Special Report: Lemonade Blessing (2026)

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Hold your ears, folks. It's showtime. People pay good money
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to see this movie.
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When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas,
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hot popcorn, and no monsters in the projection booth.
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Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
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Turn it off.
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Yeah, you know, I don't have a crush, okay?
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I have a girlfriend.
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Oh. Okay. Oh. Uh. It's a good girl. She can't look.
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Say f * * * Jesus for me. Hey, Dad.
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I guess what? Hey, buddy. What's up?
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I have a girlfriend. Hey, same here. High five. Oh, yeah. Awesome.
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Good for you.
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Hey, folks.
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Welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth. I'm
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your host, Mike White. Today, I'm talking with writer-director Chris
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Merola about Lemonade Blessing, his sacrilegious, sacrilegious, coming-of-age comedy... and
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the winding road from making backyard shorts as a kid
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to studying psychology before finally committing to filmmaking. Lemonade Blessing
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had a popular run on Letterboxd's unreleased gems before Antenna
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Releasing picked it up for a fall theatrical release. Had
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a great time talking with Chris, and I hope you
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have a great time listening. Enjoy. I definitely want to
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learn a little bit more about you as far as
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how did you even become a filmmaker?
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When does it start? Does it start when you're a
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kid and you're just screwing around, making little graphic novels
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or shooting videos with your friends? Does it happen the
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first time you hear someone describe themselves as a filmmaker
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and you're like, ooh, that sounds like, maybe I want
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to do that? Is it the first time you're like,
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I'm going to change my major to filmmaking and I'm
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going to try and pursue that? I don't 100% know
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when it fully started, but I, from a young age,
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just really loved I loved reading, loved playing video games,
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and I love films. And I would make these little
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skits on YouTube. And in seventh grade, I got my
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class together. We made a 40 minute film about a
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guy who he really wants to buy a candy bar,
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but he needs to take on all these odd jobs
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to do it. And he's just hopelessly bad at all
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of these odd jobs. He just keeps trying to get
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a different job. I can't do it. Can't muster up
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any funds. And I just kept up with making stuff.
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But when I went to undergrad, it just didn't really
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occur to me as a real profession I could do.
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So I was studying psychology to be a therapist. I
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was maybe going to try and do psychiatry, but I
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just got my butt kicked by pre-med a little too firmly.
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And my partner at the time had noted that I
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was just still always thinking of films, doing the on-campus
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one-week film competitions. And she's like, why don't you try
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and do it? And I was like, okay.
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So.
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I had a second major in philosophy and I dropped
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philosophy for film and I double majored in psych and film.
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And from that point forward, I think I was like 19.
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I started to really think seriously about, okay, what's the
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next step? Probably I should try and get into one
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of these fancy MFA programs. And so I tried for that.
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And then I get to USC and I'm like, okay,
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I should probably have a few first drafts of some
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features ready before I graduate. Let me try that first.
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When you get to your third year and you're like, okay,
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I guess I should probably, try and make a move
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on one of these. At a certain point, it's like
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you get more and more comfortable with the term. It's
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almost like it is a loftiness to it. It's like, damn,
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am I really a filmmaker? Because so much of your
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time is not actually spent filmmaking. But yeah, I suppose
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I am.
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Having psychology and film, those two things play together very well,
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at least in my opinion.
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I agree completely. The thing that's so interesting watching different
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Sometimes I feel like I watch the film not only
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just to enjoy the film, but to kind of psychoanalyze
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the creator, especially given the fact that we get to
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follow a filmmaker over the course of their lives. We
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get to see the different things that they're wrestling with
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over the course of their careers. And I found that
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some filmmakers are more naturally in tune with their unconscious.
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I'm thinking of David Lynch, for example. And then other
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filmmakers have a more rigorous, I would say, conscious approach
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to the craft. And you think of people like, I
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don't know, maybe Kubrick or Fincher, where they have an
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absolutely razor sharp control over everything they're doing. They could
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probably justify everything they're doing with a very long essay.
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Whereas with Lynch, it's more just gut level. This feels right.
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We're going with this. And I just love analyzing those
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different personalities. Like how do people make creative decisions? So
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I just love, I love studying the people as much
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as I love studying the work that they make.
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How similar or different are you from the character that
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Jake Ryan plays? Because I would say, and this is
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a compliment, there's a little bit of physical similarity between
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you and Mr.
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Ryan. I cast him mostly for the personality. And I
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felt we had a lot of nice overlap. But it
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is funny. Sometimes my family members would be like, because
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we hang out. I invited his family over for a
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family party after Tribeca. And everyone's like, wow. It really
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looks like you. And sometimes they'll just interchangeably refer to
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the protagonist as Chris. They'll be like, yeah, when you
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did that, I'm like, wait, guys, it's a movie. I
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didn't know. Come on. But I would say I'm a
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child of divorce raised in Long Island, New York, who
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went to Catholic high school in 2012. I had a
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devout Catholic mother. I fell for someone who gave me
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a fake name and told me their parents were divorced
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and I felt a lot of guilt and a lot
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of a sense of being unmoored. I felt a bit chameleonic,
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like I was never really fully sure about how I felt.
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I felt very almost drunk on other people's feelings and thoughts.
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And so depending on who I was in front of,
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I would mold myself like putty in my own hands.
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And so I think the script and the character is
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very much a an embodiment of those things. And of course,
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we both really like video games, both enjoyed Zelda Wind
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Waker to dissociate from some of the pains of childhood. So,
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you know, I think there's a lot of overlap. Of course,
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a film is a short duration, so you can't always
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get everything in there. But yeah, I would say I
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relate to the guy for sure.
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When did you decide that you were going to make
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this into a feature?
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This was the first screenplay I wrote. I was in
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my first year of USC and at USC, the sort
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of ideal alumni is Ryan Kukler. Like he's the most
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recent large scale success from the school. And so, you know,
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the lore gets passed down of like what he was
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doing before he graduated. And I'd heard that he had
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written five first feature drafts before graduating. I was like, well,
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all right, I got to make it happen. I didn't
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end up doing five. I did three and Lemony was
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the first one I wrote. I wrote it out of order.
