Filmmaking Confidential

Today's guest is actress and writer Jennifer Grace. Jennifer received her BA from Kansas State University in 1997. She has been working as a professional actor since, most notably in a record-shattering run as Emily Webb in Tony award-winning director David Cromer’s critically acclaimed production of OUR TOWN, which she performed in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, opposite actors such as Michael Shannon, Helen Hunt and Michael McKean, and for which she was recognized with a Theatre World Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway debut. Other New York theatre credits include: NIKOLAI AND THE OTHERS (Lincoln Center Theatre, world premiere, with Blair Brown, Michael Cerveris, John Glover and Kathryn Erbe) and THE 4TH GRADERS PRESENT AN UNNAMED LOVE SUICIDE (59E59). Selected regional credits: CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, TIME & THE CONWAYS, 4.48 PSYCHOSIS, BALM IN GILEAD, ARCADIA, JACK OR THE SUBMISSION, THE SEA GULL, MARAT/SADE, BLOOD WEDDING, and ANGELS IN AMERICA. Film: I SEE YOU (w/Helen Hunt), THE CASSEROLE CLUB (w/ Susan Traylor, Jane Wiedlin), KELLY & CAL (with Juliette Lewis) Television: ”Inside Amy Schumer,” “VEEP,” “Billions,” “Chicago P.D.,” and “The Red Line.” She is also an audiobook narrator, VO artist, and a writer. Proud member of SAG-AFTRA and Actor’s Equity.

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Today's guest is actor Aaron Dean Eisenberg. He is best known for portraying "Todd Lang" in HBO Series The Deuce alongside James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal; and "Richard Kane" in Ed Burns' series Public Morals.

Eisenberg made his acting debut in 2006, Nathaniel Nose-directed comedy, Talent. The following year he was seen as "Aaron Dean" in Reggie Bannister and Jason Carter-starrer horror film, The Final Curtain.  He was seen in various films such as Stuck, The Ghostmaker, Gossip Girl, Royal Pains, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Unforgettable.

In 2017, he landed his most memorable role of "Todd Lang" in the HBO series The Deuce.   In 2017, Eisenberg made his debut as producer with a 23-minute short comedy, Bagdad, Florida. The film was directed by Matthew Fifer and starred Margot Bingham and Jason Greene. The following year, he produced Night Tales directed by Randy Rubin.

In May 2019, he released Carlie Hanson: Back in My Arms, directed by Danilo Parra and starring Carlie Hanson.  In 2020, he produced Cicada (starring Cobie Smulders and Scott Adsit), The Big Ask (starring Kelli Barrett and Sathya Sridharan), and Carrol Lynn (starring Annie Golden and Anna Russell).

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Today's guest is the fabulous Rena Riffel. Rena is an American actress, singer, dancer, model, writer, producer, and director. She is best known for her supporting roles in films such as Showgirls, Striptease, and Mulholland Drive.

Riffel landed her breakthrough role in the 1995 film Showgirls starring Elizabeth Berkley, Gina Gershon, and Kyle MacLachlan. Initially reading for the lead role of Cristal Connors, Riffel was cast in the supporting role of Penny/Hope after director Paul Verhoeven decided that she was too young to play an aging showgirl.

While on the set of Showgirls, Riffel approached the music supervisor with a song she recorded, "Deep Kiss". The music supervisor tested the song on the production office (without telling them it had been written by one of the actresses) to determine if it was suitable for the film. Director Paul Verhoeven listened to the song and decided to include it in the lap dance scene at the Cheetah strip club.

Although an initial box office failure, Showgirls enjoyed success in the home video market, generating more than $100 million in video rentals and became one of MGM's top 20 all-time best sellers.

For the 2004 re-release as a DVD limited edition box set, Riffel, along with cast members Lin Tucci and Patrick Bristow, had their hand prints and names put in cement in front of the Hollywood Vista Theater at the red carpet event where they were also interviewed by Access Hollywood. Riffel and Bristow were also special guests at Peaches Christ's Midnight Mass midnight screening of Showgirls in 2008 in San Francisco, California. They were interviewed on stage after the live performance of the Goddess volcano dance performed by drag queens in gold lamé and featuring Peaches Christ as Goddess.

