Poodle Power

Films Not Made
Episode 2: Poodle Power

Amy: Welcome to Films Not Made, where producers, writers and directors pull old, never-made projects out of the closet, and we attempt to resurrect them using some very questionable AI.

Avi: I'm Avi Zev Weider.

Amy: And I'm Amy Hobby. Today we're diving into a project that Anne Hubbell and I spent almost a decade to get made. It's an animated film about a team of standard poodles that run the Iditarod in Alaska. Anne is my longtime producing partner, co-founder of Tangerine Entertainment. She currently runs the Provincetown International Film Festival and is an executive at Kodak where she helps filmmakers shoot on film, which is that kind of physical stuff that AI can't replicate yet anyway.

Avi Weider: Also joining us is my really good friend, Kent Osborne. I think he's one of the funniest people, certainly I know, and you may know him because he is a longtime animator and director, like 25 years of experience in the industry. You might see his name from SpongeBob or Adventure Time. Also fun fact, an umpire for his local little league and an active community theater member.

Amy Hobby: Kent is also the brother of Mark Osborne, the Oscar-nominated animator who gave us some truly devastating notes back in the day on the project.

Avi Weider: As usual, we've got the original materials, their original deck. They're eight years of emails. We have everything and we've fed it all into the AI pipeline to see what we could do with it. So, we're going to be looking at a new deck, a new trailer, and of course, we've got a meeting with our most interesting and semi-intelligent film executive.

Amy Hobby: Welcome to Films Not Made. Let's talk about Poodle Power.

Avi Weider: Anne, you've got water behind you. So where do we find you right now actually?

Anne Hubbell: I am in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Avi Weider: And Kent, where are you located these days?

Kent Osborne: I'm in the glorious Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

Avi Weider: Fantastic.

Kent Osborne: Also, I'm remembering now, Avi, you were in my dream, not last night, but the night before.

Avi Weider: Oh, we definitely want to hear about that.

Kent Osborne: Yeah. I woke up in the middle of the night and there were kids throwing eggs at my house, and I was like, "I'm going to go down there." And I went outside and everyone was frozen. And then you came up and you put me on a handcart and started taking me away and you were talking to someone and it became clear that I was a malfunctioning robot and you were taking me back to the shop.

Avi Weider: This is so apropos to our entire endeavor here, and I think we definitely ought to keep that in mind because in a little bit we are going to have a hopefully non-malfunctioning robot join us in the conversation. But before we get there, let's start with the origin story for this project.

Amy Hobby: Anne, do you want to tell us whose idea was it to do a film about poodles running the Iditarod?

Anne Hubbell: Well, you had a standard poodle named Zellig, and we both love dogs and somehow did you read an article or I don't know who read the article about somebody who ran the Iditarod with standard poodles and we thought that was crazy and somehow got a hold of a book that was written about this guy, John Suter. We ended up basically figuring out how to option his life rights to make a movie.

Amy Hobby: I think before that, so he was based in Chugiak, Alaska, and I think before we got his life rights, this was around 2006, and I think he had had his friend that was on his mushing team write a script about his story. That script was called Spirit Poodles, this guy, Larry Williams.

Anne Hubbell: Spirit Poodles. Uh-huh.

Amy Hobby: Spirit Poodles. Yeah. And so, he already had a script and it was a crazy script, but it wasn't animation. And so I think the project started out not animation, right?

Anne Hubbell: I did.

Amy Hobby: I actually wrote down the intro of his script. I'm going to read a little bit of it. Just-

Anne Hubbell: Do it.

Amy Hobby: Yeah.

Avi Weider: Oh, dramatic reading.

Amy Hobby: So, dramatic reading. So, the top of it it's exterior Jayhawk Helicopter Night. Captain John Suter pilots the Jayhawk Helicopter through the darkness buffeted by high winds and rain. He looks over at co-pilot Petey. Suter, "Petey, I can't see a thing through this crap. Let's put on night vision." Petey was his standard poodle. He was his co-pilot, but it was a big-

Avi Weider: Wait a minute.

Amy Hobby: ... budget extravaganza.

Avi Weider: Was the dog going to put on night vision goggles?

Amy Hobby: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It wasn't the enemy.

Anne Hubbell: I don't know if the dog was going to put on night... I think he just sort of talked to Petey. But John, he did that. He was a pilot. He, as I recall, right?

Amy Hobby: Yeah, he was a pilot.

Anne Hubbell: Yeah, he was on a rescue team.

Amy Hobby: I don't know, but he had his friend, Larry write this script and it was like a big budget, real life script. And we optioned that script first, and then I think there was one minute where we were like, "We're going to go to Alaska and make this film." And I was like, "There's no film crews there. Maybe we shoot in Canada. Can we shoot it in Winnipeg?" This was like, yeah, maybe a month. And they were like, we're not going to go shoot this film in the snow."

Anne Hubbell: Alaska.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, no way. I think you came up with the idea that it should be-

Anne Hubbell: Because I wanted to go to Alaska to make the movie.

Amy Hobby: We wanted to go to see the Iditarod, but we never made it there.

Avi Weider: So, I assume you then went and started researching even more about this guy, Suter, because we have some news clips that you guys had somehow acquired. Maybe we should watch a little bit of this.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, let's watch. Yeah.

Speaker 5: John Suter is much like any other rookie musher in this year's Iditarod, but his team is unlike any you've ever seen.

John Suter: [inaudible 00:06:48]. Good girl.

Speaker 5: John Suter is known around these parts as the Poodle Man. He began raising standard poodles as race dogs 12 years ago.

John Suter: Well, my father-in-law, John Franklin had a miniature and it ran like crazy. So, I thought it would be really something if one could get poodles up and running.

Avi Weider: So, I think we see John Suter hooking up dogs to this-

Anne Hubbell: Poodles.

Kent Osborne: They're bigger than I thought they were going to be, right?

Amy Hobby: They were standard poodles.

Kent Osborne: Really. They're big, yes.

Speaker 5: Believe it or not, these are some tough poodles. They have 15 [inaudible 00:07:25] trail miles on them this year alone.

Anne Hubbell: No. They're not were these no [inaudible 00:07:27].

Speaker 5: [inaudible 00:07:29] Iditarod along with the nine Alaska Huskies, and he knows his team will get a-

Kent Osborne: They're so black, they look like-

Speaker 5: ... share of attention.

Kent Osborne: ... the monsters from [inaudible 00:07:38].

John Suter: [inaudible 00:07:38] don't have a sense of humor when you mush poodles.

Amy Hobby: But they're fast.

Kent Osborne: Yeah.

Amy Hobby: So, John, mostly had poodles.

Kent Osborne: And he's got a couple of-

Amy Hobby: He has two Huskies.

Speaker 5: Also [inaudible 00:07:45]-

Kent Osborne: Sled dogs that are also-

Anne Hubbell: He's got two Huskies.

Speaker 5: ... serous about his racing poodles.

Kent Osborne: Those are the ringers.

