Filmmaker Nick Roth of the new movie 'Hanky Panky' - Crafting Laughs and Documentary Grit ep199

0:00ShareTom:You're editing this, so God knows what you could make me sound like at this point by taking me talking about butts and toes this much and putting it all together.

0:31ShareMitch:Welcome to Entertained. This is a podcast about movies, tv shows and video games. My name's Tom, this is Mitch, and we have Nick Roth, writer and director of Hanky Panky, which is correct me if I'm wrong . 2024 is when it was filmed, correct, or it's going to be released in 2024? Yes, gotcha 420.

0:52ShareTom:There you go, perfect . Yeah, it's coming out for 420 weekend.

0:57ShareMitch:So I'd seen the trailer and it was 2014 when you guys did the trailer right, and it was a short.

1:05ShareTom:We made a short film of the same name in 2014, but then there's a trailer for this feature, which is a separate, different movie.

1:15ShareMitch:Gotcha.

1:17ShareWe saw both. When we looked it up on IMDb and that's what Tom was asking me I was like I think that was the short and then he made it a full feature, so I wasn't sure that's correct. Tom was asking me.

1:25ShareTom:I was like I think that was the short and then he made it a full feature, so I wasn't sure that's correct. Well, thank you, did you guys watch?

1:29ShareMitch:the short film. I did not watch the short film. Mitch had sent me the link and I pulled it up and I was like I thought this was a movie. I'm like this is a minute and a half or however long the minute is the trailer.

1:44ShareTom:There's like an eight minute on, like ignore that short film. And then there is a move, then there is also a movie okay, yeah , yes, when did the movie get filmed?

1:53ShareMitch:uh?

1:53ShareTom:2016. It took a really long time to edit because, um, I didn't really know what I was doing and , uh, and my wife and I were editing it in our spare time, basically. So 2016 to 2023 was a was the golden seven years of of post-production the post-production for the fight between two of major characters.

2:16ShareMitch:I'm not going to divulge now. We'll get into it as we go through the movie. But some of like the anime edits I I about spit my beer out while I was watching it. It just kind of caught me off guard.

2:27ShareTom:I was like oh, you know, I'm glad you brought it up . It's a controversial sequence in terms of how long should that go on? And I'm a big fan of an extended fight scene in your third act. I love that. I love my kung fu movies movies . That's my jam. I was like we're promising this audience that a napkin's gonna fight a hat and it's gonna have to like I'm not gonna chicken out. You know what I mean. So it's a. It's a four and a half minute, uh, puppet fight scene it's a great puppet fight scene.

3:00ShareMitch:so I mean, I watched, started watching the movie, the trailer, the or the beginning of the film. The guy's running through a very picturesque kind of like Aspen Colorado resort-looking place and he finally gets some phone signal and then blood just goes everywhere and I was like, well, who killed him? How did it all happen? And then I get the.

3:18ShareTom:That's the question I'm hoping you'll ask at the beginning of the film.

3:21ShareMitch:You had me right there. I was like all right, now I gotta find out how we got it, we're gonna watch this movie, the I can't remember the guy's name now off the top of my head, the guy with the mustache who shows up sam and the napkin, like I just see the hand he's talking to and I'm like this movie's great. I was like I was like whoever thought of this, you're a genius , because that's like the funniest thing I've seen in a long time.

3:47ShareTom:I don't know, man, people hadn't made enough talking napkin movies. I agree, you could just put the napkin on your hand. I mean, I say that, but Toby Bryan was the lead puppeteer of this film and he really did wonders bringing that napkin to life, I think. He did Was the napkin your idea I don't remember whose idea the napkin was. I wish I could take credit for things at some point. At some point, everything in this movie was just somebody's idea it's just us nick. You can take credit for it, you know, I think, like alejandro jodorowsky once said that uh, I think it was it someone stole one of his ideas for one of his comics or one of his movies, and it was like ideas belong to the divinity.

4:32ShareTom:The God of cinema owns these, so I'm just a vessel through which they um, you know, trans, transmit to humans. So I feel like I feel like it's that you know what I mean Like the napkin. There needed to be a talking napkin murder, mystery, horror, sci-fi, rom-com movie and so it just sort of found me and my close friends as a vessel.

4:54ShareMitch:I mean, I'd never seen a talking napkin and probably anything else. And now that is the bar from which now I will measure other talking napkin film.

5:03ShareWell, I was going to ask ask because you did the short a good while before you did the movie when did the idea for this entire movie come from?

5:12ShareTom:God, I wish I had a better answer for this than this . But the truth is that we made that short for like a 48-hour film festival where you have a weekend to make a movie and you like draw random stuff out of a hat and and, uh, the hat unrelated hat, for the hat you draw. We drew like like the prop was a napkin and you had to have a main character who was an expert named sam and like everything kind of just like fell out of that. We drew like the comedy genre and so we were like, well, let's not just make the napkin a prop , let's make the napkin the other main character and we'll have the guy be an expert on napkins. And we just like combined stuff as close as we could and we were like, well, okay, so now there's these two characters who

5:59ShareTom:are a napkin and a napkin expert, and let's go from there. Um, and then it was it was much later when we were like let's make a horror movie in a cabin and I was like, well, what, what if we I think it was me who was like what if we took the talking, the cute talking napkin movie, which was very innocent and not a horror movie, but made it that these two guys ended up in it and in the situation where, where people are are missed, like agatha christie style, being killed one after the next and then the hijinks ensue.

