know i loved it and i'm like oh my gosh and finola's going to be directing a movie that i'm producing now and we're friends so it's just this very surreal.
00:18:26
Speaker 1: Thing so you get you you get your break as a translator is that right you're you're still at high school and you're asked to translate Yeah, yeah.
00:18:36
Speaker 2: I was still in high school and a friend of ours who was in the film business says, what are you doing for spring break? And I'm like, well, nothing. And he says, do you want to work as a translator for this Italian distributor who's coming here at this convention called the American Film Market? And he says, you just go watch movies with him and you just translate the deals that he's making with the studios. And I was like, well, I was literally 18.
00:19:00
Speaker 1: I had just turned 18.
00:19:05
Speaker 2: And it was wild, you know, because I was like, is there such a thing as an independent community of filmmaking? Yes, there was. You know, there were no faxes, no telexes back then, no cell phones, as you all know. So they needed, they didn't have Google to translate. So it came in very handy.
00:19:23
Speaker 1: You grow up quickly then in a situation like that, I would have thought.
00:19:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I loved it. I love that world. I love the world of film. bridging the international distributors who are picking up the movies and releasing them in other country and being part of that journey. It was so exciting.
00:19:42
Speaker 1: My guest on Conversations today is Alexia Malocky. She knows everything there is to know about making movies and putting investors and I guess stars and directors and producers together and she's written a book about it because there are traps that investors need to know. Alexia's observed it and she's written about it. Hollywood Money Traps is the name of the book. What every investor needs to know if you're thinking of investing in movies, you need to buy it. Back after the break, folks. Welcome back to Conversations, everybody. My guest today is Alexia Malocchi, a young lady who immigrated from Italy with her mother and established this business. Can speak six languages. So almost immediately out of school was asked to translate for an Italian investor in the movies. And from that, you were hooked on that industry, Alexia. So when did you actually go into business? Obviously, mum was a big influence, but When did you start to make a business of this industry that you've been introduced to?
00:20:43
Speaker 2: Well, Graeme, first of all, thank you for calling me a young lady. It feels very good to feel young when you're in your 50s. Hard to tell, but yes.
00:20:51
Speaker 1: No, well, I can tell you. Well, you do radiate through the screen, and age is but a number anyway. So anyway, you're introduced to the movie industry, but you have to make a go of it yourself and establish your own business. You must have been quite ambitious.
00:21:07
Speaker 2: Yes, I was. I mean, and I have to say, again, life is always something that is made of coincidences. And if you go with the coincidences, sometimes those coincidences will point you in the right direction of where you're destined to go, where you're meant to be. And again, this fluke of being a translator for an Italian distributor. turned out to me meeting another four or five distributors, one from Greece, one from France, one's for Germany, another one from whatever, who all of a sudden they're like, Alexia, you're here in LA. Can you follow our business ventures? Because, you know, we're buying movies every few months and, you know, we cannot always travel here. Can you follow all our business dealings? And we'll pay you, we'll pay you money to do so. And because obviously of the languages that I spoke and the cultural affinities, I found myself getting paid to go watch films and make offers and movies that my international clients wanted to buy. And so I started making a little money, not a lot of money, but it was a little money. And then my mother was working at Universal Studios in the finance department with Bruce Lansbury, who's Angela Lansbury's brother, you know, from Murder, She Wrote. And she was doing finance deals. And then some of those distributors in They're like, why don't you and mom make your own companies and you start selling the movies? You can find some movies to sell that we're going to buy. And so we started a company when I was like literally 19 years old.
00:22:38
Speaker 1: I need to know how it works. So if I've made a movie, I come to you and say, can you sell it? Who are you selling it to?
00:22:48
Speaker 2: I sell it to the big networks and theater chains all over the world. So for example, you have an independent film in Australia and it's done in Australia and it's not being made by a studio, but you still feel like it needs to be seen and appreciated by people, right? So you'll come to me and then I will say, you know what, I'll call up the BBC in the UK and show them the film and see if they wanna buy it and release it in their channel. Or I will go to a theater chain in Italy and I will see if they wanna put it out in the theaters and then I'll make that deal. So that's what they call a sales agent or slash distributor, you know, which is what I started getting in the business of doing. And the languages came very handy, obviously, because it allowed me to deal with everybody all over the world. You know, I used to sell to Village Roadshow Australia. I sold many films to them. I sold movies to Hoyts. I mean, some of like the biggest distributors in Australia.
00:23:50
Speaker 1: Did you ever meet a guy called John Cronin here in Adelaide? John, he worked for Village Roadshow for quite a while. Good friend. He was heavily involved in the movie industry, but... Wow.
00:24:01
Speaker 2: No, I knew Mark Berman, I think was his name. He used to run Village Roadshow, Warner Brothers. But, yeah, I knew a lot of the local, obviously, I don't even remember the names. They're probably not even around anymore, but, yeah.
00:24:16
Speaker 1: So they've made the movie, but part of your book also talks about assembling the money to make the movie. So there's lots of different roles involved. as you describe it, in your business. And the traps that you're talking about are the situations where people with investment, with money to make, could lose the money. So are you there from ground zero when the movie is being assembled, with the finance and before the actors are chosen and the like?
00:24:47
Speaker 2: Most of the time, yes. I mean, I'm full disclosure. I'm not somebody that likes to ask for money. So, you know, whenever I'm bringing money to the table is usually through my distributors who are, you know, say the BBC or Studio Canal or whatever, who get a project and they want to buy it early at an early stage because they love it. And so that helps, obviously, the financing process. That's one process. And sometimes I get hired as a consultant. to make sure that the packages are right so that the script is good enough to go to a director that will say yes and an actor that will say yes. And then maybe somebody wants to shoot in Australia. And as we all know, I don't know if maybe you know that, but there's a 40% tax credits for filming in Australia. So people want to go to Australia. That's why there's so many big studio movies because you get 40% of your money back. So they need someone to help them navigate those things. Am I the person writing the checks? Not really. I'd rather go shopping. But do I advise the investors? Yes. Do I advise the producers? Yes. Have I witnessed all kinds of crazy things doing that line of work?
00:25:58
Speaker 1: Can you just explain the Australian price? So if you make a movie, that investment here in Australia, the government gives you 40%. Back as a tax credit, is that right?