Speaker 5: As for the rest of the [inaudible 00:07:51]-

Amy Hobby: Totally unfair that the Huskies are out there [inaudible 00:07:53].

Kent Osborne: Is he cheating?

John Suter: No, I get a lot of ribbon from the [inaudible 00:07:56]-

Anne Hubbell: The poodles get a little distracted.

John Suter: ... but I haven't gotten any from the women, and I figure it's because women win the Iditarod and the men mush poodles.

Anne Hubbell: The Huskies are very focused.

Amy Hobby: I mean, in fact, John Suter ran poodles. It was a mixed team, poodle and Huskies in the Iditarod in I think 1989, 1990, until I think the Iditarod committee banned non-Husky breeds because of John Suter.

Avi Weider: So, you option the life rights. Had you ever optioned life rights before? I mean, is that different from optioning like a script?

Amy Hobby: I must have optioned life rights before because I make documentaries. I've been making films a while, but this is probably the first time I've dealt with optioning life rights for such a interesting individual.

Anne Hubbell: There was a book that was written and we wanted to have all of the underlying rights to everything.

Avi Weider: Wait. Suter had written a book about it?

Anne Hubbell: No. Suter didn't wrote a book-

Amy Hobby: No.

Anne Hubbell: Anyone else wrote the book. It was called Spirit-

Amy Hobby: Somebody else wrote a book.

Avi Weider: Oh, Spirit Poodle.

Amy Hobby: There was also a great book called My Lead Dog is a Lesbian that we really liked. We considered optioning that instead.

Avi Weider: Really?

Amy Hobby: Yeah.

Avi Weider: Talk more about the pivot to animation.

Amy Hobby: Suter always told us someone was... He always had some close brush with fame. For example, he tried to connect us with Sarah Palin, who he said politics aside, was pretty famous in Alaska and maybe could help us get the movie made. He told us that Gary Marshall read the script and really liked it, but he doesn't do movies in the cold. I guess that's why he passed on it. But all that aside, we just, cold, helicopters, dogs. Anne was like, "We have to do this as an animated film." Mind you, we had no idea how to make an... I don't know how you make an animated film.

Anne Hubbell: I don't know that we still have any idea how to do it.

Amy Hobby: I don't have any idea. Thank God Kent's here. But our first, not knowing anything, we reached out. I don't know how we got connected to Chris Wedge. I think I looked back to the emails. I couldn't figure it out. But I think that a very good friend of mine, Pete-

Avi Weider: Who is Chris Wedge?

Amy Hobby: Yeah. So yeah, Chris Wedge-

Anne Hubbell: He was at Blue Sky Studios, which did all of the Ice Age movies and big animation studio, and they were in White Plains.

Amy Hobby: At the time, they were in White Plains. We took the train up to White Plains.

Anne Hubbell: Took the metro.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. Side note, when we were in White Plains, we thought it would be a great location to film another project that was never made called Zeros and Ones from a script that Avi wrote.

Avi Weider: Present. Yes, we will get to that at some time.

Amy Hobby: We were developing the projects at the same time, actually. So, we'll have to have another episode for that. But Kent, did you know, or did you meet, or did you ever meet Chris Wedge and do you like his films?

Kent Osborne: Chris Wedge, he made Bunny, right? I believe.

Amy Hobby: Yeah.

Kent Osborne: Yeah. He and my brother were nominated for an Academy Award.

Amy Hobby: I think he was the lead animator on the original Tron from the 80s.

Kent Osborne: Oh, wow.

Avi Weider: Oh, man.

Amy Hobby: Which is amazing.

Avi Weider: I love that movie.

Amy Hobby: So, we knew nothing.

Anne Hubbell: We walked in and they took us around the whole studio. I mean, it was really fascinating to see how they did it, and it also felt like extremely daunting at that point where Amy and I thought, "We'll find the animator, and we can hire these people in this [inaudible 00:11:43]." I think we left that thinking, "No, no, we're just going to sell this and sit back and take a check and watch everybody else do it. There's no way we can be a part of this thing."

Amy Hobby: We had no clue. So, that was... Chris Wedge's tour of Blue Sky was our entire education on how to make an animated film. I don't think we made any other endeavors to learn about animation. We were just like, it's like two-word pitch, Poodle Iditarod.

Avi Weider: Poodle Iditarod.

Amy Hobby: Then we made a deck. So, we also had no idea 20 years ago on how to make a deck. Now, everyone does deck. Everyone has a deck.

Anne Hubbell: Oh, do you have the deck?

Avi Weider: We do have the deck. We should look at the deck. Let me get the deck. Okay.

Anne Hubbell: Let's look at the deck.

Amy Hobby: We want Kent to seek... So, Kent, it's 20 years ago. We walk in to pitch an animated film. We don't know anyone who works in animation except our new friend, Chris Wedge, and this is our deck.

Avi Weider: Here's the deck.

Amy Hobby: Tell us what you think.

Kent Osborne: So far so good.

Amy Hobby: This is our deck.

Kent Osborne: Yeah.

Avi Weider: Okay. What am I looking at here?

Anne Hubbell: [inaudible 00:12:49]?

Kent Osborne: That's a good-looking poodle.

Avi Weider: Just a nice serif font there with a picture of a poodle.

Kent Osborne: The sun setting though, majestically behind it.

Avi Weider: Yeah, totally. Totally majestically.

Amy Hobby: Pretty [inaudible 00:13:03].

Kent Osborne: Horizon line is up high.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. Green [inaudible 00:13:07].

Anne Hubbell: Yeah.

Kent Osborne: John Huston would be very proud of this shot.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, I didn't get the rights to it. I just pulled that off the internet, I guess.

Anne Hubbell: Oh, yeah.

Kent Osborne: That was great. I love it.

Amy Hobby: That's it. That was our deck.

Anne Hubbell: We never really settled on a title. I feel like that's one of the reasons it never got made... We never actually had a title.

Avi Weider: What's the title on here?

Anne Hubbell: Well, I guess it was Poodle Power. Who Knows?

Avi Weider: Poodle Power. Okay, next page, press.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, we had press.

Avi Weider: From?

Amy Hobby: Sports Illustrated.

Anne Hubbell: I don't see Poodle powered sleds.

Avi Weider: There we go. Sports Illustrated. This is from what year?

Amy Hobby: Probably 1989, 1990.

Avi Weider: And then even BetterPress.

Anne Hubbell: Wow. The Animal Press.

Avi Weider: The Animal Press. What's their distribution numbers from February 1989? It's great. It does look like a zine.

Anne Hubbell: It's a zine.

Avi Weider: There's like the word animal is in a zebra font, and I like their masthead quote, "Animal lovers are the people."

Amy Hobby: It's better than Democracy Dies in Darkness.

Avi Weider: The title is Poodles Tough It Out in the Last Great Race on Earth. "They didn't choose to be trimmed like ornamental shrubbery." This got clipped from somewhere. Who are these women though?

Amy Hobby: In that era, 1989, 1990, a lot of women would win the Iditarod. The best mushers in Alaska, Susan Butcher, I can't remember the other woman, but they ran the Iditarod and win. There was some quote, John would tell us, Alaska, where women win the Iditarod and Poodles... I forget the long line.