6:28ShareMitch:The hat reveal got me Because, like the whole time, I'm like everybody's, like getting like sawed around the head and I'm like how. Like in my head. I'm like practicality. I'm like what weapon is going to do that? Like how are you doing this to people? And like the hat and I'm like ah, light bulbs.

6:46ShareTom:It's the hat. We try to sort of like front load it with like as many random weapons or just sort of like splayed around this cabin as possible. You know one character's carrying a pickaxe and I see a shovel over here and you know you just have those things when you're in a cabin. So they were just. We didn't get those, those were just there anyway.

7:04ShareMitch:I mean, if they don't have it like is it a cabin, Right?

7:08ShareTom:Yeah, you need a shovel. Got it Well could you tell me a little bit about how the actors and actresses came to work on the project?

7:21ShareMitch:Yeah, this we're all like a group of a preexisting group of friends.

7:22ShareTom:So this wasn't like a thing where we were like open casting, called someone be in our crazy hat movie. This was like me and my friends were like, hey, let's make them , let's make a movie. We were what do we have? We have, we have a bunch of friends who are actors. We all grew up in LA and so we're all sort of uh around that and um, we were like, well, we have access to a cabin and a camera and a talking hat puppet and uh, and a bunch of friends.

7:44ShareMitch:So let's, so everything got built around that right, like, um, all of the actors got to also sort of help design the thing and build their characters so it's just an all-around environment of friends like, hey, we're just going to set out, make this movie and with having, with working with your friends, the genesis of like great ideas and just the creative juices I guess just flows like a dam that's about to explode.

8:12ShareTom:I mean, that's what we were going for. I hope so.

8:16ShareMitch:I mean it was a very. I've seen a lot of stuff, but some stuff that was. We had interviewed people in the past and they're like hey check out our film. Hey, check this out. Check this out. And there's a lot of great stuff that you know hasn't made it to. You know big time theaters or it's like a Marvel to do, but this was one of the better ones I'd seen where it's like. The quality was really good. The idea was very funny.

8:46ShareTom:The having at the time of their life being these characters. Yeah, I mean, we mostly had, I had a, we mostly had a really good time it's also it can be stressful. We were, we were all staying together. There's like 10 of us staying in this one tiny cabin making the movie and like so it was. It got a little claustrophobic and like I think you know some some sometimes I think there was a little bit of hatred, but I think that that really just like , really just helps the frenetic energy of the whole thing. We're all still friends. There's nobody so I can say that, I can report that.

9:14ShareMitch:Well, I'm glad everybody's still friends. Is the napkin still? How's Woody?

9:18ShareTom:You know what? I don't know where he is. I can't find him. He's easy to misplace because he's a napkin. I him. He's easy to misplace because he's a navigator. I have Harry's right here. He's a little worse for wear these days. His peacock eyes have rotted away. But most of him is still here. He's falling apart.

9:36ShareWell, the whole thing takes place in this cottage. It's pretty much in the middle.

9:39ShareTom:It's a cabin.

9:42ShareSame thing right.

9:43ShareMitch:No.

9:47ShareIt's in the middle of a a snowstorm. What kind of challenges did it? Was it to try and film? Because there's a lot of outdoor scenes where you're, you know, traipsing through the snow.

9:53ShareTom:So yeah it, we. We were lucky to get like record levels of snow when we went up there to shoot and and thanks to the climate getting warmer, the last couple of winters of there have been very mild, but we shot this before that shift happened and so it was freezing cold. That cabin is at about 8,000 feet of elevation, so it was like we were truly battling the altitude and the elements. And, man, there was one day where there was this like elaborate bit that I wanted to shoot in the snow, which eventually we cut out of the movie Cause it didn't work. But I spent a whole day shoveling like uh, paths for the actors to walk, so that cause there was a sequence where they sort of like it was very uh, like Benny Hill, sort of like

10:42ShareTom:old school farce, where the like actors would. The actors would come out from one side of the frame and another one would come out here and then they'd disappear over here the hat was flying around. We shot this whole thing and it was the most exhausting. Anyway, then I looked at it and I was like this is so stupid. This is a movie that has a high tolerance for stupid things that can go into it, but there's a lot of things that were too stupid to put in the movie that we tried and that I was like, no , we can't, we can't, no matter how much was there anything that you guys had cut from the film that you wish you kind of kept in looking? back. Oh my god, the first cut was three hours long and there was

11:18ShareTom:so much funny stuff in it. But but I mean, yes, like there was whole storylines that we eventually had to lose, because you know, that's why we spent so long editing. It's because it was like we didn't know totally what it was until you know deep into it. I was actually just listening to you guys' episode on like timeless movies. And it was kind of like Caddyshack, where you guys were talking about how in Caddyshack they're constantly rewriting and like trying to figure out the movie as you went and like famously I think like the screenplay for Caddyshack was like 300 pages long and then they let all of those actors just improv endlessly. Ours was only 110 or 111. But still it was too long. It was too long a script.

11:58ShareTom:We let actors do whatever they want and improv and we had just a lot of funny stuff. I think the saddest thing that's on the cutting room floor is just there was so much of Diane, that's Ashley Holiday Tavares' character, traipsing on mushrooms around in the snow. I mean we just we spent like a day just like with her pretending to be on shrooms. Maybe she was really, I don't think she was really on shrooms. Anyway, acting like she was having like a trip out in the snow and just she singing, making up little songs, and I think she opened up a snow cone shop to a bunch of forest creatures at one point, like it was. It was great. But like none of that is in the movie, it's like one shot and there was there was at least a whole like afternoon of shooting

12:41ShareTom:and I think she got hypothermia from it too.