00:26:10
Speaker 2: Yeah. So if you do a film and you hire an Australian producer, local producer, say you have an American story or an Italian story or something, and you want to shoot it in Australia and you're hiring Australian actors, Australian producers and all of that, the country literally gives you a 40% back on whatever it is you're spending in the country. and gives it back to you as a credit, which means this money that gets returned to you. If you use Australia just as a location, which means you're bringing American actors and American filmmakers, and it's just, you want to a beautiful country that you're in, you still got 25%. So it's one of the countries that is actually very aggressive in bringing movie productions down there. They're, they're, they're wonderful. I mean, all of the, you know, I'm part of this organization called Australians in Film, which there is obviously in LA and they really heavily promote Australian talent and Australian filmmakers. And I think your country does a really great job.
00:27:21
Speaker 1: Hasn't Donald Trump tried to slow that down by imposing tariffs on films made here? Has that, has that impacted at all?
00:27:29
Speaker 2: He talks a big game, but every day he comes up with a different story. So I wouldn't really worry too much. By the time he decides to implement something, he'll probably be, you know, new president comes in. So I'm not too worried about it. But yeah, does he make things difficult a little bit? He still does. But ultimately, there's nothing going on in Hollywood, unfortunately, because we don't have all the facilitations that other countries do. So that's why many films are shot overseas. It's because internationally there's a lot more opportunity.
00:28:02
Speaker 1: We had recently, these Hollywood actors pop up in Australia all the time and there's a vision of one of our local football games and our football game is unique. But there was Tom Hanks in the audience imitating one of our officials, one of the goal umpires, just gesticulating something there. So they obviously can breeze in and out of the country. You're big stars.
00:28:23
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you have a lot of amazing Australian actors. I mean, some of the biggest stars in movies are Australian. I mean, look at Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Sam Worthington. I mean, the list goes on, you know, and incredible Australian directors as well.
00:28:37
Speaker 1: Baz Luhrmann.
00:28:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, Baz, yeah.
00:28:41
Speaker 1: We need to take a break. We'll talk a bit more about the book and some of the content in it because I've got a few questions out of it.
00:28:47
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:28:48
Speaker 1: My guest is Alexia Malocki. Her book is called Hollywood Money Traps. It's a bit of a journey through life in the movie industry. I want you to name a few names. I think one of the things in the book you don't do is bury anybody. You don't name names. I might have to get a couple out of you when we come back. Back after the break, folks. Welcome back, everybody. I'm talking to Alexia Malocchi. Alexia is in LA, in Los Angeles, with a beautiful background to our set of The Kahn, where you obviously go often to The Kahn. What's it like? Is it as exotic and romantic and as exciting as it is when as we think it is?
00:29:26
Speaker 2: I would have to say it is. It's not as much as it used to be like 20 years ago, 25 years ago when I was first starting out. I mean, now there's a lot of influencers and they're crowding the place. And a lot of people, like anybody who thinks that they have a movie, they want to go to Cannes. But, you know, before it was a little bit more exclusive, but it is still fabulous. The food is great. The weather, if you luck out, is good. There's wonderful movies to see. They do a lot of people watching. Everybody's in a good mood. It must be the French wine or the champagne. Everybody's in a good mood, even if they're doing no business. It's like one of those festivals that even if you do zero business, you still come home happy.
00:30:11
Speaker 1: So lots of different topics in your book, and I'm trying to pick out ones. The Bruce Willis that wasn't there. you got a movie based on Bruce Willis starring, but it didn't quite pan out that way. Can you give us a brief overview of that?
00:30:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a little bit of an adventure. One of my clients is a big distributor in the Middle East and he's bought, you know, movies like Hunger Games and La La Land and everything. And so he was looking to buy a movie that, that had allegedly Bruce Willis in it. And, uh, He, he wanted to be the first bidding war. He, you know, offered a lot of money for the rights to, it was still in pre-production as they call it in early stages. It was set to start on a certain date. And because I knew the production team, I did not really think about doing my due diligence. I sort of, usually I do, but that time I didn't really do that. And then all of a sudden there is the movie is supposed to start say in June and June goes by, there's nothing. July goes by. Oh, yeah, you know, there's something. There's always like an excuse. So finally I'm like, well, let me call up the agents and let me find out like what's happening. And then the agents are like, what movie?
00:31:27
Speaker 1: This is Bruce Willis' agent.
00:31:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're like, we have no idea. And I'm like, what do you mean? I have no idea. So I go off and I basically asked the producer to send me the contract with Bruce Willis. And because I said my client would want his money back. And then they sent me the last page of the agreement that has a signature from Bruce Willis. But it could have been an agreement from another 20 movies earlier. You know, it's like as if I had a signature and I sent somebody a signature. And I was like, hmm. I want my money back. And then finally, they would not give us the money back. And then they send us, they say, the movie is now going in production and we can show you the footage. And then we see like a little scene like in the middle of ruins and we see a person running from the back. You can't even see who it is. And it was like one minute long. And I'm like, is that Bruce Willis? Like, yeah, that's Bruce Willis. Do you think I'm stupid? I mean, yeah, it was just crazy, you know.
00:32:33
Speaker 1: But he lost his money.
00:32:36
Speaker 2: He lost his money, yeah, because conveniently, you know, they had a shell company in another state and that company just disappeared. And so who are you going to sue? You know, so, yeah.
00:32:47
Speaker 1: I like this one you talk about when Ego runs a set, when somebody who's investing money in the movie insists that a certain person also... stars in the movies or appears in the movies no i guess there's been lots of occasions like that but i want you to name because there was a there was a valid actor in it who felt her role was being undermined by the intrusion or the insertion of this person who the producer wanted in there so can you give us a brief overview of that and and tell me who the actor was.
00:33:22
Speaker 2: And now everybody's gonna google the movie what's interesting because that movie funny enough is then as you it's the same movie that ends up my chapter of the shelf where like basically the investor left it on the shelf and it never got released it's actually the same movie so it had two disasters one after the other so um Yeah, the actress who was complaining, not the one that was featured properly, you know, prominently, was actually Laura Herring, you know, from Mulholland Drive. And she was a wonderful actress and a dear friend of mine who came on the film, you know, because I was producing it. And she wanted to be showcased properly. And she literally came to me and she's like, nobody's doing close-ups on me. Like, I'm like in the corner. Like, why are you doing that? And she was like, I'm not going to produce the movie. So it was a big thing of me being on set and trying to be a diplomat and manage. And I was a producer, but there were another two producers on set, which were male. And clearly, that's the story that I just mentioned.
00:34:30
Speaker 1: How much say does a producer have in the directing and the production of the movie? Can you interfere?
00:34:38
Speaker 2: You know what? I could, and I did partially, but it was a very delicate situation because the directors of that movie were my clients. And so who were very nice, by the way, they were not at fault because they were just listening to what the producer was saying. And so I also did not, it was a conflict because I didn't want the directors to get fired and off the other producers. And then they would get fired and then they will be sent back to Italy. So I was like, I was walking on eggshells because I was trying to make my star happy, but then I was also trying to keep the job of my directors while navigating all this.
