Michael Davis Of Underdawg Entertainment: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Became A Filmmaker
An Interview With Guernslye Honoré
Super ego leads to super success. You’ll stumble if you’re humble. My parents raised me to have humility. They professed that it was crass to brag. They said if I was over confident, people would dislike me, and I would eventually take a great fall. Wrong. This philosophy does not work in Hollywood. If you say you are the next big thing, some people will believe you are the next big thing. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy.
As a part of our series called “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Became A Filmmaker”, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Michael Davis.
Writer/Director/Animator Michael Davis is making his eighth feature film BLAST ’EM UP, a scifi, animated follow up to his live action film SHOOT ’EM UP. In true independent film spirit, Davis is animating the feature film all-by-himself.BLAST ’EM UP is a heist film set in the distant future: When a rag tag team of space thieves attempt the greatest heist of their careers, they encounter aliens hell bent on destroying mankind. Using their unique skills, the thieves must stop the alien force, save humanity, and maybe still pull off their grand theft astro.
Davis has set up a BLAST ’EM UP KICKSTARTER crowdfund campaign to help get the film made. It runs through June 27, 2024. You can support the film by clicking on the link here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/312678368/blast-em-up
BLAST ’EM UP is the spiritual follow up to SHOOT ’EM UP, the high-paced action thriller starring Clive Owen (CHILDREN OF MEN) and Paul Giamatti (SIDEWAYS). On this film, Michael drew 17,000 drawings to create fifteen minutes of previz animation to plan all of the action sequences. This animation convinced Clive Owen to star in the film.
Davis amped up his animation artistry in his most recent feature NIXED — the story of former president Richard Nixon solving the mystery of who really assassinated John F. Kennedy in an adult animated political cartoon epic that mixes mostly fact with a little fiction. Davis animated the entire film himself. Over the past four years, he has worked seven days a week, sometimes eighteen hours a day, to draw thousands of images all-by-himself to bring NIXED to life.
In 1996, armed with his life’s savings and life experiences, Davis wrote and directed the much praised EIGHT DAYS A WEEK, a loosely autobiographical, coming-of-age story starring Keri Russell (in one of her first leading film roles), which won the Audience Award at the 1997 Slamdance Film Festival.
The success of EIGHT DAYS A WEEK allowed Davis to write and direct two more romantic comedies, 100 GIRLS (with Jonathan Tucker and Katherine Heigl) and 100 WOMEN (starring Jennifer Morrison), both released by Lions Gate. He branched out into horror with the thriller, MONSTER MAN. Michael’s first feature is the 1994 film BEANSTALK, a children’s adventure story that modernizes the classic Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale.
His other directing credits include a short film funded by Steven Spielberg for a birthday celebration in honor of the late Steven Ross of Time Warner. In the film, among his cast are filmmakers George Lucas, Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg along with performers Barbra Streisand, Quincy Jones, and Chevy Chase.
Davis was an undergraduate illustration major at Parsons School of Design in New York where he honed his skill as an artist and an animator. After a stint as an animation director in Washington D.C., Davis went to USC’s School of Cinema-TV where he won the Edward G. Small Directing Scholarship.
After graduating USC, he apprenticed under several of Hollywood’s top directors as a storyboard artist. His work includes a turn as storyboard artist on the groundbreaking PEE WEE’S PLAYHOUSE and the hugely successful TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES live-action movie plus sketching sequences for John McTiernan’s MEDICINE MAN and commercials for Michael Apted.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit of the ‘backstory’ of how you grew up?
Growing up in 1970’s Rockville, Maryland, I was obsessed with Disney animation and James Bond. I created a notebook full of drawings for a dog-centric story inspired by Disney’s ARISTOCATS. I constantly drew Mickey Mouse on the back of my math homework. My sixth grade teacher was intrigued by the math homework masterpieces. He let me borrow his Super 8 camera and slip out of class early to go the school’s AV equipment room where I made my first animated film, JACK AND THE BEANSTALK. Ironically, my first feature was BEANSTALK. In seventh grade, I became a 007 fanatic. Pre-VCR era, I filmed Bond movies off the TV and in movie theaters. My Christian mom wouldn’t let me read the Fleming 007 novels until my dad cut out the sex scenes. Outlandish sex saturate my films from a teen boy’s amorous encounter with a watermelon in EIGHT DAYS A WEEK to a hero gunfighting while making love in SHOOT ’EM UP. I revel in cinematic raunch, probably a reaction to my mom’s puritanism.
