Joston Ramon Theney, Screenwriter, Author, Director, Producer: I would say before you
do that understand how distribution works because once you understand how you make your money back,
then you can justify how much money you spend.
Film Courage: Can you talk about the decision that
you were not going to make movies by committee anymore? What does this mean?
Joston: For me it's about going back to accountability and being able to hold myself
accountable for not growing for not achieving the level of growth that I need to achieve.
When you're making a movie by committee which I understand completely that most
industry movies are made by when it's a studio or whatever but going through that many
levels of decision making and this person believes they know what's better for the
film they know what's better for the audience they know what's better for marketing they know
I believe you need one voice we need one voice that ultimately makes the decision of what to
do inside of the film you can definitely confer with everyone around you when I hire an actor
I hire them because they are the best at what they do and they fit this role and when they read the
script they're going to be able to tell me things to a level of detail that maybe I haven't thought
about right and I trust their intuition and I'm going to figure out a way where we can kind of
make that work inside the film but that's not what I mean by committee what I mean by committee is
a executive producer who now says what and this is a real thing that happened
yeah I think we need a topless scene right now
and how there's in what way it's like at what time would somebody take their clothes off that
doesn't even make any sense there's a murderer running around and everybody's in the same room
like what would be the reason that they would need to it's like a lot of those
decisions that are just made because people want to be heard and they want to see whatever
they've said show up on the film it's a vanity and ultimately when you're making movies like that
and by committee with multiple people having all of this input your film is getting further
and further and further away from what you're trying to achieve and as I said the only person
I'm really competing with is the person that I was yesterday I'm constantly trying to grow and
how can I measure my growth if everything around me is being affected by people who are not me
and people who've already articulated that it has to be in there or basically they can withdraw
funding that's ultimately what it is is that the decisions when they're being made by committee
are made by people who can ultimately make the decision of if you won't do what I'm asking
you to do if you won't put this in the film I can withdraw funding and I can do it at any time I can
do it at any point because again they're not as invested in the film as you are they're invested
in their own vanity a lot of times not not all the times there are some great financers out there and
some great executive producers but unfortunately I haven't worked with them but the ones that
I've worked with have been kind of vein and and it has been the vanity of having whatever was
in their head added to the film even if it doesn't make sense story-wise sure and and
in any relationship where someone's giving you money they they kind of own you in a sense they
do they do and especially when that they can pull the plug and it's the reason why I have overlooked
a lot of the things that have been done on the set you have to let a lot of things go and try
to control the things you can control but along the way this committee will continuously try to
in influence everything that you do and it makes your personal growth
and measure you can't measure it because it's not really you it's you plus that guy and that
lady and that kid it's it's you plus all of this when it should be you making the sole decision
now you can take inspiration from what other people say you can take some advice from what
other people say if it applies if it's applicable but you can ultimately decide if it's not
and I only begin to get that sense of freedom when I started to to finance my own projects
that's when I began to see it what kind of sacrifices did you have to make to be able to
finance your own work security financial security oh yeah for a while for a while financial security
a lot of things that probably so many to to too many to name but things that would have
certainly made my young lady happy we had to sacrifice a lot with the sacrifice a lot of
time that you would normally spend together I was holed up by myself doing so many things myself
because whatever you can't pay for you have to assume that responsibility yourself so even when
we would be sacrificing financially we were also sacrificing just the time we got to spend together
and it was it was very hard time in the beginning a very hard time but here's the thing is
and I don't advise that people just run out and start self-financing
their own stuff I would say before you do that understand how distribution works because once you
understand how you make your money back then you can justify how much money you spend on a project
right you don't want to give yourself you don't want to take a loan out for eighty
thousand dollars hundred thousand dollars and make a movie that you're only going to make five
thousand dollars from you need to stack as many of the of the statuses stack as much of the deck
in your favor as possible so but in the beginning I certainly had to sacrifice financial security
and I had to sacrifice a lot of time and spend a lot of time away from my lady and I've been away
from my family since 2004. I go back home every once in a while to Georgia but for the most part
my family has seen me on average maybe once every three years till maybe maybe every two years but
I probably lean towards the three I don't go home that often so there's been a lot of sacrifice to
get to where I am today and when you're writing a script is it now in your mind that okay this is
going to cost too much and I'm not going to make my money back on this I have to change this scene
no I I'm always aware of the story that I'm writing and the budget that it falls within
I make sure I tell the truth in the story and budget should never dictate truth but budget
should dictate what you're trying to do as a whole I don't think you should make a sci-fi
opera if you only have two thousand dollars I think that that's a that's setting yourself up
for for failure I think that if you're gonna tell a very intimate story between two characters that
they met outside of a motel in the parking lot and they're developing this romance over two days
at the motel and one guy is there on a business trip and the lady lives there yeah whatever but
if you're trying to make something very small and mostly just the conversations that they
have between one another and those that's easy to do and that's very inexpensive but
if one of them is a cybernetic organism and they shapeshift and they walk through these
wormholes that constantly open up and now all the machines are coming out to attack everybody
and the motel blows up then I think you've kind of set yourself up for for for failure.