00:35:15
Speaker 1: So the producer can fire the director.
00:35:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, they wanted to, they could have sent them back home and send them packing if they didn't like the work or something, or, you know, I just, I just wanted to keep the piece on the set and it was, it was challenging. So, you know, now I've, I've learned my lessons and, I don't work anymore. I think that I don't run the show anymore. I'm going to have to be the big kahuna moving forward.
00:35:39
Speaker 1: The other thing that intrigued me and surprised me was when music writes, the chapter's called When Music Writes, Kill a Movie. I didn't realise it was so complicated to get a song with all these great movies with amazing soundtracks and how expensive and how difficult it is to get a song into a movie. Can you give us an overview of that, please?
00:36:01
Speaker 2: Yes, of course. Well, you know, as you saw, I mean, obviously we can talk about it because, you know, I have a great relationship with the band, but that was a Duran Duran music-centric project, you know, the band Duran Duran, which everybody knows who they are. And, you know, we were, it was a sort of coming of age film and had a lot of, it was a lot of the 80s soundtrack. And obviously Duran Duran being one of the biggest bands of the 80s, they had probably 10, 12 songs that were an instrumental part of the storytelling of that project as we were putting it together. And then all of a sudden, you know, we realized that they had two different record labels. They had the record label with some of the older music that was with one company. And then they had the new music that was another record label. And so I had to make everybody agree, you know, just not, the band was fine that they wanted their songs in the film, but then the record labels, they started asking crazy money. And then it was, the songwriters and then the, you know, what they were doing. So there were like probably, you know, 10, 15 people that I had to jump hoops on. And then it ended up being so expensive that I literally almost gave up and then the strike happened. And so that movie never happened, thankfully, in some way.
00:37:17
Speaker 1: I keep thinking of these as I was reading that chapter about how expensive it was and how difficult it was to get the music rights and Some of the, like The Bodyguard and Footloose and Dirty Dancing and even Top Gun where they, you know, he's playing the piano and doing a Jerry Lee Lewis song. So Pulp Fiction, the songs are so important. It seems to me they are a really expensive part of the movies as you describe it.
00:37:45
Speaker 2: Millions. It could be millions of dollars. I remember in one of the movies we wanted to get a Frank Sinatra song, not even sung by Frank Sinatra. I think it was that Samoree. And it was not even Frank Sinatra himself singing, but some unknown singer that was just singing the lyrics. And even that one, I remember just for 10 seconds of that was like $ 50, 000. Wow. Just for 10 seconds. It wasn't even a whole song. And it wasn't Frank Sinatra, Mr. Blue Eye singing. It was some unknown musician that was singing some interpretation of it.
00:38:22
Speaker 1: But even just a musical background, it obviously must be cheaper to have new music written for movies.
00:38:31
Speaker 2: Yeah. And now with AI, I mean, obviously now with AI, things are a lot easier across the board. I know we're not fans, but at the same time, they're also making our life easy. You know, we need humans. We need people like you, Graham, and me, but we're still, you know. AI can solve a lot of problems for us, let me tell you.
00:38:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, but I'm scared of it. I'm scared. I guess when we Google something, we're using AI. I don't count that, but it probably is. What do you hope for the book, Alexia? What do you hope springs from it?
00:39:06
Speaker 2: I'm just hoping that, you know, it wasn't done as a moneymaker for me. It was really done for the love of the business. And I hope that people don't get swayed by the title Hollywood Money Traps and think it's so negative and nobody should be giving money to filmmakers and storytellers because there's some very worthy people that need support so that they can tell great stories. So for me, it really was a way to have the two people come together. You know, at some point, I'm probably going to roll out my fourth book. But but this one was really done for just, you know, protection, but also understanding one another better, you know, because people need the money and people need the art and they have to speak the same language. just like sports, money, like anything that is worthy of anything, the money plays a role.
00:39:56
Speaker 1: Well, good luck. One final question before we say goodbye. The experience that you have with Hollywood and movie stars and actors and producers and directors, do you have a favourite entertainment person?
00:40:10
Speaker 2: Oh, gosh. I mean, I guess I go by... by moments. I mean, you know, if there's somebody that I would want to meet, probably who has passed on, like one of the legends would have been Marilyn Monroe. I did get to meet Fred Astaire when I first came in America and I opened my bank account. Fred Astaire was in the bank and I could not believe it. I was blown away because I grew up with my grandparents watching all the musicals. So, you know, so I've met him already. But, you know, it would have been somebody like Marilyn. And obviously in today's world, I mean, Who doesn't want to meet Brad Pitt? Come on. Like after F1 and looking so well, it was like, yeah. I met Jerry Buchenheimer too. He was my idol and I met him recently. So I would probably say if it was somebody who's passed on and is no longer in life, we would have to be, you know, either Marilyn Monroe or Alfred Hitchcock. And then now would be Brad Pitt, I would say.
00:41:06
Speaker 1: Yeah. He's getting older, Brad.
00:41:08
Speaker 2: Yeah. But he's very.
00:41:13
Speaker 1: That was a joke.
00:41:14
Speaker 2: Oh.
00:41:16
Speaker 1: Just a joke.
00:41:17
Speaker 2: He's getting old, I know. He's kind of like me, you know? He's ageless. Benjamin Button.
00:41:24
Speaker 1: He is not aging at all.
00:41:26
Speaker 2: No. He's living his own Benjamin Button era, for sure.
00:41:31
Speaker 1: Well, look, thanks for the chat. Good luck with the book. I hope it goes well for you.
00:41:35
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me and, you know, good day to all the Australians. I hope you get to read the book and, you know, and go see Australian films because they're wonderful.
00:41:45
Speaker 1: There's a couple of good ones around at the moment too. So Alexia May Lockie was my guest, folks. The book is called Hollywood Money Traps, What Every Investor Needs to Know. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: G'day everyone, welcome to Conversations. Have you ever wondered how the movie industry works? You know, we see the movies on the screen, but do we see the work that goes into assembling the cast, the talent, the finances, and what sort of business it can be? Well, you need to listen to our next guest. Alexia Malocky is my guest today, and Alexia owns a company, or was the founder of a company called Little Studio Films, which is based in Los Angeles, and it virtually puts movie people and investors together. And she's written a book called Hollywood Money Traps, What Every Investor Needs to Know. But leading into this book, there's lots of exciting stuff to talk about with Alexia's story as well. So she joins us from LA, Alexia Maloki. Thank you for joining me. How are you?