After high school, I studied illustration at Parsons School of Design. During the summers, I worked at an animation studio Broadcast Arts, known for the original MTV logos. I animated happy air molecules demonstrating Bernoulli’s principle and dancing DC Lottery cards. Next, I went to USC’s School of Cinema-TV, George Lucas’s alma mater. Disney animation, James Bond and Star Wars had now formed my holy trinity.
In 1998, I started working as a storyboard artist and writing screenplays which eventually led to directing my script BEANSTALK for the Roger Corman-esque Charlie Band (PUPPET MASTER SERIES) and his Full Moon Studios. Charlie once escaped a car bomb planted as revenge for not paying his employees. I never parked in the studio parking lot.
BEANSTALK’s low budget production values prevented me from getting big studio directing work. So with my life savings, I made EIGHT DAYS A WEEK, a Slamdance Audience Award winner. More indy films followed like 100 GIRLS, 100 WOMEN, and MONSTER MAN.
The small features didn’t pay much. I was in debt. Luckily, USC classmate Don Murphy (TRANSFORMERS) took my SHOOT ’EM UP screenplay along with my drawn animation of the twelve imaginative action scenes in the project to New Line Cinema and set the film up. Because I’d become as Clive Owen put it, “An overnight sensation after twenty years,” I had the heat to get the movie made.
SHOOT ’EM UP was a cult hit, but didn’t make money which put me in “director’s jail.” Studios hire directors with hits, but nothing stops me from making movies. I will just animate them. I recently drew all-by-myself an animated feature NIXED, a dark comedy about Richard Nixon solving the murder of JFK. NIXED premiered at The Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Recently, I’ve taught myself computer animation. I’m going to animate another feature all-by-myself, BLAST ’EM UP, a scifi follow-up to SHOOT ’EM UP. It combines everything I’ve loved and experienced: animation, Star Wars-like universe, SHOOT ’EM UP/007 type action with independent film freedom. Cool!
Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?
In junior high school, I fought depression. I felt left behind by my old elementary school classmates who bonded into new cliques. My parents sent me to a psychiatrist because I cried everyday before I went to school. The psychiatrist gave me an IQ test. I tested one point below genius. The psychiatrist surmised that I didn’t connect with my classmates because my mind was in a different intellectual space than my contemporaries.
I know it sounds crazy, but the only thing that brought joy in my life was James Bond. I honestly believe 007 saved me. Instead of listening to rock n’ roll while doing my homework, I would listen to entire 007 movies I’d secretly recorded at movie theaters. Once at the Uptown Theater, I tipped over my knapsack. The back up batteries for my recorder fell out and proceeded to roll down the inclined theater hitting the feet of several audiences members on the way. The 007 movies were so engrained in my head, I easily recited Auric Goldfinger’s Operation Grand Slam speech as my audition for a high school play. I got the part. It was years later that I realized that Bond was pure escapism. The novels and the films temporarily took me away from my sadness by whisking me away to exotic places by a hero I wished I could be. This is the power of story.
I devoured all the Fleming 007 novels in six months. I was so upset that there were no more new adventures to read, I decided to write my own Bond adventures. In the first novel, Masquerade of Death, Bond faces an opponent, who has used plastic surgery to create exact doubles of all the great leaders of the world. He planned to dominate the world by kidnapping the real leaders and replacing them with his look-alike pawns. My only criticism of the book was I named the villain Igor Stravinsky unaware that I had subconsciously stolen the moniker from the great Russian composer. In my second effort Spearhead, Bond battles a criminal organization more powerful than S.P.E.C.T.R.E, called O.M.E.G.A. — Operatives of Mass-scale Extortion and Global Annihilation.
The novels weren’t hobby projects. They weren’t short stories. They were long, 100 pages typed single spaced tomes. I discovered I was a good storyteller. I didn’t know it then, but now I believe the act of creation and escaping into worlds from my imagination staved off my depression. It takes tons of stamina to direct a movie, live action or animated. Writing the novels foreshadowed the fortitude I would need in the future as a feature filmmaker. It raised my self-esteemed, and I began to believe I might accomplish exciting things with my life by being a storyteller.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your filmmaking career?
