Repairman

FULL PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Amy Hobby: Today’s guest is someone I know back from when I spent more time in Los Angeles. After I moved to New York, Rex and I became email buddies back in the earlier days of email when I would get three emails a day. Two of them would be from Rex! Rex, at the time, you were writing a script called Two Guys on Wine and I remember you would send me excerpts from it and it was based loosely on yourself and our mutual friend Roy Gittens, who was in a band called Southern Culture on the Skids. I also distinctly remember an email where you said, “I was talking to my manager, and I think I’m going to write it [the script] as a novel and call it Sideways.”

Rex Pickett: It was loosely inspired by a trip Roy and I took up the Santa Ynez Valley. We went wine tasting, had a great time, cracked each other up, played golf, you know, whatever. The novel is much more personal, autobiographical, and confessional. I did originally write it as a screenplay, and I will admit it was Roy’s idea. He said, “You should write this as a screenplay,” you know, on the third day when we were kind of slap-happy at one of the tasting rooms.

Avi Weider: It was a script that became a book that then became a script that…

Rex Pickett: Yeah, that’s right.

Avi Weider: Amy, how common is that?

Amy Hobby: Not very common.

Rex Pickett: Well, the script became a book that then became an adapted screenplay that became a movie and is now a play, that’s playing in Riga, Latvia, and also there’s Sideways the Musical, and all songs are done—everything. I don’t have any hope for it. Actually, you can listen to them [the songs] on Spotify.  I wrote the lyrics and I wrote the book to the musical. So those characters, I guess, have a certain timelessness to them.

Amy Hobby: But we’re going to talk about something that I think, predates Sideways.

Rex Pickett: It predates the movie, but it comes between the writing of the book, which was in ‘99, and the movie, which was shot in the fall of ‘03 and released in the fall of ‘04. And that’s Repairman.

Amy Hobby: So tell us your one sentence version of Repairman, like you were telling someone about it.

Rex Pickett: Well, I have a pitch. It usually takes an hour, but I’ll try.

Amy Hobby: We’d have to cut that down.

Avi Weider: Imagine you were telling it to an agent who has three minutes.

Rex Pickett: It’s about a repairman of coin-operated laundry equipment, specializing in Whirlpool. He’s a victim of fetal alcohol syndrome, which I believe is now called fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. So that’s when your mother drank when she was pregnant. And there’s all different kinds of disabilities and disfigurements that happen regardless, you know, depending on how much they drank. And he cares for his mother, whose in a wheelchair. She’s wheelchair bound and is paralyzed on the left side, as was my mother. And he lives alone. But it’s really based on my brother. And, my brother’s name is Hack and the character’s name is Hap. Happy. So I draw from real life, and my brother was telling me back way back when in the 90s, you know, all the different ways repairmen rip you off. And I said, have you ever done that—he goes, no, never and never would. And I thought, well, that’s an interesting idea, but it’s not enough. Then I was reading an article about fetal alcohol syndrome. I thought, because my brother’s battled drinking and things, and I thought, even that’s not enough. So we got disfigurement and maybe he has a stutter, the main character—but it said that males who are victims of fetal alcohol syndrome, when they go off the wagon, they’re prone to arsonism. I thought, oh, oh, now we have something interesting. But it took a while for it to build. But it was fetal alcohol syndrome and the arsonism. That to me was like the galvanic force. And I sat down and wrote it in 2002.

Amy Hobby: Okay 2002. Had you sold Sideways?  Set us up in exactly 2002 when you wrote this, what was your level of industry confidence?

Rex Pickett: In 2000, Artisan Entertainment, flush with cash from The Blair Witch Project, greenlit Sideways as a $10 million movie, and it was front page of Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter [in 2000]: “Payne goes Sideways.” So how the book gets to Alexander Payne takes us to Repairman.

Amy Hobby: But Repairman came—

Rex Pickett: 2002, somewhere around there. So I got it to my agent and I got it to a few other people, and really immediately there was a fair amount of excitement about it. You know, my agent, Jess Taylor, liked it. Actually, I probably gave it to Michael London, you know.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. Who got it first when you, finished it? Who is your first read?

Rex Pickett: I’m a little unclear about this, but I’d moved to Writers and Artists and Marty Blumenthal, and she—she’s a key figure in this story, by the way. And so I think she read it. She was excited about it, Michael London was excited about it. And Michael London introduced me to an actor on Ally McBeal named Gil Bellows. And so I met him. He read Repairman. He loved it. I said, Gil, if you want to direct, why don’t you direct Repairman? He couldn’t believe it. His eyes bulged. Really? You want me to direct it? I go, yeah, if you can get the money. Fuck yeah. You know…

Avi Weider: If he could get the money.

