'The Movies That Made Us', Producer & Director, Brian Volk-Weiss

0:07Jawad MirLet's kind of go back to the g… genesis of how this all began. I… if, there was a story to tell behind how that, the actual, you know, series developed, would love to hear that.

0:22Brian Volk-WeissYeah. It's, it's fu… it's kind of a funny story that shows you how random, Hollywood is. We do, a show called The Toys That Made Us. Which predated The Movies That Made Us, and it did very well. And Netflix, after season one came out, asked me to put together an idea for a spinoff. So weirdly enough, because I'm not a gamer, I wanted to go with The Video Games That Made Us. I don't know why. But that's what I thought was the right thing to do.

1:03Jawad MirYeah.

1:03Brian Volk-WeissSo we spent over, bare minimum, over 100 hours making a tape, about The Video Games That Made Us, and it's one of my favorite sales tapes we've ever made. I've probably made 2 or 300 sales tapes. That's probably my third or fourth favorite that we've ever made, and we worked on it for, like, two months. The day before the meeting with everybody at Netflix who had to approve the spinoff, I don't... Again, I don't remember what made me do this, but I was like, "Maybe we should have a backup." So we spent less than two hours, all in, Photoshop, sending the file to the printer, sending a runner to the printer to make a poster, and all the poster was, if you've seen the Die Hard episode, you know, Frank Sinatra was originally supposed to be John McClane.

2:13Jawad MirYeah.

2:13Brian Volk-WeissSo all we did was, Photoshop Sinatra's head onto the poster of Die Hard, you know, where Bruce Willis is wearing the wife beater. We just put Frank Sinatra on it and that was it. So the next day we go to the meeting. It was an hour long. I kid you not, spent f… bare minimum 50 minutes pitching The Games That Made Us, and then the head of Netflix Unscripted saw the poster tube on the table. I almost didn't even pitch The Movies That Made Us. He saw the poster tube and said, "What's that?" And I'm like, "Oh, just for fun we made this." And I took the poster out of the tube. I showed it to him, and I'd brought enough for... There were, like, five people in the room. I had brought enough posters, so each one got one. And then, literally that evening I got a call from our exec, a guy named Nat, and Nat was like, "Congratulations, the spinoff is green-lit."

3:19Brian Volk-WeissI'm like, "Awesome. That's great. I guess I gotta learn more about video games." And he's like, "Oh, no, not that one. Not that one. The movies one." Yeah, that's how it happened.

3:31Jawad MirWow. That is incredible. I mean, that, it's always, even when you make films, right, it's always the ones that are close to you that more than likely are gonna be less liked by people as opposed to the ones that you're not really closely attached to. It's just the way those things happen, and this is incredible that if it wasn't for that poster, you and I probably wouldn't even be talking.

3:55Brian Volk-WeissHighly likely. And, you know, it's funny, making The Movies That Made Us and The Toys That Made Us and a lot of the other shows that we make of a similar nature, if there is one conclusion that I've come to, having now done deep dives in everything from Hello Kitty to Dirty Dancing to RoboCop to all these things, even, you know, we do this show on Disney+ called Behind the Attraction, same premise. Nobody knows nothing. Like, the amount of things we cover that the people paying for it are not excited about. Star Wars, that was just to get American Graffiti II. Fox didn't wanna make Star Wars.

4:46Jawad MirYeah.

4:46Brian Volk-WeissDirty Dancing, like, all, He-Man, Star Wars figures, all these things were, like, kind of by accident. Like, if you saw the Elf episode of Movies That Made Us, like, nobody at New Line was paying attention to them because they were paying attention to another movie that lost close to $100 million. Like, that's the conclusion I've come to about what all of these subjects. With The Simpsons, I mean, The Simpsons, there's no better example. They had nobody wanted at Fox The Simpsons. They wanted to get James L. Brooks' newest feature deal because he had made four movies for them, three won Oscars, all made bucket loads of cash. So all they wanted was his next four movies, and he forced them to green-light The Simpsons. All four of his next movies bombed, and The Simpsons is still in production, 47 years later, or 37 years later.

5:47Jawad MirThat's incredible, right? I mean, you look at J.K. Rowling as well. She went to a dozen publishers for Harry Potter…

5:54Brian Volk-WeissOh

5:54Jawad Mir... And even…

5:55Brian Volk-WeissSo by the way…

5:56Jawad MirNow it's…

5:57Brian Volk-WeissBy the way, check this out. This is what you... Thank you for saying that because this is one of my favorite pieces of useless information.

6:04Jawad MirSure.

6:05Brian Volk-WeissThe number one fantasy book of all time… Published not by Random House, not by Simon & Schuster, by Scholastic, a company that had never made anything like Harry Potter before. They made little kids books. That's all they did. It was their first attempt, their first at-bat to do fantasy, and they got Harry Potter. And Harry Potter is the number one best-selling book of all time at this point.

6:35Jawad MirYeah.