When asked if she expected Showgirls to produce such a cult legacy, Riffel replied, "No. I went into it thinking it would be a really erotic, serious, shocking exposé. People would be sitting on the edge of their seats from suspense. [... But] some people were trying to play straight comedy – I played my character with comedy; I was hoping to get a laugh – but no one was acting with tongue in cheek. I know that everyone went into it thinking it would be like Basic Instinct. [...] Maybe it's Verhoeven. Even [Basic Instinct] seems kind of campy now [...] I think it's something with European filmmakers. I think – and this is my theory – [...] that there's something that European filmmakers have, a punched-up, extreme vibe. Everything's extreme."

Following her role in Showgirls, Riffel was cast in Striptease with Demi Moore and Burt Reynolds. Showgirls was generally disliked and the filmmakers feared people would pre-judge Striptease for that reason. To avoid any association between the two films, advertisements projected Striptease as more comedic than Showgirls, which had been marketed as a drama. Aside from a common context, Striptease and Showgirls shared two notable connections: Marguerite Derricks choreographed both films, and Rena Riffel played a prominent role in each.

In 2001, Riffel appeared in the David Lynch film Mulholland Drive. When interviewed about the film and if she “got it”, Riffel replied, “See…I can’t remember. No, I guess it still doesn’t make sense to me. It’s been a while – I’d like to watch it again….one website put a lot of clarity on it with their theories.”

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Today's guest is filmmaker and actor Doug Hurley.  Doug is originally from Kansas, lived in New York City for a while, and now calls Los Angeles home. As a writer/director, his most recent short film, Suicide Date, premiered at the Dances with Films Festival in Los Angeles, winning the Audience Award for its category as well as the Overall Audience Award for the entire fest, qualifying it for the Academy Awards. As a writer/writer, he's currently developing two TV shows. As an actor, you can see him in MGM's upcoming The Baxters as Dr. Peter West, as well as Brooklyn 99, Lucifer, and many other tele-visual programs. Somehow evidently, he is also an award-winning poet and a painter. He is also very skilled at mailing random parcels to people.

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Today's guest is photographer, writer, and filmmaker Emma Elizabeth Tillman. Her family lived on a sailboat from the time she was born. Tillman grew up on the water in Southern California, and the ocean has informed and engaged her work in its symbolic attributes; as well as her own confrontation with mystery, intimacy and fear.

She graduated with an Masters of Fine Art in Film Directing from UCLA in 2014 and since has
worked across several disciplines, including her most recent solo exhibition of ten years of intimate writing and photography at Gallery 46 in London in 2017 entitled Disco Ball Soul, along with a book by the same name. She is currently at work on a television pilot and several feature length scripts. Tillman and her husband, Josh currently live and work in Los Angeles.

www.EmmaElizabethTillman.com

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Today's guests are Renny Grames and Boston McConnaughey - the team behind the new film ALIEN COUNTRY.

Boston McConnaughey - Director, Writer
With a background in filmmaking and next generation VR storytelling, Boston and Renny have 30 million views on their sci-fi action YouTube series and have created short films online for Sony Pictures, Google, Coca-cola, Nokia, and more... Alien Country’s baby daddy.

Renny Grames - Actor, Producer
An indie film actress with numerous film and television credits. Renny’s work has shown up in dozens of festivals including Napa Valley FF and Heartland FF. She’s produced dozens of films and commercials and is Alien Country’s sugar momma.

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Today's guest is Preston Taylor - an American comedian, actor, producer and writer from Gatesville, Texas. Preston started his illustrious career in Los Angeles with a brief appearance as himself on RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009) as part of the pit crew. He also appeared as an outlaw and stuntman in the award winning short film Valley of the Scorned (2011), as well as, his unbelievable one line, one scene as Keith in Parallels (2013). Preston started his comedy career in 2010 with his first ever live performance at the Palm in west Hollywood. He was fortunate as his second show would be downtown in front acting and comedic heavyweight Garrett Morris, who would tell him that night- “Kid if this is show two, you are going to be okay out here”. Preston has since enjoyed the life of traveling as a comic and performing shows mostly in the shadows until now. Before his coming out party with Farm to TV (2021), he performed for years at Hollywood staples such as The Ice House, The World Famous Comedy Store, & Jon Lovitz Comedy Club where in 2012 he was dubbed runner-up in the L.A.’s Best Comic competition for up and comers. As an homage to one his favorite comics Rodney Dangerfield, who was meticulous about the timing when on stage, Preston set out to nail his set for the special at 65 minutes on the dot. Farm to TV was shot and performed one time through, one night only, and originally stamped at exactly 65 minutes with no stage clock.

