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Do you have any “don’t meet your heroes” stories from working in Hollywood?
Absolutely.
Hollywood really is a place like no other. If you grow up loving cinema, certain people can take on mythic status in your imagination. Actors, filmmakers; they are larger than life. They become idols in the truest sense - an image that is actually worshipped.
But Hollywood is actually full of very weird human beings who have been lucky enough to make their living in a world of make-believe. A huge percentage of the people who work in this industry are strange birds, unsuited for working anywhere else.
Some of our biggest stars wouldn't last ten minutes working a real job; some of our most exalted filmmakers collapse inward if they're in a crowded room. They can have unusual talents, or beauty, or unique perspectives and abilities that have propelled them to various levels of success, or even stardom, but they're just normal, neurotic people.
And success, fame, and money can really twist people. It can be like radiation. They can go full Gollum from it.
But most people who work in Hollywood are not stars at all. The vast majority of people who work here are not rich, not famous. Most are hardworking craftsmen and craftswomen who are fighting every day to make a living, scraping by the best they can in an industry that is brutal, impersonal, and impenetrable.
But every single person in this business - whether they are superstars or not - are just ordinary people. They're insecure, anxious, and prone to all of the failings we mortals are prone to. Some of them are awesome; some of them are assholes. But most of the people here (even the superstars) quietly feel like they don't belong, or that they don't deserve it, or that their sheer ordinariness will be discovered any minute.
In fact, it's the people who seem to feel the opposite - those rare people who feel that they DO belong here, and deserve the lifestyle this industry can afford, who are inevitably the least likable ones I've met.
As I've been lucky enough to keep working in this business, I've met a lot of the people who I idolized along the way. Filmmakers and actors who I admire so much, whose work has shaped the trajectory of my life without them knowing it. I've been starstruck every time, and I am still am - I stammer, I freeze, and I kick myself for what I say, or don't say, or how I said it. I'm not good at it. I have acute social anxiety, and when you throw me at someone I admire, I turn into a blubbering idiot.
They say "don't meet your heroes" because you may (likely will) be disappointed by just how ordinary they truly are. Or worse, they may even turn out to be people you wouldn't want to interact with in normal circumstances - your heroes might be people you wouldn't want to invite to coffee. The persona you have admired is a product in itself, something you bought, something you have taken home and displayed proudly in your imagination... but the human being behind that persona is full of all the ordinary failings. That can be really hard to reconcile.
So yeah, a long-winded way of saying that I've had the experience of meeting people I admired a great deal only to be disappointed, or worse. I've got some nightmare stories in there where the actual person violently shattered the idol I'd built in my imagination. I won't share those stories, there's little point in that, but instead I'll talk about the rare exceptions - the few heroes I've met who were every bit as awesome as I'd hoped they'd be.
They may say "never meet your heroes," but they haven't met Mark Hamill.
I worked with Mark on The Fall of the House of Usher, and he is one of my favorite people. Kind, generous, humble, and so, so funny. I was nervous and excited to meet Mark for the obvious reasons, because of the hero he was in my imagination - but I got to meet Mark the actor, the father, the husband, the humanitarian, and the friend.
Guillermo Del Toro - one of my biggest heroes, his work has meant so much to me. And I was terrified to meet him. But he is one of the most joyful, honest, sweet-natured people I've met in the business, and his love for movies is infectious. For me, the man himself exceeded the myth.
I've been lucky to meet other exceptions to this rule, heroes of mine who exceeded my expectations - Ewan McGregor, Mick Garris, Brian Henson, Heather Langenkamp, Henry Thomas - and yeah, I've had the other experience too. But I try to focus on the exceptions.
It can be unhealthy to idolize people - unhealthy for you, and unhealthy for them. But it's truly awesome when someone is even more amazing than you imagined.
I'm writing a horror feature and I have all these really cool sequences and ideas but I cannot figure out who or what my characters are and how these moments affect them.
When you have an idea for a movie, how do you find your characters and your theme? Is it before, during or after your first draft?
Characters and theme have to come first, for sure. Cool sequences don't mean anything without them.
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Hey Mike! Can you talk about your experience going from Absentia to Oculus? That process after Absentia went on its festival run to pitching Oculus? Would love to learn about that time in your life & career!
I moved to Los Angeles in 2003, right after I graduated college. I went to Towson University in Maryland, was an EMF major (Electronic Media & Film) and had wanted nothing more than to make movies my whole life. We were a comfortable middle class military family (my dad was in the Coast Guard) and for most of my life, making movies for a living felt like an impossible dream.
