Zachary Spicer of Pigasus Pictures: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Became A Filmmaker

The most important resource is people. You can run out of good ideas, money and fancy equipment, but if you surround yourself with good people who you care about and you are good to, then those people can help carry you through any of those other setbacks. Everyone is capable of doing one massive, cool thing once. A lot of people have to burn bridges to get there, but if you take care of and learn from each other, you can go so much further together.

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 Zachary Spicer.

Zachary Spicer is the CEO and Founder of the Indiana-based film company, Pigasus Pictures. Over the past five years Zach has produced six independent feature films: The Good Catholic (Danny Glover and John C. McGinley — “Best Feature” at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, distributed by Broadgreen Pictures); Ms. White Light (Roberta Colindrez, Judith Light, and John Ortiz — SXSW official selection, Torino International Film Festival Press and Audience Award winner; Prathana Mohan’s The Miseducation of Bindu (executive producers Mark and Jay Duplass); So Cold the River (adapted from the New York Times best-seller by Michael Koryta, author of Those Who Wish Me Dead); What She Said (distributed by 1091 Pictures, fall 2021); Runner (World Premiere Toronto International Film Festival 2022 and Special Jury Prize winner at San Sebastian Film Festival 2022). Zachary is also the founder and president of Pigasus Institute, a 501(c)(3) dedicated to engaging, educating, and elevating Indiana communities through the diverse storytelling of film and theater. A proud IU alumni.

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?

I studied archaeology at college. All of my friends were theater majors, and one time I happened to go along with a bunch of my friends to an audition that they were going to. At the audition, the director was a guest director out of New York City and he asked me if I was interested in auditioning. I said I wasn’t planning on it. He said, “Well you should give it a try!” And I did; I ended up getting cast to play along with my friends, and he took me aside after one of the shows and said, “I don’t know what it is that you’re wanting to do with an undergraduate degree in archaeology, but you should go to New York City. You should study acting because I think that you could do this.” And so I followed his advice.

I’d never been to New York City before I moved there. I went to Circle in the Square theatre school and started my career as an actor. I’ve worked off Broadway and was involved in a ton of TV and film. I was fortunate to do a run of the show Macbeth with Kenneth Branagh; he’d always been a huge influencer on me, not just because of his talent as an actor and director, but because he started his whole career himself by launching his own theater and film company and creating his own work and opportunities. After talking to him about that and his experience, it seemed like the most fulfilling thing that an artist could set out to do. Because when you’re an actor, you only get invited to the last 10% of the conversation when it comes to making a movie and I had always loved making movies. I started making movies when I was eight years old and I loved every single aspect of the process. It wasn’t just the rehearsal and the filming, but I loved the location scouting, the script work, the focusing on production and sound design, and the score. I enjoyed the various components that made up a film and it just seemed so enriching and rewarding. And that’s when I started Pigasus Pictures.

Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your filmmaking career?

On our latest film “So Cold the River,” we needed to fill the central atrium of the West Baden Springs Hotel in French Lick, IN. And for those of you who have never been to the West Baden Springs Hotel, it is the largest freestanding dome in the western hemisphere. And it’s the largest room I have ever been in and could ever imagine being in. For one of the scenes in the movie, we needed to fill it with as many people as we possibly could, and not just people normally clothed. They needed to be in black tuxes and white gowns. The town of French Lick, IN, is home to only around 2,000 people. It is in the middle of farm country surrounded by cornfields and forests. We put a post up on Facebook asking for as many people to come out and dedicate 12 hours of their time, be in a movie and bring a black suit or white gown to join us for a day of filming. And then someone wrote back saying, “Good luck finding 20 people in French Lick, IN, with a black suit and a white gown. The post was up for four days and we had 1,300 people volunteer. We were turning people away at the door. People drove as far down as Chicago to be a part of that particular scene and help us out, and I will never ever forget the sight of that room filled wall-to-wall.

Qho are some of the most interesting people you have interacted with what was that like? Do you have any stories?

One of the best things about this job is all of the great and interesting people that you get to work with in so many different capacities. I’ve got great stories that have to do with production assistants who have worked on our sets from the bottom up. Some have done the most perfect Sean Paul karaoke impersonation and they all are just incredibly talented people that we’ve worked with on so many of our films. One of my favorite moments was in between takes on the set of our second film, “Ms. White Light.” Roberta Colindrez, John Ortiz and I would sneak away to the production office between set-ups where we had set up a TV to watch the World Series. Just the juxtaposition of this movie that focuses on death and letting go, with the chaotic life energy in that room cheering on the Dodgers in a warehouse in the middle of small town Indiana, will be something I’ll never forget.

