This interview was conducted by Alex Leon and transcribed and edited by Parker Keye Eisen.
Originally from Seattle, Jimmy Bontatibus attended Béla Tarr’s “film.factory” directing program for one year before making his first feature, THE LIFE OF FLOWERS, which premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival. His second feature, A MUSE, shot between Germany and Romania, was met with acclaim after being released online due to the COVID-19 pandemic; the film called "A triumph" by critic Matt Zoller Seitz in RogerEbert.com. ALL I'VE BEEN WANTING is his third feature, and his first to be shot in his home country.
640 Films had the pleasure of interviewing Bontatibus through an instagram live that was originally conducted on March 22, 2021 by filmmaker Alex Leon. It is a whirlwind of how he works, funds, and looks for distribution for his films. From shooting a film in 18 days in two countries to getting a review from Matt Zoller Seitz, there is a treasure trove of knowledge for any filmmaker at the DIY or Micro Budget level.
If you would like to listen to the original interview you can do so on YouTube or Instagram. We have decided to keep this transcript as true to the original conversation as possible, so sit down with some coffee and enjoy Alex’s conversation with Jimmy Bontatibus.
Alex Leon:
Our conversations up until this point have just been me pestering you for advice
in your Twitter DMs
Jimmy Bontatibus:
-[Jimmy laughs]
AL:
I really appreciate you taking the chance.
JB:
So much of my film education and development has been me pestering other filmmakers on Twitter or some platform so I'm happy to continue the chain.
AL:
You went to Bela Tarr's film school...
JB:
--I did.
AL:
How do you end up there?
And what was that like?
JB:
So, I had heard about this school when they first started. I wanna say in 2011. I was younger. That was like, in the beginning of high school which is when I was deepest in discovering cinephilia, and watching Bela Tarr's movies. I think he announced it at the Berlin Film Festival? It was when the Turin Horse played. He was like, "I'm gonna start a film school." I was immediately like "Boom! Okay. That's where I want to go." Over time it was written about in publications and magazines like Sight & Sound and that kind of thing. But they only talked about it for Master's level students and for PhD level students, so it was kind of this elusive dream school while I was also looking at colleges in the U.S. But I was having trouble getting on the wavelength of film school, just because I was making a lot of short films on my own, and film school is really expensive in America. It was kind of like, "Okay. Am I going to put what I'm doing on hold and spend a lot of money and have to take out loans?” [Bela Tarr’s Film School] announced their first undergraduate program, and it sort of lined up right when I graduated high school. I was immediately like, "Okay. That's where I'm going."
It was great. I'm from Seattle, originally, and I had been to British Columbia and all of that, but I had never really meaningfully been outside of North America. It was like two months out of high school and I'm just… in Bosnia. That was great, I wouldn't trade that for anything. The school itself was a little messy. There's a lot of economic instability in that part of the world, and I think they were over-eager in their desire to start the school. They kind of started running it without all of the necessary pieces. So, I was only there for a year, just because the school didn't seem like it had an immediate future. At the same time, I'm still really grateful for the experience. The Life of Flowers wouldn't have existed had I not lived in Bosnia, and that's how I met Mersiha Husagic. She was pivotal in the development of A Muse. None of that would've happened if I didn't go.
AL:
Did you do The Life of Flowers for the film school or did you do it outside of that?
JB:
I did it outside. I had sort of written it with the intention of doing it after. I was like: "I'll probably do this a few years down the line." And then the school started to have a lot of its stability issues. And then even told us: "We don't know if you're going to have class next semester." So I was like: "Okay. I might just make the film while I'm still over here." And then just go home for a bit and regroup.
AL:
What did you learn in that time? Or what differences were there in production? Because, A Muse could go toe-to-toe with any film you see at Sundance. And nobody would know how DIY it was.
JB:
The Life of Flowers was extremely formative. I can't even begin to tell you how much I learned, not just about filmmaking, but about myself and who I wanted to be as an artist. Through the making of that film, I got to a point in the editing where I realized I was very proud of the movie and of the work everyone had done on it. I met so many amazing people through the process,
but it didn't feel like it was me at the same time. I got through the post-production and felt that it wasn't necessarily indicative of who I am as an artist and as a person. I was also like 19 or 20 when I made the movie so there's still a lot of personal growth happening at the same time. But A Muse, the first drafts were very reactionary to how The Life of Flowers was feeling. There was like three times as much Happening, and it was just this crazy, sprawling thing. I wanted something that felt not just big, but also more aligned with the way I saw the world and the way my brain puts stories and characters together. It wasn't that much bigger of a production, relatively speaking, than The Life of Flowers was. When we were in Germany, we had, at most, 12 or 13 people behind the camera. When we were in Romania, it was just me, our DP, and sound. Then one other person who was our AD/Production Manager. It was just the 4 of us.
