thanks for tuning in to the loser kid pinball podcast we are on episode 118 i am josh roop with me my co-captain as always scott larson and scott it is an amazing day i'm excited for our guests but before we get going on that i want to just throw this out there i know there's a bunch of pinball machines floating around right now it is time to buy if you haven't so far. Venom shipping. This game is exploding on media right now. If you haven't checked out these videos, they're amazing. Also, Zach can get you any other game you want. If you don't want just Stern, you can get Galactic Tank Force. You can get all those Pulp Fictions coming out here soon. I mean, if you haven't got your hands on these games, it is now time to you can even trade in and trade up with Zach, and he is also selling used games and shipping them nationwide. So, go check out his supply. Scott, who do we got with us today? Well, Zach also is on the hunt for me, too, because I have a friend who's looking for a Black Knight Sword of Rage pro. So if you guys have any any hookups looking for home use only, but shoot me a text, I'd be interested. OK, so we have Meredith and Austin Bragg. And just in case you don't know who they are, they are the people who brought you Pinball the movie. And so this is this is actually it's great because it's such a niche thing. And ironically, I so I work in a hospital and one of the surgeons came up to me the other day. He's like, you know, I was flying to Hawaii and I saw a show on on Delta and it was about pinball. And I thought of you and I'm like, yeah, that's our friends did that show and it's a great show. So we want to welcome Meredith and Austin Bragg. And I want to know how this all came about. So first off, introduce yourselves. Tell us how you got into movies, how you got into your day jobs. And then let's transition to figuring out. This is such a niche topic that everybody in pinball knows about. But outside of pinball, very few people know about it. So I'm Meredith Bragg. I'm Austin Bragg. let's see we've been we've been we grew up as comedy nerds so watched a lot of sketch comedy when we were kids this would be 90s early 2000s so you know obviously snl but kids in the hall the state mr show a lot of british comedy monty python and the like and we just really liked it And so when Austin was in college, he put on a sketch show. Much to the chagrin of my professors. Yeah, they were their use. They had a little black box theater called Theater Two at James Madison University, which is where he went. And typically students would put on Ibsen or, you know, Homeless Hamlet, something like that. And Austin put on the Big Honkin' Sketch Show. And it went very well and sold out. And how many? You had like four, I think. We had four different shows in the black box and a couple of others scattered around campus. So part of that, there was a movie theater on campus and we created trailers to go in front of the movie theater. So I was working at a public access station. I had already graduated. I was working at ABC radio, but also a public access station at the same time. And they gave us access to equipment. And so we made short little trailers to show for the movie to help advertise the film. And I think that's when we sort of fell in love with it, the form. When he graduated, Austin took over my job at the public access station. So we continued to have access, get a key. And so we could get in the middle of the night and play with their equipment. And we made a number of shows, sort of shorts, and we made a documentary about Star Wars. and it was about that time that austin found channel 101 which maybe you can explain that austin yeah channel 101 was uh created by dan harman and rob schraub out in la and then one popped up in new york out of the upright citizens brigade theater the idea is that people you know people were getting access uh to equipment it was becoming cheaper and easier for people to make things on their own. So what they did was they created Channel 101, and the idea was people created five-minute television shows, and then they screened them in front of an audience, a live audience, and the audience then voted on their top five. And the top five shows were supposed to come back a month later with a new episode of that show, and they would be pitted against the five returning shows and five new pilots every month and so we had a couple of different shows that we did there that was sort of our filmmaking school was creating one series in particular went on for a couple of years called The Defenders of Stan and it got the attention of Warner Brothers Warner Brothers saw it and they brought us in to talk and bought the pilot and we shopped it around town. It never went anywhere, but that was our first inclination that, oh, maybe we can do this and it's not just for all of our friends to have a good time. That's awesome. Yeah. And so as far as pinball, we had had a short film that was to premiere at Tribeca in 2020 called A Piece of Cake, which is about the difficulty in finding those little silver silver confectionery balls called dragees. You'll see them on Christmas cookies and wedding cakes. The difficulty of finding those in California, they are effectively illegal. Seriously? Yes. If you ever get a canister, you'll see it says not for sale in California. Okay, that's new to me. Confectionery balls are illegal in California. Only certain kinds. Only the silver kinds. The silver reflective confectionery balls. I believe the gold ones are also anything that has a small amount of metal. Okay. It's just like, so have you guys gone to Disneyland in the last 10 years? Yes. Okay. So have you seen the sign that has like, yeah, the sign that says Disneyland uses the substances that are known to be carcinogenic. And it's like by proposition, something I can't remember. Yeah. It's just, it's so ridiculous, but I'm sure this is like an outgrowth of all that too. Right. It is. Those signs are everywhere. Yeah, they are. It's on your stick. OK, I love it when you get a you get a pinball machine. This pinball machine is has used stuff that is known to cause cancer in California. I'm like, wow, I'm so glad I don't live in California. Yeah. So we are. So somewhere around the time that was supposed to premiere at Tribeca in 2020 and COVID happened. So we ended up having a very wonderful but virtual film festival run with that film. But I am sure at some point we typed in illegal silver balls into Google and the picture of Roger popped up playing in front of the city council. And that was, you know, I feel like Austin and I are sort of the Ripley's, believe it or not, of weird laws. We just collect these things and we have a Google Doc where we will throw weird ideas that maybe they'll become a documentary. Maybe they'll be fodder for some short YouTube video. Maybe there'll be something more. and this was on that list so we put it on there we assumed that's where where we found it and um so around the time that around february 2020 i just cold emailed roger we were trying to figure out what to do next the production company mpi films that funded a piece of cake a short film had asked us if we had any feature ideas and so we called up roger and i spoke to him for about three hours and that's it just three hours well that time and at the end of it i i called austin i said i think this might be a feature because he had told me everything else he told me about ellen and seth