MAKE YOUR SHOW: theCreators
Any Given Moment
with Actor/Writer/Producer Greg Stuhr
Greg Stuhr has been acting for decades, having found success on Broadway in plays and musicals, alike. Once he finally listened to an inner desire to write, he found a new arm of his career in the entertainment business. Soon, he had completed a screenplay that set his creative trajectory into a new space. Making his feature film "The American Side" illustrated all that he didn't know while offering the chance to overcome each challenge, therefore providing him with a new set of marketable skills. Still nourishing himself with frequent appearances on stage, Greg is a firm believer in maintaining his creativity while keeping many projects in the works.
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John Cramer:
Hey, Greg, thanks for joining us. We're so glad you could make it today to chat with us.
Greg Stuhr:
Hey, John. Jason, thanks for having me.
John:
So, you guys go way back. You knew each other as actors initially.
GS:
I feel like you were I think I thought of you as a writer…but I knew you acted. Actually, I was just I earlier was watching the Facebook scene between the two of you (from “He’s With Me”, which I loved that scene. That is a great scene. It’s so perfectly understated. I thought it was a fabulous scene. Whoever is watching - go watch that scene. It's good stuff. Good performances and good writing.
Jason Cicci:
Thank you. So how did you start acting, Greg? I mean, were you (acting) since you were a kid?
GS:
I was one of those guys who just liked making a joke and getting a laugh and that kind of silly thing. I did a couple little student show things, but it really wasn't until late in high school where the director of our high school play said, “You know, you could do this”. And in the back of my mind, I was kind of thinking maybe I could. But I thought the more reasonable thing, which probably wasn't reasonable at all, would be to go into like sports broadcasting. You know, I was going to go to Syracuse, and I was going to you know, someday be the color commentator for, you know, CBS football or something like that. But my brother went into communications, and it was one of those things where I (wasn’t going to) do the same thing my brother's doing. So, I very naively auditioned for two schools, not realizing how hard it would be to get into them. And I thought, “Well, what's the backup plan?” There was no backup plan. So, I auditioned for two schools and thankfully got in. And that's really where I fell in love with acting. It really wasn't probably until my sophomore year that I really started to understand what it was, because at that point I just thought I loved old movies. And, like I said, I liked getting a laugh or whatever. So, I would just do bad impersonations of like Jack Lemmon.
You know, it was just that was what I thought performing was. Then at school, thankfully, it was pretty intense. And you kind of broke down and learned (that) there's a whole other way to approach this. And that process kind of surprised me. And I kind of learned to love it.
John:
So, you're an actor in New York and you're grinding and having really some success. I think you can attribute that to hard work. You can attribute that to your relationships probably.
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GS:
Relationships and luck, I think. I don't want to leave this part out because it makes it sound like things happened pretty quickly. They didn't. After a couple of years of nothing really happening other than one acts at EST, I'll tell you what I did. I was invited up to Buffalo, which is where I'm from, by the folks at the Irish Classical Theater up there who would all come over from the Abbey, and they got green cards or visas, whatever it is, to work or teach at the University of Buffalo. And they invited me up to do a play up there. And that kind of changed things for me because now I felt, “Okay, I'm back to being an actor”. The plays they would pick, no one was ever going to ask me to do in New York. I was doing Pinter and Shaw and, you name it, and it was fabulous. So, I did that on and off for five or six years where I'd go up and do a show a year up there, which kind of kept me going. They weren't going to change my career, but they definitely fed me artistically. Not to sound corny, but it was important.
John:
Yeah, that is absolutely crucial. And again, I think it's a recurring theme that we hear when we talk to people who make their own work is how they're surprised at how artistically fulfilling it is and how they maybe even think of themselves again as more than just an actor but as an artist. That would lead us into to the question - how did you first start thinking about making your own work? Because I'm unlike you guys. i did not go to school for acting. I had a very different road into acting and I would say I started in mid-life. So, when I did, people were already talking about how actors need to make their own work. And I'm imagining that that wasn't the case for either of you when you started. What was it that that inspired you to start thinking about making your own show?
