Film Courage: Can you tell us the whole story of how you sold It Takes Three movie? Who did you
give the script to? Logan Burdick, Screenwriter: First the story of how the movie came to beIi
have a limited perspective but the sort of broad strokes are
I wrote it on spec. I assume the viewers know that terminology. It was a spec script that I wrote
and I do think this is sort of important. I wrote it very specifically because
I had enough data and not like the most hard data but more sort of anecdotal
data that I had a lot of people that I knew who were looking for something like this
and I put that out there because i think sometimes specs are very hard right like most of the like it
it constantly sort of evolves but like traditionally like selling something on
spec is a very difficult thing it just doesn't happen very often right like specs are very useful
to get other jobs or again to get representation they don't very often actually get sold and even
when they do get sold they don't very often get produced right it's not something that happens
every day and so for me when i'm writing something on spec i want to at least go into it knowing
okay when this is done i know through however i what relationships i have
that i've got at least a handful of people who would potentially be interested in
something like this or that i know or i've gotten feedback from my representation
that there's a handful of people that they know would be interested in this um
i think it's again you're very brave if you do it completely in a vacuum
right and i've done that also but it's just not my like preference um so i
i knew that like because again my sort of um relationships with mostly with people in digital
and there was a sort of push at the moment for this sort of idea of like influencer-driven
features right and most influencers are of a certain age right like they're like
teen or like you know young 20 something and um and the sort of uh in the sort of
material that then people want to produce starring them has a sort of like um you know
it's a it tends to be like a more limited like window right like it's not they're not gonna make
you know uh the new terminator starring like an influencer yet they might tomorrow but so and um
and so basically knowing um knowing that i was like okay like these are the people i know
these are the sort of things that they're looking for what do i feel like is a story that like
checks all those boxes um and also would be a good story right i i was drawn and i actually
i was not the only one with this idea because literally there was something like i want to
say like four major adaptations of cyrano de bergerac said in high school that came
out in the last couple years so a lot of people had this idea it was definitely in the like uh
in the air but to me i was like oh this makes a lot of sense because this adaptation um really has
the potential to say something that previous iterations of it did not really have to say
right specifically with the sort of like social media component and the sort of idea of like how
effectively you could actually catfish someone and people do this right like that the story of cyrano
to me honestly felt more prescient like and important now than it did in its inception
in its inception it was kind of just an interesting quirky story
but now it felt like really sort of important and some like and really like had a lot to say
um and so i felt like oh this is again this feels like it checks off like a lot of boxes worth doing
um and so then i and then i wrote it um and i gave it to my manager at the time who
who shopped it around to the relationships he had or the relationships i had and a production
company like came on board and then ultimately it ended up in the hands of gunpowder and sky
who then ended up uh producing it and how did you have your manager already
so my so my manager who was also a producer on the film uh his name is kevin herrera and kevin
and i had been working together because at the time i had my own uh digital production company
and i had been basically one of the things that i was doing was trying to put like it started as
a very sort of one-man band doing all sorts of just random jobs for whoever sort of situation
um but as it sort of grew i was able to parlay that into actually um doing like digital series
right like i like either for like like branded corporate partners like it was pretty funny but
like uh one of my um one of my biggest clients was playboy because playboy literally at the time uh
people might not remember but they were trying to do a whole initiative to like go non-nude
and they were like trying to rebrand um and so we were doing like a bunch of like sort of
sketch comedy for them and different shows um and other like other things like that
like uh we we helped do post-production on a on a logan paul series um and then as those
opportunities came up that then i i knew kevin um through like mutual friends and as those sort of
opportunities came up it it then allowed he was able to sort of come in and help be like oh okay
how can we grow this now right because like okay so you did happen to get like this one but like
i can help you get like more i can help get you more shows i can like you know um
uh help connect you with more of those sort of opportunities and so we started working together
in that capacity um but he also was trying to put together uh these sort of influencer or
ended up again not going that direction like young adult um driven features um and that's how that
sort of relationship developed but that again to me is why i'm always sort of a proponent of like
you don't know what like it's important to have your goals and know what you would like to do
right like i never stopped wanting to write um and have features and like and do those sort of
projects um but i don't i honestly don't know that i would have gotten uh the opportunity to like
to do like a a feature film or have my spec be like sold or produced if i was
trying to go through a very traditional route um maybe i mean i i will never know
but but i do feel like again from my perspective there's always something to be about like okay
like this is a sort of this is another sort of street that people aren't taking
and like and so as long as i know where i want to go like and i'm having those discussions with
the people like i'm like you know my like uh professional like like counterparts and peers
like those opportunities like still like exist not always where you're looking i guess
sure do you take fountain sometimes okay if that one's backed up a lot they always say that's an
alternative yeah it's it's always evolving that's the that's the i will say that that's like uh
even like that's a a joke but it is it's always it's always changing and i think that it's
important to like remember that too because like again the the way that that project came together
would it come together like that again today maybe i don't know like i'm like like uh if you asked
me like a hundred percent would it like would that happen again no i don't think like again
things always are like literally like you know he's all that uh without alison ray also came out
like last month like things always like similar things do like happen but you just you don't
you know uh and forgive me if i'm wrong but i but allison ray is a tick-tock star right and
like when i was like writing like it takes three there's that wasn't like uh that wasn't a thing so
you know i think that it is it's very it's always moving very quickly um and it behooves everyone
to pay attention to that and to not think that something that worked i do think it's a mis
it's not necessarily the most savvy mood to go like move to go like oh well this is how
like quentin tarantino did it yes it is in like in like 1990 like i i i wouldn't i i don't know
the odds of it happening like that same way again are are not like great because it's just an
entirely different environment you know where were you when you got the news that the script was sold
i don't know i'm sure i was at my office i'm sure i was doing work um it was
it was very like it was very exciting and it was very cool um i think it was very interesting to me
because because it was my because again my digital company was my full-time job
i don't know that i ever really like relish in it as much as like i might have been otherwise
because just literally i didn't i was on productions and i had things to do
um i do with the caveat of i do think it's always really important to celebrate whatever small
wins you get i feel like um there's so much sort of emphasis on if you if you don't
achieve the like the final stage right that like all everything you did all the work
um it doesn't like matter and there's so many steps along the way that are like ridiculously
huge accomplishments like that you might not even recognize as like big accomplishments and like
but you should you know i i feel like i feel like i feel like it's very exciting when like
when you've literally like on the on the list of 10 000 items you finally like cross like number 10
000 but not every project goes there and not and that doesn't mean that if you got to like number
like 8 000 that all of that was a bad use of time or that that's not worth celebrating there's all
sorts of very positive um things that happen along the way in ways that you might not even under like
you might not even understand in the moment right like how they'll like pay off later or like
or or why they're important um that's something i do like i really like believe in a lot is like
again like celebrate everything that's a that's a step some people are very don't count your
chickens before they're hatched i i don't care i if they if they never hatch i still got some
awesome eggs and i'm really excited about my eggs they don't turn into chickens they don't turn into
chickens i'm still gonna like you know i'm still gonna feel positive about where it is right now
you