and gq and writing the book and all this so it became we're we didn't come from from at this as pinball people but what he told us on that call really gave us something that felt like it was universal, that we had this quirky story about pinball being illegal and why and this guy who helped legalize it in New York City by, you know, through his demonstration. But it was everything else that really captured us as well, like and just the way he talked, we just hit it off. And so that started a process where Austin and I ended up speaking to him during the pandemic when people would jump on Zoom and be thankful to talk to someone outside their household. We spoke with him for cumulatively days. He just gave us everything, and it really became a process of us winnowing down what we thought was important for a script. And thankfully, MPI Films liked the script, and then because of a delay that they needed, they needed a push. They had a film on the slate, but they had to push it for actor availability reasons, and they wanted to shoot something in 2021. so we got the call late spring saying you're up and you know four months later we were on set that is crazy who wrote the script we both we did really yeah that's a great script well and it's it's tough too because i think if anyone if a complete stranger approaches you out of the blue and says we want to make a movie about your life and it's going to be a comedy you probably don't jump at the chance, right? But, you know, we worked with Roger and MPI sort of at the same time, you know, narrowing our focus and creating outlines and showing them, you know, where we wanted to take the story. And by the time we had even a rough outline, I think they were pretty much signed on, which was fantastic. Roger really let us in and, you know, gave us a little bit of license, which was fantastic. I gotta say, I love this movie. And it's funny, because I keep joking that it's a bait and switch, right? We think it's about pinball. But it's really a romantic comedy that just happens to feature pinball. And I think it's brilliant going from that angle, because my wife, when I was like, this movie's coming out, you're going to watch it with me. She's like, please, please don't make me watch something about pinball. and we watched the premiere because they did it virtually and we were able to get the tickets and whatnot and by the end of it she's like that was amazing that was not what i was expecting and i don't know how you guys did it but something like we get it in the pinball industry like us in this community we love it and stuff like that but people outside of it it's hard to if you don't have any investment in the hobby it's probably just like any other hobby like watches or something like that but if you can't get any investment from that hobby then then the the topic falls flat and somehow you guys were able to make this beautiful romantic comedy and, and dress it up with the interesting history of, yeah, this was illegal. And like, it was quite, I love how you've turned him into the villain, but it even says in the movie, Roger says, says, so the villain's really a piece of paper and a filing cabinet somewhere. And the mayor's been dead for 30 years or something like that. It just, how was it always, I guess, getting to the question is, what was it always like we're going in this as a comedy stance or romantic comedy stance or or there was originally like we need to do a film about pinball and then just kind of happened to gravitate towards the romantic comedy as well i think we always knew there would be comedy involved that's sort of our our background that's sort of our bent anytime you're doing you know this sort of independent film these you know lower tier budgets we talked about how in order to get seen you kind of have to get weird with it right to stand out from the crowd so we knew we were going to get weird with it we knew we were going to you know do our best to make it funny we also had this struggle right first off it's pinball and second off la guardia is the bad guy but from 40 years ago you know and he's got an airport named after him. He's not exactly your typical villain for this story. And so we knew it was going to be a little bit of a challenge and then coupled with the fact that Roger was constantly downplaying the actual shot that he's so well known for, I think at one point during our Zooms I literally just said, Roger, I'm going to open this movie with you saying, I don't think this should be a movie. and that kind of stuck that turned out to be the most fun uh sort of outline that we came up with and that really gave us a chance to play in and out of the the true history and the sort of theatricality of making a movie about it it uh it worked and it plays well you guys do it multiple times during the movie like you said it starts out at just a footnote you know let me give you the full story i love the you know he finally makes the shot in court you guys are you know you're you're building up to this all the time you finally make the shot and he's cheering and confetti's going he's what are you guys doing yeah that's not what happened just constant stuff like it just it plays so well one of my favorite things that you guys did in this movie that like it's never really it's kind of alluded to but it's never really talked about movies it's a part where he meets like with the politician and he's like you mother and then roger's like wait what kind What rating are we going for here? I don't know, PG, PG-13. Okay, I'll save that for later. I don't think he ever used it, did he? No, he doesn't. Oh, gosh. The thing is, okay, so I realize we're a family-friendly podcast, so I will. It was hilarious, though. Like, it was hilarious. It's in there, but I think we use a soft curse. Yeah. When the chairman essentially notices that Roger can call his shots, he says, oh, yes. And we probably should have been harder because so many people have said, you never said it. I was like, well, technically, when you're dealing with the rating boards, that's considered a problem word. But I guess it wasn't enough. It was actually done really well. If I could do it again, I would definitely go a little harder there or underscore it somehow a little bit more. Anyway, it was great. It was perfect. I mean, the whole movie, it's just it's great. I don't know. I don't want to say to that because it's seriously like I really thought this was just going to be we've seen playing pinball documentaries and whatnot. And it just this is something entirely different. Like even let me bring up another point, too. I just love to. It starts out, you know, it was the summer of 71. Play John Lennon's Imagine. You're like, no, no, whoa. Too expensive. No, yeah. Too slow and too expensive. I love that style of humor. I guess that's just you guys on film, right? That's just how it goes. Well, but that's also the amazing thing about this is anybody who's talked to Roger for one minute knows that you captured Roger's personality perfectly. because he is a master storyteller. He's very engaging. He's very entertaining. He also is the most indirect storyteller I've ever met, where you could ask him to give a 30-second synopsis of it, and three days later, he's still talking. But he's such a great storyteller, and the way you opened it, I was like, yeah, this is definitely the way Roger would tell the story. And so, like, how did that come apart or come together