AL:
-Really?
JB:
Yeah, which was fun. It was kind of a nice contrast to Germany where it was a little more rigorous. There's precedent for a lot of rigor on sets. In Romania, they've got a really booming film scene, right now. But it's also still a redeveloping country. So there's a much more sort of punk-rock attitude about these things. You're like, "Hey, do you want to make a movie with three other people?" And people are like, "Great, sounds awesome." In terms of getting the look that we did, I worked with two very, very talented cinematographers. We shot on a Blackmagic Pocket 2K, so it's already outdated. We used a lot of natural light. We would keep our lighting sources simple. In Germany, we had a couple more complicated set-ups, but we would try to keep it to just one or two key lights. A lot of the financial resources, which we didn't really have, we put those into lenses. That's where it makes the difference. So we put those into 16mm lenses. We tested the Pocket 2K against some cameras that were 10 times as much, and we threw the 16mm lenses on, we were like, "this looks basically the same." If not better.
We were like, "How isn't everyone doing this?" That was a big part of it. And then just making sure that we planned a lot. That doesn't mean that we didn't riff and improvise when we shot, because we did. So much of what was shot in A Muse is completely different than what was written, and some of that is by choice. When you're making a movie for no money, there's not that much that's in your control. Learning to be malleable, to roll with the punches and not be too dogmatic about what you're going to get was really important. But, since there were enough visual notes that were developed and discussed beforehand, on both legs of the shoot,
when we did have to change, or deviate from the plan we also knew what the visual through lines were going to be. I think a mixture of all of those things helped amp up the production value, if you will.
AL:
You were filming in Germany and Romania, neither of which you had lived in.
Do you speak any of the languages?
JB:
No, I spoke a little bit of Bosnian, but not enough to write in any of these countries.
AL:
I'm failing to wrap my head around... How do you find the locations when you're not living there? How do you coordinate a production across two countries, multiple languages?
JB:
It's hard. I loved doing it, but it's not something I would recommend something people do in good faith; it definitely took some years off my life. You have to learn to put so much faith into other people, because you are limited in what you can do. In terms of locations, I did a lot of research before I would go. I would go onto Google Street View. I would go onto Yelp and just read about stuff that was cool. And not falling into the traps of ending up at some touristy place. Like, "Oh this bar in Hamburg is awesome." And it turns out that's in every single movie there. I tried to do some research, but then you just ask people. Like, "what's cool?" "What's a part of the city that isn't seen as much?" You walk around.
Those were some of the best experiences that I had in both of those countries, just location scouting by myself. Going around taking photos, thinking "this looks cool." And not having internet so you have to write down the intersection so you're like, "I don't even know how to pronounce this so I'm just going to take a photo of it and send it to someone." You get to know locals, you put a lot of trust in collaborators and ask them what's cool. "Who do I talk to about securing this and that?” But a lot of it just comes from talking to people in bars. And being like "What do you like in this city?"
When I started making the film, I tried to go through more official channels. I approached the film boards in Germany and all of that. There was a very small window when The Life of Flowers premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival in 2016. I went to Germany after that, for a couple of weeks to start production on A Muse. That was the window where people were like "Oh, okay. This guy is legit. because this movie just played at a B-list festival." I think I had a very Romantic view of making movies in Europe, where I was like, "Oh it's money through the government, great!" But there's obviously so many catches with that. I'm also an American dude who is waltzing in like "I'm making a movie now." People were like "Cool. Get in line.”
AL:
You had a couple years in between movies. If you shot A Muse in 2018, it was two
years between shooting that and All I've Been Wanting. How do you support yourself during that
time? Especially if you're flying back and forth to Europe.
JB:
It was tough. I lived at home when I wasn't doing A Muse. And after The Life of Flowers, I had
dropped out of college, so I had to go back home. I had the luxury of being able to live
with my parents for a few years. I would just work full-time, sometimes more. I had two jobs in Seattle, and I worked between 60-70 hours a week sometimes just, like, saving money.