Kent Osborne: That's an unfortunate composition there with the woman in the front though with the-

Anne Hubbell: Yes, it is. Those Poodles.

Kent Osborne: Two Poodles are... It looks like they're getting a little too close.

Amy Hobby: Yeah.

Avi Weider: Why don't you describe it a little more for our listeners.

Kent Osborne: They're behind her. There might be... I would say it looks like there's both sniffing her butt, but you can't see. It's obscured by her and she looks very happy.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, because she's winning. Yeah.

Kent Osborne: Yeah, yeah.

Anne Hubbell: Yeah, she's winning.

Kent Osborne: She sure is.

Avi Weider: Next page in the deck.

Anne Hubbell: Where is it from?

Avi Weider: The Suburbanite Shopping News.

Anne Hubbell: Oh, The Suburbanite Shopping News. We did not source from the Suburbanite Shopping News. This is my guest. Don't you think [inaudible 00:15:45]-

Avi Weider: You met John? You actually met him in person.

Amy Hobby: We never met him in person.

Avi Weider: Oh, okay.

Amy Hobby: And it was before Zoom was kind of a thing, right? So, we just would talk to him on the phone. He would call us relentlessly.

Avi Weider: Relentlessly.

Amy Hobby: He's like, "Is the project set up?"

Avi Weider: Was he down with the animation?

Anne Hubbell: He was down with anything as long as it got done.

Avi Weider: Here's some more-

Amy Hobby: Oh, look. Yeah, I made a little montage there.

Avi Weider: Is this like a mood board? You'd call this a mood board? Describe the mood board.

Amy Hobby: It's literally three things. I don't know.

Anne Hubbell: Looks like you even got an overlap in one of them where the Huskies look menacing.

Amy Hobby: They were the bad guys in our film.

Anne Hubbell: They were the bad guys in the film.

Avi Weider: What do we have here?

Amy Hobby: So, we had some characters. We started to flesh out what the story might be, the animated story. So, we have some character descriptions, which we included in the deck. I see now.

Anne Hubbell: I see that. Now, I didn't know. This deck is like a reminder to me. I don't... Yeah.

Avi Weider: What does it remind you of?

Anne Hubbell: It reminded me that we [inaudible 00:17:01]-

Amy Hobby: And that we never made a deck before. It's reminding me that I had never made a deck before.

Avi Weider: Yeah. Kent, do you sometimes look at decks that people send you?

Kent Osborne: I guess so. Not a lot. But yeah, sometimes if a friend's working on pitching something. Yeah. The show I'm working on right now, I helped out with [inaudible 00:17:25]. I mean, for 20 years ago... The decks should just, I think they should be fun. They should have personality and which this has. I feel like I'm Simon Cowell. I wish I was a big guy so that-

Amy Hobby: See, that's actually a picture of Zellig.

Anne Hubbell: That's Zellig, Amy's dog in the Norton's spot. So, I think Jitters was an actual name of one of John's dogs.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, it was.

Avi Weider: Yeah. So, we have a whole cast here. We have Jitters, Norton.

Anne Hubbell: Norton was half Husky, half poodle, and it was one of the key points of the movie was that he wasn't accepted by the Huskies and he was embarrassed that he was half poodle until the poodles took him in. He was motivated.

Amy Hobby: He was a good team member, highly motivated. He had something to prove. Fifi.

Anne Hubbell: Fifi was owned by a fashion designer who had come to Alaska to open up a lumberjack chic boutique. And so, we met Fifi.

Avi Weider: See, that's already a novel right there.

Anne Hubbell: See, just we had characters.

Amy Hobby: Could have been a series.

Kent Osborne: I know the poodle-verse keeps expanding.

Amy Hobby: Yeah.

Avi Weider: Poodle-verse. I like that. It's the cinematic poodle universe.

Anne Hubbell: They were working at the docks.

Avi Weider: What did they do at the docks?

Anne Hubbell: I had to seek out the poodles and they had to go to these places to find them. And I knew brothers named Brett and Bart because they were from that TV show. Leo and Rose were like an old vaudeville couple. They worked at the circus. They got sprung from the circus when the circus came to town.

Avi Weider: That's great.

Anne Hubbell: And one was... Fifi wasn't really pink in the story, but Leo and Rose were pink and blue. They'd been dyed by the circus people. So, over the course of the movie, their hair would grow out, so they would just be pink and blue at the ends by the end of the story.

Avi Weider: And Hazel?

Anne Hubbell: She was probably what the lesbian poodle was based off of. She was just like an independent poodle. Hippie, whatever. Yeah.

Avi Weider: Off the grid, it says.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, off the grid. Living off the grid.

Avi Weider: Off the poodle grid.

Anne Hubbell: Oh, Fig.

Amy Hobby: Fig.

Anne Hubbell: I don't remember much about Fig.

Amy Hobby: Fig was super smart. You can see there's a picture of Fig playing piano. She's the brains behind the operation. And then we had one other character.

Anne Hubbell: And introducing, look at the deck, it's [inaudible 00:20:23], but a Marmot.

Kent Osborne: He's got a good agent. I was just going to say.

Anne Hubbell: Yeah. Final credit.

Kent Osborne: [inaudible 00:20:23] credit.

Amy Hobby: And introducing Marley the Marmot.

Avi Weider: Okay. Oh, my God. Here we go.

Amy Hobby: And it's a long ambitious deck.

Anne Hubbell: Really? It was ages already. Beargrease. I don't know how we came up with that name.

Avi Weider: Is Beargrease a real thing?

Kent Osborne: Bear Fat. A friend of mine, someone shot a bear and she salvaged the fat and made a bear fat salve. Salve. Save. Salve.

Avi Weider: Yeah, salve.

Anne Hubbell: Yeah, salve.

Kent Osborne: I'm like, "What do you rub it on?" She's like, "Anything you want?"

Anne Hubbell: Wow.

Avi Weider: Maybe we could get that as a sponsor. Beargrease is like the villain antagonist.

Anne Hubbell: Oh. And then there was Connie.

Amy Hobby: Oh, Connie.

Avi Weider: We've got a synopsis and just why don't you read us the log line, Anne?

Anne Hubbell: "Based on the true story of a team of standard poodles who against all odds run the 1,100-mile Iditarod dog sled race in Alaska." Wow.

Avi Weider: Okay. Oh, it's two pages long.

Anne Hubbell: Look at this.

Avi Weider: It's three pages long.

Anne Hubbell: That's just definitely people reading that.

Avi Weider: Oh, product placement.

Anne Hubbell: [inaudible 00:21:37].

Avi Weider: Wait a minute.

Amy Hobby: We were so ahead of our time. We have a whole page in our deck about poodle product placement.

Avi Weider: There's a picture of a poodle. It's sort of like an iPhone at the time. Oh, the iPod. Sorry, not iPhone, it's iPod. But it says iPoodle.

Kent Osborne: It's a silhouette dancing.