that you decided, you know, we're going to do a movie about an interview, but it's still going to have, you know, going to have him popping in and out and breaking the fourth wall? Well, first, let me say that what a wonderful characteristic to have in a subject, because sitting down and talking with him, we got so much information about his life. It was really just an incredible wealth of data that he handed us. again, I think, you know, as for how it came about, there's a lot of us in that part of the script, because we were sitting with him going through this journey over months you know trying to write it over Zoom And so that interview process became part of the story in a lot of ways And a weird touchstone that we kept coming back to discussing when we were writing this was actually The Princess Bride Yeah. Because you've got Fred Savage getting, you know, the story read to him by Grandpa. Oh, that's a kissing book. I don't want the kissing book. But by the end, he's like, I'm okay with it. Right. And so we wanted to make sure that there was a, you know, a character should change from beginning to end. And we wanted to make sure that that was reflected in the sort of off screen direction as well. I think also, like, you know, bringing it back a little bit to what you're saying about this being sort of a secret romantic comedy. Part of this was Roger and really just how we talked with Roger and what he told us and how he kept saying the shot was a footnote and that it really wasn't that big a deal. And it wasn't that big a deal then. And it's, you know, kind of interesting that it's become a big deal now. But downplaying it. And he kept talking about how, you know, family is important, families and that came. So I like and it's no surprise that you can play pinball in New York City like we all know how it's going to end. So allowing us to to delve into that side of it gave at least maybe some question in the audience's mind about what was going to happen and which way it was going to go. because we all knew he was going to make the shot. I mean, we literally say it at the top. Tell us about the shot that changed everything. You know, tell us. As far as the Imagine joke and some of that, you get about, I'm a strong believer that you get about five minutes to get the audience engaged and tell them what the rules of the movie are going to be. So we had to fit a lot of that in. We had to fit in the fact that there was going to be an older version of Roger telling a story in which he will appear and change the circumstances and not always be happy with the choices that the movie makers are making. But also the movie makers are going to have to make allowances for him as well. It's a push and pull. And so we really wanted that. And so that was just a really quick way of letting people know sort of, I think all that happens in the first 45 seconds or so. Yeah. That we're very quickly establishing what the game is going to be for the whole film. And that was just a fun one that I think Austin came up with and I loved it. I do want to know who came up with the line because I laughed out loud when I heard this where I said, everything happens for a reason. sometimes the reason is you're an idiot pretty sure that was also austin so that's austin's twofer for this one i'll take it yeah yeah because seriously i was like yep that's totally true okay i want to know how much of how much of you is in this movie because there were some moments that were authentic like that um so and this is getting into me a little bit i actually, I met my wife when I was 34 and she was 30 and she actually was recently divorced. And the conversation that she had was, it was exactly me having that conversation with my wife. I mean, I had never been married, but she, I remember it was the first week I'd taken her out for a pre-date. I love that. I took her for ice cream. And then later I called her. I was in the middle of eating whatever crappy dinner I had prepared. And I said, oh, what are you doing? She's like, well, I'm thinking of going to dinner. I'm like, you know what? I'm thinking of going to dinner too. So I shoved that. I went to dinner and then we were getting in. You always get into, okay, so what's going on? What are you bringing? And she just paused for a second. She's like, well, I'm recently divorced. I've been, I was married for 11 years. And I was like, that is a hundred percent how that conversation goes. And so I totally identified with that conversation. So I would just say that's not our personal experience. Um, so, uh, technically had a lot of moments where we, uh, sort of looked at each other over zoom and went, Oh, me too. my wife is 70 years older than I am she was divorced when we met we had moments that I can relate to but that pre-date is straight from Roger's history that is Ellen to a T that she knew what she wanted and she was very clear about that from the get-go for us that was super easy that just wrote itself Right. Yeah. I would say about 90 to 95 percent of all of the everything you see, all the plot points are 100 percent accurate. We played with the timeline and obviously the dialogue has been shoved through Bragg Brothers brain and then actors. But most of the data points. So the, you know, meeting Ellen in an elevator, everything with GQ, why he got hired. the fact that he was divorced and you know lost all his furniture that he randomly found the pinball machine at an adult bookstore he says he never went behind the curtain you know all this stuff is true i will say because roger will want me to say this on the record so do the one thing that he did we initially had a dinner date and then roger would take ellen to the adult bookstore and he was adamant. He's like, I never, ever would have taken Ellen to that bookstore. Like never, that would have been terrible. I never would have done it. Like it was a terrible date. I'm not that, you know, you can't have that in the movie. And we pleaded our case. We were like, we need you to show Ellen why you love pinball. Like it's important as a character thing. Both, you know, here are the three, here's the love triangle, right? Here's the love life. Here are the two loves of your life. You want to introduce them in some way. And like, this is going to be the easiest way to do that. He's like, fine, but it has to be during daylight. We're like, no problem. And it is the most PG adult bookstore you've ever seen in your entire life. Yes. Yeah. Okay. I don't know. One, we're going to get into casting later. But the guy who is the clerk at the adult bookstore was one of my favorite characters because he was the perfect, like, character actor comic relief in the background. I loved his little interactions. And I also loved when they start, like, the romantic playing the pinball, and he's like, no, no. What is this, the cuddling from behind? This is creepy. Yeah, Connor Ratliff is the adult bookstore clerk. Yeah. And he is, we have so many great character and so many great actors that we just completely underutilized because he was one of them. He is so amazingly funny and gifted. And if you if anyone is interested, he he was actually the just finished a podcast called Dead Eyes, which I highly recommend anyone where he recounts his story and then talks to a number of people associated with it about how Tom Hanks fired him from Band of Brothers. and he had dead eyes and it all culminates i mean at this point it's all on the records