6:35Brian Volk-WeissBut in its genre, it's fantasy, right? So number one, fantasy, random connection. What's the number one science fiction book of all time? Do you know?

6:46Jawad MirDune?

6:47Brian Volk-WeissIt is Dune. Do you know who published Dune?

6:51Jawad MirI don't know. I'm guessing Scholastic.

6:54Brian Volk-WeissNo.

6:54Jawad MirNo. No, Scholastic wouldn't be around that time.

6:57Brian Volk-WeissA guy, a guy who owned a company that's sole product was printing the instruction manuals that you find in your glove box when you buy a car.

7:10Jawad MirOh, wow.

7:10Brian Volk-WeissThey had a deal with Ford and Chrysler and Toyota. That's all they did. But the guy who owned the company loved science fiction and knew Herbert. So he went after everybody passed, just like with Rowling's, he was like, "Hey, you own a printing press, right? Why don't you print my book?" That's how Dune got published.

7:35Jawad MirWow.

7:35Brian Volk-WeissWhat's the number one military book of all time?

7:39Jawad MirI don't know.

7:40Brian Volk-WeissHunt for Red October. Who published Hunt for Red October?

7:46Jawad MirDon't know.

7:48Brian Volk-WeissThere was a company that's sole existence, it was owned, it was opened by a guy who worked on a... He was a submariner during World War II and the Korean War.

7:58Jawad MirYeah.

7:58Brian Volk-WeissSo he gets out of the Navy, and he knew that all these guys were stuck underwater for six months, and they really didn't have any books to read that were interesting for someone stuck underwater for six months. So this small one-man band, literally he had no employees, opens a publishing arm, a publisher. He becomes a publisher for the specific pu… purpose of making books for guys stuck underwater for six months. Everybody passed on Hunt for Red October except him, and that's... So the three genre leading books in the three biggest genres there are were all, for all extent and purposes, missed by every single major pur… publisher and picked up by kind of random publishers. Random House, which had passed on Dune, ended up paying the car manual guy, literally ended up paying him something like $10 million in the '80s, to get Dune.

9:07Jawad MirWow.

9:07Brian Volk-WeissWhen they coulda had it for, probably five grand.

9:12Jawad MirThat's crazy, right? I mean, it's just... It goes to show, I think my lesson i… in that is that you should just, you know, like, never give up. Because even if the most... Like, you know, you said, like, people who don't even publish books. I mean, Scholastic, I remember when I was in grade eight, I, you know, you got those little... I don't know if it... You probably got the little flyers, like four pages pamphlets with Scholastic…

9:36Brian Volk-WeissYeah

9:36Jawad Mir... Books in it, and you would order them, and I remember that then. And it's, it's crazy that, I think, you know, the lesson learned is that you should just never give up. Now, it doesn't mean that it will always work. I mean, there are some great films and TV shows that have been made, that have been canceled, that tanked, but over time, you know, they became a cult classic. But there's always a lesson in that, and that's insane that it's, it's all these stories where they almost never happened ended up being…

10:03Brian Volk-WeissYeah

10:03Jawad Mir... The biggest one. And I think it's a testament to also that if you're the first one to do something in whatever you're doing, it may not be, you know, accepted in the very beginning, but down the road, it, you know, it will be… become part of history and sometimes it will blow up, like Harry Potter and Dune.

10:23Brian Volk-WeissYeah. You, d… you never know. And it always cracks me up because you always have these executives and all these people that think they know best.

10:32Jawad MirYeah.

10:32Brian Volk-WeissAnd the truth is nobody knows best.

10:35Jawad MirNobody knows.

10:36Brian Volk-WeissI… it's not that they're more wrong than anyone else.

10:38Jawad MirYeah.

10:38Brian Volk-WeissThey're, they're equally right and they're equally wrong, but…

10:42Jawad MirYeah

10:42Brian Volk-Weiss... There's, there's just no way to know what's gonna resonate. Just there's literally no way to predict it. So you just gotta trust your gut and hope for the best.

10:52Jawad MirWell, have you seen, the Paramount miniseries The Offer?

10:57Brian Volk-WeissOh my God.

10:58Jawad MirI mean…

10:58Brian Volk-WeissAnd I'm not even a Godfather guy. Like, I actually, after I watched The Offer, that was the second time I ever watched The Godfather. So I'm not a big Godfather guy. I'm not really into the mafia 'cause I just…

11:11Jawad MirYeah

11:11Brian Volk-Weiss... Don't find it very interesting. That's just me. I know everybody but me does.

11:15Jawad MirNo. That's fine. Everybody has different preferences.

11:17Brian Volk-WeissYeah.

11:17Jawad MirI'm not a big superhero fan. Everybody else is.

11:19Brian Volk-WeissBut that... I almost started watching that again as soon as I finished it. That was... And I c… I forget his name. What's the lead actor's name? What's that guy's name?

11:30Jawad MirI always forget too. Hold on.

11:33Brian Volk-WeissI almost didn't watch it. Miles Teller.