00:00:48
Speaker 2: It's so wonderful to be on your show. Like it gives me more of a motivation to come to Australia now. I love the Australians. I have to say it once again. I know we said that. of camera, but I work a lot with the Australian creatives and, you know, some of my best friends are Australian. It's so lovely to have you. I mean, I'm here to answer any questions and of course, speak about my journey, which is pretty unique. I mean, I wouldn't really call myself a movie producer just by title. Cause I do so many things. I wear like a Disney on hats as you know. So yeah.
00:01:19
Speaker 1: Well, I'm really intrigued in the story that this little girl who comes to America from Italy with her mom, but we'll get to that. I mean, just tell us about the book initially.
00:01:29
Speaker 2: You know, it was one of those, and you'll probably relate to this because I'm sure you've seen the movie Jerry Maguire, right? With Tom Cruise and a sports agent, you being an athlete. So you remember in the beginning, he had this moment of breakdown, breakthrough, where all of a sudden he started questioning the ethics of the industry he was in as a sports agent. And having been on every corner of the industry, from distribution to production to finance to championing storytellers and talent, I have seen so much. And I felt it was time for me to blow the lid on certain things that I had witnessed and by writing a bit of a memoir of sorts. It's not really a memoir because it's not my entire life, but it's just like moments, key moments in my career in the industry and savory and unsavory things that I've witnessed because people think Hollywood, there's this big myth about Hollywood and people don't really know what it's about. And so I started telling some of those stories and in telling the stories and I was like, wow, I'm actually educating filmmakers and also investors on how to come together and actually create successful films without, pardon my friend, screwing one another, you know, because when you don't know each other, sometimes you may intentionally or unintentionally make the other party lose. And so it's like, I have to write it. And it was in a dark moment of my life a few months ago. I literally whipped it up in a month. And it was my third book. You know, I had my parent who is my business partner and my best friend who was in the hospital having life-saving surgery. And I started questioning life.
00:03:08
Speaker 1: That was your mother.
00:03:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. And she's well, God bless her. She's doing great right now. But in those moments, I was like, what's the meaning of it all? And so I just wrote it. I felt I had to protect the money as well as the creatives because there's nothing that gets created in anything without the money and probably in sports too, right? You need the owners of the sports teams in order to be able to go and play sports. So the money does matter and we need to respect it. So I wrote the book about educating the money on, you know, how to like partner up with the right people.
00:03:44
Speaker 1: Well, I was going to finish with this, but you finish with your book. You say Hollywood is full of people who arrive in enormous dreams, very little knowledge. They get burnt. They get lost. They ended up in lives that kept on orbiting the real ambition. This is your words. It's full of fraudsters. and opportunists and the merely incompetent people who consume the energy and resources. Tell us what you really think.
00:04:09
Speaker 2: Right. Well, I mean, here's the thing, you know, everybody wants to make it in show business. Let's not, you know, let's be honest about it. I mean, I don't think you probably get that a little less in Australia, but in the U S everywhere you go, even if it's somebody was a chiropractor, he has a dream to be an actor, right? Or, oh, I think I'm a writer or I'm a singer. Everybody, even if you're not in the business, they have this bug to be famous or to be part of Hollywood. And there is a lot of filmmakers who are talented, but are not really doing them homework. And then they go to everyone and say, hey, give me money for my movie. And my movie is going to be like the Oscars. And it's going to make $ 100 million in the box office. And a lot of those mom and pop investors, because this is really what I wrote the book for. Obviously, the big money managers of Wall Street, they have business managers, attorneys, they have all kinds of people who are vetting the process. But, you know, it's somebody who wants to be part of it because they think they're going to be on the right carpet with like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. And then they're giving their life savings or selling their house. And then they don't know what the heck they're doing. I felt like I had to give them some sort of a simple And I chose to do it with a little personal story so that it's not like, well, here's I am teaching you about the business. It was like, look, I've been burned too. And I've been at it for 35 years and I keep getting burned. So, yeah.
00:05:37
Speaker 1: We'll get to that because you do talk about a movie project that everything lined up. but it just fell apart at the end. But I want to come back to the little girl who immigrated from Italy with her mom. Can you take us back to that? What part of Italy and what led to your mom deciding to come to America with her daughter?
00:05:58
Speaker 2: Wow, thank you so much for asking. I came when I was 15 and a half. I know I'm dating myself, but yes, I was 15 and a half from Milan. My mother was getting divorced and actually she was divorced and then she met a gentleman from Texas and they were going to get into a business of doing an Italian shopping center of all things, because there was none of that back in the late 80s. And so she said, do you want to go to Los Angeles? And I said, hell yes. I mean, I grew up watching Happy Days. I grew up watching you know, series like you probably know them, you know, like Dallas and Dynasty and all of that. My dream was to be in an American high school and wear the cap and gown and, you know, just go to prom and do all the things that they do in America. And all of a sudden it was surreal that I literally found myself, you know, doing my senior year in an American high school.
00:06:52
Speaker 1: In L.A.? Yeah. So you went straight to L.A.
00:06:55
Speaker 2: Straight to L.A., yeah. The land of the palm trees, yes. And the sunshine.
00:06:59
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it doesn't sound like you had too much trouble adjusting to life in Italy. I mean, you had the English language.
00:07:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was fluent. I was already fluent in English. You know, my mother raised me with an English nanny, so I got to speak the language. And then we used to go to the States a lot for the winter in Florida. And so I, you know, went to language like, you know, they have in Italy, they have those specialized schools where you can kind of graduate to be a translator and interpreter already like. at a high school level. And so I learned to speak a lot of languages early on. And so for me, it was pretty easy. In fact, I found myself being actually a better student than most Americans in school because I knew how to spell and they didn't sometimes. It was fascinating.
00:07:48
Speaker 1: So what part of Italy did you come from?
00:07:51
Speaker 2: Milan, Milan, Northern Italy. So, yeah.
00:07:54
Speaker 1: It would have been hard though. Milan is such a, an epicenter of fashion and culture. I mean, did, did, did you miss that?
00:08:03
Speaker 2: Not really. I loved it here. You know, I don't think, well, maybe now it's different, but I don't think back then, or, you know, when I entered into my twenties, I would have the opportunities in Italy that I would be having in the United States, you know, in America, you can be anybody, you can just wake up one day and say, I'm going to be an NFL, you know, football player. And, and, if you work hard at it, you're going to get it done. And you're going to have the people that, you know, if you have the work ethic, so they will facilitate that for you. Obviously you have to have the talent, but in, in Italy for a woman, I mean, they will mostly say you are either a secretary or a PR person, or you're like in fashion or they won't really take you seriously as a founder, especially in the nineties or the 2000. Now it's a little different. So I'm very blessed that I'm here. I'm very grateful to the country that literally took me in and allowed me to dream and do all the things that I did, although I didn't go far for it. It didn't come by chance.