Rex Pickett: We negotiated a deal for $22,500 for a one-year option, and that was a big deal to me at the time, because the option on Sideways was only $12,500, you know, one year and then a first right of refusal. But $22,500—I thought, “Wow, this guy’s really serious.” And so I call my agent, Marty Blumenthal. I say, okay, I’ve got this deal with Gil Bellows. I just met him through Michael London. You know, close the deal. Do it. So Marty, you know, is very excited about it. And just by chance, but unrelated, she represented the directing side of another actor on Ally McBeal named Greg Germann.

Avi Weider: A lot of Ally McBeal.

Rex Pickett: And then, like, literally a couple hours later, I get a call from Christina Ricci.

Amy Hobby: She just called your house, like your landline or something?

Rex Pickett: Yeah, I might have had a cell phone by then, but you know, one of those where they flip up. So she calls me: “Hi, Rex, this is Christina Ricci. I’m really good friends with Greg Germann.” She’d actually been on a couple episodes of Ally McBeal. “I love your script Repairman so much.” And meanwhile, Gil Bellows is starting to freak out, and he’s leaving angry messages on my ancient answering machine.

Amy Hobby: Because you hadn’t—

Rex Pickett: Because I hadn’t closed the deal. Well, you know what’s going on? And then they kept amping up, and so I’m thinking Christina Ricci, I’ve got a better chance of this getting made because that’s where the gold is. Is is a movie getting made? And so I called Marty.

Amy Hobby: So was Marty behind all this?

Rex Pickett: I told her to close the deal with Gil Bellows. And hours later—you know. I’m sitting there like, just coiling, you know, just shaking in my fucking boots. You know? I’m afraid there’s gonna be no deal. You know, they’re going to both— And then Marty calls and I said, they’re going to give you $15,000. Michael will be one of the producers. So will Greg Germann and so will Christina Ricci. Each can only $5000, and there’ll be no rewriting. So now I’m going to take $7500 less. I’m going to completely alienate Gil Bellows. No way I can go back to him now. His last message—I don’t remember what it was, but it was deservedly nasty.

Avi Weider: But you felt like this was a better choice in getting the film made.

Rex Pickett: Absolutely. As Amy said, Christina Ricci was hot 20 years ago in the indie film world.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. And the big actress calls you up directly. That feels like a real commitment, right?

Rex Pickett: Except I have a meeting with them. Christina Ricci is not in the meeting. Her head of development is, who had no credits I found out later.

Amy Hobby: How old is the head of development?

Rex Pickett: You know, oddly enough, probably in her late 30s or early 40s.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. Okay. And she spoke on behalf of Christina Ricci?

Rex Pickett: That’s right. So she was there, Michael London was there, and Greg Germann’s there. And right off the bat, they start talking about what it needs in rewriting. So finally, you know, I did do a couple drafts. Maybe I threw them a couple bones, you know, whatever, keep them happy. But he loved the script. He thought it was his Slingblade. He wasn’t going to act in it. He was going to direct it.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, well, it’s also smart for a first time director to not act in their first film. It takes an exceptional talent to be able to do that.

Rex Pickett: And then he and Michael London basically flogged it around town. And  they got it to big actors at that time who might have been right for the role—Joaquin Phoenix, Nick Cage, I mean, the list went on and on. I would hear about them. But then, they were like, who’s directing? Greg Germann. Then they wanted to see the short he had made and he would show it to them, and it was like, we’re in on the script, but we’re not in on you.

Avi Weider: Not in on the director.

Rex Pickett: It was like, goodbye. And I would hear about the rejections. I would hear about this, but I knew exactly what was happening. They didn’t want Greg to direct it because they saw the short, and they thought it was embarrassing. And it was.

Amy Hobby: Let’s go back a little bit. We still don’t know— our audience still doesn’t know what the film is about.

Rex Pickett: So it’s loosely based on my brother.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, based on your brother.

Rex Pickett: This guy who’s in his 30s. Who’s a victim of fetal alcohol syndrome. He has eyes spaced wide apart. He wears high magnitude spectacles.

Amy Hobby: Yeah.

Rex Pickett: You know, he looks like somebody who’s going to be bullied and persecuted, which is not, oddly, what the film ultimately becomes about. He has a mother who had a massive stroke, like my mother’s, full left side, paralyzed, you know, in a convalescent home, who he takes care of. And remember Matt Dillon, because that was an interesting phone call. And what happens is he has, like, 50 leasing accounts, meaning 50 pieces of equipment out there that he pulls money from, but he also repairs too. So, it establishes him in his life. He lives alone. He drives his red truck which he’s very proud of, you know, [on the truck is] Hap Rosecrans coin op repair and leasing. So the leasing is that he owns the machines.

Amy Hobby: And he surfs.