12:43ShareMitch:But she was fine okay , I'm glad she's fine, are you gonna going to do like? I mean, like the Justice League has the Schneider cut, are we going to get the Roth cut?

12:51ShareTom:I think that if we are so fortunate as to get a Blu-ray release, I have a lot of ideas for like special features for the like limited edition, blu-ray commentary and deleted scenes.

13:05ShareMitch:I feel like not enough people do enough with special features on a DVD release. The best one I've ever seen is Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where it's like the heart of hearing is on the menu and it's just somebody shouting at you what each little thing says.

13:21ShareTom:I was like, that was just genius, whoever came up with that.

13:24ShareMitch:that is comedy, sir. That's very good. I wish Do the Morse code version.

13:31ShareTom:The movie's coming out and they were like we're going to make a DVD. And I was like what? Okay, fine, you can make a DVD, nobody's going to buy it or sell it. I was like do you guys want any special features for it? I'd be happy to collaborate.

13:54ShareMitch:They were like no, no , thank you. And I was like when we come to the blu-ray, I am going to insist that I am. I want to put lots of special features on. Okay, I'm with you code edition . Or just have it like yeah, cling on just some dude just started shouting at you and cling on well everybody wants to see like I would love to dub this film.

14:07ShareTom:Sorry, go ahead.

14:08ShareMitch:You should totally do it, Doug. Just do the drunk dub.

14:11ShareTom:I think it would be very fun in French, for no particular reason. I could get the whole cast back to do the whole movie in French or Italian. It would be very funny.

14:20ShareMitch:Just trying to read actual Italian and just messing it up completely and everybody just eventually just devolving into beepity-boppity and just messing it up completely and it's everybody just eventually just devolving into Beepity Boppity.

14:30ShareTom:But just put the captions file into Google Translate, pop it out, get them all to do it on their iPhones, put it together. I could do it in an afternoon.

14:36ShareMitch:Or have like celebrity voice actors do like Woody in the hat, Like you just got Christopher Walkins all of a sudden like the napkin. Well, I had two questions, yeah yeah, yeah, okay two questions for you.

14:49ShareUm one where did the idea come from to make uh woody his like a sexual fantasy thing for when he's cleaning up the messes?

15:00ShareMitch:oh, let me clean that mess.

15:01ShareTom:Oh yeah, that was, um , so that's I don't, okay, so I'm primarily a writer. I think of myself as a screenwriter. I wrote on a tv show. I'm like I'm a writer first and I'm all these other things I had to do to make this movie second. And like, as a writer, like that one of the main exercises you do is you go, well, okay, if it's called, if, then right. Like, if this is true, then what else is true? Right and so like, I think maybe the very first thing that comes out of, like, if this napkin is a conscious talking entity, then okay, I guess he gets off on cleaning up messes because he's a napkin, like I don't know that. That. Just that just seems to fall out logically immediately. It's like, what's like the first thing that I think you

15:46ShareTom:know about this, this napkin, is that well, I guess he wants to be used to clean things up.

15:53ShareOh well, and then the next question I had. I forget the character's name, but the lady has the two faces.

16:00ShareMitch:Yeah, with the doll in the back of the head, it's like she's two-faced and he's like. You could have explained it a little better.

16:14ShareTom:That was not my idea, or it was, and then I later didn't want to do it. A lot of people love the face on the back of the head. When I got into the editing room, uh, with lindsey, um, we looked at that and I was like we need to cut this out of the movie. This doesn't make any. This is, this is across. That line of this is too stupid and crazy there. Why is there a face on the back of her head? I know we did a lot of work to make that happen. Toby actually got a 3D model made of Azure that's the actress who plays Lilith. It's her face made into silicone and then shrunk and put on the back of her own head. Anyway, even at the end of the day, it just looks like a ridiculous little doll face. Um, it turns out it's quite load-bearing and we reference it

16:52ShareTom:far too much in the film and see it in too many scenes to cut it out. So so stay, it did, um, but then it became many people's favorite thing in the movie. Is is just how. I think that's maybe the most ridiculous thing in the whole film. It's hard, it's a very ridiculous movie, but her having a face on the back of her own head, maybe as far as we go.

17:13ShareIt was really funny. And then with the horror movie, I think it was Malignant that had come out kind of recently for the last couple of years. After seeing that movie and then seeing this, it's a really funny transition.

17:25ShareTom:Of course, unbelievably, we actually made this before malignant, so they're copying you. Well, I think it's a case of independent invention where, um, I guess it was just we all had to make. We all had to make faces on the back people, but it's just something you gotta do.

17:38ShareMitch:Sometimes you gotta put a face on the back of the head.

17:40ShareTom:I mean, I try. I wish I had better answers for where this stuff came from. It just, but this is just. It's just out there, I think floating in the ether, what show you saying you were uh screenwriter for a show oh, I was a staff writer on a uh an abc sitcom for many years called american housewife, which was sort of a under the radar family sitcom on abc that I'm sure they're all very happy to hear me talk about, like hapkins, napkins, cleaning up messes and having orgasms and getting off on it. Hats killing people. There were no jokes like that on that show.