11:37Jawad MirYeah

11:37Brian Volk-Weiss... I almost didn't watch it because I c… at that time, I could not stand Miles Teller. Everything he was in, I thought he was, like, a pompous jerk. And then I... So like I said, I almost didn't watch The Offer because of him. And then I don't know why I gave it a shot, and then now... And then of course after Maverick, he's literally one of my favorite actors working now.

11:59Jawad MirHe is a good actor, and he has a very kinda like an underrated, for the lack of better word, ordinary face. Like, he's not like Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio.

12:08Brian Volk-WeissYeah.

12:08Jawad MirHe's decent. You know, he's like an average guy, and I think that's what resonates in The Offer. And honestly, one of the things I learned from The Offer… Is that being a filmmaker myself, it's just so important to find that one person who believes in you and just goes all out. Like, if it wasn't for the producer character, I mean, I forget the one that Miles played, The Godfather wouldn't have been made. Like, he fought for everything.

12:35Brian Volk-WeissYeah.

12:36Jawad MirEverything.

12:37Brian Volk-WeissYeah.

12:37Jawad MirI mean, that's just insane, and you need that one champion in your life, you know, just to kind of take you across that finish line in order to be, you know, successful, whatever the definition of that is.

12:48Brian Volk-WeissThat's right. That's absolutely right.

12:51Jawad MirAnd the style of Movies That Made Us, you know, the fast pace… pacing, cutting, the narration, and the quirkiness, wa… how... Was that something that was also in the Toys That Made Us? 'Cause I haven't seen that. Is that where you got it from or was that from your movies?

13:06Brian Volk-WeissA… absolutely. Basically, what happened was, you know, it took me seven years to sell Toys That Made Us, and then when it finally sold to Netflix, we had never done anything like it. I mean, it... We... Like, all my company had done at that time was stand-up comedy and, like, sketch comedy shows. That's all we ever did. So when the show was greenlit, and again, this never would've happened anywhere but Netflix. Because what Netflix does, which w… no other company that I've ever worked with to a certain extent does, Netflix is very picky, very picky about who they work with. But once they decide that they trust you and they're gonna greenlight your show, they really respect you and kinda leave you alone. So any other show, any other network, the editors that I hired for season one of Toys That Made Us, not one of them would've been approved.

14:08Brian Volk-WeissBecause th… th… to quote Silence of the Lambs, "You covet what you see every day."

14:14Jawad MirYeah.

14:14Brian Volk-WeissI was a comedy guy, so I just hired comedy editors. So, one editor in particular, a guy named Ben Frost, he sa… he summed up this process the best. And to this day, he's our lead editor. He oversees 90% of our shows in editorial. But I met him on season one of Toys That Made Us. He, you know, we were ta… and this was, this conversation I'm about to tell you, this was years later. But he told me his entire career, he would turn in a first cut to the director, and the director would be like, "I love it. You're a genius. Oh my God, this is so funny." Now pull it back. Less jokes. Less cutting.

15:03Jawad MirYeah.

15:03Brian Volk-WeissLess humor. And he said, he was like, "You're the first person I've ever worked for who was like, 'I love it. This is great. Push it further. Push it further.'" And that's really what it was. Ben and his team are geniuses, I mean, j… absolute geniuses. And I not only loved it, but I encouraged it, and it, we just ended up creating this sauce, I wouldn't call it secret sauce…

15:32Jawad MirYeah

15:33Brian Volk-Weiss... That people seem to like. And, a lot of peop… it's funny, I get people telling me all the time, "Did you see this show? They copied your style." And I'm always like, "First of all, let's say you're right. Let's say they copied my style. Good. Good." Do you know how many people I fucking copied? Like…

15:55Jawad MirYeah, everybody does

15:56Brian Volk-Weiss... You know what's funny? What's that?

15:58Jawad MirEverybody does to a certain extent.

15:59Brian Volk-WeissYeah. We, the end of our episodes, and I, this isn't 100%, but 90, 9 out of every 10 episodes we do, I like to end it on what I call a RoboCop. And by the way, you can already tell before I tell you what I mean, I am taking something from something that came before me.

16:21Jawad MirYeah.

16:21Brian Volk-WeissAnd what I mean by that is, and now that I tell you this, if you ever watch one of our shows again, you're gonna pee in your pants, 'cause it's not subtle at all. If you watch the, my favorite one we ever did was the Toys That Made Us. Actually, I like the RoboCop one, too. But the Toys That Made Us I think is the best, of St… the Star Wars episode.

16:41Jawad MirYeah.

16:41Brian Volk-WeissIt's the best one that I like the most. But basically, if you remember the scene in RoboCop where RoboCop as RoboCop goes back to his old house…

16:52Jawad MirYeah

16:52Brian Volk-Weiss... And he's walking around and it keeps cutting back and forth, back and forth. We do that every sh… episode, where we take these older people we're interviewing and cut back and forth to what they looked like when they were younger every now and then. So, like, with the Star Wars episode of Toys That Made Us, we were able to shoot in the actual Kenner headquarters today. Not today, this was five years ago. But we were able to film in the floor that Kenner, and it was an abandoned floor in the Kroger building in Cincinnati, and we were able to cut that footage back and forth with stills people had shot there 40 years earlier. So how could I be mad at anybody, quote, unquote, "copying us" when we're doing that kind of stuff?