Anne Hubbell: Amy probably made that. Amy loves to mess around with the graphics. I love that you put a-

Amy Hobby: That looks pretty advanced.

Anne Hubbell: The iPoodle [inaudible 00:22:09].

Avi Weider: Incredible. I guess the Iditarod has actual sponsors like Panasonic and Wells Fargo.

Kent Osborne: Did you ever see a movie called Bye bye Love. It's Matthew Modine and Paul Reiser. A third of the movie takes place at McDonald's.

Avi Weider: So, what are you saying, Kent?

Kent Osborne: I'm wondering what third deck looked like. Paul Reiser at this deck, it had a little McDonald's logo.

Amy Hobby: Hamburglars running away from them.

Avi Weider: That's right.

Kent Osborne: Yeah.

Avi Weider: That's it. That's the end of the deck.

Amy Hobby: So, we took our deck. Yeah.

Avi Weider: So, I mean-

Amy Hobby: We took our deck.

Anne Hubbell: Where we end on the iPoodle.

Avi Weider: That's a solid end.

Anne Hubbell: So, after that, we decided we would try to make it animated. And we had this big long, as you can see treatment. And then at some point, the bright idea of me actually writing, who've never written a script before, was going to write the script for this thing. And so, I was like, "Sure, I'll do it." And we took forever and Amy just nagged me and nagged me all the time. By the way, we were taking meetings, we were getting a lot of meetings for this.

Amy Hobby: Oh, yeah. We didn't have a script. We didn't know how to make an animated film. We had our very first deck we've ever made.

Avi Weider: You had the deck?

Amy Hobby: Yeah. So, we went to LA in the old days. Before Zoom, you would go to LA to pitch as New Yorkers. So, it was like a thing. You'd be like, "We're going to go to LA," and we'd make our dates, and then you pack in meetings and you drive from-

Anne Hubbell: You bring these jeans, you'd go to [inaudible 00:23:51]-

Amy Hobby: Yeah. Well, I was going to ask you what would we wear? We would call each other like, "What are we going to wear?" Because we're New Yorkers, what do people wear in LA?

Avi Weider: This is also where your timeline here coincides with Kent. Because at a certain point, you had asked me or had told me about the project, and I said, "Oh, I know Kent Osborne and I know Conrad Vernon," who we will also meet at some point on another episode. And I'm pretty sure I sent whatever materials you had, which was probably the deck and maybe not a script. Was a script ever written?

Amy Hobby: The script wasn't done.

Avi Weider: Okay. Oh, yeah. The script was done.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, it got done two years later and finished the script.

Avi Weider: Okay, okay. Well so-

Amy Hobby: It took a while.

Avi Weider: So, I sent it off to Kent-

Anne Hubbell: Script have taken long.

Avi Weider: ... and I'm pretty sure Kent said, "You should talk to my brother, Mark."

Kent Osborne: Well, I mean, people send me stuff once in a while and I always want to say, "Oh, I've never gotten anything made. I don't know how any of this works." I worked on my first job with SpongeBob and I worked on the movie and I just kind of went from job to job as a writer, but I had no idea how to get anything. But people would send me stuff. "I have an idea for space pirates that are trying to go around the galaxy collecting music." And I'm like, "That sounds great." They're like, "You really... Okay, what do we do now?" And I'm like, "I don't know."

Amy Hobby: But we met with your brother.

Kent Osborne: Yeah. I must have liked it if I... I am a gatekeeper, I guess. I allowed you to pass by me and go to my brother who's got two Academy Award nominations and...

Amy Hobby: We met him at a very odd place, Anne, do you remember? It was on, for those in LA, there's this road Barham that goes kind of along the freeway up and over the hill, and we met him. Maybe it was near where he was working or something, but it was a super sad restaurant, like a burrito restaurant maybe. Do you remember that, Anne?

Kent Osborne: Was it Poquito Mas?

Amy Hobby: Oh, it was. Dang.

Kent Osborne: Yeah. The Mas. Yeah, that place is great. They make their own-

Amy Hobby: The tacos were great.

Kent Osborne: Yeah, they make their own tortillas. It's like a local chain. I think there's maybe five or six of them. But I'd say, "What do you want for lunch?" And he'd go, "The Mas. Let's get the Mas."

Amy Hobby: The Mas. So, we met at the Mas.

Anne Hubbell: We took a meeting at the Mas.

Amy Hobby: And we sent him the treatment. He is very busy, your brother.

Anne Hubbell: But he did need to eat lunch. So, he let us come along for that, I guess. And yeah, and then he gave us some notes.

Amy Hobby: He gave us a pretty scathing review.

Kent Osborne: Oh, really?

Amy Hobby: Yeah. Basically he said, "It's a really strong story, but a completely boring pitch." He said this. His email was like a nice sandwich, the nice sandwich. He's like, "Great. Really strong story." And he's like, "Your pitch is really boring. There's nothing inventive about it. Maybe you could come up with an idea that's based on a true story. Maybe you could have animated documentary interview interstitials. You need to find a format that plays to the real story." And then like, "I love it. Good luck." Yeah, basically.

Kent Osborne: Did he charge you for that or...

Amy Hobby: I'm sure we paid for his Mas.

Kent Osborne: Yeah, that sounds like the way he operates.

Amy Hobby: Seriously. With Craig Estelle's help and with just asking around and Anne's gumption, we met with, I would say probably every potential animation studio, which is incredible because we had no idea what we were doing. So, we met with Hannah Minghella, we met with DreamWorks. We met with this guy, Tito.

Anne Hubbell: We met with Disney at some point.

Amy Hobby: We met-

Anne Hubbell: I remember going through the Seven Dwarfs things at their animation thing.

Amy Hobby: We met with this guy, Tito at Illumination.

Anne Hubbell: They liked him.

Amy Hobby: He was really nice. Do you know him, Kent?

Kent Osborne: Tito?

Amy Hobby: Yeah.

Kent Osborne: At Illumination? No.

Amy Hobby: No.

Kent Osborne: I was going to pretend like I knew him.

Amy Hobby: He said-

Anne Hubbell: He's definitely still there. It was only 20 years ago.

Amy Hobby: That's the thing about these animation execs, they never leave. I looked some of them up yesterday, and they're all... Hannah moved from Sony to somewhere else, but they're... She's at Netflix now, but they're all still animation execs. Tito's still working in animation. At the time, Tito told us that two of three decision-makers liked it!

Avi Weider: Two or three.

Amy Hobby: But we're going to pass. But two of three seems like a majority.

Avi Weider: In the Senate, it is.

Amy Hobby: And then there's all the executive, this big circle people would send you, [inaudible 00:29:07] Sony's like, "We like it. Talk to this guy at Fox." And then Fox would be like, "I like it. Talk to this specific person at Bluesky." Everyone kept telling us to talk to this woman who we were introduced to in January of 2009. I remember this because she was on maternity leave. And they're like, "Just give her a little time." And then she was back, and then her assistant would schedule meetings, this went on for a year and a half. She would schedule a very specific meeting at a very specific time and place, and the day before cancel, like 20 times. "Can you meet Lisa at Dean & DeLuca at 3:00? She's coming from another meeting from Columbus Circle."