When I moved to LA I took whatever work I could find. I shot and edited those local car commercials you see on TV at 2am, I was a logger and an AE for reality TV shows, and I eventually worked my way to editing.
I said I'd give myself 5 years to make it in Hollwood. By the time we shot Absentia, I'd been here for 7 years, and in that time I hadn't gotten any closer to my dream.
I've already written at length about how Absentia came along and what it was like to make that little movie, and I've recently blogged about how the Oculus premiere changed my life and birthed my career, so I won't rehash those - but I don't often talk about what went on in between.
I finished editing Absentia just before my oldest son was born in 2010, and went back to working full-time as a reality TV editor. In fact, in the months leading up to his birth, I was working double-time - I spent my days at a company called Film Garden working on a series for DIY Network, and my nights editing packages at Nash Entertainment for those true crime clip shows. Whatever it took to keep the lights on and provide as much support as I could for my son.
While this was happening, I'd submitted Absentia to a pile of film festivals. We didn't get into any of the majors - Sundance, SXSW, and Toronto all passed on the film. Our world premiere was at the Fargo Film Festival, where Tom Brandau, one of my former professors from Towson - and one of my mentors - was teaching.
(Our original festival poster, WAY better than the weird clip art that would come later)
The movie got into a fair amount of film festivals, and we traveled with it as much as we could. I have fond memories of the Phoenix Film Festival, San Luis Obispo (where I met Greg Kinnear at a party and very awkwardly asked for a picture - you can see how thrilled he is about it) and my personal favorite: the Fantastia Film Festival in Montreal.
(At one of the screenings, I believe the San Luis Obispo Film Festival)
While this was happening, the film was picked up for a tiny VOD and DVD release through Phase 4 Films.
They were a Canadian distribution company whose claim to fame was putting out Kevin Smith's Red State under a very unusual distribution model. They acquired the movie, which led to a company holiday part in Hollywood.
There, I briefly met Kevin Smith for the first time. We've met again since, and I've now had a chance to thank him for the kindness he showed me back then - I was just some starstruck kid at a party, but he was gracious and available and inspiring. I really admire the way Kevin deals with his fans, and I've tried to emulate it over the years.
So that was kind of it for Absentia. We went to a few festivals, went to a few parties, and posed for a few pictures with some people we admired. Phase 4 designed some truly godawful cover art, dropped the movie into video stores, and that was that.
($2.99 is a pretty good deal)
So Absentia had pretty much run its course. It had a passionate following of fans, but between the crappy art design and glut of low budget horror films on the market, its moment had already come and gone. I was back at work, editing a series for DIY Network called Extra Yardage, and yearning for another chance to make a movie.
Absentia might not have broken open the industry doors like I'd wanted it to, but one thing it did yield was a meeting with an entertainment attorney named Joel VanderKloot.
I had been represented a few times over the years by various managers (to be honest, they were actually Jeff Howard's managers, and they took me on because we had a co-written project together.) But those relationships hadn't gone anywhere, I'd never sold a script or booked a job, and when I suggested making Absentia they were not supportive ("You've already tried the indie thing, haven't you?") so by the time Absentia was made, I was completely unrepped.
Joel was a family friend of Jason Poh, who was one of our Absentia Kickstarter backers. He was a guy who'd just found the project online and donated a thousand bucks. He kept up with us, and loved the final movie. He told me he knew an entertainment lawyer and offered to arrange a lunch.
I left my editing job at Film Garden for a long lunch and met Joel in Santa Monica (this was a day-killing drive for me). Joel had seen the movie and really liked it. We had a good lunch, but wasn't immediately sure about taking me on - it's a lot of work to take on a new client, and there wasn't much heat on my movie. But there was something there that he liked, and he called later that day to say he would take me on as a client.
I was elated. I felt like I'd made my movie to the best of my ability, and that it had flashed in the pan and then died... no one had noticed outside of a few festival audiences and critics. But here was someone who worked in the industry and he saw something in the film that he believed in.
Joel started looking for managers while I clung to my day job. He passed the movie around and we had a few nibbles, which led to the first manager in my career who wanted to simply represent ME: Nicholas Bogner.
Bogner went about setting general meetings at production companies who specialized in horror films. There weren't a lot of takers, and not everyone was willing to watch an entire feature film in consideration of a general meeting. So it was hit or miss - I was a nobody, after all, and they get these kinds of incoming inquiries all the time.
