Film Courage: Did you see the Jim Carrey Documentary [referring to Netflix’s Jim & Andy: The
Great Beyond]?
Adam William Ward, Actor/Producer: Which one?
I saw one where he did the Man on the Moon and he talked about…that one?
Film Courage: Yes, (I’m pretty sure) he talks about his Dad?
His father was an accountant?
Adam: He did talk about his Dad…so his Dad gave up his dreams to be a comedian in the
Jim Carrey documentary and he did the 9-to-5.
The 9-to-5 which was a steady job laid him off.
So he realized at that point that there was no safe bet and that is true man.
It’s completely true.
I see that all the time with people where they really hold onto their 9-to-5 job but
nothing’s guaranteed, nothing’s guaranteed.
So it’s like you’ve got to take chances.
You’ve got to.
But that’s life.
You’ve got to make mistakes too and that’s why a lot of people…I know so many filmmakers
that aren’t willing to do their first feature because they are too scared to make a mistake.
It’s like No, you’ve got to make it and if you fail you fail or if you make a movie
that’s not the best it can do, great learn from it and make another film.
But I know more than one director that is phenomenal that has never done a feature film
and I’ve known them for 10 years.
Film Courage: Do you think it’s the money aspect?
I can see why that would be scary.
What do you think?
Adam: I think people have all kinds of excuses.
I think money is kind of the number one excuse is I don’t have enough money or I can’t
get enough money to make the feature but I mean what are you doing to try to get the
money?
There is that aspect.
A lot of them go “I don’t have the right script.”
And I’m not a script writer, a lot of that kind of stuff.
And that’s one of the reasons that WALLY GOT WASTED…it was like Seth my writing partner
Seth Hymes basically he wrote a script and came to me and I didn’t really particularly
like it.
I liked the first 20 pages and I was like the first 20 pages was slightly similar to
WALLY GOT WASTED.
And I was like “I thought the movie was going in this direction.”
Because in the first three pages it’s about three who accidentally hurt somebody and then
the movie went in a totally different direction and I was like I really thought you were going
to reamp WEEKEND AT BERNIES and put the HANGOVER together and put this new kind of comedy movie
because that’s what we ended up doing and he was like “No.”
And after he was heartbroken for awhile because I told him my honest opinion and he came back
and was like “Well let’s write the idea that you have.”
And so that was like 2014 and so we were living together at the time (we were roommates) and
I laid out the whole movie in one night with him and I came up with the structure of it
and we didn’t end up writing it.
He ended up moving out later and then 6 months later he came back and he wrote a first draft
in a day or two because he’s a very fast writer.
There was one scene in the first draft which was the drive-through scene in the movie which
was phenomenal which was great because he did my outline so it had the correct outline,
it just wasn’t as good as it needed to be yet.
But it was nice because I always try to stick on the positive because any artist is very
sensitive usually and so “I was like listen this is phenomenal.
But the driving through scene is amazing.
And the whole movie needs to be as good as the drive through scene.
So we need to do rewrites.
So then we ended up doing rewrites for eight or nine months to a year on the script and
getting it to where we thought it was strong.
And then I had enough connections in Hollywood that I was sending it to anyone who would
help me make it at the time which is where most every filmmaker ends up dying because
they are trying to hand their project to someone else to help them make it and that’s usually
falling on silent ears.
So we did that and there was one studio that was thinking about making it and it was just
talk and I was like “We can’t keep doing this.
Let’s just do it ourselves.”
So we ended up raising the money ourselves selling units to the movie for a certain dollar
amount you owned a percentage of the movie and I was going to sell units to anyone I
could sell units to.
I sold them to doctors, I sold them to dentists, I sold them to somebody in France, I sold
them to somebody in Mississippi.
I sold them anywhere I could sell them and talked to people.
And talking to people and convincing them to hand you a check is never easy.
I alway tell people I’m one of the luckiest people you’ll ever meet and people seem
to like me and trust me so I’m lucky in that aspect.
But I deliver!
I delivered the movie like I promised I would.
We raised the money and it took like a year or a year and a half to raise some of the
money (not all of it).
Film Courage: $70,000?