i don't think it's going to spoil that it all culminates in the end of season three they did three episodes where he actually sits down with um tom hanks and it's amazing it's a great great podcast listen okay i i have to say it's been a year since you guys originally shown this movie to the public since then you guys have received multiple awards and it's had an amazing amount of praise it holds a 95% Rotten Tomatoes score and has been voted one of the top three must-see independent films of the year. Did you think you'd be receiving this much praise for this movie? What was your goal starting the movie and did you achieve that goal by the end of it? I mean, clearly, no, never. This is a brag family trade, I'm afraid, that we will always see the flaws and we'll always be very hard on ourselves. so we never imagined uh this level of success that it's garnered i don't know as far as our we keep saying that as you know our sort of goal for it was always we just don't want to get kicked out of the filmmaking club right we just want to be able to do another one after this we want to be able to keep making bigger and better things and uh hopefully so far it seems like we're in we're in the clear on that front. I would say so. I think you guys have achieved higher, much higher. Yeah. Yeah. And there are all sorts of little, you know, other goals as well. Like one of our biggest goals was to get the pinball right. Right. Cause Rogers told us specifically, he said, look guys, I want the movie to be good. I do. But the pinball has to be right. Cause otherwise people are coming for him. Right. So we, you know, we worked really hard to make sure that those things were correct, that we got the right games at the right times, that even the sound for the games is correct, which I gather isn't always the case. There was a lot of effort put into that. And can I just say we had such an amazing experience with the sort of wide pinball community. They really came together and, you know, Obviously, Roger was sort of rallying the troops, but so many people donating games for the production. Just incredible. Loading machines from storage or from their basement onto their trucks and driving hours to set. It was really humbling, the outpouring of support. Well, we saw it on our end a little bit because we were in a group chat with Josh and Zach Sharp. and there would be questions of like we need pictures of this pinball machine we can't find them we need some just some sounds from it and it was amazing to see that kind of length you guys are going to to make sure that history is correct for one of those because i'm taking credit because josh asked does anyone have uh eldorado tilting and i said yes i have a friend who has an eldorado and i had him send me the video and i sent it to you guys amazing i remember that because we were this was was this before production started yeah it was early i think he's like i just needed i need to see eldorado tilting and i'm like okay well i i know i know a friend with an eldorado it's a not very common but yeah great that was great yeah we were trying to figure out what it actually looked like so we could set up a shot and sort of before we so while we actually stepped on set and everyone standing around looking at us to we knew what we wanted to do so we needed to see what it looked like when you tilted that thing that's great oh yeah and i should i mean we just again we got to say thank god that roger was you know signed on as executive producer and was there because he he really showed us a lot we had a great uh pinball tech eddie kramer who was there And I mean, they kept things working. They got machines and even if they weren't working, they sometimes we had them look like they were working. Sure. And then the Roger on a few occasions, we had something fall through and we very quickly needed to get a machine on set for the next day. and he made it happen. It was magic. I don't think you can find one person in the pinball industry that does not have a positive experience with Roger. I believe it. I universally liked, so that's amazing. A couple points that I wanted to bring up that it felt, it didn't feel very heavy-handed, but again, it nailed what was needed in that moment. And, and I'm kind of wondering how, as a writer, you, you pull this off one casting, whoever you cast as Seth is great. Cause I know kid actors are the hardest because they're, they're typically not professional actors in that they, you know, they're, they're usually kids who had acting as a hobby. And so it's pretty obvious that, Oh, that kid's not very good. He played it perfectly. And there were some moments where, like in the bowling alley, when he talks about his dad not showing up. Yeah, Christopher is really good. He's not a newcomer. He's been doing some acting for a while now. You could tell that he was trained. I'm just saying, like, finding an actor who is really able to do that. I mean, there was that was a it was a bold moment without being, you know, the the rising stand clap at the end of every 80s movie, you know? Yeah. I mean, as far as as far as him, I mean, that's one of the reasons we chose him. He had that. He just he could pull off that scene really well. And that we knew that was an important one. Understated someone who looks like he's gone, you know, gone through something. But he's not necessarily sharing that with the world. Right. Just, you know, a little bit. The lack of the lack of his father figure sort of had a little bit of damage there. But it's not crippling, but it's there. We wanted to make sure it was there. And he was just really good at that. Understated in a way. And. Yeah, that was a tricky scene to write. because we didn't want it to seem too saccharine. We also knew it was important. And that scene happened, by the way. I mean, he did go to, Roger really did go to the father-son bowling tournament with Seth before, you know, while they were dating. And that's why I really love the ending of that scene with, let's go, you know, it sucks. Let's go beat the pants off these happy fathers. I mean, I just loved it. It just, what a great line. Again, another, I think, Austin line. Damn it. You're getting all the good ones tonight. Okay, seriously, I actually unintentionally teared up when he said his dad died too. Yeah, and that was one of those, that was a tricky thing because we had a couple drafts where we alluded to that earlier. A couple drafts where it was much heavier instead of a little bit more matter of fact. we had a whole draft that dealt with his parents and his stepdad and he you know very much he talks about how he's was grateful that he had two great dads so it was a positive stepfather relationship but so and it just at a certain point we needed to cut it down and we needed it really wanted this to feel like a pinball game and part of that is especially when you're we're playing it's got to be short yeah short and fun and fast and and a little yeah and so we had to cut that out so yeah that was a that was a tricky thing we knew we wanted to include it we knew it actually you can read a lot more into the story i think once you know like roger's backstory with his father and his stepfather but uh yeah that was a that was a tricky scene and i am i think it i'm really happy with it actually especially um we did not have a lot of time in that bowling alley that day so we were we were racing around and i'm you know there's a little bit