I put Steven Spielberg into a padded room. It was a scene in a short I wrote and directed for Spielberg. The film was a birthday gift for Spielberg mentor, Steve Ross, the CEO of Time-Warner. It was going to be screened at Ross’s Long Island estate where all of his friends were going to attend. It was going to be Ross’s last birthday as cancer was eating him up. The film was a take-off of Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. In it, we got to see how people’s lives would be drastically changed if Steve Ross had never been born. Clint Eastwood would only become an extra, who got shot by another actor playing Dirty Harry. I convinced Clint to wield a tiny baby derringer while facing down a cop with a huge Magnum .44. I made George Lucas a car mechanic tinkering with an engine that made R2D2 beeps. Steven Spielberg was committed to a padded room in an insane asylum because he went nuts when no one would green light his movies. He sculpted an E.T. out of shaving cream similar to Richard Dreyfus sculpting a mountain out of mash potatoes in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND.
Spielberg was my idol. I dressed up as Indiana Jones for the opening night of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and appeared in costume on local television when the 10 o’clock news crew filmed me in the long line of movie fans waiting to enter the theater. In art school, I made an animatic of an Indiana Jones action sequence in which Indy uses his bullwhip to lasso the wheel of a biplane that a villain uses to escape. Instead of having a truck drag Indy across the desert while clutching his whip, Indy is now flying behind the plane with his whip as his life line. Indy makes it onto the airplane’s wing and has an epic fight with his opponent. This animatic foreshadows me making cool action scenes in SHOOT ’EM UP over twenty years later.
I actually look a bit like Spielberg. People in Hollywood often mistook me for Spielberg although I am a foot taller. Pierce Brosnan once yelled at me across a crowded set saying “How’s Hook? How’s your new movie, Hook?” Even face-to-face with the-man-who-would-be-Bond, it took a bit of convincing to persuade Pierce I was not the famed director. Leeza Gibbons of Entertainment Tonight started interviewing me on camera at a gala event believing I was Spielberg.
You can understand directing Steven Spielberg in the Steven Ross short was a big moment for me.
I was filming Steven’s wife, Kate Capshaw, before doing the padded room scene with Steven. Kate remarked that not only did I look like her husband, but I sounded like him, too! I recounted to her the story of meeting Steven’s mother, Leah Adler, who ran a local restaurant The Milky Way. When I met Spielberg’s mom while dining at her restaurant, I’d asked Ms. Adler if I looked like her son. In retelling the story to Kate Capshaw, I used a funny high pitched, feminine voice in my impression of Ms. Adler. Steven’s mom said to me,“Now, look up at me. Look to your left. Look to your right. Now, look back at me. Ohhhhh, you’re much more handsome than Steven is!” Kate roared with laughter and begged me to tell Steven. I was unsure. Nobody wants to hear your mother say something like that.
I told the story doing the impression of his mom with the same funny, high pitch, feminine voice I had used before. After delivering my final line, “Ohhhhh, you’re much more handsome than Steven isI” Steven just stared at me blankly. All serious. Not cracking a smile. Then, he said…
“I never knew my mom sounded like Satyajit Ray,” referring the great Indian filmmaker. That was it. He never said anything more about it. Well, I had blown it. Steven was great in the scene. He followed my direction, even waiting for me to yell cut after getting pie-ed-in-the-face with shaving cream. Steven often supported up and coming filmmakers by letting them direct an episode of his show SEAQUEST. I got no such invitation. I never met him again. I was told second hand that he “loved” the Steven Ross film I made. I take consolation in this.
Who are some of the most interesting people you have interacted with? What was that like? Do you have any stories?
Peter Gould, co-creator of BETTER CALL SAUL and a writer and director on BREAKING BAD is one of my best friends. We meet at USC film school and after graduation, we were writing partners for a couple of years. Our first paid writing job was rewriting DOUBLE DRAGON, a feature based on the then popular video game. My favorite thing about Peter is his laugh. He immediately makes me feel good by sincerely chuckling at any thing I say that is remotely funny. I’ve learned from him that people don’t remember what you do or say. People remember how you make them feel. Peter always made me and whoever we pitched to feel great. He knows everything about film. He has every copy of American Cinematographer magazine published since 1970 in hard copy. His mom’s NYC apartment has a room dedicated to his floor-to-ceiling stacks of the magazine. Whenever I am low, he will tell some anecdote from his childhood. This is my favorite. At age 13 and already an aspiring filmmaker, Peter was determined to see the X-rated FLESH GORDAN for the visual effects. He bought a costume shop mustache, glued it on, and on tIp toes asked to buy a ticket at the box office. His daring disguise worked! They sold him a ticket. He went in and saw FLESH GORDAN. He was unimpressed with the visual effects but learned a great life lesson. You must be bold to succeed.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Don Murphy (TRANSFORMERS) is the reason I got to make SHOOT ’EM UP, my film starring Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti. Don won’t take no for an answer and is unafraid of confrontation. He is legendary for punching Quentin Tarantino in a restaurant. He has so much courage.
