'Stick', Editor, Ivan Victor

0:00Ivan VictorThe biggest, you know, aspect to that was the montage at the end, and David Dobkin, who directed it, had also directed Wedding Crashers, which had a huge montage. The camera department built this raised mound where they had a circular dolly track around it so that it looked like a green, but the green was raised up, so that's how come there's, there's those, all those spinning shots. And he had it all storyboarded. He sent me pictures of... You know, it's kind of like A Beautiful Mind with different colored index cards with different colored pens connecting them.

0:41Jawad MirGood afternoon, everyone. Welcome back to Kingdom of Dreams Podcast, the making of stories. I'm your host, Jawad Mir. Today, my guest is Ivan Victor, who is an editor on the most recent Apple TV+ series, Stick, starring Owen Wilson. Ivan and I had a great chat about the series itself, and his work involved on it, and how the series keeps grounded focusing on very limited amount of characters, and it keeps it very basic and simple. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Ivan Victor for Apple TV+ Stick, starring Owen Wilson. I would love to know, as we, if we start off with, you know, your involvement on this series. How did that c… come about? What was... Was it, like, an organic process? Or if you can just talk about that just to start off, would that be greatly appreciated?

1:25Ivan VictorIt was a, an unusual process 'cause this was coming… I started a year ago. So when was that? April. But that was still sort of in the aftermath of whatever the new normals that we don't quite have yet is, if that makes any sense. That seems like a weird way of saying it. But anyway, like, the business is refinding its footing.

1:46Jawad MirYeah. Of course.

1:47Ivan VictorIn…

1:48Jawad MirYeah

1:48Ivan Victor... In the, in the Gold Rush days, you would walk out of your house, and by the time you'd gone from your house to your car, someone would have offered you two jobs. So jobs were scarce on the ground, and my agent actually, mentioned the show and said, "Do you know anybody who's involved?" And I looked on IMDb, and then it was just a process of finding anyone that I knew, however tangentially, who knew someone on the show to send in my resume or put in a good word. So it was just, you know, like pulling whatever string I could pull to get on there. And I think that the, one of the final pieces that really helped was a post producer I'd worked with years ago, who my assistant editor had kept in touch with some of his crew, got the job as post producer on that show, and the third slot was open. So I was fortunate enough to get that. But it was, it was a lot of work to get the show.

2:42Jawad MirYeah. No, I mean, it's, it's more or less in our industry, it's pretty much the path that goes, that you're talking about, or if you had somebody, if you had worked with somebody in the last project or the project before that, they bring you on board. So, that's, I mean, yeah, that itself is a daunting task, but at least you got on it. It's a great project and, you know, and they're very tight and very, meaningful with interesting characters. When you read the script, did you read the entire series, or was it just the pilot?

3:15Ivan VictorThe…

3:15Jawad MirWhat…

3:16Ivan VictorFirst, be… before I met, I think I read the first two scripts.

3:21Jawad MirOkay. Okay.

3:22Ivan VictorAnd I was r… I was really impressed with the tightness of the scripts and the, th… that there's a, you know, there's the story that bubbles along on top, but that everybody involved has... And I know that, like, I've, foolishly or not, been reading reviews, and some people are sort of ragging on the amount of trauma that people have suffered, but it's a TV show. Everything's heightened. But it was, I was impressed about the depth of everybody's issues. You know, how everybody, all the characters have something they're working on, and they, as you'll see as the series continues…

3:59Jawad MirYeah

3:59Ivan Victor... Things bubble up. But I was…

4:01Jawad MirYeah

4:02Ivan Victor... I was very writing.

4:04Jawad MirAnd that's, that's the thing that I was impressed about, which you mentioned too, is that, you know, by the end of the third episode, there's the really six characters, if not five, that have come in and gone. And that, you know, granted it's a, the pilot was a little bit longer, but other episodes were a little shorter. But still, for that to be able to have that kind of tightness of nowadays, that's really rare, even in TV shows/movies. And I think that's why people are resonating with it because of that, the development of a character. And Owen Wilson, I mean, he just carries such an amazing persona too, so, that obviously helps. But what's, what's your workflow like on, in normally or in this project? Were you on the set, or was it after it was completely done that you came on board?

