P.M. Lipscomb, Filmmaker: Let's see if you
know what this is from? Do you know what this is from? [shows tattoo].
Film Courage: Patrick I think you said whatever it is you want to do
creatively that you should do it, no matter what, even if it's for free?
P.M.: Yeah oh yes, well in the very beginning I was making films and not thinking about film
festivals or I was making them exploring the art. Now 16 years later looking back
I think it caused me to build a fundamental understanding of the moving image and what it
is to juxtapose it and how to tell a story with the camera. I didn't have all this pressure on me
when in the very beginning so like if you love to do something you can figure out how to get
something made. You can find friends to pull together and in today's day and age there's
so many ways to to build stuff nowadays with the digital technology with everything at our
fingertips that if you want to do it you can get this stuff out there I mean it's crazy to even say
it right now because it's so long and it's almost like we've heard it so many times now you know
you have people people like Sean Baker who made Tangerine yeah that's good that's the second one
yeah yeah that's good yeah maybe maybe Tangerine with his iPhone back then the iPhones now are even
better right you know so everybody's got these cameras so it's so that's where that comes from
it's just the concept of I didn't think to myself oh I need to do a Kickstarter to raise money to
make this thing just make something and then if you do that you're going to get people's attention
and eventually I mean I was never even thinking about getting film budgets and then it just
naturally built into getting them but I think it's only because of the drive to never stop making
you know as you can make a short film you can make 50 short films in this house and every single one
would look different to a degree depending on what the genre is how you shoot it what the story is so
I think that at the end of the day if you want to do something do it
and if you don't do it then it's only it's your fault
is there one film out there that's your film school that when you watch it it teaches you so
much whether you turn the sound down whether you you speed it up where like it has so many things
that it teaches you about filmmaking inadvertently it's not actually about yeah filmmaking
well I do have a particular movie that caught my fancy and caused me to re-watch it numerous times
let's see if you know what this is from do you know what this is from
okay so A Clockwork Orange yeah okay yeah okay great so close I'll fix this before I mess up the
audio oh that's nice that's a nice tattoo I like that I got that to remind myself of what you're
you're mentioning actually A Clockwork Orange is interesting to me for multiple reasons and
one of those reasons is Stanley Kubrick had made 2001 A Space Odyssey went completely over budget
and wanted to show the studio you can make an independent film so in A Clockwork Orange a lot
of times he's running a camera he's doing a lot of the editing he is putting together a lot of
the sound and as this moment where I suddenly realized that's how I was making films early on
so I watched A Clockwork Orange constantly and I was reading this book on Stanley Kubrick and
how he puts his films together and he talks about designing his films like chess moves and if you
look at A Clockwork Orange and the way that he juxtaposes close-ups and wide shots and the way
he lit almost everything's lit with these natural light bulbs I mean he got these high powered light
bulbs but if you watch it they're inside the shots all over the place so he would try to light the
same 360. Sometimes not like the scene where they beat up the homeless man in the beginning and that
film is so people come into Clockwork Orange and have such a misconception of what it's even about
because I think it's about the fact that it's almost like a futuristic Coming of Age story
it's this weird Grimm's Fairy Tale Coming of Age story about this guy learning who he truly is and
how you can't change who you are but half the film he's being horrible and corrupt and then
the other half of the film everyone that he's been horrible to is getting the revenge on him
but a lot of times people can't make it past the halfway point of the movie so I always
meet these people I talk to about the movie that didn't fully see the whole picture with all that
said another facet is Kubrick was only filmmaker from my understanding in the history books that
was able to pull that movie out of an entire country because of death threats he was having
and stuff of that sort so to me that movie I think I wanted to get the tattoo to remind myself of
where I started making films and what was in my head in the beginning of of putting images
together in sound and so A Clockwork Orange I think would definitely be one for lots of
young filmmakers to dive into because there's so much there in the movements and everything
is purposeful every single detail in all of his movies as we know but yeah do you play chess I do
yeah yeah because I think didn't he play for extra money on his plain chest to pay his rent but yeah
and so do you find in some ways that a film set is like a chess game it is my saying that
I always say is I'm playing chess not checkers so everything I'm trying to decide what what the next
movie is I'm thinking about the movie I'm going to do after that and so on and hoping that you
know because I mean you can't some filmmakers have gone from their indie film straight up to
