No, it made a lot of sense, don’t worry. Do you have any major goals or messages you want to tell with your films or are you just making films for the sake of it? 

It’s whatever the specific story is really. It’s not, like (Quentin) Tarantino who said he wants to make nine films or whatever and he probably has an idea of what he wants to make for those nine films. I don’t have that at all. I just want to make a film and whatever that film is, whatever it has to say, it says that. 

Yeah, where you’re not limiting yourself. As you mentioned how Tarantino is only making the nine, spending years making them getting the perfect shot and everything, you’re just making them for the fun of it all. 

The fun and the challenge of making a cohesive story around one theme or a couple of themes. 

Of course. One thing that we talk about a lot is actually your view on special effects versus practical effects and how they change a story and how they completely alter the quality of a film, whether it’s actual visual quality or just story quality. Do you think you’d ever practice doing a variation of special and practical effects or do you want to concentrate more on practical effects like what’s his name, from Mad Max?

George Miller? 

Yeah, him! 

(laughing) I like practical effects because it is more challenging in a sense. I mean, visual effects are challenging in their own right but, practical effects are a bit more challenging because you have to do it on the day, at the right time, at the right point, and it has to look believable. Whereas in the visual effects side you can literally do anything against a timeline that you don’t really have to, you don’t really have to plan, but you can do it whenever you want, basically. 

Right. In turn, do you think using special effects makes a lazier filmmaker or do you think it’s just however someone perceives it? 

Nah, well, both of them are incredibly difficult to achieve and especially if you look at ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) and their work on the latest Star Wars is incredibly good and you can’t tell the difference because some shots are miniatures and some are not and you just can’t tell so it is getting a lot better. But if I could go with one it would be physical or special effects. 

Especially with your filmmaking process, you’re not a very sci-fi guy, you’re more practical films, dramatic films, just like your script “44” on Lewis Hamilton’s history.

Yeah. Sort of like a biography. 

Right. Because you aim more for of the emotion rather than the spectacle. 

Yeah. 

Huh. 

I think so, I don’t know. Well, for now I am. (Laughs)

It’s all the same thing with me writing as a whole process until you discover what works right for you. Like, I started off by thinking I want to be a novelist and then that didn’t work too well so then I moved onto just short films and then I wanted to make long films and now I find myself in sitcoms. Did you have a similar process like that or have you always known you wanted to make films and you’ve stuck to that path? 

Yeah, it started off with films and hasn’t really changed since. 

Would you ever consider making a foreign film? Since I know that Spanish is your second language, would you want to try to explore that or do you want to just stick to the Western markets? 

I think my strength is in the Western market. It would really be a challenge to do something like that so yeah, I’d probably stick to the Western side for the time being. 

With most foreign films, the best you can do is get on a film festival and there is a rare chance it’ll be seen by the amount of people that most writers want their work to be seen by. 

I don’t really tend to look at it as “who is going to see my movie?” It’s more “what can I get out of it and what can I put into it?”

Okay, that’s an interesting outlook. 

By this point, I realize that I asked all of my questions and was struggling to get more content. Jack and I proceeded to talk about ways to make a word document look fancy, reminiscing about the good old days of Word Art and the early 2000s. The conversation moved onto emojis and Vines and eventually onto the Internet, which got me thinking...

Actually yeah! That’s an interesting thing, the Internet! I just want to ask a quick question, do you believe streaming services such as Netflix, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime (Video) have allowed filmmakers a broader outlook on how their films can be made? Since in network television you have to stick to a certain time, you have to have space for commercials, and you have to write it where there is a cliffhanger every 15 minutes or so and then you can cut to commercials and keep people there. While with movies you have to have something at a certain length or else people are going to walk out or be too bored with it, but with streaming services they kind of removed the need for something to be specifically within that time, like how you have episodes of [The Marvelous] Mrs. Maisel be an hour and a half or thirty minutes or an hour long. Do you think that has given filmmakers a broader opportunity to make their films where they are not creatively stuck or do you think that has limited the potential for what films can be compared to how they were classically? 

Well it’s definitely allowed for more freedom in what can be created. The fact that there are so many streaming sites available means there’s so many more pieces of content out there, and that means you’re up against a lot of competition and that means you probably won’t get, if you’re relatively unknown,  a lot of audiences if you’re looking towards that. The other thing is this whole cinema going experience; you can’t really get that at home unless you literally build a miniature cinema. 

Yeah and then commercials in films—product placement—has played a huge aspect in a majority of filmmaking. I remember watching Skyfall and they spent a literal full 45 seconds on just his (Bond) watch presented as a full scene. Do you think that diminishes the filmmaking process where filmmakers have the idea “I have to get this product in somehow even if it awkwardly transitions from my serious story into like, Oh How Did I Get My Bruises Healed? By Using This Magical Product!!” and just staring into the screen, advertising it, and going back to the story. Do you think the need for advertising a product in order to get financing diminishes the quality of a film or do you think as long as a filmmaker can make it hidden enough then it won’t matter? 

I mean it’s like a necessary evil. If you think about it, two hours of something on TV, and to ask someone to pay millions of pounds or dollars to make it is quite ridiculous. So if a company wants to advertise just one thing in it, it’s alright. But as long as it is done well and it’s not like Jack And Jill, which is basically one giant advert.

Oh my god.

… and it isn’t just trash then it would be okay, as long as you can find a way to work it in without having to detract from what you’re actually trying to show. 

It’s interesting that you mentioned Jack and Jill because Adam Sandler used to be this high-ranking filmmaker. His movies were remembered and were unbelievable. Maybe they haven’t survived the test of time but you’ve got things like, The Waterboy, Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison, and in recent days he’s reduced his quality in the movies he makes and he has even admitted that he does it just for a free holiday. Do you think actors like Adam Sandler are insulting the “magic” of filmmaking by taking it as a cheap shot just to have vacations and make a little bit more extra money verses filmmakers who actually want to tell a story and bring a message out into the world?

It’s kind of a bit, I mean it’s a hustle isn’t it? He’s doing his own thing. It’s not really going to affect, say if like a Christopher Nolan movie came out and an Adam Sandler film came out, it’ll probably be the same amount on either side because weirdly Adam Sandler gets a lot of money from the amount of people that go see it and there’s die-hard Nolan fans so it doesn’t diminish it. It’s his own hustle kind of thing.

It is interesting that you bring up Nolan because I know he’s one of your favorite filmmakers because you’re a huge fan of The Dark Knight Trilogy and you pretty much wrote my ear off about Dunkirk. What interested you most about Dunkirk? Was it the aspect ratio it was filmed in and the cinema experience that it brings? Because I even mentioned that “Oh I should probably watch it” and you said “It wouldn’t be as good if you’re not seeing it in the cinema.” 

Yeah it’s good if you don’t see it. Once you’ve seen it in the cinema widescreen in IMAX, everything else looks like it’s been filmed on a potato. But the main reason I liked it so much was because there wasn’t much dialogue, it was just told through story, or through visuals.

Right, and that’s the number one rule for writing, Show, Don’t Tell. Alright, I think I’ve gotten everything I need. Thank you again. I hope you have a great day.