GS:
I have to say, there were a few people in my life, including Jason, who were already a hyphenate, and that was not something that I sort of entertained, but I was kind of witnessing it with, Mitchell and Catie (Riggs) and you, Jason. I was seeing people do the things I knew I wanted to do. I always loved film and I assumed that I would even love directing film, which I haven't really done yet, but I in my head I thought, “Well, I'm going to start to work in film at some point, of course. And then I will learn all about directing film. I'm going to the Clint Eastwood school of film directing, and eventually then I will direct films.” This was, in my head, what I actually thought would happen, and at a certain point, at a certain age, it really did happen. So, I started. I was intimidated by the thought of directing anything film-wise. So, I started writing. I thought, “Well, if I wrote a script and then I partnered with somebody who had a had a director's vision and we were on the same page then, then maybe I could get something made.” So, I started writing, and I think the writing came out of the fact that I worked. You know, when you're coming up as an actor and even in school, you worked so much with playwrights, with new plays. I mean, that's where actors starting out, that's so often where you end up - workshops. So, you're watching the process constantly.
So, I watched all these writers go through the process and then would have a dialog with them. I mean, some of them were very open to wanting to get feedback and you start to understand the process that way. And I realized I seem to be getting the response that I was good at fixing things, or I was good at least giving ideas that could lead to fixing things. And that made me think I could maybe write something terrible and then fix it. You know, I didn't think I could write something good, but I thought if I just get something down on paper - and we all know this is the hardest thing, just get it down to begin with, because then you can go back and fix it.
So, I started writing this epic sort of film that encapsulated pretty much everything that I loved. It was a neo noir and it was twisty and a mystery and dark and hopefully a little funny and was just 160 pages of just my brain and every movie that I loved sort of mushed together. And I was doing a play in New York and a friend of mine who was a lighting designer was the TD for a private school on the Upper West Side. And she would have me come during the day to focus lights because of course, at Carnegie Mellon, one of my big jobs early on, was to get on the fly floor or get up on the ladder and focus lights. I knew how to do that. So, I would go focus lights for her show. And there was a woman there by the name of Jenna Ricker, who was teaching and doing costume design there. And she was in the process of making her first film called “Ben's Plan”, which is a great indie film that she did everything on. Great actors, some of whom she met through her connections with the Atlantic Theater Company. And it was just wonderful. I was so impressed with that. And she and I just started talking and she was in the process of developing another script and we talked about that, and we just hit it off and I thought, “Oh, this could be a person who I might want to collaborate with.” So that's how “The American Side” came about. The little upshot to that is that we got a script that Jenna had initially developed and that I worked with her on into the IFP, which is now Gotham, I think.
So, we met with all these different production companies, and you could tell that they liked us, and they liked the material, but they were a little iffy about. The script was pretty dark, and they were like, “Well, what else do you have?” So, I started talking about “The American Side”, and we walked out of there saying, “Well, now I guess we have to go finish that”.
"It was a very long process, and it was asking questions and some of it was research and learning and making mistakes. I look back, and there's lots of things we should have done differently. But I don't hold that against us because you can't cover everything."
GS:
At one point I turned over the 160-page manuscript and Jenna said, “Let's make some cuts”. This was over a few years. One of the great things that Jenna had us do was to go up to Buffalo and create a proof-of-concept trailer. Her visual take on the city had such an impact on the script because there were things she was capturing that weren't in the script that we just visually fell in love with. She just knew how to capture it in such a beautiful way. That just added to the neo noir vibe of it all that I would go back to the typewriter and incorporate scenes that had some of these visuals. A really backwards way to write something. But it was sort of fun and not unlike, I came to learn later, that a lot of great writers and directors did do that kind of thing. Hitchcock notoriously would pick a location and say, “Now what could the scene be?” And we did a little bit of that with this. We got the script to a point where we thought we can start showing it to people. We were just trying to get a budget, actually. And that's how we ended up finding our producer, because we were shooting it around trying to get a budget. We found someone who had experience in line producing, who said, “Well, I haven't done any producing for producing, so I'd like to be involved in that.” (It was) one of the things that was really helpful to us and an example of (bringing) in people who had great reputations, but who we were given an opportunity, a step higher than what they'd been doing. So, someone who had been a second A.D. we’re saying, “This is your opportunity to be an A.D. on a film. And this obviously created a great opportunity for Jana to direct something with a slightly bigger budget and with a certainly bigger crew.