SHOOT ’EM UP received hugely positive script coverage at New Line Cinema. The story is about a hard-boiled gunman, who must protect a newborn baby from assassins that are targeting the baby for death. A New Line Vice President passed on the project because she thought that the president of the company, Toby Emmerich, would be disturbed by the script because he and his wife were going to have a baby soon. Typically, when filmmakers get a pass at a studio, it’s over. You move on and try to set the project up elsewhere. Not Don. He believed that SHOOT ’EM UP with its wild action scenes and pulpy tone was perfect for New Line Cinema, home of the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and the TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES movies. Don approached Jeff Katz, a director of development at the studio. Don convinced Jeff to go around his VP boss, who had passed and show the script to the other studio VP Cale Boyter. Cale loved the script, and the project was kept alive at New Line.
Still, getting a green light for any movie requires the planets to align. SHOOT ’EM UP benefited from THE LORD OF THE RINGS films. A mini-major, not a deep pockets major studio, New Line sunk all their money into Peter Jackson’s trilogy. They stopped making other movies because all their capital supported the Middle Earth films. Seven months passed since we had first shown Cale Boyter our script. I thought we were dead a New Line. I thought we should roll the dice elsewhere. For over half a year, Don counseled patience. SHOOT ’EM UP was a great fit at New Line. When THE RETURN OF THE KING came out, Don had a phone call with Cale Boyter, who was lamenting that he had no movies in the pipeline. They had stopped script development during the LOTR era. Don told Cale that he DID have a film in the pipeline — SHOOT ’EM UP. New Line had not optioned the script, but Don shrewdly projected a tone that New Line did control it. He made Cale feel it was their property. Don had been periodically checking in with Cale and dropping little updates about the project to keep our film alive in the VP’s head. Cale got excited that my script was virtually ready for production. It only needed a slight polish. Cale presented SHOOT ’EM UP to Bob Shaye, the head of the studio. Bob loved it and SHOOT ’EM UP was soon green lit. Don was smart, patient, and strategic.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Our mistakes are our style.” This was told to me by Parsons School of Design illustration instructor David Passalacqua. Dave Passalacqua was known for illustrating big Hollywood movie posters. You may remember the sketchy face of Clint Eastwood on THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES poster. That’s Dave’s work. I interpreted his life lesson quote to mean this: Embrace what you do that is not vanilla, not the norm, different, and even eccentric. That’s what makes the work uniquely yours. Good examples are the diametrically opposed Woody Allen films and the Michael Bay movies. As beloved as Woody Allen films are, they are also static and rarely explore the power and movement of cinematic language. Audiences love Woody’s witty, sharp, observant dialogue. People basically go to listen to his movies not watch them. Objectively, Woody’s weakness, his “mistake,” is that he is not cinematic. However, the lack of startling visuals allows viewers to really concentrate on his superb spoken word. His mistake is his style. Michael Bay movies have outlandish plots and cardboard characters. He’s no Woody Allen. Whether you like or hate Michael Bay movies, you must admit there is an enormous amount of skill and craft that goes into making them. From his hot backlit stars to his painterly soft shallow depth of field long lens shots along with his distorted extreme wide lens compositions, his movies are beautifully photographed. Combine that with his staggeringly enormous action and visual effects sequences, one must admit that he is a master of eye candy. Because he has a fantastic visual “style,” audiences barely have time to register his terrible characters and ridiculous dialogue — his mistakes are his style.