00:09:08
Speaker 1: I understand that. That emanates through your writing. But it seems you integrated so easily into school, and school kids can be so cruel. How did you avoid all of that?
00:09:20
Speaker 2: Well, I have to tell you, Graham, the fact that I was Italian made me a hit like without even trying because everybody was. But the first is you're going to laugh at this because of the two things that people ask me in school, in high school. First of all, they asked me, what do we dance in Italy in the discotheque? And they said, do you dance with the opera? And I'm like, no. He says, oh, you have Michael Jackson? I'm like, of course I have Michael Jackson. So they thought I was some kind of an alien. I don't know with this idea. And then the other thing that they were asking, it's funny. It's like, do you shave? and i'm like shave should yeah should i be offended like oh because italians are very hairy and i'm like.
00:10:06
Speaker 1: I would have been offended.
00:10:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was pretty insulting, but that's okay. You know, I was young. I didn't take it personally.
00:10:14
Speaker 1: My guest on Conversation today is Alexia Malocchi. I want to call you a film producer, but I know it's much more than that. And she's written her book, amongst other books she's written, called Hollywood Money Traps, What Every Investor Needs to Know. But it's a journey through Hollywood, and we'll... continue that after the break, back shortly. Welcome back, everybody. My guest on Conversations is Alexia Malocchi, and that's an exotic Italian name, I know, because the young lady was born in Italy, moved to America with her mother when she was 15, integrated immediately into society. Did I read you speak six languages?
00:10:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually, well, I'm working on my seventh, but yes, currently I speak six languages, and A few came easy. My mother is Greek. So I spoke that language, obviously, when I started speaking as a toddler. And the same thing, Italian. And then, you know, as I said earlier, we had an English nanny. So that's already three right there.
00:11:19
Speaker 1: That's three.
00:11:19
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then my grandmother was Swiss German. So I got to speak, obviously, also German. And then French in school and Spanish in school. So that's it.
00:11:31
Speaker 1: Yeah. Did I read or did I hear that your mother was the daughter of a Russian prince? Yes, she was. Well, you're going to tell me that story.
00:11:43
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, we are descendants to the imperial family of Russian. My mom's father was second or third cousin to the Tsar from the Sheremetyev lineage, and he was a very eccentric man. personality who had to run away, obviously, with the revolution and move to Greece. What was interesting, and maybe that's where I got the artist bug, he was a world-renowned concert pianist and musician, and he was also an art curator and collector, and he donated Faberge eggs to the New York Metropolitan, and he had Kandinsky paintings, so he grew up in He also had a coffee shop that was for the artists and it was called Petrograd in the heart of Athens where like all the artists used to hang out. And so I think I must have gotten it from him. It must be in the G's.
00:12:38
Speaker 1: But it's such a story because it didn't end well for the Tsar and his family. And he's got direct lineage to that. And those Fabergé eggs are fabulously delicious. expensive i mean did he have means was he was he rich uh.
00:12:57
Speaker 2: He probably was but i didn't get any of them sadly sadly he didn't leave me anything he was very he was donating things everywhere but i have to say and i don't speak a lot about my my quote-unquote blue blood because you know in america there is a sting there are everybody's account and everybody is something and then you know you can say whoever you say you are nobody really does any digging and as you know most of the people that are the real thing they don't really broadcast it you know it's it's like it happened it's part of my lineage I'm proud of it but I'm more proud of my grandfather not his royal blood but more about what he accomplished in life which I felt was remarkable and you know I got a little bit of him hopefully.
00:13:43
Speaker 1: We mentioned your father. Your father doesn't figure prominently, other than the fact that your mum and he had a divorce and you came to America. Can you tell us about your father?
00:13:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, no. My father has been always shown into my Facebook feed and in my social media, but not so much in the business. But I do credit, he was a very well-known ad man. He was like the real original madman, Jon Hamm character in Mad Men. You know, he had... two of the biggest advertising agencies in Milan. And I actually, when I was in school, I used to go there and watch him do the creative meetings with the commercials and all of that. So I learned a lot of the marketing skills on how to market a movie or how to position a movie from him. Because even when I would visit in the summer, sometimes I would go and be his intern, quote unquote, for the PR division of his company. And then I got to learn how to before social media was there. So no, he definitely made a mark on me in the business side. Did I get along with him as well as I did with my mother? Most likely not, but he's now passed on and, you know, he rest in peace and, you know, he's given me lots. And so I'm grateful for that.
00:15:01
Speaker 1: Were you an only child?
00:15:03
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:15:04
Speaker 1: So just the marriage breaks up and I guess that's always unpleasant for everybody and can be tempestuous. Sometimes it can be amicable, not often really. So why, how did America come up? Did your mother have connections here, family here that made you decide?
00:15:23
Speaker 2: Well, you know, she was going to do some business here and we just had to, we didn't want to run away. It's not like we ran away, but I mean, we wanted to, my mother wanted to give me an opportunity to do something with my life. And she didn't feel like I would go far in Italy. And, uh, you know, in the, as it always happens in divorces, like you said, they never are truly amicable. We literally had to leave with nothing, you know, to come here, but she really wanted to give me the opportunities that I found through my career. Like, as you read, I didn't even really go to university. I started working right off of high school and, and, uh, I never regret that. I call it the school of hard knocks, you know, and I think the school of life is even more important than the school filled with degrees. In today's world, I'd really take you nowhere unless you're a doctor or a lawyer or a scientist.
00:16:20
Speaker 1: But you came with so little. I mean, the legend is you came with $ 5, 000 and a couple of suitcases. It must have been tough. It must have been tough for your mother.
00:16:31
Speaker 2: It was. It was. But thank God, you know, she had lined up opportunities, obviously. So, you know, when we went, it wasn't like, hey, let's see how we can survive. I mean, she did have, you know, business opportunities. And, you know, those obviously panned out pretty quickly, you know, within the first few months. And I was so excited. I think, you know, when you're younger, you're so oblivious. Nothing is really... an obstacle when you're getting the opportunity to live the life that you watched on television as a kid or you know you've been to the movies I mean I got to meet so many of my idols you know people that I grew up with you know and it's just to me it's still surreal like I get more excited about meeting people that marked my childhood than say if I were to meet I don't know Tom Cruise you know it's just the people that that marked certain areas of my.
00:17:24
Speaker 1: Life and I'm like oh Who springs to mind? Who was the biggest heartthrob you had when you were a teenager?