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I basically, in a notebook, made bullet points of memories
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that were salient to me about my adolescence. And I
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noticed connectivity between them. Okay, here's me and mom. Here's
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me and my first partner. Here's me and my friends.
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Here's me and my faith. And so I basically would
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just write one of the scenes that I wanted to
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write for that day. And this was nice because the
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inertia gets overcome if you're feeling conflicted. sad, you can
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write a sadder scene. If you're feeling kind of goofy,
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you can write one of the more skit like scenes.
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And so yeah, before I knew that, I think I
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had seven weeks in, I had a first draft. I
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shelved it for a while. I let it sit for
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two years. Then I came back to an early 2023.
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I rewrote it. At that point, I had my three
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drafts from USC and I had to consider which one
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I wanted to make. And so I just passed them around.
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And I heard back from people in my life who
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I was close to. And my roommate, Abhi, who is
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one of the co-editors on the film, he really responded
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to Lemonade. And that gave me a lot of, I guess,
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confidence and hope. And so from that point forward, around
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March of 2023, I said, okay, let's start prepping it.
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And so I came into USC as a spring admit.
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So we were going to graduate in December of that year.
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So I decided, okay, Let's try and shoot this in
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July of 2024, about a year and three months from now.
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That'll give me enough time to complete my studies while
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also focusing on all the different aspects of what it
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takes to make a film. Forming the LLC, hiring the lawyers,
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doing fair use clearance to make sure that your use
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of copyright material doesn't get you sued to hell, this, that,
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and the other thing. So I would say it was iterative.
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I told myself I was going to do it. I
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wrote it in my journal. I told people I was
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going to do it, but it doesn't really feel real
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until the ball is rolling enough. Enough things have happened
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that progress starts to be made outside of yourself. You've
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hired department heads and they start prepping things or your
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producers are doing work or other people are talking to
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you about it and you realize it's starting to take
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a life of its own. So I would say I
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started the fake it till you make it process in
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early 2023. And by the time I got on set,
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I was like, I guess we're doing it now.
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Skipped over what I would think would be a very
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important thing, which is, okay, yeah. So I started showing
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these drafts around. It sounds like there was already a
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green light somewhere. So where was that green light coming
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from as far as I can make one of these?
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That's a situation where I had some pretty fascinating luck
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on my side. When I was an undergrad, I started
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investing all of my life savings on the stock market
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and just taking some kind of wild gambles. And between
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2019 and 2023, I actually experienced 1,000% gains on the market.
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I basically just invested in Tesla stock pre-Elon going even crazier.
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He was crazy back then, but he was less crazy.
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he was less crazy than he currently is. And so
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I had a significant chunk of the capital for lemonade.
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And so when we were prepping it, we did research,
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we're going to shoot in New Jersey, where New Jersey
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is one of the most competitive tax credits in America.
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And so we would approach investors with the pitch of basically,
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you're guaranteed some of your money back, nobody's going to
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have to risk any more than than I am, I'm
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putting skin in the game. And if you lose everything
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on this, you still will get a write-off against investment income.
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This ended up being convincing for about 1% of the
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people we approached, which over time, we were able to
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cobble together 15 investors in addition to my investment and
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get the budget together for the film. This was all
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happening concurrently. So as I was prepping it, I was
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essentially taking the gamble that we would get everything in time.
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And Nothing will make you work hard. And that sort
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of gamble. I worked so hard just because I was
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so worried about us not getting it in time. Just
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had to do a lot of writing letters, zillowing, nice
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looking houses in the area and hoping that people had
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disposable income with which they could inject into the film.
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But yeah, that was part of the concurrent journey.
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The investing part just seems insurmountable to me.
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It's pretty wacky for sure. I think I was very
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self-sabotagingly just throwing myself into it. I've actually reflected in
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the years since making it that I don't really know
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if it's possible to do what I did then sustainably.
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I think it almost requires a certain chip on your shoulder,
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a certain almost big vacuum inside of you, like a
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feeling that you need to prove something to yourself or
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to others. And it's not even necessarily the healthiest motivation.
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But it definitely got me through. But it was pretty brutal.
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I was anxious almost all the time. And always like
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oscillating my feelings about the film. I had a lot
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of ambivalence. There were days where I really believed it
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and days where I was like, oh my God, it's
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just so traditionally structured. And we've already seen these Catholic
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high school movies. And I'm so tired of this dialogue.
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And it's just, you have to keep it inside because
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you have to project some degree of strength and inspiration
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and hope for people. but internally it can be quite brutal.
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And that's something that I wasn't really familiar with because
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so much of what you do with filmmaking is the externalities,
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the canon of film history, who has succeeded, who had
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the dogged, incredible experience of hearing a thousand no's until
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they heard the one yes. It's like, one thing I
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wish I knew is how many of the no's would
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be coming from my own head. You know what I mean?
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And so that was crazy. But I had a lot
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of help, of course. I teamed up with some good
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friends who we rolled up our sleeves and we figured
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it out is the best way to put it.
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Yeah, I was wondering if you had any sort of
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like mentor or if a producer came on board, but
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just that you were able to use your friends, it's huge.
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The idea of a rising tide lifting all boats is really,
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it's genuine because if you give someone the opportunity to
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do something they've never done before on a big scale,
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the level of trust that shows in like People get
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so excited. People are like, yeah. None of my producers
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had produced a feature. My production designer had not production
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designed a feature before. My editors had not edited a
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feature before. Being given the chance to do something for
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the first time when you do it, it's impossible for
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the brain to rely on heuristics because there is no blueprint.