But we did that across the board and even with our actors, and we ended up with a pretty extraordinary cast for “The American Side.” And that was, again, just roll up your sleeves, research, literally reading interviews with actors, reading articles about actors, researching what they were up to. Here's a perfect example. Robert Vaughn. We wanted somebody who connected us to older films and had some of those kinds of films like “Bullitt” in his repertoire. And we narrowed the list down to about four or five actors of that era who were still around and still working. And I discovered that he was doing a tour of 12 Angry Men in England. And I thought, “Here's a guy who wants to be working. Here's a guy who just loves it and wants to keep working.” So, we wrote him a letter and he immediately responded, “Absolutely”. And all of our actors, most of them have theater backgrounds. We knew they were kind of “roll up your sleeves” actors. And we were very strategic about schedule because of the nature of the story. You know, my character is kind of constantly opening doors in this rogue's gallery, kind of, you know, maze of characters. And so it allowed for different actors to come in for short periods of time. And then not be necessarily needed again, because I was in every scene, but they could pop in and out. So, the commitment for these actors was not long for most of them. And that helps too, because, you know, Robert Forster would say, “Yeah, I can be there for four days. Sure.”
Jason:
It's such a great lesson to teach. I've experienced it as well where – you know we always advocate people writing for, you know, if you have a location or if you’re inspired by a location and something that maybe you don't have to pull permits for and it's in your back pocket - write something that takes place there. And as far as casting, you know, if you're thinking of someone like “what's that person up too?” I always say actors like to act. So, if you have a connection or if you find their agent and write them a letter with the script attached and if they like it and if it's like you said, they just had to come in for a day or two… I crafted a whole series that way for Cady Huffman.
GS:
Absolutely. That's a perfect example.
Jason:
I knew that she knew all these wonderful actors, but I knew they weren't going to be available for a 12 day shoot necessarily. So that's how the script became…that's how I built it, because then people would come in and out and maybe we'd get them for a day or two at the most. But you can still get them there.
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GS:
You can get them. It helps it helped your show pop. You know, I mean Cady is fabulous, but it's nice to see her interplay with all these wonderful other actors.
"Just do it and don't worry about what you don't know because what I don't know could fill a stadium. And at the end of it you have a film and that carries some weight."
John:
How did you know how to do all that? Where did you guys just lucked out or did you ask for help? Advice from other people? How did you learn how to do these amazing things?
GS:
I have to say, John, the whole process was intimidating, and it still is to me. And yet we had the time of our lives doing it. But it was like going to a different specialty in film school each step of the way, like pre-production. I knew what intimidated me was the whole process. that I thought, “How on earth does someone actually make a film, let alone get it into theaters?” I mean, I didn't know any of that. How did you guys figure that out? So, it was a very long process, and it was asking questions and some of it was research and learning and making mistakes. I look back, and there's lots of things we should have done differently. But I don't hold that against us because you can't cover everything. You can't know it all at once. And I have a feeling there's never going to be a moment where you know everything. So, it was slow.
Each step of it, we would say we've got this part done. We understand what the budget is. Okay, good. Now what's next? The next big step was attachments. You know, who can we get attached to this that will allow us to raise some money? So, we got we got three actors to attach themselves to the project. And as you guys know, that doesn't mean they're definitely doing it. It means that they've read the material. They have a respect for the material. If they're available, they would do it kind of thing. And we got Matthew Broderick, who I knew from the play, and of course that carried a fair amount of weight with it. So it pays to be friendly and nice and a decent person to all the people you're working with. Absolutely. Because those people will help you out in a pinch. So we got the attachments and, of course, raising the money took a couple of years. And then the budget got lower and lower because we really wanted to make it. The initial budget - we're not going to reach that and get to shoot this anytime soon. So how can we make it a lower budget? And eventually we got it to a place (where) we started to put a crew together and then everything happens all at once when the schedules are aligning.