I’ve applied the “Our mistakes are our style” philosophy in all my movies. My films have eccentric characters drawn from my own life. They have a “funny because it’s true” quality. These characters are very memorable. Sometimes memorable because they say coarse, raunchy things. The teenage protagonist in EIGHT DAYS A WEEK learns his parents met when his nurse mom redressed his dad’s bandages after a hemorrhoids operation. A “traumatized sphincter” brought the lovebirds together. This is how my own parents met. In the first encounter between Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti, Giamatti’s character Hertz gleefully tells a dirty limerick. The limerick is thematically tied to the scene, but you’d never hear a standard studio villain speak this way. I put it in because it was my dad’s favorite joke. It works for me because it is authentic. I’ve heard the limerick told many times, often in inappropriate situations. The limerick scene in the film always delights me because it reminds me of my dad.
I love action movies especially the ones in James Bond movies. I hate it when action scenes lack creativity. They need imagination. The best example of creative action is in Goldfinger in which 007 electrocutes the henchman Oddjob. Just as Oddjob reaches for his deadly steel brimmed hat stuck between Fort Knox metal bars, Bond dives and touches an exposed power cable to the bars. Electricity is conducted through the metal of the hat shocking Oddjob. Hoisted by his own derby. Action creativity! I love it. I’d never seen an action sequence like it before. So, in SHOOT ’EM UP, I made every action set piece new and unique with imaginative never-before-seen ideas. I had a gunfight during sex while Clive is sexually joined with Monica Bellucci. There’s a gun fight during a baby’s birth. The umbilical cord is cut by shooting a bullet through it. I created a shoot out in mid-air while skydiving. And so on. Now, if I had only a few of these kind of sequences in the movie, the film would have been viewed as little wild, but I packed in one crazy gun fight after another with very short plot scenes in-between to drive the story along. Since the movie was jam packed with wild, smart action, the film takes on a violent absurdity. It was a blood soaked Looney Tune. The story spends little time on character development and plot — my mistake — but it is a joyful feast of creative, never-before-seen action sequences — my style. It’s bonkers. Hardcore action fans love it. One YouTube reviewer, Space Ice, calls SHOOT ’EM UP “Mankind’s Greatest Achievement.” The film has become a cult classic.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
As I mentioned before, I’m making a scifi animated follow-up to SHOOT ’EM UP called BLAST ’EM UP. It’s the spiritual follow-up to SHOOT ’EM UP. I am so stoked about my new film. SHOOT ’EM UP had all the cool things you can do with a gun fight. BLAST ’EM UP has all the cool things you can do with a blaster fight! It will also have all the elements I love: Robots. Aliens. Spaceships.
I hand animated my most recent feature length film NIXED, but I know I can’t do justice to the futuristic world of BLAST ’EM UP by drawing it. So, I taught myself computer generated animation. Today’s software is amazing. I feel soooooo empowered. Nobody can stop me from making a movie! Whatever fantastic setting or incredible action I dream up in my head, I can now turn it into a scene in a CGI animated movie.
I have already started animating this scifi heist film BLAST ’EM UP. There are clips of it all over social media.
My BLAST ’EM UP Kickstarter crowdfund campaign is also up and running through June 27th. I am trying to raise funds for the few things I can’t do myself on the film — like voice acting, sound design and soundtrack music. People can find the link to the BLAST ’EM UP Kickstarter add the end of this interview.
Which aspect of your work makes you most proud? Can you explain or give a story?
My films have my unique voice. People recognize that only Michael Davis could make that film. I’ve have had fans write letters telling me that they saw EIGHT DAYS A WEEK, and then years later, they would stumble across 100 GIRLS. They’d immediately think it had the same playful fun they enjoyed in EIGHT DAYS A WEEK. When they looked up info on the films, they’re happy to know they were right. I had made both films. My films are huge escapist entertainment. People always feel good or pumped up after watching them. One fan said they liked 100 GIRLS better than TITANIC. It feels great to know that it’s not the money on screen or the stars that resonate with people. It’s the spirit of the story.