4:53Jawad MirHow did you take a bite at it?

4:55Ivan VictorIt was, it was block shooting, so it was t… done, you know, two episodes at a time, and I always came on the second block. ... They shot in Vancouver because why would you shoot a show in America and Vancou… You know, it's rebates, so…

5:09Jawad MirYeah

5:10Ivan Victor... It was…

5:10Jawad MirI get it

5:10Ivan Victor... Shoot there. So y… you know, we would basically start with production. So we were getting, you know, as they'd shoot, we'd get dailies the next day. And I like to do this anyway, is to keep in touch with the director as much as they like to discuss what they like, what they don't like, discuss what I'm seeing, what's working, what's not working. So I was able to do that with the directors on my episodes as well.

5:38Jawad MirWas there a specific thing, a scene or an arc or something that was not working in the first three episode or was working and you suggested otherwise that you can talk about?

5:52Ivan VictorI can't really speak to the first two episodes. I wasn't particularly invo… involved in those. I mean, I do…

5:58Jawad MirLet's, let's talk about the third one then.

6:00Ivan VictorWell, no, nothing really. The biggest You know, aspect to that was the montage at the end. And David Dobkin, who directed it, who also directed Wedding Crashers, which had a huge montage, did an incredible job in preparing that. And he had the, you know, the camera department build this raised mound where they had a circular dolly track around it so that it looked like a green, but the green was raised up, so that's how come there's, there's those, all those spinning shots. And he had it all storyboarded. He sent me pictures of... You know, it's kind of like A Beautiful Mind with different colored index cards with different colored pens connecting them. So there was, there was nothing that, in that episode that was problematic other than just the challenge of that huge montage.

6:53Jawad MirGot it. And, where were you in Vancouver? Which part? Did you enjoy Vancouver? Have you been there before? I mean, it's one of my favorite cities.

7:00Ivan VictorI wasn't. Sorry, I didn't specify. We weren't there.

7:01Jawad MirOh, yeah.

7:01Ivan VictorWe were, we were on LA. We were all in LA, and it was pretty much a remote show.

7:06Jawad MirI see.

7:06Ivan VictorSo there was a... I'll just cough and then have a pause so you can edit that out. We w… we all worked from home, but there was a room that production, post had, hired for us up at CBS Radford to work with directors. So I ended up working with David Dobkin one, and Jaffa Mahmoud, who did episode... Well, he did five and six, so I did one with him. But he was in Vancouver 'cause he was shooting second unit, and then I worked with John Hamburg. So worked with two directors in person and then the rest was remote because Jason Keller, the showrunner, would be up and down between Vancouver and LA. Obviously when production finished, he just preferred to stay at home and work remotely.

7:49Jawad MirRight. And I'm always fascinated with people's journey and how it began. What was the bug that got you or bit you that led you to where you are today? What inspired you?

8:01Ivan VictorWell, I, it was odd. At the time, my parents used to yell at me for watching too much TV, but I guess I was doing research when I was young. I liked a lot of TV. But I was always interested in film and TV and music. And then, my first job was at ABC News in London…

8:19Jawad MirOh

8:19Ivan Victor... The American. Working on the production floor. So I saw what the news editors did and, you know, the excitement of cutting news. And also they had a three-machine room there where they would do those longer feature pieces. And I learned the very basics of an in point and an out point and, you know, video, audio one, audio two. So when I moved to America, I told people that I knew how to edit, which was true. I wasn't an editor, but I... So I started cutting very basic news stuff. And then, what was like the... I don't know when it was, probably the early '90s, a colleague of mine had started learning Avid, and I thought, "Oh, that looks interesting." So I learned that. And then a friend of mine, like it's, it's, it's a business of relationships, as we're speaking about.

9:02Jawad MirYeah, 100%.

9:03Ivan VictorAnd so, you know, this guy said, "Oh, you should learn Avid. It's fun." And then someone else from the news station was doing some reality stuff, so I started doing reality TV. And one of the producers from one of those reality shows, was producing The Tom Green Show when it moved to LA, and I was at one of those, it's one of those, I don't know if you're a fan of sliding doors, not everybody is, but it's one of those sliding door…

9:28Jawad MirThe movie?