17:45Jawad MirYeah. Well, I mean, I have this discussion with, Mark Mancina, who did the c… who was the composer of Bad Boys and Speed. And, you know, if you look at, there's a musician, composer, I don't know if you know him, Gustav Holst. I for… always forget his name.

18:03Brian Volk-WeissI don't…

18:03Jawad MirHe's like maybe…

18:03Brian Volk-Weiss... But I will say Speed is one of the greatest soundtracks ever made.

18:08Jawad MirOh.

18:08Brian Volk-WeissGets no appreciation. Dun.

18:10Jawad MirIt is, and then that…

18:11Brian Volk-WeissDun

18:11Jawad Mir... It is one... Sorry, go on.

18:14Brian Volk-WeissNo, I was just doing an impression of it.

18:17Jawad MirBut if you look at Star Wars, right? So this musician, that way back from the early 1900s, Gustav Holst something. But anyways, Everybody from Hans Zimmer, John Williams. Literally, if you look at, listen to his album on YouTube, it's called, Planet de Mars or, yeah, Planet Jupiter or Planet Mars. It's literally from the Star Wars, there's a, there is, there is a scene in, I think, episode four where there's a music beat that goes like this, dun. Dun.

18:48Brian Volk-WeissMusic beat. Music beat.

18:50Jawad MirAnd it was l… Sorry?

18:52Brian Volk-WeissThe entire Star Wars fanfare…

18:56Jawad MirYeah

18:56Brian Volk-Weiss... Is taken from a, the chorus of a random pirate movie from the '30s. Like, it's not subtle at all. I mean, it's literally…

19:04Jawad MirThat, I think, yeah. That I didn't know, but I know that there's…

19:08Brian Volk-WeissOh

19:08Jawad Mir... A lot of parts from Star Wars music that's taken from Gustav's music, like to the, to the note.

19:15Brian Volk-WeissOh.

19:15Jawad MirTo the note.

19:17Brian Volk-WeissGoogle, when we're done, Google Star Wars John Williams pirate movie and you'll... It, I mean, again, it's, it's not, there, it is, and I'm putting this diplomatically, 'cause I worship John Williams, but…

19:30Jawad MirYeah

19:30Brian Volk-Weiss... Yeah, it's not subtle.

19:33Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, no, it, I think we all subconsciously or consciously do that, and I think that's, you know, there's always, I think that I was reading it somewhere, there's literally seven unique stories in the world, and we all recycle them over…

19:46Brian Volk-WeissYeah

19:46Jawad Mir... And over again in a different way. And so…

19:49Brian Volk-WeissHero with a thousand faces.

19:51Jawad MirYeah. And I'll tell you something about your editing and your pacing. So Jurassic Park, for me, is like the Holy Grail. Like, that's the reason I became the filmmaker that I am today. Like, I st… it's a very, you know, pr… deep movie for me. And when I started watching the episodes, like Robocop and Die Hard, I just did not wanna watch the Jurassic Park episode, because I was like, "This is gonna ruin my entire…"

20:17Brian Volk-WeissI…

20:17Jawad Mir"... You know, child…"

20:18Brian Volk-WeissI'm the same way. I know exactly what you mean.

20:21Jawad Mir"... Childhood." But when I saw it, I loved it. And I think the two things that I walked away... I haven't seen all the episodes. I've seen maybe, I think, out of the three seasons, about eight or nine of them. But two things that I was shocked about, and I'm sure you, I wanna know what you think, the revolt against James Cameron, that was news to me, from Aliens. Like, I'm like, "Holy crap, the guy's career almost ended." Like, we wouldn't have had Titanic, Terminator, Avatar. And then Zemeckis and Hanks, with the amount of, success they've had with Back to the Future films and Tom Hanks romantic comedies, they still went through so much hell in Forrest Gump. Was, were those shock for you when you discovered them in, upon researching?

21:08Brian Volk-WeissI knew they, James Cameron, within reason, is my favorite director. So I've, I've known that story long before…

21:17Jawad MirOkay

21:17Brian Volk-Weiss... The show was green-lit, so that did not surprise me. The Forrest Gump thing, I mean, that's, I mean, that surprised the hell out of me, to answer your question. But the, it should, and I did this in the episode, so it's there, but I always, I never know if things resonate the way I want them to, as intended. The amount of money that Paramount lost by not spending an extra 1.8 mil… I mean, because they wouldn't spend $1.8 million. Like, Hanks and Zemeckis were already on board with taking pay cuts.

22:02Jawad MirYeah.