Adam: Well…$70,000 yes but Seth [Hymes] my partner was actually coming up with $40,000
of that actually but we only raised like $30,000 of it.
And unfortunately Seth was in a bad business deal.
And I actually did not know that so I was like “We have the $70,000, we can start.”
I did all of the casting of the movie already.
I found 38 locations for free in Los Angeles.
That’s like unheard of right?
Film Courage: How did you do that?
Adam: Meeting…well we have drive-throughs, we have grocery stores, we have fast food
restaurants, we have night clubs.
It took time and I didn’t want to put dates down for the film until I found all my locations
and found all of my actors.
I did not want to have a date because I was working every day anyway.
I didn’t need a time to push me.
So every location that I needed and I would be like “Hey can we use this space to shoot?
Can I speak to the manager and talk to them?”
Chains would all turn me down “It’s a corporate decision.”
So I learned very quickly that I needed to find Mom-and-Pop places, Mom-and-Pop grocery
stores, Mom-and-Pop fast food places.
Basically I just needed to be able talk to the person who was making the decision and
not have a million lines to get to who I need to talk.
And it was just convincing people with passion really.
It was my first feature.
My butt was on the line.
I think they saw how much excitement I had and a lot of people just agreed to help me.
And then sometimes it was a connection through somebody else, like at the grocery store,
it was a connection through Seth, it was a friend of his from college who owned a grocery
story and they gave us permission to shoot there.
And they we went there on the day and they didn’t know who we were.
Somebody didn’t even tell them but they saw the camera and the crew and they were
excited and they ended up letting us shoot there.
I don’t even know if they even needed permission to shoot there because they didn’t know
who we were.
And we shot at the grocery store when it was open.
Some of my actors were joking and we have a 35-minute documentary on YouTube (actually
people can type in WALLY GOT WASTED behind-the-scenes and it will pop right up).
It’s a little 35-minute documentary on how we made the film.
But one of the actors in the documentary is like “Live theater” because there are
homeless people walking by, there are regular people walking by in the middle of the shot
when we were shooting but we made it work.
So yes just convincing every location to just let us shoot there.
And some of the locations would back out the day before because the fast food restaurant
was like “I need to come there tomorrow night.”
And he was like “You can come after we close.”
And it closes at 10:00.
And he says “How long does you need to be here?”
He’s thinking I need to be like an hour.
No we need to shoot until the sun comes up.
I need as much time as possible so normally we’ll try to shoot 12 hours but I have the
sun.
So we’ll shoot from 10:00 p.m. until 5:00 a.m.
And he’s like “Oh…I have to stay here until 5:00 a.m.?”
He was immediately like I don’t want to do this anymore and I was like “Listen you
can’t bail on me I have nothing, I’m completely screwed.”
So I would convince him to stay basically and that would happen a lot.
Rewind all the way back to Seth getting that money stolen from him, so I thought we were
shooting the movie for $70,000 and rewind…Seth was going to put in $40,000…the $40,000
was stolen so he didn’t know until the first day of shooting.
So basically the first day of shooting and you see photos and videos of him and you can
see he’s having a nervous breakdown, his eyes are like half open because he still has
to tell me that he’s lost all of that money.
We have our first day of shooting and we finally get back (because he moved back in my apartment
to shoot the movie.
And he comes into my room after like 14 hours and he was like completely destroyed and he’s
like “I lost all of the money, we have to shut the movie down.”
And I said “Seth I’ve got to tell you that there is nothing in the world that could
stop me from shooting this movie at this point.
No, we’re not going to stop.
We’ll use the $30,000 and we’ll put the rest on credit cards.
Me and you will open credit cards and we’re going to finish the movie.
We will put everything we possibly can on credit cards but we will not stop the movie.”
And when he came into my room he was like “We’re going to shut down the movie and
I’m going to move away from Los Angeles and I’m done with this dream.
I’m never going to do it again.”
And I was like “No, you’re going to finish your dream and we’re going to drive forward.”
I wouldn’t let him quit.
I’m like “We have to do this.”
And so that’s what we did, we put the rest of the movie, $40,000 on credit cards and
$30,000 we used to pay the crew and people we needed to pay and we finished it.