18:13ShareMitch:It was really a constrictive environment. They didn't really let you run wild.

18:17ShareTom:I kept pitching that the napkins in the house on American Housewife should be coming to life and getting off on cleaning up the house. I was shot down by the showrunners at every turn.

18:28ShareMitch:I just can't do nothing right these days and getting off on cleaning up the house, but I was shot down by the showrunners at every turn. I'll tell you what showrunners. They just can't do nothing, right these days.

18:31ShareNo, you also had a pretty big name on the movie with you, seth Green. How did you come to get him on the project? Is he like a friend or just someone you've met before?

18:42ShareTom:Did you?

18:43ShareMitch:kidnap him.

18:43ShareTom:Yeah, he's a friend. Yeah, I forced him at gunpoint. I was like I need you to just do your Skeletor voice for 45 minutes. Just do it and we'll let your family go. So he's a friend. His wife is Claire, who plays Kelly in the movie, and we all became friends years ago Lindsay , my wife and his wife, claire, rebecca in the movie and Kelly the movie. They took like an improv class together like 12 years ago or something, and hit it off and became friends and we met Ashley through them, and Christina, who plays Carla, and then we brought some of our friends from way back in the days Toby and Jacob. We kind of like mashed up a couple of friend groups and got this movie. And then somehow I don't know where Anthony Rudowitz came from

19:27ShareTom:, who plays Cliff. He's just a genius. He's a theater actor that we knew and we were like you gotta be in this movie too. He just showed up.

19:35ShareMitch:He just wandered in the set like hey.

19:39ShareTom:He's so good. I feel like he's a real scene stealer in the movie a lot of times.

19:49ShareMitch:He's a really fun dude. Those are the kind of dudes you always end up just kind of keeping the camera on, which is like come on, I know you're going to do something great and we're going to get it on camera, damn it.

19:53ShareTom:Yeah, I wish we had had a crew so we could have shot with more than one camera at a time, because that makes improv a lot easier. It's very hard to edit together stuff you've shot with one camera when actors are making stuff up and the scene is changing, and we had intended to shoot with multiple cameras always, but we that means you need people to run multiple cameras, which we did not have. We didn't have a crew on this movie, really.

20:19ShareMitch:Is there going to be?

20:21ShareTom:We did what we did.

20:22ShareMitch:Is there going to be a sequel?

20:24ShareTom:So I do yes, yes, look you heard it here first it's cominganky panky 2, budget dependent on how well hanky panky 1 does. But even if it just bombs, I'm writing, I'm going to try to write hanky panky 2 before hanky panky 1. You know, really has been out a long time at least. So that, just because it will be easier, I think, to write the sequel before it bombs.

20:48ShareMitch:I mean, we already have the sentient napkin, the sentient hat. What are you thinking is going to become sentient? Is it going to be like a can of soda?

20:56Sharea tablecloth, a chair , a scarf.

20:58ShareMitch:A scarf, a fez.

21:02ShareTom:Well, okay, yes, I'm thinking more hats and other articles of clothing, and that's it. You've got to draw the line somewhere, sentient sock. So, yeah, hanky Panky 2 is like a big alien invasion movie. It's more like if Hanky Panky 1 is like Clue on acid, hanky Panky 2 I'm pitching as Independence Day on acid. The alien hats have come. They're going to try to take over the whole world and the only thing that stands between humanity and its certain destruction is the Topanga women's Ayahuasca troop. That's it I love it. I have an outline for the whole movie.

21:42ShareMitch:I'm going to write it . I've been having to come up with an idea. We joke around. It's like, oh, we should do like this, like what you know friends sitting around like, oh hey, this would be a really funny idea, this would be a really funny show, or this would be a funny bit to film. And the one that I tell them all the time that I've always wanted to do since high school is a guy who like loses his big toe, or no, he has one, that he has the big toe, but he has, like no other toes. And it's just like the trials and tribulations of not being able to buy flip-flops. He can't kick a soccer ball straight. It's just like that whole sphere of just nonsense.

22:15ShareWell, that's when you and Hayden Did he lose the toe.

22:18ShareMitch:It was bitten off by an alligator. We toyed like what's a funnier animal? Like a platypus attack at a zoo . Well you and hayden both came up with, like the strange afflictions a guy missing an ass , cheek and stuff, the guy with one butt cheek and he has like the implant and like something pops and he's just slowly doing this in an interview horrible horrible ideas.

22:42ShareTom:Sorry, this is important to me. That one ass cheek. Is it just that he's missing the other one, or is it one big one?

22:47ShareMitch:He's missing the other one.

22:48ShareTom:It is just one. What's there?

22:52ShareMitch:It's just skin on bone. If you're looking at it topographically it's like flat and then the butt.

23:01ShareTom:It could be a very beautiful rom-com where these two people meet each other with the toeless person and the buttless person Could be Mitch.

23:07ShareMitch:Where do these?

23:08ShareTom:two people meet each other. I didn't think rom-com With the toeless person and the buttless person Could be. Mitch, write that down. They meet each other Immediately. They don't get. You know what I mean. They hate each other.

23:15ShareMitch:But they're just passionately in love at the end.

23:18ShareTom:By the end of the movie, they've discovered that they're soulmates.

23:23ShareThey go to the same prosthetic designer. Before we move too far off of the Hanky Panky movie. What was your favorite part shooting in the movie?