of movie magic post-movie magic in that as well but it i was happy with it and you should have said it took us forever just to bowl a strike oh i remember that and everyone wanted turns bowling a strike yeah like i'll do it i'll do it and of course because we also had a camera in the way like It was not easy. It was not – so it was kind of fun. So I have to note, you guys – you got the initial interviews, and there was a ton of interviews there, I assume. You cut a lot from what Roger originally did But did those initial interviews actually shape the direction of the movie and the meta style of the older Mr Sharp being interviewed At some point that happened. I don't know when. The way that we write is maybe inefficient in the long run, or in the short run, but I think it helps us in the long run, where we will actually do a lot of discussion. So we'll get together and we'll talk and we'll whiteboard things and we'll do all that. And then we'll go in our separate corners and our separate offices and we'll each write outlines. Sort of here's one direction. Sometimes we'll write multiple outlines, especially early on in the process. We may say, you know, by Friday, come with three different one page outlines of how the story could go. and then we get together and we discuss what the pros and cons of each and eventually we winnow it down to one outline and then we do the same thing for larger treatments and the same thing for scripts but i think austin was the first one to come up with the older mr sharp being interviewed and the ability it just it gave us a lot of freedom it it added austin said a little bit of weird to what could otherwise have been a very standard biopic and we really i mean we had spent so much time with roger over zoom at that point and really you know grew very fond of him in our chats that it was nice to represent that yeah on screen and you guys hit him spot on yeah I mean, holy crap. My wife thought it was him. My wife was like, yeah, they nailed the actor to play Roger. She's like, oh, that's not him. Well, Dennis was actually on Roger's short list when we came down to casting. He was the one who first suggested Dennis. And, oh, man, what a difficult role that is. because most of the time he's on camera, no one's paying attention to him. No reacting. It's a hard thing to do for an actor. And then on the flip side, when we is interacting with someone, it's me off screen, right? That's no fun for anybody. So hats off to Dennis. It was really great having him there. And it was, it's been really fun. the number of people who have conflated the two. We've had folks at festivals say, wow, that Roger's had such an incredible life. Did you know that he was on Better Call Saul? Sorry. Yeah, so that's been a lot of fun. It's a full line. Yeah. He's already completed the main quest. He's just doing all the side quests he can now. Exactly. Yeah. yeah well i even love i love the humor too of like there's a part where at the very beginning where older sharp is next to younger sharp playing pinball and you have some guy to run in like a milk crate or something like that and put it down he steps up he's like ah there we go now it's like looking at the mirror just it's humor that you you don't expect from a movie and i've got to say like i said i know that this is independent and you guys i don't know what your budget was but it astounds me watching this movie i could have anyone watch this movie and they think it it is a high quality you know like big big studio made movie like look at what was that flaming hot it's a similar style of what you what you guys did with pinball the man who saved the game but that was done by like disney or something like that and i feel like your guys is on par or above what they did and so you guys have really accomplished something really great with with the limited resources that you you had well all credit to the production team i mean we really we had some great people working on this show and you know there are going to be limitations anytime you're in this sort of low budget range and the fact that people were signing up and you know willing to do that and willing to come play was it was really good Like having a fun movie is helpful in a lot of ways. Like having something that's fun to work on, you know, that will sway people from going. I want to I don't want to do that depressing, gritty, the drug addict show with the die at the end. Yeah. Even if even if we're going to be scraping, you know, for for every dime over here, this one's going to be a lot more fun. And we had a very fun set. We really did. We kept saying, we're making a movie about pinball. If we're not having fun, we're doing it wrong. And I think part of the fun of the set is, by the end of it, we had about 30 pinball machines. And whenever we would call for lunch or we had to turn something around and there was a break, you would just hear them all firing up and all the actors and crew and Roger and Eddie would just be playing. It was great. Yeah. Yeah. So was that kind of the crew or was that just extras at the end of the film where you're kind of wrapping it up? You're all in that room of pinball machines. You're watching Zach and Josh play pinball. Was that part of the crew or was that mostly just extras? Oh, those were background actors. Yeah. OK. In that that that end. Yes. And I mean, it would have been great to get Josh and Zach, but I think we were mid we were in the middle of COVID. We shot this. Yeah. COVID. We're basically in a bubble at that. Yeah. But man, I think I wish I know that some people like. we chose out of the actors we had the ones that we thought were the best, but, and I know we, we get, we sometimes, uh, we said we got the pinball, right? That's perfect. We didn't get Josh and Zach right. Okay. So, so guilty admission. Uh, we were texting Josh this morning. Okay. And I messaged and I said, I love that. You look like a bouncer from the Bronx. He looks like a linebacker who's about to take you out, which is funny. because if you meet Josh, Josh is, he's not that guy, but it's hilarious. Yeah, we just, we had a limited number of background actors that had cleared COVID and could step in and do it. So, but yeah, that was, we didn't do him dirty on purpose, I promise. He also, he loved that the, that the adult bookstore was the first on the planet with a satellite dish. Oh, gosh. Yeah. Trust me. There are a couple other things. Don't look too close. Oh, no, no. Okay, but the vibe, just what Josh said. So I remember the 70s. I grew up in the 70s. And this is exactly how the 70s felt. Well, okay. I think there was a lot more smoking in the 70s. I'm 49 now, and so I'm looking back in life. but it certainly creates the vibe. Let's just say, yeah. So one of the things we wanted to do was we did not want to create the seventies New York of taxi driver joke. Oh yeah. So when we were even just creating a look book, which is a sort of a document that you send out to folks to give, hopefully get them on board and excited and make sure we're all on the same page. We were very careful about sort of our color palettes and what we wanted. and it wasn't like dirty harry or the the every movie in the 70s was depressing so this is actually just growing up in the 70s i'm like yeah that style was there this is someone reminiscing telling a story about the 70s for a family-friendly audience that's basically what we're doing here yeah and no one's chain smoking in