Also, nothing will ever compare to the very first film that we made, “The Good Catholic,” and being able to sit in a room with John C McGinley and Danny Glover and listen to these two titans of the acting world talk about IU basketball. And hearing Danny tell stories about all these old jazz legends that he knew personally while sitting in the pews of a church. That’s one of the most special memories I’ll keep with me for a long, long time.

Is there any particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?

Well, I’m the only child of a single mother, so the straightaway answer is my mom. I wouldn’t be where I am today without her. I wouldn’t have clothes on my back and I wouldn’t have had an education. I would never have had any shred of confidence or belief in chasing after a dream if it wasn’t for her and the magical childhood that she gave me growing up in Greencastle, IN. Between her and an entire town, we started Pigasus Pictures in Bloomington, IN, in 2016 and had to make a lot of magic happen in order to pull off that first film, let alone the next six films. What we found when we started asking for help and people to join us in this incredible unknown journey was an outpouring of the ““ Hoosier hospitality” that Indiana is famous for. It’s not just one person that came out to make things possible for us. It was hundreds. Inn keepers, restaurant owners, students, some lady donating her car to us so we could drive people around. It was an incredible time.

Can you please give us your favorite life lesson quote?

I’m a huge John Steinbeck fan, and that’s where the name Pigasus initially comes from. On the inside flap of every single John Steinbeck novel was drawn a little pig with wings, and under it written in Latin “Ad astra per alia porci,” which means “to the stars on the wings of a pig.” And somebody once asked him about why he liked having this Pigasus as his symbol, and he said that it was a symbol of the people that he was writing about and for lumbering souls, striving to fly with not enough wingspan, but plenty of intention. When I read that, I thought that it was pretty much the best symbol for an independent film company in a small town in Indiana. In every industry, you always meet individuals who seem to have more resources, connections or God-given talent than you. And the only thing that you can control is how hard you are going to work toward what you want to achieve and how you are going to go about doing that work. To me, that’s one of the most important things and something that we will never sacrifice as a company.The work is important, but so are the lives of all of the people that are coming together to make that work possible, and lending all of their talents toward a common goal.

I am very interested in diversity in the entertainment industry. Can you share three reasons with our readers about why you think it’s important to have diversity represented in film and television? How can that potentially affect our culture?

Diversity and representation in the film and television industry are important because those are the stories that we grow up watching as kids. Being a white kid growing up in Indiana, I had a lot of stories and narratives that were tailor-made for me. Those stories really helped me feel not-so alone. They helped me dream and aspire for a world that was unknown to me at the time. They were my pathway into my adulthood. Just like a great book, a great piece of literature.

It’s important for people who don’t look and sound like me to be able to have their heroes, stories and dreams to connect to as well. The scale has heavily been tipped on the side of white men narratives since the industry began, but the more diversity in our storytelling allows us all to be able to know each other a little bit more. The whole point of storytelling is an empathic response — seeing someone go through something that you feel connected to them in someway. What can we learn from the story, and how are we similar to the story? How does the story engage us? How does it activate us?

It’s not just about the stories themselves, but it’s about the people who have the opportunity to tell those stories. That’s a big thing that we focus on at Pigasus. It can’t just be white men telling every story. We have the opportunity and platform to be able to diversify the stories we tell and the filmmakers that we’re privileged enough to work with.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?

We have one film, “Runner” by Marian Mathias, that is currently touring the festival circuit. The film made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the special Jury Prize at the San Sebastian International Film Festival that is now touring all over the world. We’re really proud of that film and the story it tells, and thankful for Marian as well as Joy Jorgensen, the other producer on the film.

Beyond that, we have five different feature films that are currently in the pipeline to be made over the next three years. One exciting film that is born out of our community is the story of the women’s Little 500 race held at Indiana University (IU) in 1988. It is a follow-up to the historic sports film, “Breaking Away,” which we all love and watch once a year. That film is particularly exciting to us. Not just because of the incredible, true story that it’s based on, but again an opportunity for an entire community to come together and make some magic happen in Indiana.