9:29Ivan VictorThe… Yeah.

9:30Jawad MirYeah.

9:30Ivan VictorIt's got…

9:30Jawad MirI love that movie. I love that movie.

9:32Ivan VictorRichard Ayoade doesn't. I don't know if you've read his book on it.

9:35Jawad MirThat I have not, but I would love to.

9:37Ivan VictorThat's, that's a good read. And I'd quit a job 'cause it was just unbearable, and someone said, "Oh, come and cut promos for a judge show. It's a union job. It'll be great." And this guy from one of the reality shows said, "Hey, we're doing The Tom Green Show." And I said, "Yeah, but I've got this job and it's union." He said, "Come do Tom Green. It'd be more fun than that." So fortunately I went for, I went for that job, which led to, there was a kind of bounce between doing like MTV comedy shows. I did Lyricist Lounge and Andy Dick and Jackass. And then in between I would go and do various crappy reality shows. And then, you know, there's, there's always someone that kind of helps. And there's an editor friend of mine, John Corn, who had been on Reno 911! And wasn't able to do it, so he r… he recommended me for that. And then because I'd done that level of improv, when John wasn't available to do this one episode of Curb, I got a meeting on Curb and did season seven, episode one of Curb. And then when John didn't wanna go back to Parks and Rec for the second season, I got that.

10:40Ivan VictorSo, and that was kind of, I think the key thing was to be on a, on a big series and I w… I was on seasons two, three and four of that. So that was the cliff notes, I suppose.

10:54Jawad MirDid you mentioned Curb Your Enthusiasm. I'm not sure if you worked on that season. Roger Nygard?

11:01Ivan VictorYeah.

11:01Jawad MirDo you know him? Yeah.

11:02Ivan VictorAnd I, one of…

11:03Jawad MirI had him…

11:04Ivan VictorSorry, I was, I, but Roger was off directing something, which is why I got to do that episode.

11:08Jawad MirRight. And I asked him b… about that because I had him on a while ago, I think a year and a half ago, for the Trekkies, the documentary that he directed, and he talked about, Curb. I think he's been involved in it from the very beginning. So that's, that's interesting connection.

11:22Ivan VictorYeah.

11:22Jawad MirSmall world. What is about, what is it about editing that you enjoy? I mean, I think I know the answer, but I would love to hear from you, maybe it's a little bit different, that you enjoy that you probably can't find that in directing or writing or, you know, cinematography or any other job on the set?

11:46Ivan VictorThat's a very good question. I mean, there's so much I love about it. I love the solitude of put… putting stuff together. I love when you're working with good people, the collaborative aspect. And I love the, it's, it's like a, being an all-rounder. I don't know if you're a sports guy at all, but you know, sometimes there's like an all-rounder Who can do…

12:10Jawad MirYeah

12:11Ivan Victor... You know, obviously we can't, we're not DPs and we're not writers, but we understand about framing and what shot size means in terms of the narrative. We, you know, I just finished up, working on the Vince Staples show for Netflix, and we're very big on sound design and how that plays into everything. So we're, we're dealing with all of these different aspects to put them together, and then it's that final rewrite aspect of it too. So I think it's the, I don't know, all, the whole thing. And th… then you get into the minutiae when you're very close, when it feels right about does someone blink here? Do they not blink? How much of the door do we see close? It's like all of those…

12:51Jawad MirYeah

12:51Ivan Victor... Like…

12:51Jawad MirThe details

12:52Ivan Victor... Yeah, it's like this huge big picture of what's the story and then all these kind of micro aspect of it as well.

13:00Jawad MirWhat, w… is there a specific editor who you've looked up to or a specific film or series that you enjoy watching from the editing standpoint?

13:10Ivan VictorOoh. I don't know. There's, there's too many. I mean, Billy Wilder is my favorite filmmaker. But I, you know, I couldn't probably, I should probably know who cut his films. This, I don't know. There's too many to mention. You know, when you look at... I don't know. Sorry, there's just too many.

13:33Jawad MirNo, it makes sense. I thought you were gonna probably gonna say Walter Murch, but everybody says Walter Murch, so.