22:02Brian Volk-WeissThey'd already said yes to that. Hanks was working at, like, a fifth of his rate. Zemeckis was pretty much working SAG minimum, or DGA minimum. Paramount didn't wanna spend $1.8 million. That has conservatively cost them 150 to $200 million. Like, I mean, it was idiotic. It's like, you've already jumped in the deep end with this crazy idea. You, like, $1.8 million, you're really gonna, like, give them more back end? Like, it was nuts. They should have either just said no and not done it and given them the back end, or they should have just given them the 1.8 mil. But yeah, that decision, should be studied at Harvard Business School.

22:54Jawad MirYeah. It's, it's, it's insane. Do you think it's, I mean, everybody's running a business, right? At the end of the day. But do you think sometimes it's egos that kick in w… at executive levels that like, "No, we're not gonna let this happen so it doesn't start a trend"?

23:09Brian Volk-WeissSometimes, yes. But in this case, I know a lot about, you know, Cheryl Lansing and I also know a lot about Paramount. It wasn't ego with them. It really was they had a tight budget. But it's so funny, Paramount is always said in the same sentence as Warner Brothers and Disney…

23:33Jawad MirYeah

23:34Brian Volk-Weiss... And Universal. They are the tiny... They do deserve to be on that shelf, don't get me wrong. But they are the junior partner. I mean, I would imagine Warners and Disney in one or two quarters makes what Paramount makes in a year. So they are, they are the baby studio compared to the other three. And there have been years, by the way, where other studios, like s… like Li… They're, like, the year the second Hunger Games came out…

24:09Brian Volk-Weiss... Lionsgate out-grossed Universal, or Paramount. Like, let that, I mean, Lionsgate has…

24:17Jawad MirWow

24:17Brian Volk-Weiss... Like, 10% of the staff, like, 10% of the bank line. Like, I mean, and Lionsgate was able to get ahead that year of Paramount. So I mean, that tells you all you gotta know about Paramount. Disney could have every single movie bomb… And Lionsgate could still not get ahead of Disney in any given year.

24:40Jawad MirYeah.

24:40Brian Volk-WeissSame for Warners. So they were just really tight with the money, and that's, that's what it was.

24:49Jawad MirCrazy. Crazy. And, Brian, when making the episodes that you have made for The Movies That Made Us, was there a struggle of your own in any of the episodes, whether it was in production, post-production, or pre-production, that maybe 20 years from now somebody can consider that the am… I mean, I know you talked about Netflix being very easygoing once they have you on board, but was there any struggle, not necessarily from Netflix, but just production, post-production, pre-production-wise that, you know, you couldn't get through and you finally did?

25:23Brian Volk-WeissThere's only two examples that I can give you of that. And to be honest with you, I would argue both of these are even stretching to answer your question.

25:33Jawad MirOh.

25:33Brian Volk-Weiss99% of it, we had a plan and we implemented the plan. It was, it was that simple. The only exceptions to that, there's only one thing we ever started that we stopped, but I, like I said, I don't really include it because we stopped so quickly. Like, I think we worked on it for two weeks, and then we were like, "yeah, this won't work." And that was, It's a Beautiful Life. It's a Wonderful Life.

26:01Brian Volk-WeissAnd the reason we stopped, everybody's dead. So there was nobody to interview. I mean, there was literally one human being that had anything to do with the movie that was still alive.

26:15Jawad MirYeah.

26:15Brian Volk-WeissAnd it was, like, a three-year-old little boy, when the movie was made, who's, like, now 92. Like, so that's the only thing we ever started and stopped. And by the way, we, it may not have even been two weeks. It may have been one week. And then the only other thing that I can truthfully answer you on, and it's not, obviously it's not even Movies That Made Us, it's, Toys That Made Us, was the wrestling episode. Because the WWE, would have absolutely nothing to do with us, and, made it very clear. Like, "Don't mess with us, 'cause we gonna sue you." so that was the only difficult thing we've ever made.

26:59Jawad MirGot it. Got it. Is there a season four coming that you're allowed to talk about or you're not?

27:07Brian Volk-WeissI feel, I hate saying this, like, it must drive people nuts, but all I can tell you is stay tuned.

27:13Jawad MirOkay. Got it. And is there a partic… And without talking about what may be on the table, are there some films that you want to cover…

27:24Brian Volk-WeissYeah

27:24Jawad Mir... Down the road that…

27:25Brian Volk-WeissYeah, a hundred.

27:27Jawad MirWhich ones are top three?

27:30Brian Volk-WeissGod, what's top three that we haven't done? Terminator.

27:35Jawad MirOkay.

27:35Brian Volk-WeissI mean, that's, that's easy. Definitely wanna do Terminator. A new one, but my God, do I wanna do it, is, Top Gun: Maverick. And then, Fury Road.

27:51Jawad MirYeah.

27:51Brian Volk-WeissYeah.

27:51Jawad MirRight.

27:51Brian Volk-WeissThose would be my top three. Yeah.

27:55Jawad MirOkay.

27:55Brian Volk-WeissTerminator's a crazy story. Abso…

27:58Jawad MirThe original one, right?