23:28ShareTom:Sorry. Okay, I will answer that, but I just want to go back to the butt and toe movie for a second. I feel like, I feel like you're , you're, you gotta call it, you gotta have kick ass in the title, cause like it's gotta be, like one of them goes to kick the other one and like I had no toes and the other one's like I don't have a butt cheek and that's a very good way to meet you. That's a rom-com. We didn't think of any of that.

23:55ShareMitch:We just thought it was hilarious trying to watch somebody with one big toe and no other toes try to walk in flip-flops.

24:01ShareTom:Yeah, although you probably will earn the wrath of the amputee community, hay earn the wrath of the amputee community.

24:11ShareMitch:Hayden had written out there dealing with these issues. He made up some organization that was like people who only had just a big toe, no other toes, and it was like this elitist thing where people who had all 10 digits no, I don't want it.

24:23ShareTom:That idea came to you . I'm just here to take some of your various good ideas and puzzle piece them together. You've got to put the butt thing with the toe thing. All right, add the butt with the toe and don't take that out of context. You're editing this, so God knows what you could make me sound like at this point by taking me talking about butts and toes this much and putting it all together.

24:45ShareDon't worry, we'll be good to everybody.

24:48ShareTom:We're always good to our people. It's fine. It would be very funny if you turned this into some gotcha journalism. Filmmaker Nick Roth talks about towing butts. All the time Obsessed with toes and butts, he's a maniac Cancel . It's on TMZ.

25:06ShareMitch:TMZ has the scoop.

25:09ShareTom:You had a question. The question was what was my favorite part of making Hickey Pankey? Yes, right, you mean, besides finishing it, I spent a really long time in the final stages of getting the movie done. It really did. Getting a feature film over the finish line is really hard, and so the moment that it was like I was like this movie is done was a very moving one. Um, I mean it would definitely be during the production, right, like the best parts were. You know, being in that cabin with a, with a bunch of my favorite people and like getting to make a movie like that there was. There was some really really fun stuff that we got to do. Definitely not when I was acting in it, so let's see if that narrows it down.

25:56ShareTom:I mean a lot of the running around in the snow. Honestly, just like the day that it was like a full blizzard and it's just. There's a sequence where sam is being chased by harry and it was just like you know, me and toby are playing frisbee with the hat back and forth as the hat, as he's like ducking it and making snowballs and throwing them at them. Like that was really fun. I mean, I grew up in la. It's like that snow is a real marvel to me as well. So like I think, probably just like the general, like getting to be outside filming in the snow was probably my favorite part.

26:32ShareMitch:Okay, being from the north and playing in the snow. Like it is fun for the first hour until, like your feet start to get sweaty and then, like they used to get cold because it's wet, like the snow gets to your gloves and your hands get wet and you can't feel your fingers and you're're just like I want to go inside and drink some Campbell's soup.

26:49ShareTom:Yeah, we were drinking. I mean, okay, here's the real. The best part of making Hanky Panky was coming in from the snow into the cabin and then making like hot Ovaltine spiked with all kinds of like whatever booze we had that was great.

27:02ShareMitch:Let me get my chocolate milk and Jack Daniels.

27:05ShareTom:Yeah, that was probably actually one of the drinks we were drinking.

27:11ShareMitch:I wonder how chocolate milk and Jack Daniels would taste Good, jot that down, nick recommended.

27:20ShareTom:Our actual official drink of the film that we were drinking up there. We called it the Heber Creeper. We shot this in Heber, utah. The Heber Valley Railroad has this slow, scenic tourist railroad. We call it the Heber Creeper, and so the Heber Creeper we took that name for. The drink is a whole milk Ovaltine with Kahlua and peppermint schnapps. So it is very Christmassy and very warming and also sneaks up on you and just makes you feel real good if you've been out in the snow for the whole or in a blizzard all day.

27:52ShareThat is a great combo , so you recommend that while people are watching the movie.

27:56ShareMitch:Yes.

27:57ShareTom:Yeah, much more than the other. Like my character, dr Crane in the film is always seen drinking a. We never make much of it. It's a martini, but you see there's marshmallows in it. It's called a marsh-tini and I do not recommend that drink. It is disgusting and no one should have that.

28:18ShareMitch:I'm happy to know that during the movie, people who are drinking on set like you or whatever, in a shot, it's real, that's real drinking, that's real alcohol. That's not just water in a shot like it's real, that's real drinking, that's real alcohol. That's not just water in a martini glass and it's like, ooh , this martini or iced tea pretending to be whiskey Nope, real booze.

28:37ShareTom:We did a combo because there's quite a bit of drinking actually in this film. Most of those cans of bush beer that Cliff drinks, I'm pretty sure that was always beer. Carla is always drinking wine. Sometimes it's wine, sometimes it's not wine. The mushrooms that are consumed are mostly not psilocybin mushrooms but I can't say that with a hundred percent certainty and the martinis were sometimes a martini and sometimes just water with marshmallow in it after a certain amount of hours, a martini and sometimes just water with marshmallow in it after a certain amount of hours.

29:14ShareWell, while you had this movie in the festivals and stuff, what was the kind of reception and stuff you got from the movie?