Eric Jungmann, the star of my horror movie MONSTER MAN, was approached by an unsheltered man at a Starbucks. The man got real close and said “Where’s F&@K Face.” The monster in the film had a scars all over his face, and thus was called F&@K Face. The guy recognized Eric from the film. Eric was eventually able to learn that the man would save up enough money to rent a hotel room once a month to get cleaned up. On one of the hotel nights, the guy decided to use his special evening to watch MONSTER MAN. Of all things, he watched my movie. Come on. That’s a huge compliment. MONSTER MAN also has the same young, male buddy-comedy voice as EIGHT DAYS A WEEK and 100 GIRLS.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
1. Entrances and exits are important. Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, writers of ED WOOD, THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT, MAN ON THE MOON, and BIG EYES, came aboard as producers on a script I wrote about Alfred Kinsey, the world’s first sex researcher. They coached me to start off the pitch with small talk, but to look for signs from the person we were pitching to that they were ready to hear our story. More importantly, they stressed the importance of leaving the meeting once we knew that people liked our pitch. They explained that the longer the meeting continued, the more likely something might come up that made someone like our story less. Rarely can you make someone like your project more by staying in the meeting longer. Once, I was at Disney and they were very interested in me writing their film DINOSAUR which was released in 2000. In fact, I felt they were offering me the job in the room. Towards the end of the meeting, I was excited to report that I had just landed my first feature film directing job, BEANSTALK, for straight-to-video studio Full Moon. I thought that this news would bolster my standing. I was moving up in the business. No. It blew up in my face. Disney thought I would not be available immediately to start writing DINOSAUR. So, they moved on to other writers. You need to exit meetings sooner rather than later.
2. Readers are leaders. A couple of my USC classmates and I would get together for Monday Night Football. When the NFL season ended, we wanted to continue our Monday night gatherings. We decided to do something constructive. We took a weekly Monday night seminar on screenwriting taught by story guru John Trudy. Story experts break down story into three acts, but John Trudy breaks down story into 22 steps. He also explains how different genres emphasize certain steps more than others. After the series of classes ended, I read his book The Anatomy of Story. It was fantastic and was even more detailed than his seminar. His information was better than what I learned in all of my USC scriptwriting classes combined. I started reading every screenwriting book including Lynda Seger’s Making A Good Script Great and Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! Very good books. Then, I read a great one. Writing for Emotional Impact by Karl Iglesias. It is the only book on story that explains how to get audiences rooting for the main character and invested in their goal. We go to movies to be emotionally moved — and that is the only book that really talks about emotion. I still read books on story and screenwriting. I learn something from every book I read.
Scott Alexander also counseled me to read more, especially non-fiction. He said by reading biographies you discover amazing character details that are funny because they’re true and anecdotes that are stranger than fiction. A writer can use these real life character details to enrich their fictional characters. I read a biography on Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s. In it, he described how he studied color. Red and gold colors stimulate people. People actually eat faster in rooms with these colors. So that’s why the inside of a McDonald’s have red, orange and yellow colors. I had a script with a character, who was an expert at surveillance. In the story, his biggest challenge was staying awake while on the job. So, using what I learned from the Ray Kroc bio, I wrote this into my story: The Surveillance King would always prepare his “nest” — where he was based for a stakeout — by painting the room red to help him from falling asleep on a long assignment. He also dressed in red shirts. He believed even having red fabric in his peripheral vision helped keep him alert. There are so many benefits to reading. Many of those can help in screenwriting.
3. Bonehead today. Studio Head tomorrow. Don’t under estimate people you think are idiots and boneheads. More likely than not, these people will be hugely successful, and you’ll be the idiot and bonehead for ignoring them. I also read something awhile back that explains this. Dumb people often are more successful than smart people because sometimes they don’t realize they just said or did something stupid. Instead of being embarrassed and shrinking away, they blindly, boldly, and confidently forge ahead undaunted by their faux pas. They don’t know they made a mistake. They believe they’re awesome. They become awesome. There was a guy down at USC that was a slacked jawed neanderthal that I described as “The Missing Link.” I thought no way this dude would ever make it in Hollywood. I was completely wrong. Not only did he become a top cinematographer on major motion pictures, he’s become a film director, who has made movies with the biggest Hollywood stars. I am the idiot and bonehead .
4. Super ego leads to super success. You’ll stumble if you’re humble. My parents raised me to have humility. They professed that it was crass to brag. They said if I was over confident, people would dislike me, and I would eventually take a great fall. Wrong. This philosophy does not work in Hollywood. If you say you are the next big thing, some people will believe you are the next big thing. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy.
At USC film school, I knew the very talented John Singleton, writer and director of such great films as BOYZ IN THE HOOD, POETIC JUSTICE, HIGHER LEARNING and ROSEWOOD. At age 24, John was nominated for Academy Awards for both Directing and Best Original Screenplay for BOYZ IN THE HOOD. Action fan that I am, I love his 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS and FOUR BROTHERS films. I also knew John from PEE WEE’S PLAYHOUSE. I was the storyboard artist on the show, and John was the PA watching the soundstage door to the set. One day, we got to chatting. John said “When I get out of film school, people are going to be chasing me like I am Magic Johnson.” I was turned off by this per my parental values instilled in me. Look what happened. People DID chase him like Magic Johnson when he wrote and directed BOYZ IN THE HOOD.