28:00Brian Volk-WeissThe first one, yeah.

28:01Jawad MirYeah.

28:01Brian Volk-WeissI mean, talk about a movie that should not have been able to survive the process and even get shot, let alone, released, let alone a hit. I mean, it got shut down twice. Linda Hamilton, broke her leg the day before shooting started. I mean, it's nuts.

28:23Jawad MirWell, it's the same thing I find with James Cameron films. I mean, he's not... I don't think struggle is a nice, is the right word, but, you know, with Titanic, I don't remember the details, but I think he said in an interview to Howard Stern that he didn't... Like, he gave up his own salary, or he didn't get any back end money because he want… he believed in the project so much. And then same thing with Avatar, the first one, that whole sequence of the flying, you know, birds, the studio executives wanted to cut it down, and he said that's something that in the survey, you know, the most admired scene. And he always kinda sticks to his guts. But he gives him everything, and I find that impec… impeccable that even at this stage in his career he has to, you know, go through that stuff on and off.

29:11Brian Volk-WeissYes, but I mean, the guy's, like, five movies in a row made the most expensive movie ever made.

29:19Jawad MirYeah.

29:19Brian Volk-WeissLike, there was no reason for True Lies to be the most expensive movie ever made when it was made, but it was.

29:26Jawad MirYeah.

29:27Brian Volk-WeissLike, so imagine you're the studio that basically greenlights some dumbass Schwarzenegger action movie, and what should've been 80 million ends up costing 190 million. Like, imagine you're, you're in your house having breakfast, looking at your wife and kids or whatever, and, like, there's some guy that if that movie bombs, you're losing your job, buddy. Like, yeah, th… there was no reason for that to co… And don't forget, The Abyss was the most expensive movie ever made.

30:02Jawad MirYeah.

30:02Brian Volk-WeissAnd that did not... That took forever to break even.

30:06Jawad MirYeah.

30:06Brian Volk-WeissI mean, I think that film probably took 10 to 15 years before it broke even. So d… yeah. It... By the way, the odds of Avatar... What are the odds the same guy, three movies in a row, can make the highest grossing film of all time? It's zero. So, but obviously it's not zero. So yeah, if I were the guy writing those checks and getting those emails and cost reports... By the way, I get cost reports now every day. It… It's really scary. It's really scary.

30:44Jawad MirIt is, yeah.

30:44Brian Volk-WeissAnd you have, let's say, a $4 million budget that's supposed to last 18 months, and you're in month 11, and you cross $4 million. Like, that's what a lot of people don't get to see, and I'm very lucky that I see both sides of this business. Sometimes I'm the one spending money, and sometimes I'm the guy writing the checks. So I'm able to understand it from both point... Like, I saw an interview, yesterday with,.. I think it was Snoop Dogg. He said, like, "Why, if a billion people listen to my music, did I only get a million dollars?" I just read that yesterday, and I'm literally... Anytime I see anybody say this, I always say to myself, "Let me ask you a question, Snoop. O… o… off the top of your head, how much do you think it costs to build, launch, and maintain a satellite?" I guarantee you he has no clue.

31:46Brian Volk-WeissIt's $400 million per satellite, and SiriusXM don't work without 24 of them. So they gotta spend 400 million times 24. Yeah, th… th… there's probably a real good reason, why, you're not making a billion dollars for a billion listens. But few people think like that, which I understand. But as someone who, like I said, gets cost reports now every night, yeah, it can be a bit scary.

32:18Jawad MirNo, it is, a hu… 100%, and I'm with you on that. And I think on the other side of things, you know, it's also when you are trying to make a film, let's say we take away the studios and the Netflix and everything. Let's say we talk about investors and all that, independent investors or angel investors. If they are trying to put money in... Like, I'll give you my example. So the first film that I made, you know what, I had to do it on my own. I had to do it on my own because I didn't have anything to show in terms of I've made a feature documentary film. I had to do it on my own. But that became a ground for me to get investors for the second one, and third one, and fourth one, and so on and so forth. But at the same time, it is, it is... And I'm nothing like James Cameron in any way in terms of, you know, the box office and talent and everything.

33:14Brian Volk-WeissNo one is.

33:15Jawad MirBut people... I… it's so hard, to get people on board because obviously they're putting their money in, and why would they be interested in you? Why would they believe in you, if…

33:29Brian Volk-WeissYeah

33:29Jawad Mir... If you have... Even if you have made profit but you're not, haven't made hundreds of millions of dollars, right? So I agree with you on that, 100%.

33:36Brian Volk-WeissYeah. You go… you gotta earn it.

33:38Jawad MirYeah, you gotta.

33:38Brian Volk-WeissIt's easier for me to do things now than it was five years ago, and I know why. I, you know, I have results that I can point to, and I... The fact that Netflix greenlit Toys That Made Us, I still don't completely understand why. I mean, I know why, but they had absolutely no reason to trust us with a show like that. We'd never done anything like it.