Which aspect of your work makes you most proud?

All of the people that we get to work with. On every one of our films, we partner with IU Media School. Anywhere between 12 and 30 different media school students come and work on our sets in production and assistant roles and get real-world working experience of what it is like to work on a professional film set. At the same time, they’re getting course credit through the media school towards their degree.

When I was at IU, there was a 16mm short film course that I took twice because I wanted to work as much as I possibly could in film, and there weren’t any more opportunities. The fact that we are able to have this pipeline for students to dream beyond the boundaries of what they think they’re capable of is the most rewarding part of this whole process.

One particular story I’ll give you is when we were filming “The Good Catholic” back in 2016, there was a freshman named Mia Siffin who was in the theater and department. She worked on our very first set. She went above and beyond in everything that anybody asked her to do to do. She became invaluable when there was something that needed to be done. We remembered her name first because we knew she could solve any problem. She was a freshman in college; since then, we have hired her for every film. We have done six in total, and she has worked in four different departments doing everything you can imagine on a film set. Now she is in graduate school at UCLA, getting her master’s degree in screenwriting to continue her career. Nothing will make me happier than the day we are producing one of Mia‘s films, and we are now working for her. I cannot imagine a smile bigger on my face than that day.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. 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. The most important resource is people. You can run out of good ideas, money and fancy equipment, but if you surround yourself with good people who you care about and you are good to, then those people can help carry you through any of those other setbacks. Everyone is capable of doing one massive, cool thing once. A lot of people have to burn bridges to get there, but if you take care of and learn from each other, you can go so much further together.
2. I wish somebody had asked me: What does success mean for you? It can really be a million different things. I try to ask myself this now on every single film that we start out with. I try to have it be my very first question. The second question, actually. The first question is: Why make this thing? Why does it need to exist in the world? What purpose is it going to serve? As far as what success means, there can be a bunch of different answers to it — could be that it makes $1 million or premieres at a first-tier festival. Or it could be that I physically finish this story, and I just put it out into the world. If you are specific with what the line of success is for any particular project, then you will be a lot happier once you get there.
3. I wish somebody had given me David Foster Wallace‘s commencement speech transcript for “This Is Water” before I endeavored to do anything in any career. Pretty much everything that he outlines in that speech, I go back to multiple times a year. I first read it after the premiere of our first film, “The Good Catholic,” and it blew my mind open. At one point, he says: “There is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” When I sit and think about that, I question why I am doing what it is that I’m doing. It makes you choose, or at least have some awareness of the choice, and it reshaped my entire outlook on life, creativity and career.
4. Breathe more. Meditating, even once a day, will do more for you and your career than three hours of back-to-back phone calls.
5. There is no normal in this industry — or possibly any industry. You don’t change things by being normal or the industry standard. You change things by being radically different and doing things in a radically different way. When we finished our first film, “The Good Catholic,” a lot of people were asking us if we would go make movies in Hollywood now. We decided to stay because that’s where the magic is. That’s what makes us different. We are outside of the main industry bubble, and we really like it that way.

We didn’t set out to do this originally, but every single film we have done so far has been a first-time writer/director. We place a lot of importance and weight behind that artistic vision because that’s when you have somebody putting something different out into the world a new voice. Those are the films that always excite me the most, but on any film that we take on, you have a responsibility to your financiers, and you have a responsibility to your audience.

The responsibility to the audience does not mean placating them or giving them what they want. This is something that I think frequently about in the age of social media and streamers that were in, where algorithms are choosing what it is that we are exposed to. That can be easy, but it can also be dangerous. Sometimes you just want a “feel good” movie at the end of a long day, and sometimes you want a movie that challenges the way you see things and challenges the way that you’ve always known things. When we think about the audience, we want to entertain as much as we want to challenge.

If you could start a movement, that would bring the most amount of goods to the most amount of people, what would that be?

#DreamsArentDumb

Giving everyday people the opportunity to believe that they’re capable of doing more and they think they can — whether it be in the arts, politics, finance, their personal life or believing in themselves and others — is the greatest feeling that you can wake up with in the morning.

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. :-)

There is nothing in this world I would rather do than sit down and have a cup of damn fine coffee with David Lynch and just talk about anything — art, cooking, movies, weather, woodworking. After that, grab a beer and watch Hoosiers basketball with Mark Cuban. That would be a perfect day.

This was very meaningful, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!