(Then) we’re like, “when is this going to happen and how do we get everything to work?” And it just feels like it's going to be all too two drawn out. And then suddenly everybody's schedule lines up and you immediately have to get the office up in Buffalo and get the pre-production running and get the locations nailed down. And it just all rushes together and you're sort of shocked that you're suddenly on a set and there are trucks and you're like, “how did this happen?” There are times where I still don't know how it happened.
Greg with Matthew Broderick and Director Jenna Ricker
on the set of "The American Side"
John:
Now what is post-production?
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GS:
It's funny. During all this, we're all also trying to do our other things. I remember I was up at Yale Rep doing a play. When rehearsals would end, I would come back to my apartment up there and I would be putting together the opening credits sequence on iMovie and just pulling pictures of Buffalo that different folks had taken. These beautiful different shots of Buffalo and historical pictures of the falls and Tesla who is a part of the plot. It was just supposed to be a temp for festivals and then by the time we were finished, our producers (said) “just use this.” So, if you look at the credits closely, I'm the expert credit sequence creator, which of course I know absolutely nothing about. (I just) kind of tediously figured it out on iMovie. And we didn't even know if the transfer would work because I was doing it and I wouldn't even know if it would work on a big screen. But it worked fine.
Jason:
We've talked to people who after they've made things, they say, “God, I really wish I thought more about the distribution of the thing after before we made it.” How did that process happen for you?
GS:
I think we had a concept in our head of how it would work, and it just didn't work that way. I think we thought we've got wonderful actors, we've got a genre picture that's kind of quirky and it just seems like what festival wouldn't want to? Well, apparently not too many. And part of that we've come to learn just because we've had friends get into festivals and as you guys know, there's a lot of behind-the-scenes relationships that need to be massaged for the festival kind of thing to work - having producers intimately connected to them, having actors whose agencies are really championing the film and leveraging other projects to get smaller projects into festivals. There's a lot of that that happens, and we didn't have any of that. We just thought it'll stand on its own. And thankfully there were a couple of festivals, including Woodstock, that did take a chance on it. You go through this phase of like, “I don't want it to go to this festival because Sundance won't take it if it's already been in this festival.” And for me, the lesson on this was any festival that wants to, let them have it. Let people see your film and get it out there. What happened at Woodstock for us that was great was that the Hollywood Reporter reviewed it, so that gave us our first kind of stamp of approval from a national publication. And it was a good review. And that allowed us to get a little more traction with getting it shown in New York. It was really a “roll up your sleeves”. This is why I like talking to you guys, because there's nothing slick or super connected about it. Jen and I literally got on the phone and called arthouse theaters across the country. We had a friend that Jen met watching a Buffalo Bills game and at another dear friend - you may have read about Bill Thompson, who just recently passed away. He worked for Cohen Media in the distribution area. And Bill was wonderful in letting us know how distribution worked in the indie film arena. And I would have never thought of this, but he said a lot of these places are going to have booking agents that they adhere to and they won't even consider talking to you, which we found a lot of.
I mean, I literally called people. They're like, “No, no.” And then you would get some of the more independent minded places and they would say, “Oh, well, we'll take a look at it. Send them the film.” And in some cases, they would get back to us. I remember Wilmette just outside of Chicago, was one of the big success stories for the film. I called them. Totally independently run. The woman who runs it, fabulous. And I had said to her, “Would you guys consider like doing a weekend, just a weekend of this?” And she said, “No, we want it for a week.” “That's a great, that's really sweet. Thank you.” She said, “Would you guys be willing to do a Q&A for opening night? You and Jenna.” “Absolutely.” So, we go up and do the Q&A, and the theater itself helped arrange for a couple of radio interviews and publications to come see it. We spent a very small amount of money on PR up there. Very little but enough to get press to come. We opened there and we were up against indie films that year with much splashier, slicker campaigns and we outperformed them. So they kept us for a second week and then a third week and a fourth week and a fifth week.
Meanwhile, we were traveling around the country doing openings in other cities. San Francisco and Portland, in L.A. And we would go back. Not every week, but we went back to maybe two or three more times for Q&As. And the independent film critics up there -they have a whole group. For whatever reason, maybe because it was Buffalo and Buffalo's like a little tiny Chicago, they really embraced it and we got great reviews out of Chicago and that helped us. Again, it's a slow process. So, you take the great reviews from Chicago and then you call San Francisco and you say, “Look, this is what they're saying in Chicago.”