But there were a few takers. And the very first meeting I had was with Anil Kurian at Intrepid Pictures.
Again, I took an extended lunch from my editing job and drove across town to Intrepid's offices in Santa Monica. I was beyond nervous when I sat in the waiting room. The young man working the front desk signed me in and offered me a water. And then, just before the meeting started, he leaned over and he said "I loved Absentia, by the way."
Anil was a really cool executive and we had a good general meeting. At the end of it, he introduced me to the heads of Intrepid: Marc Evans, and Trevor Macy.
We all ended up in the conference room, where posters for Intrepid's other movies - at that time, The Strangers and The Raven - were hanging. I vividly remember staring at them while I pitched all five of the ideas I had for movies.
One of them was a story about a little boy whose dreams manifested in real life, and another was a take on Stephen King's novel Gerald's Game. But at the time, none of these ideas worked. The meeting was over, and everyone was politely going about their day.
I felt a panic in me. It was my first real meeting, the door had been cracked open just an inch by Absentia, and I was about to walk away with nothing. Would my new manager want to keep me? Would my new lawyer think he was wasting his time?
I stopped in the doorway and turned back. "I've got one other thing," I said. "I made a short years ago about a haunted mirror, and I have a take for a feature."
They kind of laughed at the idea of a haunted mirror. "How do you make that scary?" Trevor asked. I said "Think of it like a portable Overlook Hotel," and the room got a little quieter.
"I'd like to see that short," Trevor said. I agreed to send it immediately.
I ran back to work, stayed a few hours late to make up the time I'd burned on my lunch hour, and went home to find a DVD copy of Oculus: The Man with the Plan.
I'd made that short in 2005. It was 20 mins long, and a lot of fun. Over the years whenever I'd get into meetings (all courtesy of Jeff Howard, who had sold scripts long before we started writing together), people would see it and ask about a feature. Every time, though, the conversation stalled because they wanted the film to be a found footage movie, or they'd balk at the idea of me directing a feature.
I sent the DVD to Intrepid and waited. About a week later, they called and asked me to come back in.
I took another long lunch (this would become quite a habit as the project advanced) and drove back down. We met again in the conference room, but this time the mood was a little different.
Trevor said "We're interested in this. How would you expand it? I know there are cameras in the room with the man and the mirror, which begs the question of found footage..."
My heart sank.
"... but we're thinking that's a mistake. It looks like all the fun is in playing with reality, and you can't do that with found footage. So how would you do it?"
And we were off.
I won't rehash the long journey between this meeting and the Oculus premiere at Toronto (scroll down to find another blog about that), but that was really the moment when things changed.
I drove back to work a little giddy. Intrepid optioned the short film, I called Jeff Howard to see if he'd still want to work on a feature with me, and we were commissioned to write the script.
It was my first Hollywood job. I was paid the bare minimum, but I was also able to join the WGA because of the deal. I still didn't quite my day job (and wouldn't for a long time, not until the movie was really shooting in Alabama the following year) but I was off to the races.
Once the script was done, Oculus would lead to my first agents (at APA, and they treated me very well) and my first "real" movie.
What's particularly neat about this time, looking back, is that I owe it all to Absentia. We'd made this tiny little movie to try to kick open the door of Hollywood and start a career. And despite the enormous pride I had in the finished film, it felt for a long time like it hadn't quite succeeded in that.
But quietly, subtly, the movie did exactly what I hoped it would. The festival screenings built up a small but confident word of mouth. The movie led directly to my attorney Joel (who still represents me to this day), which led directly to my first real representation, which led directly to Intrepid Pictures.
Trevor Macy is now my business partner and has produced every single thing I've ever made since. We run Intrepid Pictures together, and I see that same eagerness in the faces of young filmmakers who find their way to us for general meetings. I try to be as supportive and accessible to them as I possibly can, because I remember very well what it feels like to stand in their shoes.
And Trevor even ended up making those other pitches he'd rejected all those years ago - Before I Wake and Gerald's Game followed soon after Oculus was done.
Absentia did everything I could have wanted it to do, and much more. I'll always remember that period of time with great affection... but man, it was stressful. The uncertainty of those years still exists in me, I don't think it'll ever leave.
Someone told me, along the way, that there wouldn't be a moment when I realized I "made it." It would happen while I wasn't looking. That ended up being absolutely true.