00:17:33
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I mean, there weren't even people that I idolised, like, you know, I had a crush on. Like, for example, I got to meet Don Most. who was on Happy Days, you know, he was the funny guy with the red hair. I don't even remember his name. And it was weird. I brought him on my podcast, you know, because, you know, I have a podcast as well. And I interviewed him and it was surreal for me to go, oh, my goodness, I dreamed about meeting people like you. And here you are. You know, I had Finola Hughes, who was in, as you know, staying alive with John Travolta. And she was british um you know she's been a star of general hospital for years and years and i grew up watching that movie i must have seen it 20 times you know i loved it and i'm like oh my gosh and finola's going to be directing a movie that i'm producing now and we're friends so it's just this very surreal.
00:18:26
Speaker 1: Thing so you get you you get your break as a translator is that right you're you're still at high school and you're asked to translate Yeah, yeah.
00:18:36
Speaker 2: I was still in high school and a friend of ours who was in the film business says, what are you doing for spring break? And I'm like, well, nothing. And he says, do you want to work as a translator for this Italian distributor who's coming here at this convention called the American Film Market? And he says, you just go watch movies with him and you just translate the deals that he's making with the studios. And I was like, well, I was literally 18.
00:19:00
Speaker 1: I had just turned 18.
00:19:05
Speaker 2: And it was wild, you know, because I was like, is there such a thing as an independent community of filmmaking? Yes, there was. You know, there were no faxes, no telexes back then, no cell phones, as you all know. So they needed, they didn't have Google to translate. So it came in very handy.
00:19:23
Speaker 1: You grow up quickly then in a situation like that, I would have thought.
00:19:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I loved it. I love that world. I love the world of film. bridging the international distributors who are picking up the movies and releasing them in other country and being part of that journey. It was so exciting.
00:19:42
Speaker 1: My guest on Conversations today is Alexia Malocky. She knows everything there is to know about making movies and putting investors and I guess stars and directors and producers together and she's written a book about it because there are traps that investors need to know. Alexia's observed it and she's written about it. Hollywood Money Traps is the name of the book. What every investor needs to know if you're thinking of investing in movies, you need to buy it. Back after the break, folks. Welcome back to Conversations, everybody. My guest today is Alexia Malocchi, a young lady who immigrated from Italy with her mother and established this business. Can speak six languages. So almost immediately out of school was asked to translate for an Italian investor in the movies. And from that, you were hooked on that industry, Alexia. So when did you actually go into business? Obviously, mum was a big influence, but When did you start to make a business of this industry that you've been introduced to?
00:20:43
Speaker 2: Well, Graeme, first of all, thank you for calling me a young lady. It feels very good to feel young when you're in your 50s. Hard to tell, but yes.
00:20:51
Speaker 1: No, well, I can tell you. Well, you do radiate through the screen, and age is but a number anyway. So anyway, you're introduced to the movie industry, but you have to make a go of it yourself and establish your own business. You must have been quite ambitious.
00:21:07
Speaker 2: Yes, I was. I mean, and I have to say, again, life is always something that is made of coincidences. And if you go with the coincidences, sometimes those coincidences will point you in the right direction of where you're destined to go, where you're meant to be. And again, this fluke of being a translator for an Italian distributor. turned out to me meeting another four or five distributors, one from Greece, one from France, one's for Germany, another one from whatever, who all of a sudden they're like, Alexia, you're here in LA. Can you follow our business ventures? Because, you know, we're buying movies every few months and, you know, we cannot always travel here. Can you follow all our business dealings? And we'll pay you, we'll pay you money to do so. And because obviously of the languages that I spoke and the cultural affinities, I found myself getting paid to go watch films and make offers and movies that my international clients wanted to buy. And so I started making a little money, not a lot of money, but it was a little money. And then my mother was working at Universal Studios in the finance department with Bruce Lansbury, who's Angela Lansbury's brother, you know, from Murder, She Wrote. And she was doing finance deals. And then some of those distributors in They're like, why don't you and mom make your own companies and you start selling the movies? You can find some movies to sell that we're going to buy. And so we started a company when I was like literally 19 years old.
00:22:38
Speaker 1: I need to know how it works. So if I've made a movie, I come to you and say, can you sell it? Who are you selling it to?
00:22:48
Speaker 2: I sell it to the big networks and theater chains all over the world. So for example, you have an independent film in Australia and it's done in Australia and it's not being made by a studio, but you still feel like it needs to be seen and appreciated by people, right? So you'll come to me and then I will say, you know what, I'll call up the BBC in the UK and show them the film and see if they wanna buy it and release it in their channel. Or I will go to a theater chain in Italy and I will see if they wanna put it out in the theaters and then I'll make that deal. So that's what they call a sales agent or slash distributor, you know, which is what I started getting in the business of doing. And the languages came very handy, obviously, because it allowed me to deal with everybody all over the world. You know, I used to sell to Village Roadshow Australia. I sold many films to them. I sold movies to Hoyts. I mean, some of like the biggest distributors in Australia.
00:23:50
Speaker 1: Did you ever meet a guy called John Cronin here in Adelaide? John, he worked for Village Roadshow for quite a while. Good friend. He was heavily involved in the movie industry, but... Wow.
00:24:01
Speaker 2: No, I knew Mark Berman, I think was his name. He used to run Village Roadshow, Warner Brothers. But, yeah, I knew a lot of the local, obviously, I don't even remember the names. They're probably not even around anymore, but, yeah.
00:24:16
Speaker 1: So they've made the movie, but part of your book also talks about assembling the money to make the movie. So there's lots of different roles involved. as you describe it, in your business. And the traps that you're talking about are the situations where people with investment, with money to make, could lose the money. So are you there from ground zero when the movie is being assembled, with the finance and before the actors are chosen and the like?
00:24:47
Speaker 2: Most of the time, yes. I mean, I'm full disclosure. I'm not somebody that likes to ask for money. So, you know, whenever I'm bringing money to the table is usually through my distributors who are, you know, say the BBC or Studio Canal or whatever, who get a project and they want to buy it early at an early stage because they love it. And so that helps, obviously, the financing process. That's one process. And sometimes I get hired as a consultant. to make sure that the packages are right so that the script is good enough to go to a director that will say yes and an actor that will say yes. And then maybe somebody wants to shoot in Australia. And as we all know, I don't know if maybe you know that, but there's a 40% tax credits for filming in Australia. So people want to go to Australia. That's why there's so many big studio movies because you get 40% of your money back. So they need someone to help them navigate those things. Am I the person writing the checks? Not really. I'd rather go shopping. But do I advise the investors? Yes. Do I advise the producers? Yes. Have I witnessed all kinds of crazy things doing that line of work?