29:16ShareTom:Just exceptionally positive Actually, no, for real, like surprisingly delightful. I also so. I teach. I teach at Cal state, northridge, and the first audiences to see the movie were my students. Uh, in, like film, one-on-one and in American film history, which are the classes that I teach. Um, which is kind of terrifying because you know I'm the professor, so they assume that I , I like I must know what I'm talking about and then I show them hanky panky and I'm like we're going to do citizen Kane next. I hope I still have credibility or whatever. Um, but, uh, you know, you get the movie gets laughed and all of its screenings it gets. It's gotten laughs sort of start to finish, and we've been

29:58ShareTom:in a couple of small festivals and that's true. And, um, it's hard to say how well it's going to play. You know, for people who are watching it streaming and watching it by themselves, I think it probably is a bit of a different film, but like watching it with an audience is very gratifying because you know when you, when you watch it with an audience, you're just sitting there going. Please let people laugh, please let people laugh, because they have to start laughing early and then laugh the whole way. You know, no one starts laughing halfway through a movie . If you haven't laughed in the beginning of this movie, you're out, you're walking out, right. So mostly the reception has been pretty positive.

30:36ShareTom:You know what? I will say this that, with a couple of mixed reviews, we've gotten mostly pretty good reviews, because who's going to review Hanky Panky and trash it Like these guys with no money? Went out there and tried to make a movie, frankie, and trash it Like these guys with no money went out there and tried to make a movie Idiot Um yeah, a couple of people have been like this movie is was not for me Right. And some people have been like I don't know, this movie is kind of stupid. But also I laughed so hard I almost peed myself a couple of times and it's like then you loved it. What are made? A mixed review? If we made you like what movies are out there making you pee yourself with laughter?

31:07ShareTom:Thank you, this is a great review. It'll be like I don't know, b minus seven out of ten, but I did piss myself laughing like. I was so hard I urinated two thumbs down.

31:17ShareMitch:It's like what? Like what was your benchmark?

31:22ShareTom:What do you want out of looking at movies in general if they can make you piss yourself and that's not an A+? Outrageous, that's what I think .

31:33ShareMoving on just a little bit, if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into filmmaking and what made you decide to pursued directing and writing as opposed to just acting?

31:44ShareTom:Well, what made me pursue directing? I'll say this that was just a necessity of like. Lindsay didn't want to direct this by herself. I think Lindsay had directed a number of shorts, music videos and stuff, and she was like I don't really know if Hanky Panky should be my debut feature or whatever. I was like we'll direct it together, and so it can be our debut feature, whatever. I was like well, let's, we'll direct it together. Uh, and so it. It can be our debut feature, but you can still like make a more serious movie at some point . She was like that sounds like a great, great plan. Um, uh, I don't know. I like I grew up, my parents are both in the industry, my dad is a director and so, like I never wanted to immediately follow in

32:23ShareTom:his, in his footsteps. Um, and so for a really long time I like I went to grad school, did all these other things, and then it was like I think I just want to. I think I really want to like write movies. Um, and I moved. I moved back to LA in like 2013 to like try to do that. So I guess it's been a little over 10 years now. Um, that's, I mean, I don't know . I like, really like making stuff up, like that's really fun , like uh and uh and that's all. I would really like to do. It Like in a perfect world that we just get to write all these movies all the time and I'll write the toe butt movie and write hanky panky too, and then have someone pay me a ton of money and go make it. Um, uh, the reality is, I think , like if you write something

33:02ShareTom:like Hanky Panky or if this is your style, like you kind of have to prove that it might work and be fun and be funny and have to make it yourself. So I will continue to do that until until such a time, as you know, the briefcases of money come arriving to.

33:20ShareMitch:You know, make these movies on a larger scale when Warner Bros is like here's a duffel bag of money, go do this. They got a duffel bag of money Go do this.

33:27ShareTom:They got those duffel bags of money over there. Jeez David Zaslav, where you at ? Where's my briefcase full of free cash flow?

33:39ShareHonestly, I was also going to ask you looking through your IMDb. You've done a lot of acting and you've had other writing experiences on a lot of big shows as well. What, what, uh, what kind of experiences do you have from those?

33:50ShareTom:oh I would. Those were all very like I could have a reel of like I actually started making a reel once of all my tv acting credits , because they're all like one line and so like it's not a funny enough bit, um, but like the real would be. Like it's like a two minute scene and then it cuts over to like some mechanic in the corner being like, hey, and that's me and then it goes to the next scene and then you just you have to sit through 45 minutes of that or whatever to get like the four lines I've ever had. Um, you know, like me as hydra agent number two on marvel agents of shield freeze and that's all I say you said it really well. There was a lot of conviction I mean, I, I'd like to think so.

34:30ShareTom:I played a kazakhstani fireman in an episode of scorpion where they let me write. They were like it just like was written like follow me in russian, or whatever. And then I got there and they were like you speak russian, right? I was like, oh yeah, of course that's how I got this role. So I had to like call a Russian . So I don't even remember what the line was, but it's me saying follow me. However, you say that in Russian, like it's not an illustrious career as an actor. Dr Crane is the performance I guess I'm most proud of, which feels crazy, but I think it holds up, it's funny. Proud of, which feels crazy, but, uh, I think it holds up, it's funny. I thought that character is more realistic than I mean I I

35:11ShareTom:went to grad school and was like I have a phd in english and like I knew a lot of those, I knew dr crane, and so it's kind of like in a a bit of an expanded, more ridiculous version of myself. But also I've met I've met some professors who, who are, who, who are that guy? There's some weird professors running around out there.