13:39Ivan VictorGood. I lo… I mean, I love Alan Heim, who… ... You know, did All That Jazz and he did Network and he did 12 Chairs. There's a to… I mean, Richard Chew with Star Wars and The Conversation and Cuckoo's Nest. There's, there's a ton.

13:56Jawad MirRight. And…

13:56Ivan VictorThere's some, there's some great editors out there too.

13:59Jawad MirI was going through your IMDb and I don't remember, have you done features? Like is that something that you have worked on or you want to work on?

14:08Ivan VictorI would love to. Do you have any? You got, you know, got any leads?

14:12Jawad MirSure.

14:14Ivan VictorNo, the features I've, the features I've done have been really super low budget. So the first one I did was in 1994. It was called Flesh Suitcase. I should have mentioned that in my how I got here. It was while I was working at KTLA.

14:28Ivan VictorI'd, as like a, the cousin of someone I knew in London was out who was an actor and we were all, you know, early '90s trying to do stuff, and there was a writer we knew who had this script called Flesh Suitcase, which is on YouTube. You can watch it too.

14:43Jawad MirI'll check it out.

14:43Ivan VictorAnd we just, we just said, "Fuck it. We'll, we'll just make it. Whatever money we have, we'll make it." And like someone who was our production designer had this big Craftsman house in Pasadena, so we built everything out. We raised money. We shot it in I think something like 17 days on 35 mil short ends, and we got into the inaugural Slamdance, which was, which was fun. So yeah, the, all the films have been no budget, low budget. I would love to do features that like, you know, take a bite out of that particular genre of storytelling.

15:14Jawad MirYeah, that'd be really cool. It's interesting you were talking about earlier about watching television and that was your research. I've never had anybody articulate it that way because that was the biggest problem my parents had with me…... 'cause I used to watch, when we migrated to Canada, all I did was watch TV. Like that was my thing. And it's so interest… you use the word research because that's, even though Jurassic Park did it for me, like in terms of knowing what I wanna do, but I think before that just having that education and research from different TV shows and movies, really goes far in terms of teaching you a lot of stuff.

15:52Ivan VictorYeah. I don't know when it was, but I do remember watching The Third Man. I think I don't, I'll, like I'd rented it from Videos or something. And I remember seeing Joseph Cotten get to the top of the stairs, you know, and like there's a, like a medium shot and cut to a wide shot of him going across the landing. Like something just happened there, and I rewound and I noticed like they'd taken a chunk out of his walk, and that, I think that was the first time I'd really noticed that aspect of…

16:18Jawad MirEditing

16:18Ivan Victor... Cutting things. Yeah.

16:21Jawad MirYeah. And it, that has become... I shouldn't say that has become more common now, but I think it has become more and more common now where audience has become a little bit smarter. I mean, would you agree that, like there's a lot of times a scene would be cut from, you know, getting a car, stopping in a parking lot and instead of showing him or her getting out of the car un… unless it serves the story, you see them getting out of the elevator of wherever they're reaching. And I don't think that was probably there that much in the '70s, '80s and '90s or even early 2000s. Would you, would you agree with that or is that, am I overlooking at things?

17:00Ivan VictorNo, I mean, I'm not as like au fait with the, you know, like cinema history in that way. Certainly I, from what I do know, you know, early on that whole Russian school of… ... Show every step and then I think probably was the '70s where things got more stylized in terms of, or the French New Wave of just, "I'm bored. Let's just cut here," and you've got the jump cut was born.

17:25Jawad MirYeah

17:25Ivan Victor... But I think s… I think audiences are more sophisticated despite what network notes seem to tell us when we're in the notes process.

17:34Jawad MirGoing back to Stick, again, you worked on episode three. As simple as you think, a… as simple as you say it was, it's still editing. I mean, you're still, yes, you have a script, yes, you have different shots and different takes, and you still have to rearrange sometimes, you know, shots and scenes because it's probably worked on paper but it's not working in the visual flow of things. Was there anything off script that you had, you felt like that needed to be sort of changed in terms of a scene be… you know, where it was in the script and how it ended at, in the episode?