34:01Jawad MirYeah. Your career itself, how did, how did you get into the world of film, if you want to talk about that a little bit?

34:14Brian Volk-WeissI went a very classic route. I went through representation. You know, a lot of people start off as agents and managers, and I was one of them. I was a manager. I only represented stand-up comedians. I was very lucky in that a guy that I signed who couldn't sell 200 tickets, became the biggest comedian in 40 years. So he was making a lot of money, a… as an actor and as a touring comedian doing gigantic, tours. And I took the money from those commissions that I made, and I started investing in my own stand-up comedy specials that I paid for. That may have sounded wrong. The, to be clear, it was not me on stage telling jokes.

35:07Jawad MirRight.

35:07Brian Volk-WeissWe produced them, and we built a library of stand-up specials, and that allowed us, once we had made enough, to become a distributor. And basically now, the money that comes in every quarter, I just spend less than what comes in…... To make more. And but now it's not just stand-up specials. It's documentaries. We're doing our first cartoon right now. Like, so it's, it's a very traditional... You know, people are always saying to me, like, "Brian, you're a genius." And I'm like, "No, I'm not. I just read some books." Because we just literally did exactly what the studios did 100 years ago. Like, there's literally no difference with what we did versus what Warners, and Universal, Paramount, and Disney did 100 years ago. We just had different types of technology, that allowed thing...

36:08Brian Volk-WeissI mean, the technology allowed a small company to e… evolve the way we did. So that is one advantage we had that the original studios didn't. But…

36:19Jawad MirRight

36:19Brian Volk-Weiss... Yeah, that's the story. That's, that's 25 years of history in less than a minute.

36:26Jawad MirAside from Movies That Made Us video games, well, that, Toys, what other projects are out there, that you w… I know you talked about the Disney one, but anything else that you wanna, talk about that's in the works?

36:40Brian Volk-WeissWell, have you, if you like Movies That Made Us, have you seen Icons on Earth on Vice?

36:45Jawad MirNo, I have not. I'm gonna make a note of that

36:47Brian Volk-WeissYeah, that show basically, if you like Movies That Made Us, I think you'll like Icons Unearthed. It's literally made by the exact same people. I mean, there's, there's a, within, it's, it's 85 to 90%, if you looked at the credits, the exact same people. But, you know, it's funny, I got, I get asked all the time for Movies That Made Us by anybody who knows me, "Why didn't you make Star Wars? You gotta do Star Wars. You gotta do Star Wars." And I never did Star Wars because, like, that's the movie that inspired my whole career. Like, I'd probably be…

37:25Brian Volk-Weiss... A banker or a dentist in Queens if it wasn't for Star Wars. And I just knew I couldn't do Star Wars in under an hour. So we s… created this show called Icons Unearthed that's was specifically designed to make Star Wars. So the way... And we just got picked up for six more seasons, so we're making 10 seasons of the show. Star Wars, The Simpsons, Fast and Furious, and Marvel, those seasons have al… already aired, so you can watch them right now on Vice.... And we're making James Bond. We're making six seasons literally as we speak, but the only one I can talk about, because the only one that's public so far, is James Bond. So that show basically, instead of spending one hour per movie, spends at least six hours per franchise.

38:26Brian Volk-WeissSo, like, for the Star Wars, Movies That Made Us season, you know, we spent two hours on A New Hope. So that's, if you like our work, I strongly recommend you check out…

38:40Jawad MirI will

38:40Brian Volk-Weiss... Icons Unearthed.

38:42Jawad MirNo, I will, 100%. And I wonder, are you guys... So this is gonna be a little selfish of me to talk about this now. One of the things that I would really love, and obviously, you know, it's, it's your show, you should do whatever you want. I'm a huge... I, my childhood grew up, when I say childhood, like my twen… late 19s, 20s, grew up, watching DreamWorks stuff. Like, I know everything there is need to know between 1994 and 2003 about DreamWorks. Like, I almost wanted to... I almost started researching. Well, I did, but I almost wanted to make a documentary, a feature documentary about the evolution of DreamWorks, and that sort of, kind of just sat down there for a while. I wonder if there's anything that you guys are tackling, whether it's Gladiator, American Beauty, Saving Private Ryan, or anything like that, Prince of Egypt.

39:34Brian Volk-WeissNot to be a jerk, but one of the movies…

39:36Jawad MirNo

39:36Brian Volk-Weiss... You mentioned, let me just say we're taking very seriously.

39:41Jawad MirGot it.

39:42Brian Volk-WeissAnd I'll give you a clue.

39:43Jawad MirInteresting.

39:43Brian Volk-WeissIt ain't, American Beauty.

39:45Jawad MirI think I know which one it is. That's all I'll say.

39:49Brian Volk-WeissIf you know me at all, it's not too hard to guess.

39:51Jawad MirNo, it's, it's, it's not even about knowing you or not knowing you. I just know the amount of stuff that those films that I mentioned went through, and I know one of them went through way more than the other, so I'm willing to bet that's the one it is.