35:25ShareMitch:Yeah, myself, but also I've met. I've met some professors who, who are? Who are that guy? There's some weird professors running around out there.

35:29ShareYeah Well, can you tell us I mean, you've, like I said, you've worked on a lot of bigger projects Are there any like starstruck moments that you had, meeting anybody else in the film industry?

35:40ShareTom:I did like meet Kristen wig at a party once and was very starstruck. I thought that was like oh my god, um god, I should have a better answer. I'm not easily starstruck, because I like I don't know, I just like when you like, when you grow up in LA and you grow up like around it, like you meet famous people and like I don't know. Like the other day I was at a cafe and, uh, with my three-year-old, who really loves cars, and Jeremy Piven was at the next table and I was like that's the voice of Lightning McQueen's agent car and she was like what the what are you talking about? I don't know what a voice actor is. I don't remember that character from the franchise, but Not.

36:19ShareLightning McQueen. Yeah, my son, he's two. He just sees him on TV and he goes Go-Go's. I want to watch Go-Go's.

36:26ShareMitch:Yeah, or my nieces. It's just like Bluey, all it is Bluey, bluey I don't even know what Bluey is.

36:35ShareTom:I would be starstruck if I met the voice cast of Bluey. I don't know who they are or what they look like, but I'd be like oh Bandit.

36:41ShareYeah, me and my daughter watch it all the time.

36:44ShareMitch:Yeah, I did see one of your shorts that had popped up in your IMDb, Our Ukrainian.

36:53ShareTom:Sky, where you were a writer.

36:54ShareMitch:I'm guessing that's about the. This is a new one.

36:56ShareTom:It's on the festival circuit right now. Actually, our Ukrainian Sky is sort of. I just actually went to Palm Springs. I was at Amdoc for a screening of it, which is, which is, a really great film festival. That is the thing I worked on with my dad. I've worked a lot with my dad, which is a crazy story that it was just like he was like, hey, this was a few years ago. He was like, hey, I'm doing this crazy thing, I'm going to Ukraine. And I was like what, okay, cool . And he was like, yeah, there's this group of of, uh, lawyers in England who are like, uh, driving used pickup trucks over the border and into Ukraine to donate them to the, the, the war effort there. Um, and I'm going to. I volunteered, just, I signed up to drive a truck and I was

37:40ShareTom:like, great, I think that's fantastic, anyway. So then, like once he was like going, they found out he was a filmmaker and they were like do you want to film this Cause, we'll use it? And like, um, it would be cool. So he put together like a skeleton crew and like, uh, you know, drove, they filmed their experience picking up a truck in London and driving it, you know , uh, into a war zone, basically , and then interviewed a few whoever he could in Kiev and then came back and was like, uh, is this a documentary? I don't know, would you like to help? And I was like, yes, yes, I would like to help. So, uh, like, the job of a writer on a documentary is is obviously quite different than it is like on a on a narrative

38:23ShareTom:feature, and it can mean a lot of different things. And in this case it was a lot about sort of like looking at I think there was about 16 hours of footage that they shot and just being like how, how do we shape this into a 12 minute short story that has a beginning and a middle and an end? Um, which is? I mean, I actually. So I was doing that while I was editing hanky Panky. It's a really fun challenge. I like documentary work like that. It's really cool and this was a good cause. I was very happy to help in any way I could, but it's not like my doc. I was just trying to help. I think this is how we should set it up and maybe we can use this interview and cut to this.

39:02ShareMitch:That's a hell of a premise when it's like hey. Like it doesn't say hey, I'm going to ukraine. You're like okay. It's like yeah, there's british lawyers who are taking used cars to ukraine. It's like british, like what?

39:15ShareTom:yeah, no, but it was. I mean, it was, it was crazy. I think that's like. I think it's a good documentary short for that reason that it's like there are really people who are out there doing kind of interesting things that you would never think about. And it was just like why are, why is this group of people they're not just donating money, they're not just doing whatever they're, they're, you know they've this group of people has like altered their lives and because, like, what they discovered is that, like most of the drivers who would go to Ukraine like had like a life changing experience doing this and so have done it over and over again, and so now they've donated the last time I talked to them like three or four

39:55ShareTom:hundred trucks. So it's become this whole thing where they are taking these used pickups and getting them over there and handing them off directly to the military. I don't know, I mean.

40:08ShareMitch:I think it's just pretty cool. That is pretty cool, and you said it's already in the festival circuit.

40:14ShareTom:Yeah, so, like you know, we it was sort of the group that was doing this financed it. So they it's their project and they have it and they sort of have been. I think they're also using it for fundraising and we just were sort of have been I think they're also using it for fundraising, um, and, and we just were sort of like my, my interest was like, look, I'm happy to help this group doing whatever they're doing, but I was like I think it's also important just as a talking piece to keep Ukraine in the, in the, you know, international conflict conversation, right, um , and so we've been trying to just sort of like get it in front of audiences wherever possible like this is still happening. Yeah, this is, this is.

40:54ShareTom:They're still bringing the trucks over there you know, um, so you know it's. I think you know there's a world where, like it, if, like we really, if our team was really committed, we'd like go like I'm not going to do this, like I have young kids and my dad is like not going to do this, but like somebody should like embed with the troops and do a full feature-length documentary on these trucks, because I think it's interesting. Um, but you know, in our sort of modest way, we were like, okay, we can make this little human interest piece about like why this group of people wanted to do this crazy thing. And and they continue to.