the movie that was the 70s everything smelled like uh stale coffee and cigarettes. That was a Roger Rask we were happy to oblige with. If you've looked over his pinball book, there's a picture in there and we joke that it's a perfect homage to the 70s because it's a pinball machine covered in cigarette containers. And a Budweiser can resting on it. That's the one. Yes. There you go. Mine's copies downstairs. I will say at the end of the movie, my wife, so I was watching it again with my wife last night and she turned to me and she's like, so did they cut all those interviews in the book? And I said, yeah, actually, that's a good question. Cause I, I saw there was text in there. So that was one thing I confirmed with Josh this morning. I said, so did, did they cut a lot of those things? He's like, yeah, we probably still have them. So I, I, I pled with Josh to, uh, to release the 2.0 version. because I want to read all those interviews. I do too. We were given, he still had some cassette tapes and he, I think, I don't know if it was Josh or Zach digitized them, but they were sent our way. So even some of, when we were in, during the Chicago, what we call the Chicago montage, where he's in Chicago interviewing these people, a lot of those quotes from, you know, the, a lot of those quotes were lifted, like exactly what people said. Yeah. Same thing with Harry Williams. I mean, some of this, you know, we got caught with our pants hanging around our knees. You know, that's a direct quote from him. Well, I wanted to be a Disney animator. But, you know, the ball is wild. These things were lifted from these tapes where you can hear a younger Roger asking him. And, you know, dishes are clanking because they're in some diner and then it switches to an office. And so we tried to be as accurate as possible with that as well. But I would love to see see those. That transcripts. Would you guys would you guys ever consider doing an extended version of this movie? I wish, except I got to tell you, there is no extended version. Like we this was a we shot over 21 days. It was, as we mentioned, low budget. Still the biggest budget we've ever had. And I feel like we do need to say that like MPI films took a risk with us for sure. So we are totally grateful for what we had, but we were very careful about what we shot and why we shot it. There is one scene which didn't make it into the end final cut. And that's because we it was a scene between Ellen and Seth before Roger met Seth. And we simply wanted to hold that to make it more of a fun reveal for the audience as well. And that scene was maybe half a page. I mean, it's very short. Other than that, we cut a few bits at the beginning, which just because we wanted to keep it snappy and fast and get to. Streamline it. Exactly. But otherwise, what we wrote is pretty much what's on there. There really isn't an extended version. There were a couple of quotes that I was like, man, that's great writing. So I actually have it pulled up right now. So when he's interviewing Harry Williams, he says, the bigger risk is not taking one. Like that's a great line. And another one was, I think I mentioned it before, everything's on the play field for a reason. Like, you know, just things like that. I'm like, that's actually, those are stuff that you could see on a bumper sticker. that's a really good snapshot of life well it reminds me too where he does talk about life being like pinball you know you gotta take your shot before the ball drains we get our second chances or extra balls or whatever there's just so many I don't know how you guys captured it you captured it well and you captured it it sounds like with very few film to to expand on top of that but You guys did a great job. How many days did it take to shoot? Because I know this was during COVID, so you were limited. Yeah, we shot for 21 days in the Hudson Valley, New York region. Typically, how long do you get? If it wasn't COVID, how long do you get to film? Us? 21 days. Okay. It's Clint Eastwood style. Okay, we got it. I mean, this is our sort of featured debut. We don't have a lot of data points to really go off of. Good point. So 21 days sounds right. I know, you know, obviously if you're shooting something for the Marvel Universe, then you get a lot more. A lot more CGI too. Yeah, and time to go back and do reshoots or do test screenings with audiences and tweak things after the fact. Yeah, that didn't happen for us. We had 21 days to shoot, 10 weeks of posts. The first time we saw it all put together was at the premiere. Wow. That's impressive. Okay. I thought it was a little nerve-wracking though, right? Sure. Yeah. I mean, the first few festivals were, I think. Are you going to do a follow-up on Roger's book? So the next movie you release is on the next book Roger published. Are you familiar with that? The Panning book? how to tan without frying how to get a great tan without frying it's a riveting read it's 39 pages including footnotes yeah what's that one going for on ebay oh I don't know I bought this 10 years ago 5 bucks I think I think it's great yeah that would be fantastic I wanted to put a tanning joke in there and I think we kept trying and we never could make it land but it seems like too much of an in-joke for people. Right. Yeah. Right. Exactly. You don't want to wink too much of the audience. Yeah. See what I did. See what I did. Yeah. We did hide Tommy in the background of the, the marquee, the movie marquee. Oh, did you? Oh, I guess I didn't see that. Yeah. You saw the satellite dish, but you didn't see. Okay. I didn't see the satellite. I didn't at all. That was something Josh Sharpe asked. I was like, anything we should ask, ask about the satellite dish. Wow. You know what? I did do Josh Dirty. That's why you intentionally made him shorter than Zach for the first time in his whole life. Yeah. But he's jacked, though. Yeah, that's correct. That's great. What was your favorite memory on this? There was the end of the first week. so we'd just really gotten gotten our sea legs under us for production things were starting to really groove the first couple days are always a little you're trying to feel everyone out see how the crew is working and we were shooting the shot we were shooting that scene and we were in we had to pick our use our resources wisely and we definitely spent some money to be in that hall that we shot. Is it the actual hall? No, no, no. It's in Newburgh. It's actually an old bank that's now a museum. So we shot, so we were in there and all these extras with, you know, the 70s clothes and a lot of the characters were there for that scene. It was just, and it was for the first time in my career, there was a crane. We had a crane. And I we were sitting behind the monitors. Things were going well. People were having fun. I just remember thinking, wow, this is great. I did not expect to be here. You would ask me 10 years ago, you know, this is this is great. And then we shoot the the what we call the Hollywood version of the shot from that. That was great. I loved it. I love that you did that. People went, it was the funniest thing. I mean, it was so amazing. We, it was just gold. We loved it. And, um, I think we shot it twice, but both times were just so, it was so fantastic. So fun. So that was probably my highlight. That's one of them for sure. I just, um, I mean, there's plenty of memories on set that were just incredible, but I keep coming back to the community