the 100 million dollar budget and then that movie failed and then they lost their career
so I feel like there is kind of you you know building up and what you're doing but then also
going back to Onset if there's an issue not only should you be ahead of it and the concept of as a
director dealing with it and putting the issue to rest but at the same time it's like how you deal
with somebody's mentality is how they're going to react for instance I was making a feature film my
second one in Cincinnati, Ohio it was one of my final projects before I came out west and I went
outside for a quick phone call when I came back inside everybody was shocked and a gentleman had
walked over and just hit the detach button on my tripod so the camera fell and broke the lens
I was so in shock at the time because everybody's reacting that I'm thinking in my head that I have
to be joking you know I it's not broken and the next day we're going to film this scene
in a tent and the wide-angle lens had just gotten broken now my friend thought he said I thought you
were going to attack this guy I saw it broken in his hands and I took a deep breath and I calmed
myself and I asked him to step outside and we had a conversation I told him don't worry about
it he almost started crying I said it's okay accidents happen and little did I realize his
mother was a little bit wealthier and was able to purchase us the exact same lens the very next
day that I had bought that lens used and then she brought she came to set and brought us a
brand new version of the lens and if I would have reacted angry he would have ran away embarrassed
and I you know and so instead I tried to be kind and compassionate towards the situation
and so I think there's you know the lesson there is always stay calm you know no matter what's
taking place sure you said something how you've seen an indie filmmaker make a low budget film
and then jump to a studio movie and it possibly could ruin that person's career do you think it's
always about that the story or the product was bad or that sometimes no people don't want to
see somebody make such an easy leap could happen with companies too like oh this is getting too
big we can't have this this person shouldn't have gotten that chance I don't know yeah I'm
just wondering oh no that's interesting that's interesting well one particular situation is an
indie filmmaker went to make a big franchise film and another franchise film came out at the same
time and so one of them tanked at the box office and so it was I mean in the movies a good movie
and then I think that I don't know how the studio system works in that respect like I don't know how
they view those numbers or have conversations amongst themselves but I can imagine you have
to put the blame on somebody for why the thing didn't do well and then who do you point out is
the novice director coming off of $250,000 movie so I and I believe when I was reading this my
first inclination was you should make four or five movies before you make that hundred million dollar
because Ron Howard's film The Star Wars one he made I don't think it grossed as
much money as the other Star Wars pictures did but he's Ron Howard
so I mean I think if you're comfortable in that setting then it's harder to be
the reason perhaps but yeah so I don't know I mean just what I've seen in studio filmmaking I
feel like you have to go into that with the concept of playing chess and not checkers
because you have to make those decisions on like how you're going to push your career
because your film's got to make money if they're not making money then you're not making movies
sure but that you know that's great that you brought up you know Ron Howard and he's Ron Howard
it's different if you look you know you were in San Francisco for a while so these quote unquote
I hate to use this term but “tech disruptors,” I know it's cliche, but some some may have had an
idea or a company that was actually brilliant but maybe it did it disrupted the status quo too much
and the powers that be didn't want that so if the Newbie comes and does something whether it's good
or not yeah you rose too fast yeah this isn't going to work but if you're an established name
I think A lot's about the change though too with the concept of just so many Indie investors
there's so much money there and that now there's so many streaming services I think even AMC is
more accessible to try to distribute your movie theatrically yourself hence all these Distributors
popping up out of nowhere or there's tons and tons of film Distributing distribution companies
so I think at the end of the day
where the studio system is planted themselves with doing these hundred million dollar movies and
they've basically removed the 20 30 million dollar dramas and stuff that they were making forever
I feel like inevitably the Indie cinema world is going to overtake most of what that is or
maybe that's going to compartmentalize a bid or maybe it's always going to be there I mean
at the end of the day I think there's a lot of money there to make all kinds of films so
you know whether or not it's it's it's the studio system or something Indie I think
that maybe they'll they'll exist but I guess what I'm getting at is it's a time where you
can do whatever you want and get things out there I mean there's so many indie films that end up in
mass releases in theaters that are made with no one's permission maybe that's where it goes to
feeling like you have to ask someone's permission or need to get the money to do this thing or why.