Now, if you're a New Yorker, it's like you're in Manhattan, it doesn't... Whatever. Just tell us where to meet. Great. Day before, her assistant would be like, "Oh, Lisa has to reschedule. I'm so sorry." And then she'd come back, "Can you meet Lisa at this sushi restaurant at 4:06?" We're like, "Yes." And then there are all these emails I saw between you and me and where we would just be like, "Fuck this woman."

Anne Hubbell: This is never going to happen.

Avi Weider: So, did things start to go sideways then? Was it just like an endless mill? I mean, how does it go? Kent, also, if you were pitching something, do you just get stuck in this endless development thing or-

Kent Osborne: I would love to have an executive blow me off that much. I can't even get that far. Sounds amazing. Yeah. All those emails, that sounds exciting. No.

Amy Hobby: What happens is we actually got pretty, aside from our friend Lisa at Bluesky, we got pretty definitive rejections, very nice rejections fairly quickly actually. And I think because we had an agent representing us, Craig Estelle, at the time, William Morris, we got the usual executive... I wrote down one of the DreamWorks execs said to us, "My feeling is, and I realize this is contrary to your point of view, but nonetheless it's really better served in live action if you could pull it off."

Anne Hubbell: Yes.

Amy Hobby: "But there's no denying, it's a fun story." Nice sandwich, nice sandwich. "But there's no denying that it's a fun story. And I wish you every bit of luck in getting the project set up elsewhere and eventually made."

Anne Hubbell: I feel like it was the DreamWorks guy that said, "This is great. Do you think you could make the poodles fly?"

Amy Hobby: Oh, yeah.

Anne Hubbell: You know that you go to these meetings and these people say things to you, and we're in the movie meetings together. And then I'm just like, "Don't look at Amy. Don't look at Amy." Because I say the craziest things to you and you just think you're going to lose it.

Amy Hobby: So, then what happens is, so all the A-listers pass, and then we went into this whole spiral of smaller and smaller production companies who are enthusiastic about it. And what we realized is of course, they only have a certain number of places to pitch it to. So, we would go to, was it Curious Pictures?

Avi Weider: Curious.

Amy Hobby: They love the project. "We're going to come on board. This is the best project ever." And then they're like, "We're going to pitch it to Disney." We're like, "We already pitched at Disney."

Anne Hubbell: We're done.

Avi Weider: Oh, no.

Amy Hobby: They're like, "We're going to pitch it here." And then three weeks later, that executives leaves that company and like, "I loved your project so much, but I'm leaving Curious Pictures. Here's my personal email." So, that would happen. And then we would just get... It was like this downward spiral down to-

Avi Weider: Kind of a death spiral.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, we worked on it for several years.

Avi Weider: And then did the option expire or do you still have it or?

Amy Hobby: Yeah. So, John Suter became more and more irate, but then would apologize. He would be like, "I can't believe it." At the time... Well, at the time, somewhere within that eight years, I was sharing an office with the director, Doug Liman and John Suter, I don't know how he found out, he like, "I can't believe you don't just walk this script over to Doug Liman. Doug Liman could direct this. You have the answer. You have the golden key. I can't believe how incompetent you are that you aren't talking to Doug Liman and he's not directing the Poodle Iditarod film." And he just spiral down.

And then we had a competitor, and you remember, so John Suter was like, "I've been approached by Scott Glasgow and he wants to make the film and he can make this film not like you. He's very positive." And we look up this guy and he's not [inaudible 00:34:14].

Avi Weider: Amazing.

Amy Hobby: We're like, "John, he's not really made any films." He's like, "He's very popular. He lives in Beverly Hills and he is going to get your project made." And I'm like, "John, he doesn't... I don't..." He's like, "You get on a call with Scott Glasgow." I'm like, "Okay." So, we met with Scott Glasgow-

Kent Osborne: He's like, "He wants the poodles to fly."

Amy Hobby: Yeah. He's like, "He knows everyone in Hollywood." I'm like, "John, he's blowing smoke up your ass." He's like, "You talk to him or that's it." So, we talked to Scott Glasgow and he's like, "I can package this project," whatever. So, the option expired. Scott Glasgow-

Anne Hubbell: As he learned the Word package.

Kent Osborne: Scott said, "Now first off, you both know Doug Liman?"

Amy Hobby: Yeah, yeah. Can you get this to Doug Liman?

Avi Weider: I've packaged it for Doug.

Kent Osborne: Yeah. Step one.

Avi Weider: That's amazing.

Amy Hobby: Anyway, Scott Glasgow got the option, I guess, and I did do some Googling yesterday and yeah, he didn't make the film.

Avi Weider: Oh.

Kent Osborne: He did not make it.

Amy Hobby: No.

Kent Osborne: No. Wow.

Avi Weider: So, we'll have to have him on [inaudible 00:35:32].

Amy Hobby: He didn't have the juice. So, what happens now, Avi? How can we help us?

Avi Weider: Well, how can we help us? So, part of the whole show here is we're going to take all those assets, including that deck that we just looked at, including the actual script. There's some other pitch stuff as well as the eight years of emails between Anne and Amy and executives, and probably Kent and Mark Osborne and Conrad Vernon and whoever else.

Kent Osborne: Poquito Mas receipts.

Amy Hobby: Yeah.

Avi Weider: Poquito Mas, we have the receipts.

Amy Hobby: The Poquito Mas receipts.

Kent Osborne: Yeah. You put them on the computer. Yeah.

Avi Weider: Exactly. It's all good. And so, what we've done is we've fed it through... In the case of this episode now, I created a custom GPT to act as a film executive to help create some new assets that you could possibly go out with to pitch it again. And I've compiled them into a new pitch deck based on it that using generative AI technology, that is everything under discussion today in our culture and industry as well. So, we're going to take a look at that. And then after that, we're going to have a live meeting with a studio executive that we're bringing on. And he's read all of the material. He's got the new material, the old material. He's looked over all the notes that you guys got from all the meetings, and we can have a live chat with him. He's taken a little time out of his busy day. So, first, let's look at the new deck.

Anne Hubbell: Okay. Still called Poodle Power.

Avi Weider: This is the title page. What do we got here? Describe it for our audience.

Anne Hubbell: It's a cartoon poodle. One poodle pulling an empty sled. The poodle is wearing a pink hoodie. It's a white poodle in Alaska in the snow with the northern lights behind it.

Amy Hobby: It's got a cool font, much better font than my font. It's like a generic-

Anne Hubbell: [inaudible 00:38:11] in font.

Amy Hobby: ... animation font. Yeah, yeah.

Avi Weider: Just so we understand, I asked the model and the custom, we'll call it custom agent, that I trained up to select what it thought was the best style for the project. It came up with three and then selected the best one. And then I instructed it to create all the images we're going to see in the style. We've got a logline, a pitch, and some talking points. Read it off.