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There's nothing to fall back on. You have to go
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through a novel problem every day. And of course, people
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make mistakes the first time they do things. But I
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think there's a magic to it as well because it's
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so fresh. People are willing to work really hard in
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those situations. So what I found was I was trying
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to find a lot of mentors, but it was a
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little hard. I'd go to my professors at school and
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I'd be like, hey, do you have any examples of
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budgets for films in this range? I'm trying to budget
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this film. They're like, to be honest, no, your budget's
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so low. I don't really have a sample of how
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much this is supposed to cost. And so it was
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just a matter of just It was iterative. It's like, okay,
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let's go to a person with this day rate and
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this budget for production design, this budget for costumes, and
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let's see what people say. And people leverage their experience
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against us to say, hey, this makes sense and this doesn't.
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And you just grapple. You just grapple with people and
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you honestly take their input in. And over time, the
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budget shapes itself. The schedule shapes itself. You just show
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it to people. They let you know that's going to work.
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That's not going to work. I often find that the
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act of directing was answering the tug of war, trying
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to call a truce between departments because everyone's advocating for themselves,
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but nobody can get everything they want because there's limited
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time and limited resources. So it's quite a mediator position,
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I realized at the end of the day. But yeah,
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I wouldn't say we had any out and out mentors.
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There was a few, I had a friend, Jamie, who
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was an accountant in New Jersey who we wanted to
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bring on as our accountant for production, but we just
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couldn't afford him. And he gave us some really good
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headstarts on the tax credit and ways we could capitalize
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properly because there is a lot of minutiae involved with
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the New Jersey tax credit. It is not as simple
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as I showed up in New Jersey, used my credit
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card in New Jersey. It's like, you got to prove it.
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You got to generate business registration certificates for everything. It's
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kind of hell. And yes, we did have some help
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on the tax end of things, but I'm not going
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to lie. A lot of it was us just bumbling
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and fumbling our way forward a little bit.
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Did you find that anybody became your right hand as
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you're going through this process?
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There were a lot of right hands. On the producing end,
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my good friend Raza from USC was the first person
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I brought on. He read the first draft. We were
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in the back of a film distribution class. And I
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was like, hey, would you be interested in producing? And
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he's like, yeah, let's do it. And literally since then,
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it's been three years, he's still always putting 110% in.
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And he's also just a very... very bright man a
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few words you ask him to do something he's like
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yeah cool and he just does it he's just he's
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also a freak with watching films he watches like 500
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a year we're talking about logging media that man watches
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movies it's crazy but then i also would have to
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shout out harrison my dp harrison is unbelievable he's not
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just our dp he's our colorist he also he just
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figured out the other day how to do a dcp
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because our distributor was like we're fumbling around with it.
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And the DCP we got for our first screening in
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Brooklyn was a little desaturated. And Harrison was like, screw it.
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I'm going to teach myself. I'm just going to teach
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myself how to do the whole thing. And he did
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a fresh DCP. So there are a few people that
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to some extent, I feel like they might even care
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about the project more than me. And you do need
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a few people like that in order to get a
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project to the finish line. You can't do it alone.
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Everyone in the project worked really hard, but Those are
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a few of the, oh my God, they went so,
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so hard in the paint for us that they just,
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I would consider them the right-hand people.
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This doesn't look like a first-time feature. Of course, I
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knew it was going in, but just, I was like, God,
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who was behind this kid making this, and sorry to
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call you kid, but I'm old. I'm like, who's behind
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this kid that's like just... This looks fantastic. The acting
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is great. The sets look great. The story is fantastic.
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It's just what is going on. So that when I
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hear this DIY spirit that is carrying you through this
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whole thing and that your crew and your friends are
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just exhibiting, it just makes it even more impressive that
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this film came together the way that it did.
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Oh, thank you, man. I really appreciate it. It took
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me a while. I think I definitely had a bit
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of a mourning period after Tribeca because it took so,
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so long for us to find a home. So it
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took me a long time to believe in the film.
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And it's sometimes, yeah, it's easy to just be like,
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I guess we failed. I guess that's it. That's why
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I'm just so thankful to Letterboxd because if they had
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not taken a chance on us with Video Store, we
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probably wouldn't have found Antenna. We wouldn't be about to
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embark on a five-month roadshow. And this film just would
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not have found audience. Genuinely, that would have been it
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for us. So I don't know. It's crazy. I have
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a feeling, Mike, that there are a lot of people
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that are doing just what we're doing. And there's probably
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much better films and much more impressive things going on
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that they just don't see the light of day. Because honestly,
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we have a very specific gatekeeping system in the industry
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that is it's not it's letting in a very particular
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type of film i guess that's the way i put
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it yeah.
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Can you talk a little bit about the kind of
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the nuts and bolts of this whole thing with tribeca
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with letterbox with antenna because i'm familiar what's going on
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but i'm looking at press releases i'm more in i
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can't say i'm in the industry but i'm more in
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the know than maybe some of the listeners. So can
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you talk a little bit about that?
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When you make a film, you got to get it
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out to the theaters. And normally the person that does
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that as the distributor, they team up, they put some
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money into advertising the film, they book you the theaters,
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and in return, they take a chunk of the money. Normally,
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in the 90s, early 2000s, you go to a festival
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and distributors go there and Or in the 90s, if
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you made a film on your own, good for you.
381
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You're probably going to get a distributor and you're going
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to go to theaters and you're going to do well
383
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and you're going to be okay. Increasingly, after the democratization
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of technology in the 2010s with the DSLR revolution, everyone
385
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can make a film. Everyone has the technology to complete
386
00:20:53.779 --> 00:20:56.500
a film. So we have a saturation of product in
387
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the marketplace and exhibition itself, distribution itself has become the
388
00:21:01.869 --> 00:21:05.109
new bottleneck. And so- As hard as it is to
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00:21:05.130 --> 00:21:09.910
get into a festival, which for Tribeca, it was about 13,500
390
00:21:09.910 --> 00:21:12.390
films were submitted for our year and about 100 films
391
00:21:12.910 --> 00:21:17.130
were selected, 12 of them in competition. We were in
392
00:21:17.150 --> 00:21:23.059
competition there. Even among those 12 films, only one got
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00:21:23.099 --> 00:21:25.900
what I would call a traditional distribution deal out of Tribeca,
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00:21:25.920 --> 00:21:28.940
and that was Rosemead. They went with Vertical, and Vertical
395
00:21:28.980 --> 00:21:35.160
gave it a more standard theatrical release. And so it
396
00:21:35.220 --> 00:21:38.380
is very, very, very hard to get the attention of
397
00:21:38.420 --> 00:21:41.460
a distributor, much less even hope to make any money.