00:25:58
Speaker 1: Can you just explain the Australian price? So if you make a movie, that investment here in Australia, the government gives you 40%. Back as a tax credit, is that right?
00:26:10
Speaker 2: Yeah. So if you do a film and you hire an Australian producer, local producer, say you have an American story or an Italian story or something, and you want to shoot it in Australia and you're hiring Australian actors, Australian producers and all of that, the country literally gives you a 40% back on whatever it is you're spending in the country. and gives it back to you as a credit, which means this money that gets returned to you. If you use Australia just as a location, which means you're bringing American actors and American filmmakers, and it's just, you want to a beautiful country that you're in, you still got 25%. So it's one of the countries that is actually very aggressive in bringing movie productions down there. They're, they're, they're wonderful. I mean, all of the, you know, I'm part of this organization called Australians in Film, which there is obviously in LA and they really heavily promote Australian talent and Australian filmmakers. And I think your country does a really great job.
00:27:21
Speaker 1: Hasn't Donald Trump tried to slow that down by imposing tariffs on films made here? Has that, has that impacted at all?
00:27:29
Speaker 2: He talks a big game, but every day he comes up with a different story. So I wouldn't really worry too much. By the time he decides to implement something, he'll probably be, you know, new president comes in. So I'm not too worried about it. But yeah, does he make things difficult a little bit? He still does. But ultimately, there's nothing going on in Hollywood, unfortunately, because we don't have all the facilitations that other countries do. So that's why many films are shot overseas. It's because internationally there's a lot more opportunity.
00:28:02
Speaker 1: We had recently, these Hollywood actors pop up in Australia all the time and there's a vision of one of our local football games and our football game is unique. But there was Tom Hanks in the audience imitating one of our officials, one of the goal umpires, just gesticulating something there. So they obviously can breeze in and out of the country. You're big stars.
00:28:23
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you have a lot of amazing Australian actors. I mean, some of the biggest stars in movies are Australian. I mean, look at Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Sam Worthington. I mean, the list goes on, you know, and incredible Australian directors as well.
00:28:37
Speaker 1: Baz Luhrmann.
00:28:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, Baz, yeah.
00:28:41
Speaker 1: We need to take a break. We'll talk a bit more about the book and some of the content in it because I've got a few questions out of it.
00:28:47
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:28:48
Speaker 1: My guest is Alexia Malocki. Her book is called Hollywood Money Traps. It's a bit of a journey through life in the movie industry. I want you to name a few names. I think one of the things in the book you don't do is bury anybody. You don't name names. I might have to get a couple out of you when we come back. Back after the break, folks. Welcome back, everybody. I'm talking to Alexia Malocchi. Alexia is in LA, in Los Angeles, with a beautiful background to our set of The Kahn, where you obviously go often to The Kahn. What's it like? Is it as exotic and romantic and as exciting as it is when as we think it is?
00:29:26
Speaker 2: I would have to say it is. It's not as much as it used to be like 20 years ago, 25 years ago when I was first starting out. I mean, now there's a lot of influencers and they're crowding the place. And a lot of people, like anybody who thinks that they have a movie, they want to go to Cannes. But, you know, before it was a little bit more exclusive, but it is still fabulous. The food is great. The weather, if you luck out, is good. There's wonderful movies to see. They do a lot of people watching. Everybody's in a good mood. It must be the French wine or the champagne. Everybody's in a good mood, even if they're doing no business. It's like one of those festivals that even if you do zero business, you still come home happy.
00:30:11
Speaker 1: So lots of different topics in your book, and I'm trying to pick out ones. The Bruce Willis that wasn't there. you got a movie based on Bruce Willis starring, but it didn't quite pan out that way. Can you give us a brief overview of that?
00:30:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a little bit of an adventure. One of my clients is a big distributor in the Middle East and he's bought, you know, movies like Hunger Games and La La Land and everything. And so he was looking to buy a movie that, that had allegedly Bruce Willis in it. And, uh, He, he wanted to be the first bidding war. He, you know, offered a lot of money for the rights to, it was still in pre-production as they call it in early stages. It was set to start on a certain date. And because I knew the production team, I did not really think about doing my due diligence. I sort of, usually I do, but that time I didn't really do that. And then all of a sudden there is the movie is supposed to start say in June and June goes by, there's nothing. July goes by. Oh, yeah, you know, there's something. There's always like an excuse. So finally I'm like, well, let me call up the agents and let me find out like what's happening. And then the agents are like, what movie?
00:31:27
Speaker 1: This is Bruce Willis' agent.
00:31:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're like, we have no idea. And I'm like, what do you mean? I have no idea. So I go off and I basically asked the producer to send me the contract with Bruce Willis. And because I said my client would want his money back. And then they sent me the last page of the agreement that has a signature from Bruce Willis. But it could have been an agreement from another 20 movies earlier. You know, it's like as if I had a signature and I sent somebody a signature. And I was like, hmm. I want my money back. And then finally, they would not give us the money back. And then they send us, they say, the movie is now going in production and we can show you the footage. And then we see like a little scene like in the middle of ruins and we see a person running from the back. You can't even see who it is. And it was like one minute long. And I'm like, is that Bruce Willis? Like, yeah, that's Bruce Willis. Do you think I'm stupid? I mean, yeah, it was just crazy, you know.
00:32:33
Speaker 1: But he lost his money.
00:32:36
Speaker 2: He lost his money, yeah, because conveniently, you know, they had a shell company in another state and that company just disappeared. And so who are you going to sue? You know, so, yeah.
00:32:47
Speaker 1: I like this one you talk about when Ego runs a set, when somebody who's investing money in the movie insists that a certain person also... stars in the movies or appears in the movies no i guess there's been lots of occasions like that but i want you to name because there was a there was a valid actor in it who felt her role was being undermined by the intrusion or the insertion of this person who the producer wanted in there so can you give us a brief overview of that and and tell me who the actor was.
00:33:22
Speaker 2: And now everybody's gonna google the movie what's interesting because that movie funny enough is then as you it's the same movie that ends up my chapter of the shelf where like basically the investor left it on the shelf and it never got released it's actually the same movie so it had two disasters one after the other so um Yeah, the actress who was complaining, not the one that was featured properly, you know, prominently, was actually Laura Herring, you know, from Mulholland Drive. And she was a wonderful actress and a dear friend of mine who came on the film, you know, because I was producing it. And she wanted to be showcased properly. And she literally came to me and she's like, nobody's doing close-ups on me. Like, I'm like in the corner. Like, why are you doing that? And she was like, I'm not going to produce the movie. So it was a big thing of me being on set and trying to be a diplomat and manage. And I was a producer, but there were another two producers on set, which were male. And clearly, that's the story that I just mentioned.