Anne Hubbell: "Logline, a pampered standard poodle and a ragtag pack of misfit dogs defy the odds and the Huskies, to run the Iditarod discovering grit, friendship, and unexpected style along the way." Here's the pitch. This is a true-ish joyously exaggerated animated adventure of team poodle, the only poodles ever to race the Iditarod. Think, Alaska wilderness, dog sled action sequences and a comedy of outsiders daring to take their place in history. It's both a sports movie and a love letter to misfits everywhere." Which is good. That's pretty good.

Avi Weider: So, we have a sample of the style and it shows it as a Neo-2D with painterly backgrounds, bold linework, high-contrast color, kinetic character animation. I don't know. Kent, do you have a hot take on this?

Kent Osborne: I'm not an artist or a character designer, but it's not appealing to me. I mean, I'll just be blunt. It's what I'd expect one of this AI-generated images to look like. It just looks generic and boring. I mean, it's not ugly. I mean, it's ugly in that it's so boring, like the expression on the face and I don't know. It looks-

Amy Hobby: We should show it to Conrad and see what-

Kent Osborne: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm not an artist and obviously I have some bias just because I really don't like anything... I mean, I've seen some AI stuff that I'm like, "Okay, that's interesting." I mean, I know... I think it is complicated and it's a tool that can be used by an artist, but I think just kind of dumping everything into a computer and saying, "Show me what you got." And it's... I mean, I think the deck you showed before from 20 years ago was more interesting and had more personality and was more funny.

Amy Hobby: That's good to know. Maybe I could get a job.

Anne Hubbell: Good to know.

Kent Osborne: But I don't want to-

Avi Weider: Absolutely.

Kent Osborne: Also, it's like where did the... The AI kind of looks at everything that's available on the internet and then... So, somebody drew this dog somewhere. The AI found it, and [inaudible 00:41:14]-

Anne Hubbell: They composited it.

Kent Osborne: Composited from other people's work. Yeah, so there's ownership issues or-

Anne Hubbell: It's got a Wile E. Coyote nose. It's giving-

Avi Weider: That's so interesting it does. Its idea for jitters with the casting choices of Adam Devine, Ben Schwartz and John Mulaney.

Anne Hubbell: I love that descriptions they've given for Adam Devine, lovable, neurotic energy. Ben Schwartz, fast-talking, earnest. John Mulaney, neurotic charm.

Kent Osborne: So, this is ChatGPT that came up with this too? They're casting [inaudible 00:41:52]-

Anne Hubbell: Yeah.

Avi Weider: Yeah. I asked it for... In a way, it's kind of a one-stop shop. I gave it all the materials and I said, "Give a synopsis, give me a pitch, give me a talking point. Give me casting options for every main character. Come up with a style and then give me image prompts for all of the images we're seeing." And then I took those image prompts made in ChatGPT, and I put them into Google Gemini, and that's what created the actual images. So, we have Norton here who could be Oscar Isaac, gravelly and soulful, or Jason Sudeikis, grumpy humor or Mahershala Ali, quiet gravitas. That's a range.

Anne Hubbell: Wow. He's like a noir panel.

Amy Hobby: There's a garbage can in the background.

Kent Osborne: The sign is NTOE. I don't know.

Avi Weider: Yeah, NTOE and EPL. We got Fifi, glamorous, clumsy, secretly tough. Could be Kristen Wiig, Sophie Turner or Jenny Slate. Did you think about casting at all when you guys were doing this?

Amy Hobby: No, we didn't even get that far.

Anne Hubbell: No. Well, I don't even know that we understood that celebrity casting was such a big thing then.

Avi Weider: Here's Marley the Marmot.

Amy Hobby: Forest-wise.

Avi Weider: A chatterbox.

Amy Hobby: ... Awkwafina.

Avi Weider: Could be Awkwafina.

Amy Hobby: Keegan-Michael Key.

Anne Hubbell: Josh Gad.

Avi Weider: What do you think? Is this a-

Amy Hobby: Manic Wit.

Anne Hubbell: I could see that.

Avi Weider: Yeah.

Amy Hobby: Yeah.

Anne Hubbell: This is a Marmot that's wearing a pink track suit.

Avi Weider: Yeah.

Amy Hobby: And he's on a sled.

Avi Weider: Here's Beargrease who's sort of wearing like a-

Amy Hobby: In a different movie?

Avi Weider: Yeah. He's kind of like-

Amy Hobby: Maybe he's in Tron.

Anne Hubbell: He looks like he's in Tron.

Amy Hobby: Where's Chris Wedge? He's in Tron, 1989.

Avi Weider: Yeah, JK Simmons maybe. I don't know. It says-

Amy Hobby: Idris Elba.

Avi Weider: Arrogant, alpha antagonist.

Anne Hubbell: Idris Elba, Bryan Cranston and JK Simmons.

Avi Weider: Connie. Husky love interest.

Anne Hubbell: Zendaya. Hailee Steinfield.

Avi Weider: It's funny.

Anne Hubbell: Ana de Armas.

Avi Weider: Connie looks kind of like a male dog and Jitters looks like a female dog in this situation, but it should be the other way around maybe.

Amy Hobby: Are you genderizing the pink hoodie, Avi?

Avi Weider: No. I mean, were you? I don't know.

Amy Hobby: No.

Kent Osborne: I said before this. I was trying to... I was saying it isn't ugly, I think it is ugly. This is all really ugly.

Avi Weider: Yeah.

Amy Hobby: It's pretty ugly.

Avi Weider: It is pretty ugly. This is one thing is we're not going for perfection here with this stuff. It is kind of an experiment of if we put in all the information, put in the assets and what can we get kind of right away and clean it up a little bit. I think Kent is just depressed by all of this. Oh, and here you guys are.

Amy Hobby: Look.

Anne Hubbell: Amy like a superhero. And Amy-

Avi Weider: Amy has a chain around her neck for some reason-

Anne Hubbell: Look at [inaudible 00:45:43]. Yeah.

Amy Hobby: Dang, I'm going to use that as my head shot from now on.

Avi Weider: It's pretty boss. Again, I just asked Chat to give me a three bullet bio for each of you. And there it is. Anne Hubbell, independent film producer, co-founder, Tangerine Entertainment. Champion of Emerging Voices.

Anne Hubbell: Oh, wow. Okay.

Avi Weider: And Amy Hobby, Oscar-nominated producer, co-founder, Tangerine Entertainment and advocate for women filmmakers.

Anne Hubbell: Okay.

Avi Weider: Well, that's the deck folks.

Anne Hubbell: That's amazing.

Kent Osborne: How many lakes did that drain to make that?

Avi Weider: Let's just say a little more about that because Kent, you work in animation. I mean, right now you're working on a show. So, what is the vibe there about basically what we just did and what I'm going to show you next, which is actually full motion video for this?

Kent Osborne: I think studios they're desperately trying to figure out ways to incorporate all this so that they can not hire people, which is people are worried about that. I think also the question of ownership and where are they getting when they make these images, what are they're stealing? Is there a copyright issue? And then I think the environmental issue, and as someone I mentioned this to and they said, "Oh, in Louisiana, Meta's building a data center that uses more electricity in a day than New Orleans does in a year." And then-

Avi Weider: Oh, shit.