41:27ShareMitch:That's the crazy part about like now, because like you can pretty much YouTube like Ukraine, russia war and you can get footage like hours of soldiers who have. Gopros, strapped to their vests or strapped to their helmets, and you can just watch the war.

41:40ShareYeah, I mean it could be live, or it could be like it could be live, or it could be a couple hours old, yeah.

41:43ShareMitch:I mean, that really sort of became a thing with, like Iraq towards the later stages, where dudes had GoPros and it's just some dude at a fob , him and his boys hanging out smoking Marlboros, and then it's like oh, that's one shot, charlie. He shoots at our base every hour one time just to make us mad.

42:00ShareTom:And then they just make like a whole video bit about it.

42:05ShareMitch:Just make like a whole video bit about it. And it's like I'm really surprised like that filmmaking like that hasn't really become like a thing like just from soldiers themselves, like they just don't have like their own youtube channel. It's like the, like the ukrainalogs, where it's like episode three, like you know, you know shit got real, or it's like episode four, it's like chow time and it's just like their mundane lives. A little bit I've mixed in with combat. I'd watch that show. You should write that, nick.

42:31ShareTom:You gotta write. You keep coming up with these ideas. You gotta write them.

42:35ShareMitch:I'm just an idea guy. I can't write to save my life and my handwriting is horrible. I could write a great idea and then I wouldn't be able to read it later.

42:42ShareYou could get a typewriter, guess he comes up with ideas and he's like, hey, can y'all do that? He came up, he wanted us to do kind of like the the chicken. Uh, was it robot chicken? With like the action figures. So I made like three or four episodes where we have our own figures talking to whoever our guest is, but it took way too much time for me compared to what I have to actually edit.

43:03ShareTom:Oh yeah, stop yeah. Stop motion is one of the most labor-intensive processes to make anything.

43:10ShareMitch:We weren't even trying to stop motion.

43:11ShareTom:It's much easier to just act in it to do live action .

43:13ShareMitch:We weren't even trying to do stop motion. I was like, is there a way you could have? We had a little set and it had a couch and little microphones and a Rodecaster and little headsets, and it's just little action figures sitting on like breakable wrestling furniture and just like you know like it cuts to, like one of us is talking, and it's just like it's just a still shot of that person just standing like this, and it may be it might move to that and that was it.

43:35ShareTom:There was no other movement. I mean, you know I'm on board Like this was a. This is the villain of my movie . If you put him down somewhere you can't see the hand. It's just like now he's talking to you all of a sudden. That's it. I can't do it. I'm not the puppeteer. I don't want to do Toby's job for him. There's still gaffers taping this to where all the blood bags work.

44:01ShareMitch:It's already been 45. I don't want to keep you any longer. I know you took enough time out of your day to talk to us.

44:06ShareTom:I'm going to have a class and teach at some point.

44:09ShareBefore you go. I did want to ask. You told us that you're going to try and still work on Hickey Panky 2. Is there any other projects that you're working on or that you want to promote with friends or anything like that?

44:19ShareTom:Yes, stay tuned for my big Jewish Hanukkah horror movie, which is called Dreddle you have. Jewish Hanukkah horror. Yeah, there's not enough Jewish horror and I have several pitches. I really want to do a Golem movie too, but I think Dreddle once I came up with that name I was like I got to write it. Now I still haven't quite cracked it working on it, but that's going to be the next. Uh fun fact I think will be uh, you know, you spin the right. Now I'm like maybe if you spin the dreidel and that, like, you get one of the 10 plagues of egypt. If you lose, like I'm not really sure I know, that's kind of like a jumanji yeah, whatever it lands.

44:59ShareYeah, exactly, you know negative connotation. Whatever it lands on it does something to you.

45:04ShareMitch:Or it spins like bad things are going to happen, like the symbols on the side turn glowing red and it spins faster and faster and faster.

45:12ShareTom:Yeah, working title is just Jew Manji.

45:18ShareMitch:And we're banned in Israel. I am.

45:24ShareTom:I mean our listeners, if they can't tell that I'm Jewish from being an LA screenwriter who's talking about all this stuff.

45:30ShareI am Jewish he has the pass, he's allowed to do it.

45:35ShareTom:I'm allowed to. That's all I'm allowed to do is Hanukkah horror movies, I think , so I'm going to go for it.

45:41ShareMitch:I look forward to seeing Dreddle and Hanky Panky too.

45:45ShareTom:Napkins Reloaded or whatever the sequel, a lot of big announcements heard first on this podcast. We're normally late to the party, but it's nice to be first for once Way ahead of the game here on a movie that I just have the idea for and haven't even written yet.

46:02ShareMitch:Is there anything else you wanted to plug while we got you God?

46:05ShareTom:even written yet. Is there anything else you wanted to plug while we got you? God, I probably should be. No, that's it. Just Hanky Panky. April 19th on Amazon, google, apple, all the really funny named ones. There's something called Hoopla out there. They're like Voodoo Hoopla. Yeah, there's all kinds of great, but it'll be everywhere and that's it.

46:23ShareMitch:All right Well thank you everybody who joined us for this interview with writer director Nick Roth for did Hanky Panky, ukrainian Sky our. Ukrainian. Sky which is in the festival circuit. He's a teacher, he's a professor, he's got a lot going on and I hope you enjoyed our interview and we'll catch you next time.