Jason:
Is that how you booked those subsequent cities? You use the Chicago? You didn't necessarily have connections in those places?
GS:
No connections in those places. No connections in any of these places, really, other than just finding theaters that were independent and willing to take on films they'd never heard of. Part of it was that we were showing up that that carried a lot of weight with them because a lot of art houses love feeling a connection to the films that are playing. So if they feel like they’re going to get a chance to give feedback and talk to the creators, the art houses love that. It's part of the it's part of the attraction for subscribers to those art houses that they're much more connected.
Jason:
So, this is on your dime? Is this part of the built in budget for the for the film?
GS:
No and that was actually one mistake. I mean, I can't say it was a mistake because we needed every cent to make the film, but we did not reserve, what I think people suggest very conservatively, 10%, but it probably should be more than that. And certainly studios are known for spending more than the film itself to promote it, because that's business. What's more important is promotion. We had nothing to promote the film so Jenna and I did a Kickstarter campaign. I think it probably still exists. You (could) probably still go see elements of it on the site. That worked really well for us and that was our budget for that was our that P&A budget, and that's what we used to get the PR in Chicago. It allowed us to travel to these different cities to do the Q&As and just a few incidentals along the way.
Jason:
Where can you see the film today?
GS:
I believe you can get it on Amazon. I think at this point it's probably even on Tubi.
John:
That’s incredible.
Jason:
What a journey.
Greg with Jenna Ricker and the cast of
"The American Side"
GS:
It feels like it's still going in a weird way and of course, we'd like to be doing more. I mean we actually made this from a while ago, but it was such a rewarding process. Super challenging, of course, but really rewarding. And the only real lesson I walk away from is what you guys are always preaching - just do it and don't worry about what you don't know because what I don't know could fill a stadium. And at the end of it you have a film and that carries some weight. Well, here's the other thing. We also thought, naively, now that we've got this film, someone's going to see it, I'll be cast in the next “CSI” and Jenna will be directing this and that. Here we are, Rotten Tomatoes, great reviews, all these critics. And it didn't fling open doors. It didn't. What it did was it expanded our circle a bit. It taught us how to make a film. We've made a couple of things since, and we have these connections. But the part of it that changed our lives was the fun of doing it, the process of doing it. That's what changed our lives. Not what came, not how the business treated us afterwards or the result of it.
John:
That's an amazing message. The two big questions that I had, and we we've alluded to it a little bit: what was the one thig, if you could just pick one I know it's hard, but one thing you would do differently next time or you would have done differently if you could have on that first project? And then the other question is, you had this intention when you started out writing that film. How did the experience of making the film fulfill or not fulfill that intention? So, what's one thing you would have differently?
GS:
I think having the having an understanding of the distribution side of it, having something in place both financially for the print and advertising element but also the connections like sowing the seeds earlier in the process, trying to get some buzz going at certain festivals or find some inroads at certain festivals or get someone attached to the film who has inroads at certain festivals. It just raises your profile so significantly. It doesn't have to be Sundance, but there are certain festivals that are going to give you a leg up as far as getting attention. And there are great smaller festivals that aren't slick and thank God they're not super slick, you know? I mean I love what they do at Woodstock. That is a fabulous festival. If you can get your film in there, you're very lucky. It's not going to have big players descending on it like some of these other festivals.
Jason:
We had a short there and they were very receptive. It’s a really nice festival.
GS:
And it's a great town and the whole vibe there is fantastic. We'd love to go back to Woodstock. I think that would be one thing: really thinking about that and planning. That's not going to be a guarantee but having some inroads made on that festival scene, even as you're ramping up production would be a lesson.
John:
You think that there is a way that you could have learned how to do that better besides just going through the process?
GS:
Maybe not. I don't know. I think maybe we to go through it. Because again, we weren't anybody, and we're still not anybody but we didn't have any cachet with anyone to say, “Hey, we've got this film we're going to Woodstock.” “Yeah, you and 8 billion other people.” So, I think we can be smarter about it. There's just no way to get there without having gone through it.