Kent Osborne: ... prices go up. Or I don't know, I feel like Bernie Sanders now. But then consumer starts spending more-

Amy Hobby: [inaudible 00:47:36] Vermont.

Kent Osborne: Yeah. Your electric bill's going to go up because electricity is not infinite. And yeah, I mean it's fun to see something that a computer made and to go, "Oh, my God, look at that. And why is there a neon sign? Why is it spelled that way?" But at a certain point, yeah, I don't know. It feels weird. It feels weird to have this component of a... You know what I mean? Talking about this movie is way more interesting to me. Hearing Anne and Amy talk about all this and seeing the newspaper clippings in the deck and talking about their experiences is really interesting. And then this feels, I don't know. This feels to me not as interesting. I don't know. You said I could be the curmudgeons.

Amy Hobby: No, we want you to [inaudible 00:48:38] away.

Avi Weider: No, no. I mean, I think people really are unsure of how they should feel about a lot of it because it's so seductive and enticing and attention grabbing. And there's no way you can tell me that what we just did isn't just being done 100% at all the places we just talked about. And whether it comes out kind of boring stylistically, it becomes an idea generator or it's just for script, or they're training their own LLMs to be more specific to whatever they want to do. I just think nobody's going to turn it off now, I guess. So, that's also something I do think is a reality.

Kent Osborne: Yeah.

Avi Weider: And you can put whatever a value judgment or valence on it, of course. But for us it's a little more on the fun side, I guess. And we can poke fun at it, of course.

Kent Osborne: Right. But going into a store that has vegetables and fruit and going to the candy aisle and just eating a bunch of the shittiest candy they have is fun. But you're going to feel terrible afterwards. And well-

Amy Hobby: Speaking of feeling terrible, why don't we see the trailer?

Avi Weider: Let's watch the trailer.

Anne Hubbell: Oh, no.

Amy Hobby: Let's feel shittier.

Avi Weider: Let's do a little more here.

Anne Hubbell: The trailer had the same prompt, so the trailer had just the script?

Avi Weider: Good question. So, basically I asked the model to create an outline for a trailer for a 60-second, 90-second trailer, and then to give me a first frame prompts that I could use. And I took those prompts along with the style prompt, and I put those into Gemini. And what I got was basically just still of some action. Ultimately, we actually used Sora 2, which just came out to, and you'll see the watermark on it. I used Sora 2 to create the generated video here because it also does audio. And so, all the audio is also generated. And the soundtrack was also AI generated in a platform called Udio. And I put all that into Premiere-

Amy Hobby: Which puts a lot of musicians out of business.

Avi Weider: Yes, everybody gets the same treatment here. So, we're

Amy Hobby: Writers, animators, musicians.

Avi Weider: We're all witnesses to our own execution.

Kent Osborne: When you put this podcast out, someone can take it and enter it and say like make me... Someone's going to make an AI version of this episode.

Avi Weider: Correct.

Kent Osborne: And it'll get more views than this. You know what I mean? And then there'll be 30 versions of this out there where we're all different, but it's us saying the same exact things.

Avi Weider: This will be on YouTube, which is owned by Google, and Google will then use it for their next training set in their next Gemini model. Okay, here we go.

Amy Hobby: I haven't seen it [inaudible 00:52:21] right here-

Avi Weider: I'm going to share with you the trailer.

Amy Hobby: You wouldn't show me.

Anne Hubbell: Of course, we're seeing it.

Avi Weider: Yeah. Nobody seen it yet. All right. Make sure the volume's up. There we go.

Anne Hubbell: Wow.

Amy Hobby: Wow, I sold it to Netflix.

Anne Hubbell: Wow.

Avi Weider: Except it said Netlix.

Anne Hubbell: Amazing.

Amy Hobby: Why did the poodles have hot dogs in their mouths?

Anne Hubbell: At the end of the movie, after the race was finished, I'm not even going to give the spoiler of who won. There were a whole bunch of dachshunds there because they'd been inspired by the poodles that they [inaudible 00:54:03] run. At our script, there were dachshunds.

Avi Weider: The legend lives on is what you're saying.

Anne Hubbell: Yeah, exactly.

Avi Weider: So, hot take on the trailer.

Kent Osborne: It's just garbage. It's-

Amy Hobby: It's so bad.

Anne Hubbell: I love they made it the whole inner world and the bad guys are so... It's so overblown.

Amy Hobby: Why are bad guys always buffed out like dudes? Huskies, I mean. Sorry.

Avi Weider: Of course, we could have iterated it through it a thousand times to create something artistic and wonderful. Or maybe that wouldn't have even happened because when you... I don't know how many... Everyone here has used a lot of it, but it's kind of like a slot machine. I mean, there are techniques to get more consistency, get where you are, and the tools are getting better in terms of more control and certainly more realism. But obviously with animation, I'm not concerned about realism. But this was again, kind of a one shot. The point was not to spend a ton of time on it to see what we could get pretty quick because we think it's a little more entertaining and shows us perhaps the state of the art right now for an average consumer or creative, just is this going to help me or not? And it's just an interesting experiment.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. My hope was watching the trailer would give me some closure. The project is in my mind, it got made and then the trailer's done, and then I would just feel like really good having walked away from the project, but somehow I feel utterly despondent watching the trailer.

Avi Weider: Should we talk to our exec then to get a little pick-me-up on it or-

Amy Hobby: Yeah, let's talk to him.

Avi Weider: Or do you want to talk... Do you want to have more?

Amy Hobby: Let's talk to him. Let's pitch it. Let's repitch it.

Avi Weider: I mean, because seen everything he's seen. Well, he hasn't seen the trailer yet for-

Amy Hobby: I think that's good. So, maybe there's hope. We should pitch it to him as a different type of animation.

Avi Weider: But he has the new deck and he has all the notes and the old stuff.

Kent Osborne: What if he cancels on you at the last minute?

Amy Hobby: He probably will. I was meeting him at Dean and Deluca, but...

Avi Weider: It's true. He could.

Anne Hubbell: I think they're still trying to schedule that meeting? I aren't, Amy?

Amy Hobby: The assistant at the end, the last email I found, she was like, "I feel like I cancel meetings more than I schedule them. I'm so sorry, but can we reschedule."

Avi Weider: Bob, can you hear us now?

Speaker 7: All right. So, from what I've gathered, Poodle Power has this quirky charm with the lighthearted spirit. Jitters, our poodle protagonist has a pretty interesting arc, but there's always room for clarifying his goals to keep audiences hooked. A playful attempt to blend comedy with the whimsy of an Iditarod race is promising. Honestly, the old documents have some outdated elements that can use a modern tweak. I see potential in refreshing the animation style, finding a tone that really sings to today's audience. Jumping from the past now it looks like the project could use some structural polish, maybe a tighter focus on character and motivation would help it resonate more. But hey, I really like that it doesn't shy away from absurdity. That's a fun angle. Just needs a little more oomph to stand out. How do you guys feel about aligning it more with recent successful animated features? I'm thinking we lean into that absurdity of poodles doing the Iditarod. You could push more humor by playing up those unusual elements, like maybe making them on polar bear. Imagine the scale and comedy of a poodle and a polar bear interaction. It's gold.