For the most part, it was only 40 hours a week, then I ramped it up towards the end. That's how it was able to happen. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to move back home. I was very lucky to be able to do that. Lots of work, work, work, save all this money and then hop on over to Europe, for like a month to bounce around and try to raise money. "Okay! It didn't work that time," let's repeat it and do the same thing again. I cycled through that a few times. And now, I live in New York, and I've had a couple day jobs. With A Muse and The Life of Flowers existing, I've been able to do some freelance editing and directing gigs and that's how I've supported myself.
AL:
You were saying that the budget for A Muse was relatively tight as well, right?
JB:
I wanna say it was around $30,000. Maybe $32,000. It's tough because people are like: "Wow!
that's like nothing!" In film money, I've worked on short films that have budgets around that.
AL:
How does that money get allocated? Obviously you're not hiring union crew and stuff like that.
JB:
It's strange because in Germany there's union rates but there's no union. It was very weird to navigate, I still don't quite understand it. In Romania, there wasn't as much of that. We put a lot of money into people when we were shooting abroad. When I'm shooting in America, I'm working with friends, for the most part. And when I'm abroad, I don't know everyone as well. We had stipends for people. We spent a little bit of money on locations, like not very much. A lot of it we put into the lenses, and the sound. I think any filmmaker has learned their lesson about skimping on sound.
AL:
Shout out to Dylan, he's the man who has done sound for every project we’ve made.
JB:
Dylan is the MVP then, because it's imperative. That's where so much of the money is going. And with good reason. We weren't able to pay people Union rates on these movies, just because they're so cheap. Generally if people are excited we still try to give them something, so there's some kind of stipend. Then we put the rest into the equipment and into the camera. We also made sure there was some saved for post-production as well. Because that's another rookie mistake that I have made before. Like, "Hey! You're going to need to mix the sound, it's going to be important." And also, I use a lot of music in my movies. There's not as much in The Life of Flowers. There's a lot in A Muse, some that people were kind enough to give us just for festival rights. Others we had to pay for, but that's something that needed to be budgeted for in advance. So that's a rough spread. I've never made any money from the stuff I've directed, in terms of films.
AL:
With a budget of $30,000 and a fairly small crew When shooting in a public location, when
do you go through the standard process for filing a permit to film. And when do you go, "Let's take our camera and our actors and see what happens."
JB:
I've never filed for a permit in my life. For any film I've ever made, that's never happened. Generally the rule is that if we're going to be somewhere for an extended period of time we want to make sure that we are allowed to be there. Every city and country has different rules. For the most part, if you're not on a tripod, no one's really going to stop you. If you're handheld, and there's only a couple of people and it's just a camera and a mic and maybe two others. If you're not stopping traffic, people have bigger things to worry about. When the sticks come out, therefore you are stopping the flow of pedestrians or cars, that's when you need a permit. Most everything that's outside is stolen.
AL:
I listened in an interview that you did where you said that you don't have a ton of time to work with your actors, which I thought was super surprising because the performances were all great. With the limited time you have with actors, what do you prioritize doing? If you have a 1-hour meeting with an actor, are you spending time reading the script? Are you trying to flesh out the character? What are the first things you do as a director?
JB:
Generally, unless it’s a lead actor, I don't know if I have ever gone through the script. On The Life of Flowers we had a little bit more time. On A Muse, I'm struggling to remember if that happened at all, with anybody [laughs]. I had some longer meetings with all 3 of the leads, for sure. It all depends, there's no one-size-fits-all. If I'm working with non-actors and non-professionals then we'll dig into the technical elements a little bit more. "So there's going to be a camera that's right here." And then just give some general tricks like "relax your shoulders Just worry about what the other person is doing and don't worry about what you're doing, just play off of them." But when you're working with people like Mersiha or Miriam it's really about the characters, and talking about intentions. And making sure that we are on the same page about what they are feeling in a certain place, or we're on the same page with not exactly knowing and letting things happen. Communication is key in all of these things. We don't really dig too deep into the blocking; we don't talk about that in advance. These guys are pros.
I've seen them in other movies. I know that they have the technical ability to show up and act and perform. So let's dig into the intentions and that sort of thing And again, communication.
AL:
What did the crew look like for--I guess it's a different answer for each country, but for Germany and Romania...Which crew members were vital to the production, for you?