One day at film school, I was walking down the hall and John approaches me. He says, “Hey, Michael. I was just awarded the Jack Nicholson writing scholarship. The school is giving me $5000.” I complimented him. Three days later, he enthusiastically told me this again. The same producer of PEE WEE’S PLAYHOUSE had a shoot for another show out in Malibu. I was there delivering more storyboards. Working as a PA, John shows up for the shoot. He rolls down his car window and says to me, “Hey, Michael. I was just awarded the Jack Nicholson writing scholarship. The school is giving me $5000.” Later that day, my girlfriend from USC film school visited me on the set. Recognizing her from school, John dashed across the beach to tell her about the scholarship. Because I had this “be humble at all costs” philosophy drummed into my head by my parents, I didn’t like all of John’s self promoting — even though you have to do it in the ultra competitive world of Hollywood. So being the idiot and bonehead that I was, I played a mean trick on John. The Los Angeles Times Sunday paper use to have a big arts section filled with stories about the entertainment business. There was no article about the scholarships at USC, but I told John that there was an article in the Times about John winning the Jack Nicolson Writing Award. I gave him the arts section and for three straight hours, John flipped through every page of the paper looking for the phantom story on his scholarship. Whenever he asked me where the article was, I’d just tell him it was in there somewhere. I thought my trick was funny, but the real joke was on me. It took me twenty years longer than John to direct a studio feature film. I only made one Hollywood studio movie. John directed nine studio feature films and produced six. Many of them were hits and most of them were critically acclaimed. He was nominated for several Emmys. He will be greatly missed. Don’t be afraid to promote yourself loudly — and don’t feel bad about it — everyone is self promoting. You might as well do it, too. And if you are super talented like John, it will help you achieve your dreams.
5. To be the smartest filmmaker in the room, don’t be the smartest person the the room This philosophy is the exact opposite of the wisdom I just recounted. People like to work with people that make them feel good. This means kiss the ring. Don’t be the funniest or smartest person in the room even if you probably are. If you make people feel positive in the room, they will feel positive about your work. You do this by letting the spotlight land on others in the room. People feel good when they feel important — when their words are heard and their ideas applauded. If you disagree with a suggestion, don’t debate the point. Express enthusiasm. You don’t have to take the note. Often, the person giving the note will forget they ever gave it. But they will remember if you disagreed with them. Also sometimes, there’s a good idea hidden inside a bad idea. There is a reason a person makes a comment or criticism. They may do a terrible job explaining their thoughts, but many times — if you dig deep trying to find the reason someone made a seemingly stupid comment — you may find a great idea that will improve your work.
I was storyboarding NIGHT GAME directed by Peter Masterson, who made the film version of BEST LITTLE WHORE HOUSE IN TEXAS. The cinematographer was the great Fred Murphy of HOOSIERS. I loved working with Fred. The whole crew was on a tech scout at an abandoned construction site. It was a skeleton of vertical wood studs. No walls were ever put up as the project went bankrupt. Backlit by the sun, it looked like an excitingly graphic, giant set of crosshatchings. Very, very cinematic. Peter Masterson explained to everyone the blocking and where the camera would be go. His camera placement was 180 degrees from where it should be. With his plan, the sun was shining on the actors and the back of the camera was to the dynamic backlit vertical wood studs. His shot list did not take advantage at all of the cinematic potential of the location. Stupid me, I spoke up probably with an air of being the smartest man on the room (I was young.) I said “Hey Peter, if you pointed the camera this way, you’d capture…” I knew I was stupid the moment I opened my mouth. I had also made the most important man in the room feel foolish. I worked for another two weeks, but I had been promised more work. I had been politely shoved out the door. Even though Fred Murphy thought I had talent and good ideas, he distanced himself from me. It’s tricky. Sometimes you need be the cockiest bastard out there and sometimes you need to shut up and let someone else be the big cheese. I am still learning when to pick my moments.
When you create a film, which stakeholders have the greatest impact on the artistic and cinematic choices you make? Is it the viewers, the critics, the financiers, or your own personal artistic vision? Can you share a story with us or give an example about what you mean?