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Adam Barnick attended New York's School of Visual Arts for filmmaking, while assisting in production and special effects for theater and independent films. Afterwards he began his career assisting on commercials produced locally for Japanese television.

As a writer/director, Adam’s short film MAINSTREAM has played seven international festivals and opened the New York City Horror Film Festival’s theatrical screenings its year of release. Fangoria Magazine and Koch Vision acquired it for worldwide distribution on their FANGORIA BLOOD DRIVE II: America's Best Short Horror Films DVD, sold worldwide. MAINSTREAM was voted one of the top 5 horror films of the year by the editor of Horror-Movies.ca, as well as being featured in numerous print, radio and online articles in the top genre websites.

His company Wicked Tree Films has collaborated with Shout! Factory, IFC Midnight, Anchor Bay Entertainment, Starz Home Entertainment, Ariescope Pictures, Crimson Films, A Bigger Boat, Glass Eye Pix, Dire Wit Films and Red Shirt Pictures.

In the arena of BTS documentaries and Blu-Ray/online content, he was edited, directed and shot featurettes in the past several years on the short film and feature-length versions of Paul Solet's award-winning GRACE; the horror prequel Malevolence: Bereavement, the true-story drama Aaron Bacon, Adam Green's survival thriller FROZEN, and Solet's followup to GRACE, DARK SUMMER. The DVD extras/documentaries for GRACE have received acclaim from horror fans and reviewers the world over, with the DVD winning "Best Indie Disc" at the 2010 Reaper Awards. FROZEN's Extras were nominated for "Best DVD Extras" in the 2011 Reaper Awards, alongside such heavyweights as The Walking Dead, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Alien Anthology. FROZEN recently became Anchor Bay's top-selling original Blu-Ray and DVD. Recent documentary projects include a series of featurettes celebrating and exploring Larry Fessenden's Glass Eye Pix, which has just hit a milestone 30th anniversary, as well as featurettes on the upcoming Blu-Ray releases of the genre films ITSY BITSY, the 80's horror comedy LITTLE MONSTERS, and Larry Fessenden's DEPRAVED.

As a music video director, he has collaborated with artists John Presnell, Rivulets, Barbiana Complex, and Kathy Zimmer. His striking and bizarre video for Presnell's PILLS was reviewed as "the creepiest, most on-fucking-point music video I've ever seen" by the influential music blog SYFFAL. His current music video, THE LOOK for Barbiana Complex, repurposes fan-shot footage into a candy-colored, electrified palette.

Recently, Adam founded the company Wicked Tree Creative, to rebrand and expand his editing services as a boutique post production company, delivering solutions for clients worldwide.

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Join film directors Elizabeth Spear & Steve Balderson as they discuss the sometimes insane behavior and on-set antics of other Directors, Primadonnas, Assistant Directors, Explosive Producers, Egomaniacs, and how one can navigate all this and still manage to have a creative, warm, and welcoming film set.

Elizabeth Spear is an award winning filmmaker from Austin, Texas.  She earned her M.A. in Media and Communication from European Graduate School in Switzerland and has studied under Terrence Malick, Wim Wenders, D.J. Spooky and Slavoj Zizek. Her films have screened all over the world including France, Germany, Norway, Egypt, Ireland and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  

Awards
HELL TOWN (2015) Best Feature, Crimson Screen Horror Film Fest
ROUNDBALL (2014), Best Romantic Comedy, WorldFest
THE PEOPLE YOU KNOW (2012), Best Feature Film, 60 Degrees Norway FORWARD/BACKWARD (2009), People’s Choice, Different than What? 
HANGING (2002), Grand Prize, 72HFP Gene Siskel Theater

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William Clift, a Hollywood native, started his career as a Make-up and Hair man for the fashion, film, television and Music Video industry. In mid 2000 he decided to follow his life long dream of becoming a director, writer and produced his first short film, The Fairy Tale, soon after a documentary, The Pure Eccentrics; San Francisco. This led to his first feature film Baby Jane? shot on a shoestring budget, receiving rave reviews from Variety, Fangoria and the Examiner to name a few. Baby Jane? was on Netflix streaming in 2012 and bought by HERE TV. Billy's next project was I Want To Get Married, which was distributed all over the globe. Billy's next feature was his follow up to Baby Jane?, Hush Up Sweet Charlotte, starring a cast of cult icons ( Mink Stole, Varla Jean Merman).

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