398
00:21:41.579 --> 00:21:45.319
Because another thing that's changed is that previously distributors would
399
00:21:45.359 --> 00:21:47.880
give you a certain amount of money, a minimum guarantee
400
00:21:48.849 --> 00:21:52.069
while they start recouping the cost of the film. So
401
00:21:52.089 --> 00:21:54.029
basically the idea is they give you X amount of
402
00:21:54.069 --> 00:21:57.190
dollars and then they would put some printed advertising costs
403
00:21:57.289 --> 00:22:00.069
into the film to distribute it. And as money comes in,
404
00:22:00.109 --> 00:22:02.089
they pay off the printed advertising as well as your
405
00:22:02.109 --> 00:22:04.680
minimum guarantee. And then you two could both make money
406
00:22:04.720 --> 00:22:09.140
in perpetuity. Now, of course, in practice, Hollywood accounting has
407
00:22:09.180 --> 00:22:12.910
a bit of a reputation. And for good reason, oftentimes
408
00:22:12.950 --> 00:22:16.470
minimum guarantees are the only things that filmmakers see. But increasingly,
409
00:22:16.509 --> 00:22:20.599
filmmakers are not getting minimum guarantees. So I can say
410
00:22:20.670 --> 00:22:24.819
for Lemonade, we didn't receive any offers with any minimum guarantee.
411
00:22:24.900 --> 00:22:27.799
So there's no money upfront that was offered to us
412
00:22:27.819 --> 00:22:33.299
in any sort of capacity. And this is difficult, it's stressful.
413
00:22:34.130 --> 00:22:35.740
You go to these festivals, you team up with a
414
00:22:35.759 --> 00:22:38.140
sales agent who's going to take about 10% of everything
415
00:22:38.160 --> 00:22:40.980
you earn on the film in order to broker the
416
00:22:41.019 --> 00:22:44.319
film and sell it. Now, the sales agents are probably
417
00:22:44.339 --> 00:22:46.579
going to take on more films than they expect to sell.
418
00:22:47.140 --> 00:22:49.460
They are hoping to get a slam dunk at festival
419
00:22:49.559 --> 00:22:51.880
because then it's the shortest amount of time between I
420
00:22:52.299 --> 00:22:54.809
hop onto this project, I sell this project, i.e. the
421
00:22:54.829 --> 00:22:57.910
quickest turnaround for profit. So the longer that your film
422
00:22:57.950 --> 00:23:00.789
doesn't sell the less effort they're going to put into it.
423
00:23:00.819 --> 00:23:03.599
And that's just the system. So unfortunately, what we found
424
00:23:03.700 --> 00:23:06.220
in the case of Lemonade is, you know, the film
425
00:23:06.240 --> 00:23:09.559
had a certain polish to it that they were expecting, hey,
426
00:23:09.599 --> 00:23:13.640
I think this will sell. It didn't. And we weren't
427
00:23:13.680 --> 00:23:18.130
really hearing from them. And so I, after wrapping in Lemonade,
428
00:23:18.170 --> 00:23:20.650
I started producing a feature for a friend. And so
429
00:23:20.670 --> 00:23:22.829
I was focused on that, but I was kind of
430
00:23:23.210 --> 00:23:25.490
getting frustrated. And I think around the nine month mark,
431
00:23:25.529 --> 00:23:27.400
I'm like nine months out of festival. I'm like, I
432
00:23:27.420 --> 00:23:29.200
think I need to just try something on my own here.
433
00:23:30.069 --> 00:23:33.490
So I just started emailing around because I saw that
434
00:23:33.529 --> 00:23:36.890
Letterboxd had announced its video store platform. And I was like,
435
00:23:37.069 --> 00:23:38.529
I think we'd be really good for this. I think
436
00:23:38.569 --> 00:23:40.890
our vibes are similar. So it took me about two
437
00:23:40.950 --> 00:23:45.089
months to get in contact with Letterboxd. But when... We did.
438
00:23:45.329 --> 00:23:48.250
They really liked the film. And so Letterboxd is an
439
00:23:48.289 --> 00:23:51.470
interesting part of this whole distribution pipeline that we're talking about.
440
00:23:52.089 --> 00:23:55.549
Letterboxd does something interesting. They will actually release your film
441
00:23:56.329 --> 00:23:59.789
online for a month for a very high price, a
442
00:23:59.829 --> 00:24:04.329
festival ticket price. And this can gather attention for your film.
443
00:24:04.369 --> 00:24:08.109
It's like a supercharged digital film festival. Now, it's notable
444
00:24:08.150 --> 00:24:12.890
that this is a non-traditional market. Typically, you're going to
445
00:24:12.930 --> 00:24:14.650
go to theaters and then you're going to go to digital.
446
00:24:14.990 --> 00:24:18.269
To go from digital to the theaters is a little unusual,
447
00:24:18.630 --> 00:24:22.869
but I do believe that in a world where attention
448
00:24:23.089 --> 00:24:26.329
is the ultimate separator, it's actually a really good idea.
449
00:24:26.650 --> 00:24:28.069
And it worked out in our case. We went on
450
00:24:28.109 --> 00:24:31.339
the video store. We did quite well. We got a
451
00:24:31.359 --> 00:24:34.079
lot of press, a lot of buzz and antenna and
452
00:24:34.220 --> 00:24:37.839
I got connected. I reached out to them outside of
453
00:24:37.900 --> 00:24:39.500
our agreement with our sales agent and I was able
454
00:24:39.519 --> 00:24:42.039
to broker a deal with them on our own. went
455
00:24:42.059 --> 00:24:44.640
our separate ways with the sales agent, wish them all
456
00:24:44.660 --> 00:24:46.200
the best. They have a lot of stuff that they
457
00:24:46.220 --> 00:24:49.230
had to do. So I understand. But yeah, Antenna is
458
00:24:49.250 --> 00:24:52.849
a lovely company. They're incredibly filmmaker forward. They're founded by
459
00:24:52.890 --> 00:24:56.690
filmmakers and the deal terms they offered were stunning to
460
00:24:56.730 --> 00:24:59.849
say the least. I won't offer super particulars, but I
461
00:24:59.890 --> 00:25:04.049
will say this normally, like I said, printed advertising fees are,
462
00:25:04.589 --> 00:25:07.690
they're a debt and they come out of your, your money.