John:
So, where you started when you started writing the script so many years ago versus where you are now. How did it meet or not meet those expectations? Do you have completely different goals now and ideas of what you want to do?
GS:
It's such a great question and I guess the answer for me is that it fluctuates wildly from moment to moment, because there are times where I look back at it and I think about, not to harp on the critics, but it's very rewarding to have people you don't know and have no connection to who do this for a living look at something that you helped create and say, “Yeah, that's worth watching.” And then there's also the self-critic in me that looks up every blogger in a basement everywhere who says things like, “This was the worst movie I've ever seen. It's a good thing Greg Stuhr wrote it because no one would cast him in it otherwise. He's awful. Where did he come from?” You know, you read that stuff, too. That's another good lesson. You start to develop thick skin because as you know, you're acting as a producer, too, so you kind of have to read everything, not just an actor and go like, “I don't want to know.” I mean, I always read everything anyway. You shouldn't, but I do.
The other big factor I will say, John, is the thing that for me helps me overcome the fear of it all and the intimidating elements of it all is having like-minded partners. Because on the days where I'm thinking, “What on earth are we doing”, to have a partner or two or three that can say, “Today we're doing this”, or “We're getting this done”, or “You got to feel good about this”, or “Here's the next step”, put it in perspective for you. Then hopefully you're doing the same for them when they're having days where it's like, “Oh, gosh, we cannot get ahead”, “Why is no one saying yes to this?”, “Why aren't theaters booking us?” To have other people so it's not just you alone makes a big difference. Makes a huge difference.
Jason:
It’s such a collaborative process. So that is everything. It's so true. So, what are you working on now?
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John:
How many projects would you say you've got in the works right now if you could put a number on it.
GS:
We always feel like we have like a bunch going.
John:
It's funny because, you know, between Jason and I, we've got things that we're working on on our own. We're working on with other people, working on together. The tow of us, it feels like there can never be enough in a way. And on the other hand, like you said, there's something about that relationship. I think creativity just leads to creativity. I'm sure somebody else already said it, but it's not a resource that you have to worry about using too much of. It's a self-replicating resource somehow. It's very strange. So, if anybody talked to us about creativity, that's just something we say. You know, there's no such thing as writer's block. As you proved, it's just about being willing to write bad stuff. And that internal critic that you've suffered through at Q&As you somehow silenced long enough to write a feature film.
GS:
Yeah. And you have to kind of hang up the perfectionism hat and all that because I always say this to anyone asks: it’s so much easier to rewrite than write, but you can't rewrite nothing. So, you have to get it on the page and let it be what it is and then go back and then make it great. Because that you can do. We have to convince ourselves to get the ink on that page to begin with.
Jason:
This is so much more interesting and in-depth about so many parts of what you did than I anticipated.
GS:
Oh, good.
John:
Anything else you want to offer, Greg?
GS:
I'm remembering what I was going to say, that you made me think of John. It's about how many projects you have going and all that. And I think what's interesting about that is you don't know and why it's probably good to have multiple things going is like we learned: you don't know what is going to gain traction and you don't know in any given moment who you're going be introduced to that might be interested in this or that. It's part of the reason why Jenna and I have three or four television projects, film projects together, a couple of things separately, including plays, including unscripted series. So, as I said about the doc, we didn't know that was the direction that we would head in, but that was what got traction and that that was the opportunity that presented itself. So, we embraced it. And I do think “Qualified”, that's the name of the “30 For 30”, I think it's a really good film and we don't know what's next. The next thing might be an unscripted series. You know, wasn't my dream. But if that's the next thing, that's the next thing, and we'll embrace it and have fun with it and make it the best thing we can make it. But ultimately, I certainly want to get back to narrative features, and we're working at that. Television is also extremely appealing for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is financial, if you can crack that code. So, it's whatever. You've got to have different things going because you don't know what's going to get traction, you don't know what your connections are going to lead you to or ask of you at any given moment. “Hey, do you have this?”