So ive been having a nightmare marathon and so far nr 1 and 2 are the best. Nr 3 was boring, much bettet in the 80s, and nr 4 was the shits. Freddy was scary in the first, and partly the second. Then in 3-4 he turns into a clown, and is quite annoying. Friday the 13th series are 10x better cause Jason is a quiet killing machine like the shark in Jaws, and the crystal lake gore premise is much more satisfying.
So I got 5-6 then 7 left. I know im in for more disapointment, except for nr 7.
4 games that defined my childhood. Those were the days. Samurai Warrior, what a game. And it Came from the desert, CINEMAWARE was perhaps the best video game developer ever 👌
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Mr. Flanagan, I’d like to ask a question and I deeply hope that it does not offend or upset you. I am strongly considering canceling my Netflix subscription due to their new password sharing policy. However, Midnight Mass is one of my favorite shows of all time and I know it isn’t available on DVD, and I’m also profoundly anticipating your take on my favorite Edgar Allen Poe story. So I wanted to ask your take on people accessing your work through, uh, other means. If it’s something that’s offensive to you or will harm you or the other people who work so hard on these shows, I’ll happily keep my Netflix just so that I can keep supporting your work. I respect you far too much as an artist to do otherwise.
Again, I really hope I’m not upsetting you by asking this question. Thank you for everything, and I hope you’re having a great day!
Hi there - no offense taken whatsoever, in fact I think this is a very interesting and important question.
So. If you asked me this a few years ago, I would have said "I hate piracy and it is hurting creators, especially in the independent space." I used to get in Facebook arguments with fans early in my career when people would post about seeing my work on torrent sites, especially when that work was readily available for rent and purchase on VOD.
Back in 2014, my movie Before I Wake was pirated and leaked prior to any domestic release, and that was devastating to the project. It actually made it harder to find distribution for the film. By the time we were able to get distribution in the US, the film had already been so exposed online that the best we could hope for was a Netflix release. Netflix stepped in and saved that movie, and for that I will always be grateful to them.
However.
Working in streaming for the past few years has made me reconsider my position on piracy. You could say my feelings on the matter have "evolved."
In the years I worked at Netflix, I tried very hard to get them to release my work on blu-ray and DVD. They refused at every turn.
It became clear very fast that their only priority was subscriptions, and that they were actively hostile to the idea of physical media. While they had some lingering obligations on certain titles, or had partnerships who still valued physical media, and had flirted with releasing juggernaut hits like Stranger Things, that wasn't at all their priority. In fact, they were very actively trying to eliminate those kinds of releases from their business model.
This is a very dangerous point of view. While companies like Netflix pride themselves on being disruptors, and have proven that they can affect great change in the industry, they sometimes fail to see the difference between disruption and damage. So much that they can find themselves, intentionally or not, doing enormous harm to the very concept of film preservation.
The danger comes when a title is only available on one platform, and then - for whatever reason - is removed.
We have already seen this happen. And it is only going to happen more and more. Titles exclusively available on streaming services have essentially been erased from the world. If those titles existed on the marketplace on physical media, like HBO's Westworld, the loss is somewhat mitigated (though only somewhat.) But when titles do not exist elsewhere, they are potentially gone forever.
The list of titles that have been removed from streaming services is growing quickly, quietly, and insidiously.
When titles disappear without warning, the whole streaming space starts to seem less stable.
So to answer your question - today, I am very grateful that my Netflix originals are available through - uh - other means.
The issue of password sharing is a different one, but suffice to say I do not blame you one bit for considering canceling your subscription.
I still believe that where we put our dollars matters. Renting or buying a piece of work that you like is essential. It is casting a vote, encouraging studios - who only speak the language of money - to invest more effort into similar work. If we show up to support distinct, unique, exciting work, it encourages them to make more of it. It's as simple as that. If we don't show up, or if they can't hear our voice because we are casing our vote "silently" through torrent sites or other means - it makes it unlikely that they will take a chance to create that kind of work again.
Which is why I typically suggest that if you like a movie you've seen through - uh - other means, throw a few dollars at that title on a legitimate platform. Rent it. Purchase it. Support it.
But if services like Netflix offer no avenue for that kind of support, and can (and will) remove content from their platform forever... frankly, I think that changes the rules.
Netflix will likely never release the work I created for them on physical media. I've tried for years, but have met with the same apathy throughout.