463
00:25:08.440 --> 00:25:10.619
antenna does not charge print and advertising as a debt.
464
00:25:10.700 --> 00:25:13.839
They pay out of pocket for print and advertising. And
465
00:25:13.859 --> 00:25:15.680
the split that they made with us was by far
466
00:25:15.720 --> 00:25:18.180
the most favorable split of any offer we had been made.
467
00:25:19.829 --> 00:25:22.210
That really incentivizes me to go out on this roadshow
468
00:25:22.410 --> 00:25:24.930
and make a ton of money. So that's my, my,
469
00:25:26.470 --> 00:25:30.650
my special interest rant about distribution. I don't know. Was that,
470
00:25:31.069 --> 00:25:31.809
did that kind.
471
00:25:31.670 --> 00:25:35.730
Of, I've had friends who've made movies and they just
472
00:25:35.750 --> 00:25:39.039
kind of disappear after a while, or they're just waiting for,
473
00:25:39.059 --> 00:25:42.640
like you said, for distribution. I've got a friend who
474
00:25:42.980 --> 00:25:47.099
worked 20 years on a documentary, and he's still waiting
475
00:25:47.140 --> 00:25:50.369
for some sort of a streaming platform that will not
476
00:25:50.960 --> 00:25:55.329
just completely rob him of all of the work and
477
00:25:55.369 --> 00:25:57.750
the effort that he put into it. I'm preaching to
478
00:25:57.789 --> 00:25:59.890
the choir. It's not an easy thing.
479
00:26:00.769 --> 00:26:03.170
It's really not. And I think there needs to be
480
00:26:03.250 --> 00:26:06.670
full transparency on that front. I live in my dad's house.
481
00:26:06.750 --> 00:26:08.710
I've been living in my dad's house this whole time.
482
00:26:09.130 --> 00:26:11.549
You cannot afford to pay rent and do this. I
483
00:26:12.089 --> 00:26:15.930
haven't made a cent on Lemonade yet. And it's been
484
00:26:15.970 --> 00:26:17.539
three years I've been working on it. I had to
485
00:26:17.579 --> 00:26:21.140
defer my rate for cashflow purposes. And even my rate
486
00:26:21.180 --> 00:26:25.819
was pretty low. So the real thing here, it's actually
487
00:26:25.839 --> 00:26:29.920
a broader economic thing where in order to, I think,
488
00:26:29.960 --> 00:26:31.549
tell a story, you have to live life. You have
489
00:26:31.569 --> 00:26:34.150
to suffer a little bit. But people who are suffering,
490
00:26:34.170 --> 00:26:37.230
they often don't have enough money or resources to tell
491
00:26:37.259 --> 00:26:40.299
a story. So you actually have these camps, broadly speaking,
492
00:26:40.440 --> 00:26:42.720
not trying to generalize, but the people who have the
493
00:26:42.799 --> 00:26:46.500
money to make films, they don't always, in my opinion,
494
00:26:47.079 --> 00:26:49.470
have the best stories to tell because there's just not
495
00:26:49.509 --> 00:26:50.869
as much of a soul there. There's just not as
496
00:26:50.910 --> 00:26:52.829
much suffering behind it. And then the people who do
497
00:26:52.930 --> 00:26:56.329
have a story to tell, they don't have access to
498
00:26:56.349 --> 00:26:58.990
the institutional help to get it out there in a
499
00:26:59.029 --> 00:27:01.730
big way. So there's this like thin Venn diagram overlap
500
00:27:01.769 --> 00:27:03.829
of like, some people kind of are able to get
501
00:27:03.849 --> 00:27:06.569
to some degree of resources and they hopefully have something
502
00:27:06.589 --> 00:27:09.250
to say. I hope I'm not being presumptuous by putting
503
00:27:09.269 --> 00:27:11.119
myself in that camp, but you know, I, I felt
504
00:27:11.140 --> 00:27:12.799
like we had a story here and I felt like
505
00:27:12.819 --> 00:27:15.500
I was lucky enough to have resources. And so I
506
00:27:15.519 --> 00:27:18.220
think that's the problem here is that just the stuff
507
00:27:18.240 --> 00:27:21.200
that gets made, it's like, You had a friend at
508
00:27:21.319 --> 00:27:25.539
CAA or your buddy is Chuck Norris or whatever the fuck.
509
00:27:25.559 --> 00:27:28.119
And they make a cameo or whatever. We'll have you.
510
00:27:28.160 --> 00:27:31.519
And it's like, there's just a lot of luck in
511
00:27:31.539 --> 00:27:33.839
the world, unfortunately. And a lot of people do not
512
00:27:33.900 --> 00:27:36.720
have enough time and money to stay in the game
513
00:27:36.859 --> 00:27:38.619
before their luck turns around.
514
00:27:39.559 --> 00:27:41.660
It's not a cheap hobby. That's for sure.
515
00:27:42.059 --> 00:27:46.359
Not at all. Not at all, brother. The life savings ruiner.
516
00:27:47.930 --> 00:27:49.750
You did work on this. It was one of the
517
00:27:49.789 --> 00:27:52.630
first things that you ever worked on. I'm always so
518
00:27:52.710 --> 00:27:55.950
curious as far as the evolution of a project. The
519
00:27:55.970 --> 00:27:59.319
movie that I got to see, how close or distant
520
00:27:59.440 --> 00:28:01.960
is that from those early drafts that you're putting together?