00:34:30
Speaker 1: How much say does a producer have in the directing and the production of the movie? Can you interfere?
00:34:38
Speaker 2: You know what? I could, and I did partially, but it was a very delicate situation because the directors of that movie were my clients. And so who were very nice, by the way, they were not at fault because they were just listening to what the producer was saying. And so I also did not, it was a conflict because I didn't want the directors to get fired and off the other producers. And then they would get fired and then they will be sent back to Italy. So I was like, I was walking on eggshells because I was trying to make my star happy, but then I was also trying to keep the job of my directors while navigating all this.
00:35:15
Speaker 1: So the producer can fire the director.
00:35:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, they wanted to, they could have sent them back home and send them packing if they didn't like the work or something, or, you know, I just, I just wanted to keep the piece on the set and it was, it was challenging. So, you know, now I've, I've learned my lessons and, I don't work anymore. I think that I don't run the show anymore. I'm going to have to be the big kahuna moving forward.
00:35:39
Speaker 1: The other thing that intrigued me and surprised me was when music writes, the chapter's called When Music Writes, Kill a Movie. I didn't realise it was so complicated to get a song with all these great movies with amazing soundtracks and how expensive and how difficult it is to get a song into a movie. Can you give us an overview of that, please?
00:36:01
Speaker 2: Yes, of course. Well, you know, as you saw, I mean, obviously we can talk about it because, you know, I have a great relationship with the band, but that was a Duran Duran music-centric project, you know, the band Duran Duran, which everybody knows who they are. And, you know, we were, it was a sort of coming of age film and had a lot of, it was a lot of the 80s soundtrack. And obviously Duran Duran being one of the biggest bands of the 80s, they had probably 10, 12 songs that were an instrumental part of the storytelling of that project as we were putting it together. And then all of a sudden, you know, we realized that they had two different record labels. They had the record label with some of the older music that was with one company. And then they had the new music that was another record label. And so I had to make everybody agree, you know, just not, the band was fine that they wanted their songs in the film, but then the record labels, they started asking crazy money. And then it was, the songwriters and then the, you know, what they were doing. So there were like probably, you know, 10, 15 people that I had to jump hoops on. And then it ended up being so expensive that I literally almost gave up and then the strike happened. And so that movie never happened, thankfully, in some way.
00:37:17
Speaker 1: I keep thinking of these as I was reading that chapter about how expensive it was and how difficult it was to get the music rights and Some of the, like The Bodyguard and Footloose and Dirty Dancing and even Top Gun where they, you know, he's playing the piano and doing a Jerry Lee Lewis song. So Pulp Fiction, the songs are so important. It seems to me they are a really expensive part of the movies as you describe it.
00:37:45
Speaker 2: Millions. It could be millions of dollars. I remember in one of the movies we wanted to get a Frank Sinatra song, not even sung by Frank Sinatra. I think it was that Samoree. And it was not even Frank Sinatra himself singing, but some unknown singer that was just singing the lyrics. And even that one, I remember just for 10 seconds of that was like $ 50, 000. Wow. Just for 10 seconds. It wasn't even a whole song. And it wasn't Frank Sinatra, Mr. Blue Eye singing. It was some unknown musician that was singing some interpretation of it.
00:38:22
Speaker 1: But even just a musical background, it obviously must be cheaper to have new music written for movies.
00:38:31
Speaker 2: Yeah. And now with AI, I mean, obviously now with AI, things are a lot easier across the board. I know we're not fans, but at the same time, they're also making our life easy. You know, we need humans. We need people like you, Graham, and me, but we're still, you know. AI can solve a lot of problems for us, let me tell you.
00:38:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, but I'm scared of it. I'm scared. I guess when we Google something, we're using AI. I don't count that, but it probably is. What do you hope for the book, Alexia? What do you hope springs from it?
00:39:06
Speaker 2: I'm just hoping that, you know, it wasn't done as a moneymaker for me. It was really done for the love of the business. And I hope that people don't get swayed by the title Hollywood Money Traps and think it's so negative and nobody should be giving money to filmmakers and storytellers because there's some very worthy people that need support so that they can tell great stories. So for me, it really was a way to have the two people come together. You know, at some point, I'm probably going to roll out my fourth book. But but this one was really done for just, you know, protection, but also understanding one another better, you know, because people need the money and people need the art and they have to speak the same language. just like sports, money, like anything that is worthy of anything, the money plays a role.
00:39:56
Speaker 1: Well, good luck. One final question before we say goodbye. The experience that you have with Hollywood and movie stars and actors and producers and directors, do you have a favourite entertainment person?
00:40:10
Speaker 2: Oh, gosh. I mean, I guess I go by... by moments. I mean, you know, if there's somebody that I would want to meet, probably who has passed on, like one of the legends would have been Marilyn Monroe. I did get to meet Fred Astaire when I first came in America and I opened my bank account. Fred Astaire was in the bank and I could not believe it. I was blown away because I grew up with my grandparents watching all the musicals. So, you know, so I've met him already. But, you know, it would have been somebody like Marilyn. And obviously in today's world, I mean, Who doesn't want to meet Brad Pitt? Come on. Like after F1 and looking so well, it was like, yeah. I met Jerry Buchenheimer too. He was my idol and I met him recently. So I would probably say if it was somebody who's passed on and is no longer in life, we would have to be, you know, either Marilyn Monroe or Alfred Hitchcock. And then now would be Brad Pitt, I would say.
00:41:06
Speaker 1: Yeah. He's getting older, Brad.
00:41:08
Speaker 2: Yeah. But he's very.
00:41:13
Speaker 1: That was a joke.
00:41:14
Speaker 2: Oh.
00:41:16
Speaker 1: Just a joke.
00:41:17
Speaker 2: He's getting old, I know. He's kind of like me, you know? He's ageless. Benjamin Button.
00:41:24
Speaker 1: He is not aging at all.
00:41:26
Speaker 2: No. He's living his own Benjamin Button era, for sure.
00:41:31
Speaker 1: Well, look, thanks for the chat. Good luck with the book. I hope it goes well for you.
00:41:35
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me and, you know, good day to all the Australians. I hope you get to read the book and, you know, and go see Australian films because they're wonderful.
00:41:45
Speaker 1: There's a couple of good ones around at the moment too. So Alexia May Lockie was my guest, folks. The book is called Hollywood Money Traps, What Every Investor Needs to Know. Thank you so much for joining us.