18:10Ivan VictorYeah. We pl… we played with structure a lot towards the end with that big montage because, I don't know, this may be a spoiler if people haven't watched it, but there's a scene where Mark Maron's character, after he's been trapped in the bed, has been freed by the fire brigade, and that moved around a few times. And there were a couple of... There was a couple of extra scenes of Mark Maron trapped in the bed that we didn't need.

18:39Ivan VictorTook. W… at one point there were two scenes with, Elena trying to get him out that were separated by something else, and we stuck those two scenes together. What else did we do? Also, initially that montage was supposed to end sooner and have more of a dialogue score approach to the end, but a… again, David Dobkin was like, "No, let's just use as much of the song as we can." There's like, there's one tiny music edit in it, but it's pretty much the song in its entirety.

19:12Ivan VictorSo that changed from the script, 'cause the script did have, you get to a certain point, and then as he's approaching the last hole, we're back in, you know, not the montage world. But that's not how it ended up.

19:25Jawad MirI'm, I'm glad you talked about the scene under… under… underneath the bed, because I loved the, fact... I was gonna ask you how much coverage you guys had in the footage, because you probably s… there's only two shots of him underneath the bed that you see, and the rest of it you just hear him.

19:43Ivan VictorYeah.

19:43Jawad MirWhich I, which I thought was really cool, because I think it helped build the relationship that probably will come up in the later episodes between those two characters. They're trying to find, you know, they don't like each other from the beginning, but who knows, there may be, there might be something blossoming right there. I, that to me was really cool. Was that intentional, to have that kind of distance…

20:08Ivan VictorThat wa…

20:08Jawad Mir... From the characters?

20:09Ivan VictorAs I recall, that was in the script. Coverage was shot for that, but we didn't use it other than at the time that it was... I think we may have gone to it just a beat earlier than before it was scripted.

20:23Ivan VictorThe intention was to not use that as a, as a Band-Aid, and it took, it, that scene was a challenge, especially when we made the, you know, the tightens to it, dropping lines to make it flow. But yeah, the idea was to not see him as much as possible.

20:41Jawad MirYeah. No, that was really cool. I really, I really liked that. And you know, when we're, when we're watching something, Ivan, or even working on something, consciously or subconsciously most of the time, we enjoy something because there's that relatability con… a… aspect to it, right? W… what kind of, w… w… which character would represent who you are…... In the s… in the series, and why?

21:11Ivan VictorOh, God.

21:13Jawad MirSorry to put you on the spot. I…

21:14Ivan VictorThat's all right. I was just gonna say the old woman that he's giving the golf lesson to at the beginning, who can't even hear what he's saying. I don't know. There's a little bit of all of them in us. I'm, I'm too old to be the phenom, and I'm not, I'm not washed up at this point, so I don't know. Probably none of them.

21:32Jawad MirHm. Okay, fair enough. And, but I w… I will say this, though, and I know you didn't have, as you mentioned, you were more on the third episode. But the opening of the first episode, I thought it was fantastic because obviously from a s… y… from a sales standpoint, like, it's like a sales 101. You know, you can watch it over and over again and learn how to sell something. But it sets up this character that you think is just amazingly genius and this and that, and then it goes into a complete shambles life he's had, which I thought was really well crafted, obviously in the script, but also into the s… in the post-production aspect.

22:14Ivan VictorYeah. It was g… I think as well that the initial kind of montage at the top was something that came about after various iterations, 'cause the initial, initially the script was just Owen's character selling the golf club, but without the kind of what golf means to him kind of thing.

22:34Ivan VictorBut also, we, even though we were kind of working remotely, the, Mel McCoy, who cut the first, she did 1, 4, 7, and 10, and Dan Gabay, who did 2, 5, and 8, we would, you know, we'd talk to each other on and off about how we felt certain characters were playing, and we were, we would... We weren't quite as we used to do when we're in person. Like, you know, back in the day when we used to work in person, you would, if you trusted them, you'd invite people in and say, "Hey, what do you think of this?" But…

23:03Jawad MirSure

23:04Ivan Victor... Because they had assemblies going out and I could see what people were looking for, I looked at their episodes to just get a sense of tonally what people were looking for.

23:18Jawad MirHm. Okay. That makes sense. And, have you seen the entire series?