521
00:28:01.980 --> 00:28:05.740
One thing I've discovered about myself is I'll write, let
522
00:28:05.859 --> 00:28:09.569
me call them myopic or irreverent first drafts. I think
523
00:28:09.630 --> 00:28:12.930
that I have some trouble taking my feelings seriously. I
524
00:28:13.970 --> 00:28:16.430
think that I tend to have an unmoored or almost
525
00:28:16.609 --> 00:28:20.710
disembodied experience with reality sometimes. And so my first drafts,
526
00:28:20.769 --> 00:28:23.829
they feel a little surreal. They go for the laughs more,
527
00:28:24.269 --> 00:28:26.690
and they tend to only flesh out the protagonist's world
528
00:28:26.809 --> 00:28:30.470
and everyone else. They provide structural conflict, but their characters
529
00:28:30.519 --> 00:28:33.240
are not as fully realized. So the initial draft of
530
00:28:33.299 --> 00:28:36.799
Lemonade had the features that you know of from the
531
00:28:36.839 --> 00:28:41.940
final film, the sacrilegious dares, the general vibe. Structurally, they're
532
00:28:42.019 --> 00:28:46.210
relatively similar. But the side characters just did not have
533
00:28:46.309 --> 00:28:50.059
as much empathy or life extended towards them. And the
534
00:28:50.099 --> 00:28:55.259
dialogue just needed improvements. And there was just ways in
535
00:28:55.319 --> 00:28:58.440
which I hadn't thought of how to make certain sequences
536
00:28:58.480 --> 00:29:01.599
more visual yet. Because that's another thing is as you
537
00:29:01.619 --> 00:29:03.900
start honing it, you realize you're like, okay, I've got
538
00:29:03.920 --> 00:29:05.910
a pretty dialogue heavy film here. How can I shake
539
00:29:05.930 --> 00:29:10.089
it up? Like, how can I introduce visual montages to
540
00:29:10.450 --> 00:29:12.789
kind of break up the film? So I would say,
541
00:29:13.269 --> 00:29:19.519
The first draft ended early. There's a flashback sequence at
542
00:29:19.539 --> 00:29:22.940
the end of the film. And the first draft ended
543
00:29:23.099 --> 00:29:25.299
at the end of that flashback sequence. There's no resolution.
544
00:29:26.220 --> 00:29:28.359
And it was a bit more depressing. It was suggesting
545
00:29:28.400 --> 00:29:32.549
a deterministic outcome that we are doomed to repeat our
546
00:29:32.970 --> 00:29:37.710
childhood wounds infinitely, essentially, because we're ending where we're beginning.
547
00:29:38.710 --> 00:29:40.940
And I think that's what... felt honest to me at
548
00:29:40.960 --> 00:29:43.519
the time. But over the two years of working on
549
00:29:43.539 --> 00:29:47.480
the film, I got a little more hope that we
550
00:29:47.519 --> 00:29:50.829
can transcend our childhood wounds. And so even down to
551
00:29:50.869 --> 00:29:53.990
the final edit of the film, the very final scene
552
00:29:54.970 --> 00:29:58.049
that you see in the film was actually initially supposed
553
00:29:58.109 --> 00:30:01.579
to begin the post flashback secrets. It was supposed to
554
00:30:01.640 --> 00:30:05.539
be like, we're a few months later. And now this
555
00:30:05.599 --> 00:30:08.819
is how John starts his day. But I realized that
556
00:30:08.839 --> 00:30:10.640
if we did it that way, we were ending with
557
00:30:11.900 --> 00:30:13.599
him and his mom. And it was becoming a story
558
00:30:13.660 --> 00:30:15.980
about a boy and his mother rather than a boy
559
00:30:16.039 --> 00:30:18.380
taking his first steps from the nest. And it was
560
00:30:18.440 --> 00:30:22.180
actually my sound designer, Shuby, who had the idea. She's like, well,
561
00:30:22.200 --> 00:30:24.859
wait a minute. If you start the film with noise,
562
00:30:24.980 --> 00:30:27.160
with parents arguing, what if you end the film with silence,
563
00:30:27.269 --> 00:30:29.170
the duality of that? And I was like, oh, you're
564
00:30:29.210 --> 00:30:31.730
so right. And so Shuby really gave the idea for
565
00:30:32.130 --> 00:30:35.680
reordering that ending. And that was an incredible idea. And
566
00:30:36.440 --> 00:30:38.500
I was really happy with that. There ended up being
567
00:30:38.519 --> 00:30:40.579
a really interesting duality because the first shot is a
568
00:30:40.960 --> 00:30:45.720
young boy looking outside of himself to escape pain. But
569
00:30:45.740 --> 00:30:49.000
then the last shot is a boy now older looking
570
00:30:49.059 --> 00:30:51.279
within to escape pain. I was like, wow, there's a
571
00:30:51.319 --> 00:30:55.579
nice duality to that. Totally circumstantial. But These are all
572
00:30:55.619 --> 00:30:58.640
these sorts of things that shift. I storyboarded the whole
573
00:30:58.660 --> 00:31:01.619
film about a year before we made it. But sometimes
574
00:31:01.940 --> 00:31:04.440
you show up on set and you're like, screw the storyboards,
575
00:31:04.480 --> 00:31:06.819
do something different. Sometimes you do something different and you're like,
576
00:31:06.920 --> 00:31:08.380
why did I do that? Why did I go away
577
00:31:08.400 --> 00:31:10.210
from the storyboards? Oh my God, what am I doing?
578
00:31:10.690 --> 00:31:12.970
It's like, you get a little dazed and confused sometimes,
579
00:31:13.150 --> 00:31:17.450
but Lemony got more empathy. It got more, the world
580
00:31:17.490 --> 00:31:20.430
expanded and our love for the characters expanded as it went.
581
00:31:21.329 --> 00:31:24.940
I also combined The character of Angelo was two separate characters.