JB:
Everyone's vital. There's me, co-producer Andre Sanabria, my friend Elijah Newman, who is the musical director of All I've Been Wanting, and someone I went to high school with who came on to help out as production manager. We were on the production end. There was no First AD, all three of us would do that in tandem together. There was Roxana Reiss who was our DP. She usually had 1 camera assistant, sometimes she had two. On one day we had 3, that was crazy to me. "There's 4 people in the camera department right now, that's like a Hollywood production!" We had Christian Grundey who did sound. He was the only person other than me not including the actors who was on both shoots. He came to Romania. He's a director, and he's done several DIY features in Germany, and he's a DP so he was able to help for the times our Romanian DP Adrian Lurchevici needed a camera assistant. He had the boom behind his back and would be racking focus at the same time.
AL:
Oh my God.
JB:
I love that stuff though! That's how I would make short films when I was growing up. So I totally geek out when it's a bunch of us doing things at the same time. We had Tamo, our production designer. We had our costume designer, Allison Dunn. Who was also from Seattle. She was only there for the first 5 days of the production, so she came 2 weeks before we started shooting and helped get the continuity down and made sure everyone knew what they had to wear. We had a PA named Janas as well who was there almost every day. I think he was in high school at the time? He was a senior and was like, "I'm just not going to school for these 12 days."
AL:
That's amazing!
JB:
I was like, "I love this kid already. This is great." I want to say that was basically it.
The camera assists kind of fluctuated, based on the day. In Romania, it was me, it was Adrian, who was shooting that section, and it was Christian Grundley. And then we worked with a First AD type, her name was Christiana and she was someone we found at the local film school. I just showed up and was like, "Hey does anyone want to help out on this shoot?" Then she came on. Adrian's partner Raluka, who is also a director, came to set to help out a few times. Other than some of the people who worked on post-production that's a lot of the people who went into
this movie. They're all very interesting, very talented people. I'm really grateful. Many of them were strangers who I got to develop relationships with.
AL:
How many takes do you typically end up doing? With your actors, when do you know to take a suggestion versus reject a suggestion? When do you know to improvise and when do you know to stick to the script?
JB:
So, the short answer to that question is that you don't. That was a really important thing for me on The Life of Flowers that I was still learning. Then I discovered that it was okay to be wrong. Like...a lot of the time. Because in the end you're shooting... I don't know how many hours of footage to make a 90-minute movie. You can be wrong quite a lot of the time, and most people are. That's part of it and that's great. I think the best way to answer that is starting with the "takes" question. We were so strapped for time. People were running on set. It's this very unwieldy, ambitious thing that was 12 days in Germany. Then in Romania, I think we shot 9 days? Yeah, so we were really hustling. It was an 18-day, full-day shoot. We got 2 takes, pretty much for everything.If something was technically wrong, we maybe got a third. But on a shoot of this scale with the scope of what we were doing, you took what you got after 2 takes. You had to put a lot of trust in people and make sure everything was talked out in advance. I think I can count on two hands the amount of times in my career I've been able to shoot more than 3 takes, just because time is always of the essence, which I've learned to be okay with.
But you also want to make sure you are not short-changing your actors at the same time.I'd always check in to make sure they felt comfortable. The deal that we would make because we were so limited on time is if the actors didn't feel like they were getting it, or I didn't feel like they were, we'd start to put set-ups together. So if set-up 1 is a close-up and set-up 2 is handheld shot that pans around, well let's do them at the same time. Let's put on that lens, and let's do the pan to buy the actors more time so they can explore their performance. Everyday on A Muse, and pretty much every day on All I've Been Wanting, we ended up combining a lot of the shotlist. It gives the performers more time and us more material, as well.
In terms of feeling out, "Oh, did they get this one?" You just gotta feel it out. You never really know. Because actors are doing things that are basically invisible with their face, that you can't always see on set, you just have to know that you're going to learn things in the edit. And you're like, "Oh, wow! Miriam is doing this incredible thing with her eyes." That is invisible to the human eye. But when it is this image that is plastered on a bigger screen it's like, "Oh, I can totally see what she is doing right here." A good way to sus it out is how did the actors feel? If they feel really good or it looks like they had fun that means there is going to be something in there. Maybe not what you were looking for but at the same time, if they're feeling what they're doing even if it is a slightly different emotional wavelength, It's probably still going to work in the edit.