23:23Ivan VictorOh, yeah. Several times.

23:25Jawad MirAnd…

23:25Ivan VictorIn my appetite, yeah.

23:29Jawad MirAs an audience member, not necessarily a person who worked on it, was it satisfactory?

23:34Ivan VictorYeah, I think it really is.

23:37Jawad MirOkay.

23:37Ivan VictorYeah. And what I l… like about it, not quite the most, but what I'm really proud of, is that everybody involved, you know, absolutely everybody, I feel like it has a strong voice and a very clear tone, and that I feel is often the toughest thing to execute in any, you know, an… any moving image medium, whether it's a show or a TV show, is like that consistent voice. A lot of shows you watch, especially when it takes actors... The same with a feature, you know? However many days it takes actors to learn their relationships with each other or learn their characters. I think the actors are all at such a high level… That they knew who their characters were and it's got a very... I don't know. I just, I always felt that the tone was strong and kind of what it needed to be. Whether people like the storyline or like that tone, I still feel like we all, you know, we achieved, we achieved the goal, which is a coherent story.

24:49Jawad MirYeah. No, it, like I said, I mean, so far so good. I don't know. I think there are 10 episodes, right?

24:55Ivan VictorYeah.

24:56Jawad MirYeah. I mean, I don't know how, where it's going in terms of will there, will it wrap up by the end of 10 episodes or is there something that's gonna lead to season two? I'm not asking, I'm just talking. And that's, that's something I look forward to. Personally, for me, I'm more into now se… series that are miniseries or at least two, maybe three season because…

25:19Ivan VictorYeah

25:19Jawad Mir... You know, in three season you can tell that chapter one, chapter two, and chapter three story. So it would be interesting to see where that goes and, you know, like a show like Stranger Things now it's in its fifth season and I lost interest after third season because that was enough for me, right? Like it's just you need to sort of draw a line. And I know why studios and streamers do it, obviously it's money, but, I think this show has a very strong potential to be honest with you because it's very simple and straightforward. It's not about golf, but…

25:51Ivan VictorYeah

25:51Jawad Mir... You know, and that's what I love about it. It's just very simple and very grounded I would like to say.

25:57Ivan VictorYeah. I feel that too. The, you know, you see it's some… someone who's lost a son, someone who doesn't have a father, someone who's lost a partner, someone who's lost a partner. You know, there are, the, it's, it's pretty relatable to a lot of people, not necessarily all that level of death, but still…

26:12Jawad MirYeah

26:13Ivan Victor... There's relatability in terms of that loss.

26:15Jawad Mir100%. What's, what's cooking up, next for you? Anything you're working on that you're able to talk about?

26:22Ivan VictorWell, I mentioned it briefly, I just finished the Vince Staples one…

26:24Jawad MirRight. Yes

26:26Ivan Victor... On Netflix, which, I loved. That comes out in November.

26:30Jawad MirSeason two?

26:31Ivan VictorSeason two, yeah.

26:33Jawad MirOkay.

26:34Ivan VictorI don't know. There may, there may be more, who knows? It may be in that sweet spot for you of just three. There's only six, there's only six episodes.

26:43Jawad MirThat's, that's a decent number, right? Like that's, that's pretty decent I think.

26:47Ivan VictorYeah. No, I loved doing that and, I don't know what's next. I'm, you know, putting out feelers as always. I, you know, maintain those, all those relationships 'cause you never know when someone will come along and say, "Hey, I can't do this show but maybe you could."

27:01Jawad MirYeah. That…

27:02Ivan VictorYou know?

27:02Jawad Mir... That's what it's all about. That's 100% what it's all about. Any particular film or show that you are watch… have, that you recently watched that you weren't involved in that you liked?

27:12Ivan VictorI just finished Department Q on Netflix. It's Matthew Goode is the lead…

27:19Jawad MirOkay

27:20Ivan Victor... In it, and it's based on a Danish show, and it's Scott Frank who wrote and directed it, and Michelle Tesoro edited them all. And Matthew Goode's incredible. I don't know, did you see, The Offer on Paramount about the making of…

27:35Jawad MirYes. I loved that. I loved that.