582
00:31:25.369 --> 00:31:29.089
It was the raunchy friend and the kid with the
583
00:31:29.130 --> 00:31:31.390
Bible and the dad. And I thought combining them would
584
00:31:31.410 --> 00:31:36.029
be interesting and more elegant. And so stuff like that shifted.
585
00:31:36.849 --> 00:31:39.589
I'm just so glad to hear how open you are
586
00:31:39.690 --> 00:31:43.029
to these other suggestions, that you're looking outside of yourself,
587
00:31:43.069 --> 00:31:45.890
you're listening to this. I can't remember which director it is,
588
00:31:45.970 --> 00:31:48.329
if it was Altman or somebody else, where it's just like...
589
00:31:48.779 --> 00:31:50.819
Bring me all your ideas. I want to hear every
590
00:31:50.839 --> 00:31:53.099
single idea. I might not act on them, but I
591
00:31:53.140 --> 00:31:55.740
want to hear them because everybody's here to make this
592
00:31:55.839 --> 00:31:58.599
the best film that we possibly can. I love that
593
00:31:58.900 --> 00:31:59.680
is your attitude.
594
00:32:00.400 --> 00:32:04.059
Oh, thank you. Yeah, dude, auteur theory is ridiculous. It's
595
00:32:04.099 --> 00:32:08.500
frankly patriarchal. It's this idea of the lone male genius. Ooh,
596
00:32:08.640 --> 00:32:12.180
so smart. It's no shot, man. It's a team sport.
597
00:32:13.099 --> 00:32:17.660
As director, you're mostly mediating. You're mostly acting as a peacemaker.
598
00:32:18.220 --> 00:32:20.380
And if you ever have authority on anything, it's only
599
00:32:20.420 --> 00:32:22.710
because you've just spent so much time with the story
600
00:32:23.289 --> 00:32:25.549
that you feel like you know what it wants. But really,
601
00:32:25.589 --> 00:32:28.170
it's not about you. It's like everyone collectively is working
602
00:32:28.190 --> 00:32:30.750
on this thing outside of you. And it's the story.
603
00:32:31.670 --> 00:32:34.829
Weirdly enough, I actually had some trouble accepting authority on set.
604
00:32:34.849 --> 00:32:38.220
I remember at one point, Abhi told me, yeah, and
605
00:32:38.240 --> 00:32:40.339
he said my name, but he said the director. And
606
00:32:40.359 --> 00:32:42.339
the way he said it sounded so haughty. And I
607
00:32:42.339 --> 00:32:46.170
was like, ew, don't. ew dude but then obby got
608
00:32:46.210 --> 00:32:48.410
insecure he's like you just looked at me with disgust
609
00:32:48.470 --> 00:32:50.529
man i can't believe you just looked at me like
610
00:32:50.569 --> 00:32:51.609
that i was like no i'm not looking at you
611
00:32:51.630 --> 00:32:53.470
disgust i just don't want to i don't want to
612
00:32:53.539 --> 00:32:55.200
be called that but it's like i am the director
613
00:32:55.279 --> 00:32:57.480
but it's so i have to figure that out like
614
00:32:57.559 --> 00:32:59.380
i do think in the future i could probably just
615
00:32:59.420 --> 00:33:01.779
put the kibosh i probably accepted too many ideas because
616
00:33:02.039 --> 00:33:03.779
sometimes people give me an idea for a shot and
617
00:33:03.799 --> 00:33:05.519
in my head i'd be like i don't fucking need
618
00:33:05.559 --> 00:33:06.980
that shot but i was like yeah sure let's do
619
00:33:07.240 --> 00:33:09.440
it in the future i'm gonna put my foot down
620
00:33:09.480 --> 00:33:12.569
a little bit more but Yes, it's a tour theory is,
621
00:33:12.670 --> 00:33:14.109
in my opinion, a little ridiculous.
622
00:33:15.089 --> 00:33:16.799
Where are people going to be able to see this
623
00:33:16.890 --> 00:33:18.660
movie and where can they find out where they're going
624
00:33:18.680 --> 00:33:19.700
to be able to see this movie?
625
00:33:20.579 --> 00:33:24.259
Antenna releasing our distributor has all of our screenings available
626
00:33:24.400 --> 00:33:27.559
on their website. Right now we're recording this in September.
627
00:33:27.599 --> 00:33:29.079
I don't know when it's going to come out, but
628
00:33:29.519 --> 00:33:31.140
I'm going to be on the road with this film
629
00:33:31.160 --> 00:33:35.319
at every screening until at least March of next year.
630
00:33:35.839 --> 00:33:39.599
We are hoping to drum up enough sort of groundswell
631
00:33:39.680 --> 00:33:42.480
that we can move from a roadshow model, which is
632
00:33:42.539 --> 00:33:45.920
different city every night, to a wide theatrical model, which
633
00:33:45.940 --> 00:33:49.920
is we go out to 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 theaters.
634
00:33:50.740 --> 00:33:53.519
And we try and just have a great per theater
635
00:33:53.589 --> 00:33:57.549
average and make a nice return. So, you know, keep
636
00:33:58.049 --> 00:34:01.519
following us on Instagram at Lemonade Blessing. Follow our distributor
637
00:34:01.559 --> 00:34:04.859
antenna on their website. You can find tickets. We are
638
00:34:04.960 --> 00:34:08.130
basically screening at least five days a week for the
639
00:34:08.289 --> 00:34:11.710
next five months. We'll be hitting all 48 continental states
640
00:34:11.769 --> 00:34:15.380
as well as Canada. And honestly, I might try and squeeze.
641
00:34:15.460 --> 00:34:17.360
Let's get to Alaska and Hawaii too. Why not just
642
00:34:17.409 --> 00:34:19.469
make it 50? I don't know when that's going to
643
00:34:19.510 --> 00:34:23.829
happen yet. But yeah, this is truly just a boots
644
00:34:23.869 --> 00:34:26.030
on the ground. I will be there. You want to
645
00:34:26.050 --> 00:34:28.570
hang out? I'll be at the screening. I'm excited to
646
00:34:28.610 --> 00:34:32.159
show it to people. And hopefully, kind of similar to
647
00:34:32.500 --> 00:34:34.619
the way Hundreds of Beavers did it, like hopefully word
648
00:34:35.199 --> 00:34:39.340
will spread organically and it'll get to more people. And
649
00:34:39.360 --> 00:34:40.179
then we can make another film.