Some of you may say "wait, aren't The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor available on blu-ray and DVD?" Yes, they are, because they were co-produced with Paramount. Paramount retained the physical media rights for those titles, and were permitted to release them (though they had to wait a calendar year after their launches on Netflix). I'm so, so grateful that Paramount was able to release and protect those titles. (I'm also grateful that those releases include extended cuts, deleted scenes, and commentary tracks. There are a number of fantastic benefits to physical media releases.)
But a lot of the other work I did there are Netflix originals, without any other studio involvement. Those titles - like Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club, and the upcoming Fall of the House of Usher - along with my Netflix exclusive and/or original movies Before I Wake and Gerald's Game - have no such protections. The physical media releases of those titles are entirely at Netflix's discretion, and unfortunately Netflix has made their position clear.
There was a brief, shining moment when Netflix told me they were going to release a "Flanaverse" (man I hate that word) blu-ray set - I was very excited. But as abruptly as they had told me they were going to do it, they retracted their offer with a casual, dismissive "oh, never mind." There was very little context offered, simply that the company had changed its mind and weren't interested in physical media for my stuff after all.
My movie Hush recently disappeared from the platform, and is currently not available anywhere in the world. That's a slightly different situation, as the reason it disappeared is that Netflix's license agreement ran out, which gave us the opportunity to shop it to new homes - hopefully homes with more support for physical media (and you better believe that's exactly what we're doing right now). But that's a fortunate case - Hush was not a Netflix original. A lot of my other work is, and we'll have no such opportunity to extract them.
As a result, I've gone looking for archival copies of Midnight Mass (and some other work) for myself. And that led me to some "bootleg" blu-rays created by people who operate through - uh - other means.
The result is that I now have three copies of Midnight Mass on blu-ray in my collection. The quality is excellent. The people who created these even went through the trouble to make animated menus and cover art - and I have to say they're quite good. I found these online, it wasn't difficult, and it wasn't expensive. I'm told the quality of torrent sites is pretty great. And honestly, at this point, given Netflix's position on the mater... I'm very glad they exist.
At the moment, Netflix seems content to leave Before I Wake, Gerald's Game, Midnight Mass, and The Midnight Club on the service, where they still draw audiences. I don't think there is a plan to remove any of them anytime soon. But plans change, the industry changes - hell, I've watched the executive structure at Netflix change so many times since I got there I don't even recognize the company anymore.
The point is things change, and each of those titles - should they be removed from the service for any reason - are not available anywhere else. If that day comes - if Netflix's servers are destroyed, if a meteor hits the building, if they are bought out by a competitor and their library is liquidated - I don't know what the circumstances might be, I just know that if that day comes, some of the work that means the most to me in the world would be entirely erased.
Or, what if we aren't so catastrophic in our thinking? What if it the change isn't so total? What if Netflix simply bumps into an issue with the license they paid for music (like the Neil Diamond songs that play such a crucial role in Midnight Mass), and decide to leave the show up but replace the songs?
This has happened before as well - fans of Northern Exposure can get the show on DVD and blu-ray, but the music they heard when the series aired has been replaced due to the licensing issues. And the replacements - chosen for their low cost, not for creative reasons - are not improvements. What if the shows as they were intended to be are just changed, and not by creatives, but by business affairs executives?
All to say that physical media is critically important. Having redundancy in the marketplace is critically important. The more platforms a piece of work is available on, the more likely it is to survive and grow its audience. At this point, if a studio refuses to make them available, I am fully on board with any means that protect and archive the work, and to make the work available to an audience outside of that platform's exclusive base.
As I said, things change - my overall deal at Netflix ran its course, and I'm now at Amazon, who have a somewhat different perspective on physical media. Their business model is not built entirely on subscribers; far from it. I'm hoping very much that the work I create with them will meet a different fate, and be supported in a different manner.
As for Netflix, I hope sincerely that their thinking on this matter evolves, and that they value the content they spend so much money creating enough to protect it for posterity. That's up to them, it's their studio, it's their rules. But I like to think they may see that light eventually, and realize that exclusivity in a certain window is very cool... but exclusivity in perpetuity limits the audience and endangers the work.
All to say that if you decide to cancel your Netflix subscription, that's entirely your choice - I'm not here telling you to cancel it, or to keep it, for that matter. On that point, I am utterly agnostic.
But I will say that if you do cancel it, I am profoundly grateful that my work is available somewhere else. And if you take advantage of that, that is absolutely, positively, unequivocally fine with me.
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