40:05Brian Volk-WeissWell, you know, it's, you're right. You're absolutely right. But just using American Beauty as the example, because I already told you we're not doing it.

40:13Jawad MirYeah.

40:14Brian Volk-WeissOne of the real reasons why we would never do American Beauty is there's no constituency.

40:21Jawad MirYeah.

40:22Brian Volk-WeissLike, when we do, Jurassic Park, it's been in production for 30 years. A new one came out less than a year ago. Another one's gonna come out less than two years from now. There's a theme park ri… there's a attraction at every single Universal in all seven parks. You go to Comic-Con, you see people dressed like Sam Neill.

40:49Brian Volk-WeissLike, that's... You need a constituency to justify what we spend to make these episodes. So American Beauty, great movie, whatever, nobody's dressing like those characters at Comic-Con.

41:05Jawad MirNo.

41:05Brian Volk-WeissIt's not... There's no TV show that's still going based on it. It just doesn't make sense for us to cover it.

41:14Jawad MirYeah.

41:14Brian Volk-WeissThere's not enough people…

41:15Jawad MirAnd also…

41:15Brian Volk-Weiss... To see it

41:16Jawad Mir... And also, I think American Beauty, based on what I know, I mean, ob… I'm sure it went through a lot of troubles, but it was one of those films where the script wasn't changed at all, and, you know, Spielberg gave a green light, and then the final cut was the way it was. And then the marketing of that film, I still remember. I mean, that's like marketing 101. I wish studios were doing that right now. What DreamWorks did, because it was a new company, going back to our conversation, nobody was doing anything like that before. What DreamWorks did was they had, b… they believed in the film so much, after it came out at TIFF, they did all these, on their website, you could go onto American Beauty website, and you can choose your city, and you can go watch a screening for free, for absolutely free. And this was, like, over 30 cities across North America, Toronto being one of them.

42:07Brian Volk-WeissAmazing.

42:07Jawad MirAnd it just created this buzz, you know, and ended up winning ridiculous amount of Oscars, like, almost, like, every main category.

42:15Brian Volk-WeissYeah. Yeah.

42:16Jawad MirYeah. And the show on Disney that you're talking about, what is it called? Rides?

42:21Brian Volk-WeissBehind the Attraction.

42:23Jawad MirOkay. So you're, you're pretty busy.

42:28Brian Volk-WeissYeah. We got, 19 shows in production right now, not, and that doesn't include the movies, or the stand-up specials. So yeah, it's, we're kinda busy.

42:38Jawad MirAnd what kind of movies…

42:39Brian Volk-WeissCrazy

42:39Jawad Mir... Are you guys tackling in terms of documentary genre? Like, are, is it more serious or fun, or?

42:45Brian Volk-WeissEverything's fine. People always say to me, "What are we looking for?" And what I always tell them is, "That would take me an hour to answer. Let me just tell you what we're not looking for: dark."

42:55Jawad MirYeah.

42:55Brian Volk-WeissWe don't want anything dark. A wife who killed, the woman having an affair with her husband, that's not for us.

43:03Jawad MirGot it. Got it.

43:03Brian Volk-WeissNothing about serial killers. Like, yeah, that's, that's not for us.

43:09Jawad MirWell, there's a lot of crime stuff already out there, I mean, in terms of podcasts and in terms of TV.

43:14Brian Volk-WeissSure.

43:14Jawad MirAlmost everybody's doing it.

43:18Brian Volk-WeissI agree. It's not for us.

43:21Jawad MirGot it. Anything else you wanna add, Brian?

43:24Brian Volk-WeissNo. I'm, I'm very appreciative of your time and interest in anything we're doing. It's... I've been doing interviews like this for about five years, and it's still very strange that anybody cares about what we're doing, so I'm very grateful for your interest.

43:39Jawad MirWell, I'll tell you why is that people are interested in what you're doing is because it resonates with their childhood, period. I mean, that's, that's what it is. I mean, literally, like, the movies that you're doing are something we all grew up on and, you know, and they're, they're... Even though they were action, like, you know, Robocop and Die Hard, they still had this human element to it that we all connect to.

44:01Brian Volk-WeissYeah.

44:01Jawad MirAnd, you know, and then the way you have done it is, again, like I said, when I wanted to watch Jurassic Park episode, I'm like, "I'm not gonna watch it." But it's just so unique. And you know, so credit goes to you and your team, of course, in doing so, and I'm, I'm looking forward to more work of yours. Maybe we can chat again, about the Star Wars series or other series that you have in the works or the Disney one.

44:24Brian Volk-WeissSure.

44:25Jawad MirLove to do that.

44:26Brian Volk-WeissCheck it out if you dig it. Happy to chat again. This was a lot of fun.

44:31Jawad MirI appreciate it. Thank you so much, Brian.

44:34Brian Volk-WeissThank you. Stay warm. Bye.

44:36Jawad MirI will. Take care. Bye-bye.