That genuine quality is going to come through in the performance more than anything else, and it can be cool too! This actor is exploring this line in a way that was completely different than it was written or intended. That can be really great. That's kind of what you're looking for,
or at least what I'm looking for when I'm on set. Like, "Oh, this is going to a place I couldn't have written or predicted on my own, but it's coming from a genuine place for the performers. That's the one that we run with. It's a mixture of giving them space and making sure they are feeling good about things, and doing what you can in the camera department to buy time for them to have those explorations.
AL:
When you're done with production--you edit all of your movies?
JB:
I didn't edit The Life of Flowers myself. I edited A Muse, and I am editing All I've Been Wanting, right now. It's not quite done yet.
AL:
With A Muse, there's 3 timelines. There's a lot going on. How much of that was prescribed in the script when you wrote it, and how much of that did you piece together in the edit?
JB:
That's a great question because it was an intersection of the two. It was very much written for the two central narratives to be playing off of each other. We would shoot a scene in Germany that had gaps in the shot list because we knew those were going to be filmed in Romania.
We knew it would cut to someone's hand here, but we would get that shot in a separate timeline. But it was a nice exercise to be shooting in this constructive way. It allowed for a lot of options in the editing. If you've got a reaction shot of someone you can still place whatever you want in front of them and there is still going to be meaning, in terms of intercutting the two storylines. That's a lot of how the film was put together. The third framing device of Yves Klein… ended up becoming more of a through line than expected. Initially, it was something that was going to be frontloaded. We were just going to have it in the opening credits and create a stage for what was coming. And it became clear as I was editing that the film was going to need a binding agent for the two storylines playing off of each other. That's how that came to be. It's a little bit more phrenetic with the way that those 3 storylines cut together than I anticipated, but the language of how they all play off of each other was written into the film.
AL:
I sincerely don't know how you did it.
JB:
It's a lot of throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks though. You don't always know how things are going to play off of one another. And something that was really formative for me was reading Robert Bresson's book Notes on Cinematography when I was a teenager. He writes about the idea of an image not having absolute value. And that was crazy to me when I was like 16 or 17. It's all in the contextual side of editing. You can build so much around a shot and change what it means. And you don't necessarily know what it is going to mean. A lot of the editing for me in A Muse was matching this piece of archival footage from the performance
And here's something that maybe mirrors that. Or rather “Here's a couple of shots that
have a visual or thematic parallel. I'm listening to this song right now, let's throw this song underneath.” Try it a whole bunch of times, and then eventually something is ignited. And that's really exciting. That's how the rhythm of the film develops. How can we throw all these things together and then, "Oh!" something sparks. Let's take that, make that the center of the scene and fill outwards from there.
AL:
That's really cool, man.
JB:
It takes some time though. We made A Muse and it was incidental with the way that it ended up being cut and put together. And a lot of that was necessitated by how loose the production ended up being. With All I've Been Wanting, it was, "how can we plan that approach and that style from the beginning so that we're not caught flat footed by it in certain areas?"
AL:
Once A Muse was done, it seems like you had a pretty successful promotional campaign?
JB:
[Laughs]
AL:
I thought it was pretty successful.
I feel like it's successful because at least I heard about it.
JB:
The fact that strangers saw it all is cool and still kind of surreal to me.
AL:
I'm curious, I heard you hired a publicist in the interview I listened to? What was the process for promoting it? What do you think the successes were? And what do you wish you would've done differently?
JB:
That's a great question. I had never worked with a publicist before. I worked with a publicist
named Gale Davidson. Who was awesome; she was really sweet. I think I was a little nervous? It felt like we were denying ourselves a festival run by premiering the film online. We didn't know when the festivals would come back, but we were giving away the exclusivity that is required to premiere at most festivals that have media attention. A friend put me in touch with Gale, who’s a music publicist by trade, but she watched the film, and she really liked it. I sent her the look book I had made in pre-production for the movie which had influences and all that. And she was like, "Oh, I love Naked by Mike Leigh." I was like, "Okay, this person is legit." It was tough. It was such a weird time to be doing this. She was a total pro, but was like, "we're kind of improvising here."