Avi Weider: Did you look at the new deck? Do you think it's anything that Anne and Amy could actually pitch to some new studios?

Speaker 7: All right. So, I took a look at the new deck. It's got some fresh elements that can definitely work in its favor. The idea of using bold line work and painterly backgrounds definitely gives it a distinct look. Think of it as more visually appealing and dynamic. Plus the character animation has this kinetic style that's really engaging and relevant. Casting is also solid. Think Adam Devine or Benjamin Schwartz, they bring the right energy for Jitters who's lovable yet slightly neurotic. So, yeah, if Anne and Amy pitched this with confidence anchoring phoony and adventure elements, they've got a good shot of getting out there in new studios. Just needs a robust story with those laughs locked in. What do you think?

Avi Weider: That might be it for Bob? I think he peaced out on us.

Kent Osborne: He's got a lot.

Avi Weider: He's rescheduled. He's heading to Dean and Deluca.

Kent Osborne: He's meeting Benjamin Schwartz at Dean and Deluca.

Anne Hubbell: He's pitching it right now.

Avi Weider: Okay. Well, I don't know if Bob can rejoin us, but-

Kent Osborne: That's okay.

Amy Hobby: It's okay.

Anne Hubbell: I feel might actually be pitching to AI soon like-

Avi Weider: Well, that's the thing. I mean, that-

Amy Hobby: It feels totally realistic.

Anne Hubbell: Yeah. Of course.

Avi Weider: Like if you were-

Kent Osborne: I mean, I think growing up watching sci-fi movies, I think everyone's like, "Oh, I want to talk to a robot. I want to talk to AI." And I feel like this wave we're in right now, this is what it is. It's all like that. It's all, I don't think it's there yet.

Amy Hobby: Like an executive. Yeah.

Avi Weider: Bob's an experiment. And I think that, look, that's where it is right now. There's a lot of layers to try to get Bob into this conversation. The failure there is an artifact of the processing power of the second laptop I have trying to run all this stuff at the same time. Bob is from a company called Tavus, T-A-V-U-S. And in Tavus you can create what's called a replica, which is basically yourself. So, I could make a virtual Avi, it won't let me just upload a picture of someone and do it. There's sort of a guardrail there where you have to do it yourself. But the whole point is that you could do that. And I know actually from working on some other corporate stuff, they've already fully scanned the CEOs and all the decision makers-

Amy Hobby: What? This is where we reveal that Kent is actually not Kent.

Avi Weider: If you're a replica, raise your hand. As the show goes on, we're just going to keep playing with it because it's already being used. And it's also kind of pretty good comedy in my opinion.

Amy Hobby: Do we think this film could have legs now? Would we pitch it now? New deck aside, if we go back to our old deck and I put it into Canva, which clearly didn't exist 20 years ago and I think I did that in Word-

Kent Osborne: I'm surprised you weren't able to make it then. And I'm surprised it should be made now because now it's even more of a period piece. It's set in what, 2005 or when was it? Or-

Amy Hobby: No, the poodles ran the Iditarod in 1989, 1990-

Kent Osborne: Oh, 1989. I mean, it's all interesting, the deck and the articles and the news story, and everyone loves dogs. I would watch this. I mean, poodles running the Iditarod is such a good idea, I think. I don't know. I would go see that movie. It sounds fun.

Avi Weider: Especially if it was the 80s.

Amy Hobby: Yeah.

Kent Osborne: Yeah. Yeah.

Amy Hobby: Now we have 80s, early 90s fashion and music from that era. I think you're right.

Kent Osborne: Yeah. And it's pre-smartphones and pre-computers almost, right?

Amy Hobby: Which is always better for a story, right?

Kent Osborne: Yeah.

Amy Hobby: And the character descriptions that you came up with are really good and funny. I had totally forgotten about that in our original deck. They all had their own arc. They had their motivation as to why they wanted to win or be part of the team.

Anne Hubbell: Yeah.

Kent Osborne: Yeah. The one who's living up the grid is great. The circus one. Yeah.

Anne Hubbell: All of the introductions and where we find them and their motivations that all come back together at the end in a final sequence where the skills have to come into play.

Amy Hobby: They don't win.

Anne Hubbell: God, stop spoiling it.

Kent Osborne: It's like Bad News Bears, it's rocky. It's a personal victory.

Anne Hubbell: Correct?

Amy Hobby: Yeah, exactly. We are both huge fans of Bad News Bears actually.

Kent Osborne: Me too. It's in my top five.

Amy Hobby: Me too.

Avi Weider: What's this?

Amy Hobby: Oh, my God. He owns it on VHS.

Avi Weider: Oh, and it's signed.

Amy Hobby: Yeah.

Avi Weider: Oh, my Gosh.

Amy Hobby: No.

Anne Hubbell: When did you get-

Avi Weider: What?

Kent Osborne: I asked him, I was on set with him and his last day. I said, "Would you sign this?" And he was like, "All right." I said, "Well..." I didn't know what to write, so I wrote to Kent from Walter Matthau.

Amy Hobby: That's amazing.

Kent Osborne: I was like, "That's great." I told-

Avi Weider: Have you watched that copy of it?

Kent Osborne: This VHS?

Anne Hubbell: Can you watch it VHS?

Amy Hobby: I have a VHS deck. If you want to come over to my house, we can watch it.

Kent Osborne: I do. Yeah. I do have one. I was in Toronto and I remember I went to the store to buy this, to get him to sign it. I mean, I have it on DVD too, but I have the poster and I went as a Bad News Bear for Halloween.

Amy Hobby: Oh, my God. You're a mega fan.

Avi Weider: Secrets are revealed.

Amy Hobby: All right, Anne, we got to get back out there. We got to brush off that script.

Kent Osborne: Yeah, tell them Bob's at you.

Amy Hobby: Dust off the script.

Kent Osborne: Bob at Netlix is really into it.

Amy Hobby: We sell it to Netlix.

Kent Osborne: Yeah.

Avi Weider: Amazing. All right. Well, I think you guys have your marching orders then for this-

Anne Hubbell: Okay.

Avi Weider: This one.

Amy Hobby: All right, guys, this was fun.

Anne Hubbell: Great.

Avi Weider: Thanks, guys.

Avi Weider: You've been listening to Films Not Made, but if you want an even better experience, check us out on YouTube where you can see all the new materials, including the pitch deck and trailer.

Amy Hobby: And subscribe to our Substack for show notes, more about our guests and industry insights.

Avi Weider: And please follow us on Instagram and TikTok as Films Not Made.

Amy Hobby: And of course we have merch. Check that out and all things Films Not Made at filmsnotmade.com.

Avi Weider: Thanks again for listening and watching. We'll see you next time.