27:38Ivan VictorWell, he plays an entirely different character. I mean, you could suggest that Bob Evans was a psychopath, but anyway. I really loved that. Film-wise, I saw S… I saw Sinners, which I liked, but that's a whole other long conversation. I don't know if you saw that.

27:58Jawad MirI haven't. I keep hearing about it and I, it's on my list. I wasn't really too crazy from the trailer so I don't know how, but everybody raves about it. Anybody I've talked to they said you should watch it, so I have to.

28:12Ivan VictorI think it's one of those ones that's worth watching. I'm trying to think, feature-wise. The Phoenician Scheme is great if you're a Wes Anderson man.

28:21Jawad MirYeah. I haven't seen that. I haven't seen some of his movies in the most recent times, but I will check that out. You know what you should watch? We're talking about tight shows, this is, like, a rather old show. When I say old I would say probably four or five years. And anybody I've mentioned it to, nobody has ever heard of this show, but it's probably one of the most amazing miniseries I've ever seen. It's called ZeroZeroZero.

28:48Ivan VictorOkay, I'm writing that down.

28:49Jawad MirNot the number zero, in the alphabet.

28:52Ivan VictorYeah.

28:52Jawad MirAnd it's literally about the cartels, the Italian mafia, and the people who do business in America. So it's, it's a, it kinda connects family in three different countries and it's so, it's kinda like a Sicario feel the way it's done…

29:11Jawad Mir... But it's really brilliant. One of my favorite miniseries.

29:15Ivan VictorYeah. Oh, we also, I mean, for TV we enjoyed Mob Land as well.

29:19Jawad MirI've heard that's good too. Yeah. I've heard…

29:22Ivan VictorAnd, you know, Pierce Brosnan with a bit of a roaming Irish accent and

29:26Jawad MirYes. Yes

29:27Ivan Victor... Helen Mirren as a bit of an evil one.

29:31Jawad MirThey're coming in a movie together too by Chris Columbus. The Thursday Murder Club or… ... August 28th.

29:40Ivan VictorNo, that's Spielberg doing that one.

29:42Jawad MirNo, Spielberg pr… his company co-produced it, Amblin produced it. Chris Columbus is obviously who wrote Goonies and who's directed Home Alone…

29:50Ivan VictorOh

29:50Jawad Mir... Mrs. Doubtfire, and all that fun stuff. But

29:53Ivan VictorBut that's based on the Richard Osman books, right?

29:56Jawad MirYeah. It's based on books, yeah. I saw the trailer. I wasn't sold on it but, hey, I'll still watch it because Ben Kingsley, Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Chris Columbus, and Don Burgess, who I've had the pleasure of having so many times on this podcast, who's DP, who's worked with Robert Zemeckis for the last 30 years. So it's an exciting project. I'm looking forward to that.

30:20Ivan VictorIt's great. I'll try and…

30:20Jawad MirAmazing. Amazing. Well, it's been pleasure talking to you and I, like I said earlier, pleasantly surprised by Stig. Really good, nice little show and I'm looking forward to the next episodes. I think it's on Wednesday they do it.

30:36Ivan VictorYeah, Wednesdays.

30:36Jawad MirIf I remember. Yeah.

30:37Ivan VictorYeah, no, I think it's, it was three to begin with and it'll be one a week till the 10th.

30:43Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. So I'm really looking forward to that or maybe I'll hold off because I saw three in a row. Like I literally just saw three back to back in under, you know, two hours' time. But, looking forward to it. Amazing. Thank you for your work on it. Totally like it.

30:58Ivan VictorGlad you enjoyed it. It's always nice to, you know, I'm a big believer too, obviously it's important that things are, you know, liked by people but also there's the intrinsic value of what we do in making it is also really important. But it's, it's great when people actually watch and even more when they like it, so thank you for that.

31:19Jawad MirMy pleasure. Well, thank you so much for your time and accommodating with your schedule. So I know you've got meetings coming up and we'll probably chat soon, maybe when this new season of, what's the show called? The Vince…

31:32Ivan VictorThe Staples show.

31:33Jawad MirYes. We can probably chat about it back, around that time. Pleasure having you.

31:37Ivan VictorLove to. All right, take care.