On every movie, a different force has the greatest impact on the vision of the film. As a writer/director, I have had the biggest impact on my films. However, I have been told that studios prefer to separate the roles of writer and director because it gives them more control. Divide and conquer. Producer and studios alway assume a filmmaker must be “handled” even when the filmmaker is responsible and not an out-of-control artist mad man. This is because once the film is in production, they have little to do to help the film — but they want to validate themselves to the studio or their bosses — so they make a big deal out of “handling” the director.
I take it as a huge compliment when someone recognizes my voice, my style, my fingerprints on a movie, but it has worked against me. After the release of SHOOT ’EM UP, I went in to pitch to direct RED 2, the follow up to the Bruce Willis/Helen Mirren movie action movie. After my pitch, the VP at Summit Entertainment called my agent and said “Michael’s director’s pitch was one of the best presentations I’ve ever seen.” I didn’t get the job.
Later, I invited this VP out to dinner because I liked him and valued his Hollywood business insights. He told me one of the reasons I didn’t get the job was he felt — in a positive way — all my films were uniquely my own. The movies felt like Michael Davis films. But unfortunately, the studio feared if I directed their new project that it would be a “Michael Davis film, not a Red film.”
I appreciated this film executive’s honesty. It is one of the reasons I pivoted from live action films to animation. It finally sunk into my thick skull that I was going to continue face hardship and heart breaking challenges attempting to be a writer/director with a unique vision in the live action studio world. I am tired of chasing money, directing jobs and distribution deals. I just love making films and telling stories. That’s why I am now making animated features like BLAST ’EM UP. Total control. Nobody can stop me from making movies.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
The most amazing thing in the world is the human brain. There is so much that we need to learn about it and
what we do know is not very well publicized or taught. I’d like to create book called. THE HUMAN BRAIN: AN OWNER’S MANUEL. It would have sections in it like: a person grows up healthy and more mentally fit when he/she/they is held all the time as a newborn and baby. I’d find a way to make this book fun, simple and an easy read — it could be a coffee table book. Or like one of those word of the day calendars.
I also would like people to know about this crazy, illogical behavior of the brain. When someone is confronted with facts and logic, instead of saying “Hmm. Interesting. Let me think about that.” The confronted person holds onto his/her/they illogical, unsubstantiated-by-facts false belief even stronger. It’s called Confirmation Bias. A person with a delusion will hold firm to the belief regardless of evidence to the contrary. There is a backfire effect with a cognitive bias that causes people who encounter evidence that challenges their beliefs to reject that evidence and to strengthen their support of their original stance — no matter how unfounded did it is. This is a human condition. It’s what the brain does. If people knew that the brain often makes us think and behave this way, they would realize that they need to stop and think — and engage in critical thinking. We need more education in critical thinking — and more research into how the brain works — and make this information common place knowledge.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might see this. :-)
I want to meet Rob Reiner. He has just released a podcast series with Soledad O’Brien on the assassination of JFK. My film NIXED is an dark animated comedy about Richard Nixon solving who murdered John F. Kennedy, and 95% percent of what I conclude about the killing is the exact same conclusion Rob Reiner presents. The film screened at the prestigious Annecy International Animation Film Festival. The voice actors I have are terrific, but to secure distribution, I need stars to voice Nixon and Kennedy. I want to ask Rob Reiner for help finding name actors to re-voice the film to make it more attractive to distributors. NIXED also illustrates the crazy, absurd but true events from inside the White House in the 1960’s and1970’s. This makes the film relevant to today’s world with the absurd, surreal, ridiculous state of our politics.
How can our readers further follow you online?
Please check out my BLAST ’EM UP KICKSTARTER crowdfund campaign at:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/312678368/blast-em-up
This was very meaningful, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!
About the interviewer: Guernslye Honoré, affectionately known as “Gee-Gee”, is an amalgamation of creativity, vision, and endless enthusiasm. She has elegantly twined the worlds of writing, acting, and digital marketing into an inspiring tapestry of achievement. As the creative genius at the heart of Esma Marketing & Publishing, she leads her team to unprecedented heights with her comprehensive understanding of the industry and her innate flair for innovation. Her boundless passion and sense of purpose radiate from every endeavor she undertakes, turning ideas into reality and creating a realm of infinite possibilities. A true dynamo, Gee-Gee’s name has become synonymous with inspirational leadership and the art of creating success.