the pinball community and specifically you know we had all of these festivals and screenings and fun things that we done and everywhere we go it seems there always an after party at a pinball arcade somewhere. And it's just been so much fun, you know, talking with everybody and meeting everyone. And the reception has been really welcoming and really fantastic. It's just, again, it's, it's been very humbling. And we're very appreciative. And I'll just also say like the cast, we got together. Oh, the cast was great. It was nobody that stuck out. Everyone's like, yep, that's that person. And just great people. Like they're just really good, decent, professional human beings and really fun to be around when the cameras weren't rolling. and, um, just lovely. Like we, we, you know, hats off to Lindsay Weissmuller, who was our casting director who really helped put amazing people in front of us. And we couldn't believe our luck. Okay. I do have a question and we can get this if you want. The mustache is comically thin. It. Yeah. It looks a little bit like Ned Flanders, but with like a, it was like a comb over version of a mustache. It varies over time. Okay. And here's the thing. You go back and you look at that shot of Roger from 76. It's nuts. That mustache is crazy. Yeah, that mustache looks like it has furry creatures growing in it. It needed to be a little insane. And we knew that right out of the gate. We couldn't ask Mike to grow one on that short notice. No one can grow one, much less with a couple of weeks' time. Yeah. add to that you know we had some experimentation when Mike actually had an allergic reaction to the adhesive they're putting on I mean we love Mike Mike was incredible on set incredible presence like he had to shoot 21 days he's in practically every scene he's got that thing glued onto his face and he was just a wonderful human being to have on set what did we get we had two mustaches? We had two, and one of them fell apart. We can sort of date the scenes by the relative. Yeah. And, you know, this is part of the joy of filmmaking. You never know what your problems are going to be. Sometimes you anticipate them. Sometimes you anticipate them wrongly. You go to set with the mustache you have. Yeah, I mean, once the movie train is rolling, there's only so much you could... This is what we got. This is what we're dealing with. Please move on. There's probably not too many giant Roger Sharp mustaches off the shelf that you can just buy. No, they're not. In the color that would suit Mike. During COVID and supply issues, it was a thing. definitely something we had to deal with so we knew we have to make this movie good enough that even if the mustache is a bit it was a degree of difficulty points that's what we it's fine there was some question about how much whether we wanted to acknowledge it right out of the gate and we had some back and forth on that or whether we wanted to play with it but But, you know, in the end, I just I love that moment when Dennis is sitting down, pointing at the photo and saying, yes, that's me. And yes, it's a real mustache. Yeah, I laugh, though, when on their, I think, first kiss while she went in and she kind of part of the mustache. Because, again, this rang true for me because I had just broken up with a casual girlfriend that I had. And I was like, you know, I'm done for a while. And so I grew a Fu Manchu. It was a terrible Fu Manchu. But it was – and I turned to her like our – when I kissed her the first time, I was like, you ever kiss a guy with a Fu Manchu? And she did. But the next night she's like, you need to go shave that. So we actually – in the script writing process, we did a mustache pass. Okay. Because it's very easy. You write – and they're going to have a big mustache. He's like, but it's going to be so big and so noticeable that we need to call attention to it. So we actually went through and added and made sure that every 20 or so pages someone mentioned the fact that he had like we were very conscious that this was going to be a thing. And we wanted to sort of hang a lantern on it, let everyone know, like, oh, yeah, it's it's a thing. Everyone understands that. And apparently, you know, the so we wrote in the parting of the mustache. Yeah. Yeah. Like Moses, I believe. Yeah. I love it when they were talking about shape. No, it's like testosterone on your face. Yeah. That was that was Meredith. Yes. Yes. You got one. You got one. Testosterone flag. I literally laughed out loud at that moment. I'm like, that is perfect. and whoever you got for the flamboyant guy in jq he was so great i loved watching him every time he was on it's brian bett he's amazing uh what again such a fun set such a gun group but he was he was clearly having a ball yeah and that was a tough one to cast because the real harry was just sort of this well-known hedonist at GQ. This big, what did they call it? A big mustachioed ball of fun, I think it was. That, you know, he was just all about having a good time. And I think Brian really nailed it. And Brian, if you don't know, Brian was in Mad Men, where he played sort of a closeted art director. And I have seen a couple people online talk about that, you know, in the Brian Batt universe. It's the same. He's just, this is him. Which I love. He's fantastic. Yeah. No, it's, the most successful actors play some version of themselves. And then that's, and so that's why you see, like, when you think about Marvel, I'm like, well, there is only one person who could have played Tony Zac Stark, and that was Robert Downey Jr. Because that's basically a version of himself. and and and so whatever it's everybody in the show seems to be playing a an idealized version of themselves which i think is great i love his his outlandish request too so i got a plane yeah yeah plane i got shut down half of manhattan how much is that gonna cost me all that is true there is a there that is 100 true there's a great article if you're interested called like something about the the gay GQs from GQ called like GQ gay 70s sure and it talks about it talks about those two you know and and sort of had the push and pull between them and how Harry would just constantly keep asking for seaplanes and they would travel to you know weird islands just to take a photo he wanted they did shut down Manhattan the the what he pitches during that round, that pitch meeting about monkey suits and Tarzan. It's in it. That's why we show the photo at the end and the end credits. All this stuff is true. It was so good. Yeah. We never got to find out why the photographer went into photography. He starts into it and then you're like, oh, we need to go to the hearing. Well, there is a story there and the story is because the real James Hamilton who was also on set a couple times and made some cameos. He told this story in an interview that we read, and then we chatted with him over Zoom at one point, that he decided he picked up a camera and he went to a music festival in Texas and started taking pictures. And it was from those pictures that he ended up selling them to Crawdaddy and then working at the Village Voice. Like he just sort of he wanted to learn how to take photos. So he just went and started doing it. And by doing it, it became like one day he just realized that he was a professional photographer. Yeah. But it was just him hitchhiking down to Texas. I think he hitchhiked. I remember correctly. Good story. But which seems very similar to