I'm going off here, but the series that I mentioned earlier, that I've written that came about because the playwright whose play I was doing at Yale Rep and L.A. and New York I'd worked with a few times, he had an overall deal with it with a television studio. And part of his overall deal was to bring them projects of other people's at certain times. And we got on very well and he liked me enough and knew that I liked writing. And he said, “Why don't you write something, and I'll see if maybe if it's worth going into them with?” And he told me what he ostensibly wanted it to be about. And I said, “Well, okay, I get why you like that. But to me, that's not that interesting. But there's an element of that that is really interesting. Let me go research that a little bit more, because there are people I know really well and have been around and it's an environment I've been around a lot”. And so I did a little bit of that and started developing the script for this pitch.
So, we went out and pitched it. I've never been in that “room” sort of situation before where you're pitching to a network and they bought it, which is insane. I mean, we walked out, and he said to me, “Do you know what just happened?” I was kinda like, “It seems like they like it, right?” He's like, “Yeah, they bought it.”
John:
Bought it in the room.
GS:
Bought it in the room. Only pitch I've ever had to a network.
John:
That's really serious beginner's luck.
GS:
Yeah. Yeah, it is. Absolutely. It is 100% luck. And I'll tell you how lucky we were. The two people that we pitched to, one of them had just recently had an experience that dealt exactly with the scenario. And the other one, who was very young, really savvy, had just been watching a series, an old TV series that we reference in this that I thought, “Oh, these people are not going to know what we're talking about. We are like old school to them.” And they had just been watching it. They're like, “Oh, I get it, It's this.” And we're like, “Yeah, it's that.” So, we got super, super lucky, but we didn't get lucky. This studio got bought. It was a huge studio and it got bought by another huge studio and the people that signed on to ours were gone. And so it was not a happy ending, but it was a great experience. The point of the story is you don't know what is going to be asked of you next. So having different things in your mind and on the page is always worthwhile.
John:
Greg, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us. It was a lot of fun.
Greg:
It was a blast. Thank you both.
Jason:
It's great to catch up with you Greg, my friend. So nice to see you.
GS;
It's a neat thing you guys are doing, and I think it's so valuable and it's stuff that I think even people who are out there creating need to go back and look at and be reminded.
We need that out there.
John:
That means a lot. Thanks, Greg.
Jason:
Take care, Greg.
GS:
Probably the biggest thing we've done subsequently was a documentary that ended up being in an ESPN “30 For 30”. It premiered at South by Southwest. Jenna directed it as well and I produced. It was about Janet Guthrie, who's the first woman to race in the Indy 500 in 1977, and the Daytona 500. One of the things we've been working on is the development of the narrative of that.
Jason:
You’re writing the script?
GS:
Yes, based on her book. Her autobiography is fabulous. And it's what got us interested to begin with. But again, this is another lesson for us. We were not seeking out documentary or that that world at all. It just so happened that we became interested in the story, and we had a few tenuous connections to that world that we thought, “Well, let's pitch this”, and that kind of snowballed into making it happen. Now, interesting, that's opened doors in that arena because once you've made something like that, then people think, “Okay, that's what you do.” It’s so funny how those paths go.
Greg Stuhr appeared in the Broadway production of Larry David’s Fish in the Dark directed by Anna Shapiro; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee; David Mamet’s November, directed by Joe Mantello; and Elaine May’s Taller Than a Dwarf, directed by Alan Arkin. Off-Broadway and regional work include world premieres by Ethan Coen, Keith Reddin, Rolin Jones and Bruce Norris for the Atlantic Theater Company, South Coast Rep, Yale Rep and Steppenwolf Theater Company, respectively.
His film, "The American Side", shot in his hometown of Buffalo, NY, co-written with Jenna Ricker and co- starring Alicja Bachleda, Camilla Belle, Matthew Broderick, Robert Vaughn and Robert Forster, was touted by The Hollywood Reporter as an “adrenaline charged, pop-noir mystery” and a festival “highlight.” The San Francisco Chronicle hailed it as a "stylish, tense, witty, imponderable and exhilarating tribute to film noir classics". He was a regular on the "Onion SportsDome" for Comedy Central and served as producer on the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary, "Qualified", also directed by Ms. Ricker, which premiered at SXSW. Along with Adam O’Byrne and Rolin Jones, Greg created the comedy series "Luba’s Lot" for Fox Television Studios.
Greg is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon Drama.