That was basically how this entire production has gone so might as well keep that line through the actual release of the film. We set up some ad campaigns, and created some 30-second spots. I cut a trailer for the movie and then we cut some shorter versions of that. We just went on Facebook and Instagram and created this audience. We focused mainly on places like Seattle, where I'm from and New York where I have social circles. And then in Hamburg, where we shot, and Bucharest as well. Then if you like the Criterion Collection on Facebook or Instagram we set it to target you, and I think that worked pretty well. We had a website and we put a Pixel on it, which is like 20 bucks, so if someone goes to the website they'll get ads. Which is funny because it happens on things you wouldn't expect. A friend of mine texted me and said he just watched a Conan O'Brien interview and there was an ad for A Muse right beforehand. I was like, "that's insane." So we did that, and that worked pretty well. It was hard to get coverage for the movie though. I think a lot of that was that we were doing during COVID and the idea was like, "Oh there's nothing coming out, right now, so it will be easier for people to write about us." What we didn't maybe expect, and I don't know how I would phrase this as what I would've done differently because I still don't know how I would've gone about it if we had known it was......people were maybe interested in writing about the film but their publications weren't taking pitches because everyone was taking a financial hit. There were a couple of critics that we ended up becoming connected to that were friends or friends of friends that were like, "I would love to write about this film, but my outlet isn't going to pick it up." That was a little tough.
The review we got from Matt Zoller Seitz on RogerEbert.com; I just sent him that on Twitter. That existed outside of the publicist thing. It was sort of serendipitous because he had tweeted something the night before the release, about the mythology of releasing independent films. People were like, "Oh, Robert Rodriguez made this movie for 4,000 dollars and it came out in theaters. Yeah, but, I don't know the studio who bought it, put all this money into blowing up and doing a new sound mix. I was like, "Hey! On the note of true independent films, I made this thing, if you want to watch it." He was very sweet, he was like, "Okay, I'm very busy. You're a stranger, but I'll do my best." A couple of nights later, I didn't think anything was gonna come of it, he messaged me on Twitter for a little bit more information on the movie. And then the next morning the review came out.
AL:
That's crazy!
JB:
That's what instigated a lot of people watching the film. The ads worked--there were some people who watched because of that, but in the end it was the review because I think people needed some sort of brand identity to push them into watching the film. That's why a lot of movies that would be released in theaters anyways will play at Sundance, so there's some sense of "Oh, this is a Sundance movie. I, as an audience member and a consumer, know what that is." RogerEbert.com was a recognizable brand outlet, there was a sense of quality control.
AL:
It gives you legitimacy.
JB:
For sure. I'm very grateful to Matt for taking a chance on it, because it's a 100-minute movie that has no quality control. It just came to him from a stranger on Twitter. To me, it really speaks to who he is as a person, and how that guy really loves cinema and is willing to gamble on his time with it.
AL:
What have you been watching recently? And in particular, what independent filmmakers that are doing similar things to what you're doing do you see that are exciting to you?
JB:
That's an excellent question that I wish I was more prepared for. It's been a little bit slower recently, just because I've been editing and that makes it a little bit tougher to focus on watching films. I like to make sure that I'm one hundred percent invested in something. It's hard when you've been staring at your own film for 6 hours and figuring out the grammar of the movies and how to put things together.
AL:
I can imagine your movie appetite after a day of editing is not huge.
JB:
It's a little tough. This is not what you asked for, but it's an answer. Someone I've been watching a lot of and going to the well of inspiration lately is John Sayles, who is an older more studio
adjacent filmmaker. But, I think he's someone that independent filmmakers, myself included, can really learn a lot from. His movies are very...he's interested in people, and he's interested in doing things that are local. I mean that in the sense that this is a film that is really going to explore the cultural nuances and environment of a single place, in a way that doesn't demand a larger scale for filmmaking. There's so many unique things with rhythm and structure and the way that he puts his movies together that I don't feel like he's ever gotten the full attention for. He's a novelist by trade, so he writes and structures things in a way that novels do, and is able to edit a movie with that rhythm. In terms of contemporary independent filmmakers--aw man, I feel bad I'm really struggling with that question. 'Cause I'm just a little out of the loop right now. I'm going through my log of films offscreen right now. I know the second we get off this call I'm going to remember something, so maybe I can also hit you up?
AL
You're good, man. You don't need to answer now.
JB:
No, no, no--it's good to promote what people are doing. I'm also trying to think about what is
available, too. Because I have friends who have made movies that I really like, as well, but there's no place to see them, right now because they're maybe still on the heels
of their festival runs and that sort of deal. But I'll message you sometime soon if you want to investigate on your own those recommendations. You're more than welcome to.
AL:
Yeah man, for sure.
JB:
Sorry, I kinda whiffed on that one.
AL:
Nope, you're good. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it.
JB:
It was my pleasure! It was great to chat.
AL:
Have a good day, Jimmy.
JB:
All the best. Be well, you too.