Roger finding like it's not like he went out. The crazy thing when I when we talked to Roger is that it's not like he said, oh, yeah, I'm the pinball guy. And that's that's my path. He kind of stumbled onto it and he still worked at GQ when he was designing games on the side. Yeah. Like he was being a consultant. And so he kind of like. I don't know, evolved into the pinball guy and then doing all the licensing, too, which is, again, that's brilliant to even bring it up in. Imagine, because it's like everybody knows, well, there was a Led Zeppelin pinball machine. They didn't do Stairway to Heaven because licensing was so expensive for that song. There are things that you think about that he didn't know at the beginning. And it's unusual to see. Actually, it's unusual to see an uncertain Roger because that person doesn't exist in today's Roger. He is the most sure, confident guy and just like, no, this is how it's supposed to be. but it's it was fun to see him becoming that guy yeah he he did give us some insights into sort of how he saw himself back then um and that's and again great for filmmakers who are trying to write a story arc you know not all of them were positive he talked about how you know he really just wanted a pinball machine that was it he wanted to play pinball he wanted one as soon as he got one in his apartment he was like i'm good right i love how he turned them down in the movie anyway he turned him down twice he's like yeah yeah i'm not doing that i got my machine i'm good yeah i'm good and i think there's a little bit of a poetic license there sure sure uh but but it is interesting to see that it's you would expect that they would call and he's like oh yeah i'm totally in and so i i was surprised he's like you know what it's no that's not my thing i'm not your guy see ya yeah so i yeah and of course there's poetic license it's a movie right but he would talk about how he used to speak in headlines it's only now later that he speaks in paragraphs yeah he doesn't speak in paragraphs he speaks in the encyclopedias talked about how he was bouncing around and he wasn't you know definitely in contrast to ellen who definitely knew what she wanted roger sort of knew what he wanted he wanted to write books you know next great american novel that sort of thing but he wasn't quite sure and he was sort of bouncing on he was a little and um so that was that's great that's catnip for screenwriters because it allows us to tell a story of someone who you know changes and becomes who everyone knows now so that was great right well i think you guys did great at juxtaposing that too there's a there's a moment where the congressman has said like you know it's not hemingway and and you're like well they're both banned you know Yeah, they're both men. That was a great transition. I wish I was that clever. There's a lot of great juxtapositions to mainstream pop culture that goes so well with the story that you guys had done. And I'm glad that you guys took those moments as well. I guess the only other question I have is, can you give us kind of some insight to what the future holds for the Bragg brothers? Can you? Yeah. Because I would love to find out. I mean, as we're having this conversation, most of the entertainment industry is shut down by two different strikes. Yeah, and it's ironic that we're going through another shutdown, right? And so we're, you know, we've had a very good festival run. We've talked to a lot of great people. You know, we've had some fun conversations, but there's nothing that's moving forward at the moment. So we're sort of, you know, trying to stockpile what we can on our end so that when things open back up, we're ready to move. I think the tan movie is really up there. We'll put it on our short list. Yeah, there you go. Idea board. Well, awesome. We do have our own version of hats. We'd love to give you one. There's lots of different options. I'm wearing one. I'm wearing the 2.0 version. We have the 1.0 is no longer available, but we have 2.0 and 3.0. Stinky COVID. We'd love to. Yeah, I know. Dumb COVID. So we'd love to get you that. And if anybody has ideas or wants to reach out to you, how do they get a hold of you? The Bragg Brothers at gmail.com. Yeah, we're not hiding. We are there. Awesome. Thank you very much. We would love to thank you guys so much for coming on. I know that you're busy. You're trying to do so many things, and we're a small podcast. We just love that you were able to take time out and talk about your movie because it really – I was so excited to talk to you guys because it's just not – it was so well done, and it hit all the touch points in my life. And I'm like, I totally will watch this movie again and again. Well, I got to say, and I know we've mentioned it off mic before, but I'll just say it on mic now. I am 100% sure that I listened to your Roger Sharp interview. Now, whether I did it before I called him as part of my research before, so that I would sort of have a pretty good grounding of what I was getting myself into when I initially reached out to him or just thereafter. But it was part of our research process was listening to these podcasts. And you had some really, really nice deep dive into Roger that helped us. So thank you. You're welcome. It shocked me when you told me that we were communicating through email. I was like, it's just funny because we did that. It's just like we know Roger likes to talk. And we had nothing to talk about. Everything was shut down. Yeah, COVID hit. We're like, OK, so what are we going to do? And we're like, well, we haven't found anybody who's really discussed more in depth. We know the shot story, but we don't know the background of the shot. And that's pretty much how that pitched to Josh when I was talking to him. I was like, how do we do this? Yeah. Well, if you need us to interview anyone else, Wink Wink, for maybe a movie potential, we can do it for you. It might be out of the blue and random. Email is always open. Yeah. We have a Google Doc full of these weird embryonic ideas that start off as just a quirky photo of someone with an amazing mustache playing in front of growling city council members. A grumpy congressman. And then all of a sudden, it's funny what actually turns out to work. So yeah, I'm always open. I love that stuff. The truth is stranger than fiction. alright listeners if you want to get a hold of us we are Loser Kid Pinball Podcast at gmail.com you can get a hold of us there or on all of our socials which is at Loser Kid Pinball slash whether it be Facebook or Twitter or Instagram we're all on all those sites YouTube also subscribe and what not if you want some swag we do have I'm wearing the Triple Drain Hydra shirt right now you can get that through silverballswag.com that is Triple Drain stuff but we are there as well we have got whatever your heart desires. I think we're actually sold out on all the fabric. We got all bought out. It's pretty crazy. Oh, we need to get more. A lot of women out there making dresses out of pinball stuff, so that's really cool. I'm so excited to see that. Hopefully we'll see you at Expo. And if you haven't reached out, I will be at Expo. Scott will sadly not be there, but we'll have some fun. Anything else for Scott? No, we'll see you in about two weeks. And if you haven't seen it, go watch the movie. I have it on Apple, so it's on all the available forums. If you have Hulu, you can watch it on Hulu. So go hit it up there.