650
00:34:41.190 --> 00:34:43.449
Mentioned that you were producing for somebody else. Are you
651
00:34:43.469 --> 00:34:46.630
working on other projects while you're doing this whole rollout?
652
00:34:47.239 --> 00:34:49.860
Yeah, I have two features that I'm kind of ready
653
00:34:49.880 --> 00:34:52.440
to go on. I got management out of Tribeca, so
654
00:34:52.460 --> 00:34:54.699
we've been pitching them around. I've got one that I
655
00:34:54.699 --> 00:34:57.059
would call more commercial that should be more of a
656
00:34:57.099 --> 00:34:59.099
slam dunk to get funding for, and then one that's
657
00:34:59.539 --> 00:35:02.239
less commercial. I'm really hoping I get funding for the
658
00:35:02.519 --> 00:35:06.710
wacky one because I'm very excited about it. Yeah, I
659
00:35:06.730 --> 00:35:08.949
just hope that The thing that was kind of special
660
00:35:08.989 --> 00:35:11.210
about Lemonade's prep is I took so long to prep it.
661
00:35:11.670 --> 00:35:14.789
I just hope in the Hollywood system, you could get
662
00:35:14.829 --> 00:35:17.289
Greenlit and then you're just on set in a few months.
663
00:35:17.329 --> 00:35:21.550
And I just hope that I can lock in and
664
00:35:21.590 --> 00:35:24.150
make that film. If I'm so lucky as to be
665
00:35:24.170 --> 00:35:26.639
able to even make another film, that one, give it
666
00:35:26.699 --> 00:35:30.480
the time that it needs to really gestate and have
667
00:35:30.519 --> 00:35:32.289
the world and the characters be what they need to be.
668
00:35:33.170 --> 00:35:35.210
But yeah, always trying to write every day. I try
669
00:35:35.230 --> 00:35:37.630
to journal three pages a day and transcribe my old
670
00:35:37.670 --> 00:35:40.070
journals and just keep the wheels spinning.
671
00:35:41.849 --> 00:35:44.739
Chris, you have an open invitation. Whenever you have something
672
00:35:44.780 --> 00:35:46.579
that you want to talk about, even if it's just
673
00:35:46.639 --> 00:35:48.920
a BS, you can come back on the projection booth.
674
00:35:48.940 --> 00:35:49.800
I would love to have you.
675
00:35:49.820 --> 00:35:51.960
Oh, thank you, man. Dude, I would love, it's a
676
00:35:51.960 --> 00:35:54.159
great conversation. I feel bad. I bloated a lot, but
677
00:35:54.219 --> 00:35:56.179
you asked really good questions and I think they deserve
678
00:35:56.280 --> 00:35:59.530
really lengthy answers. So I appreciate you. And yeah, I
679
00:36:00.030 --> 00:36:01.469
would love to come on and then talk about a
680
00:36:01.510 --> 00:36:03.250
film or, Yeah, really, anything.
681
00:36:03.949 --> 00:36:06.219
One thing before we go, I need you to say
682
00:36:06.300 --> 00:36:07.219
fuck Jesus for me.
683
00:36:07.760 --> 00:36:08.659
Yeah, fuck Jesus.
684
00:36:08.719 --> 00:36:09.619
There you go.
685
00:36:09.780 --> 00:36:13.719
You got me. Fuck Jesus? No, you ran into him
686
00:36:13.739 --> 00:36:15.900
by the park. I do feel bad. Jesus, I got
687
00:36:15.940 --> 00:36:19.159
nothing against Jesus. It's just, he's a nice guy. It's
688
00:36:19.199 --> 00:36:22.630
really the power structure that built up around him that
689
00:36:22.690 --> 00:36:24.690
is a little tough, but yeah.
690
00:36:25.590 --> 00:36:27.670
Chris, thank you so much, man. This was such a pleasure.
691
00:36:28.050 --> 00:36:29.590
Oh, dude, right back at you. Thank you, Mike.
692
00:36:30.369 --> 00:36:33.329
Yeah. Thank you.
693
00:36:36.380 --> 00:36:39.659
Hallelujah! Brothers and sisters, hallelujah!
694
00:36:39.719 --> 00:36:46.239
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah! I want you to dig deep into
695
00:36:46.260 --> 00:36:48.639
your pockets and tell me how much you love Jesus!
696
00:36:48.659 --> 00:36:51.380

697
00:36:51.400 --> 00:36:52.480

698
00:36:52.500 --> 00:36:53.420

699
00:36:53.440 --> 00:36:54.039
.
700
00:36:54.019 --> 00:36:55.019

701
00:36:55.059 --> 00:36:55.619
.
702
00:36:55.599 --> 00:36:56.599

703
00:36:56.619 --> 00:36:57.679

704
00:36:57.699 --> 00:36:58.760

705
00:36:58.780 --> 00:37:01.030

706
00:37:01.050 --> 00:37:02.239

707
00:37:02.260 --> 00:37:03.630

708
00:37:03.650 --> 00:37:04.510

709
00:37:04.530 --> 00:37:07.230
Thank you.
710
00:37:41.440 --> 00:37:43.820
Come on, give me another chance, man And everything will
711
00:37:43.840 --> 00:37:46.059
be okay One in addition, man And you'll never have
712
00:37:46.119 --> 00:37:48.059
to worry about giving your free.
713
00:37:47.900 --> 00:37:50.500
Will again Because it's God's will, you have built a
714
00:37:50.559 --> 00:37:52.909
bond And played for the people that you'll tap it
715
00:37:52.989 --> 00:38:01.710
on Ignorance is all the strength that you need To
716
00:38:01.730 --> 00:38:14.949
be a servant of the kingdom That means...