Rex Pickett: He surfs. That’s right. Well, he dreams of surfing. He’s clearly unathletic. So surfing is part of my background. I grew up in San Diego. It takes place in Ocean Beach, which at that time was, you know, a pretty sketchy beach community. And my brother lived actually two blocks from the ocean. So I took it from him and his totally fucked up friends that he had, who did various kind of odd jobs and drank a lot. And when we meet Hap, he’s sober and we don’t notice. We see him on his repair route. We see what he does. He has a stutter, and he shows up at his parole officer. And the parole officer is just kind of chit-chatting with him. “Hap, how’s it going?” And at one point he leans forward, the parole officer, and says, I love this moment, because I’ve been waiting for this moment. “Have you lit any fires lately?” What we learn in that scene is that he has gone on benders and San Diego has a lot of canyons. You know, it’s pretty overdeveloped now. And it has dry Santa Ana winds. And so when the Santa Anas come out so do the arsonists.

Amy Hobby: Well, I think we know a little bit about more about fires now.

Rex Pickett: Yeah. That’s true. So we know that he has this criminal past, but he’s gone straight. So that’s that’s the setup. He then also has some financial problems with the Internal Revenue Service. And there’s this huge leasing company I call "Aardvark, Repair and Leasing. They probably have 500 pieces of equipment out there. And the head of the business is a guy named Greg. Think kind of a slightly younger Jeff Bridges or something. And he knows that Hap needs money. So he wants Hap to come to work for him, which Hap’s willing to do. And the guy’s already got three other repair guys, but he wants Hap’s leasing accounts and Hap doesn’t want to give those up. But ultimately he capitulates and gives it up. And now he goes to work. Bear in mind he only repairs coin op washing machines. You know, commercial machines that would go into apartment complexes, into locker rooms, that’s all he repairs. And also laundromats too. He knows these three guys because they all know each other’s community. And he knows they’re they’re corrupt and they’re fuckups. Well, these guys are skimming and Hap is not going to skim, so they start to basically bully and persecute him. His honesty is being tested. And also bear in mind it’s whether he’s going to cave in and just start drinking because he can’t take it anymore. And bear in mind,  one of the things the parole officer said to him—Hap, I just don’t want to turn on the news one night and see a subdivision going up in flames.

Avi Weider: The character of Hap is, I mean, that’s the whole movie. I mean, it’s a super rich character. You know, you’ve got all this work you’ve done to to build it up, but when did it really just kind of topple down?

Rex Pickett: In all fairness, Greg Germann and Michael London, they kept slogging around town, and then the 15 minute donkey movie would come out, and that was it.

Avi Weider: So were you in conversations with Greg? Like, maybe you shouldn’t be the one to direct this.

Rex Pickett: Unlike Amy and some really successful people, I’m very bad at confrontation.

Amy Hobby: I’m going to say something on the directing front. So, I was burrowing in my closet. The idea for this show started because I was cleaning out my closet, and I realized I had not made more films than I made. But so in the infamous closet, I found this, which says “Repairman Directors,” in a pink folder.

Avi Weider: We might have some answers.

Amy Hobby: So I can’t remember when we had a conversation about it. But I do have these, director lists, which are all, look, clearly we talked about it because there’s crossing out and highlighting. There’s people like Stacy Peralta, I guess because of the surfing thing. Thomas McCarthy of The Station Agent fame, in that era. Gavin O’Connor, who had just directed Tumbleweeds, very strange list. Mark Ruffalo, who was just starting to direct at that point.

Rex Pickett: At that time I’d started I’d become really good friends with a woman named Pamela. And she had directed a short, this five minute short, but she had a little cachet. She’d sold something to HBO that never got made, but, you know, she was young, you know, I just loved to talk to her. She loves film, I love film. So I was like let’s co-direct this.

Avi Weider: So you were now set to direct or co-direct the picture co.

Rex Pickett: Co-Direct it with Pamela. And she was now in meetings with me at Untitled. And now we got in at First Look.

Avi Weider:  And you had funding now?

Rex Pickett: And they agreed to greenlight it for $2.5 million, shot in four weeks on 35 millimeter. And I’m thinking that’s going to be pretty brutal.

Avi Weider: That’s going to take some years off.

Amy Hobby: Pretty brutal.

Rex Pickett: In the digital day with small crews and LED lights, you know, I mean and no generators and, you know, fire marshals and whatever, maybe—

Amy Hobby: Made on location presumably. Right. It would have had to be on location.

Rex Pickett: Yeah. You’re right Amy—it’s different than a soundstage. It’s different than, you know, if you take, say, Sex, Lies, and Videotape—the brilliance of that film, aside from the fact that, you know, it’s a great film, is that he shot in only five locations in the same town.

Amy Hobby: Exactly. And I remember the script, you know, Repairman had— a part of it was the town. The town was a character, right?

Rex Pickett: Yeah. It was. And so it’s a lot of locations. So even if you’re shooting in digital it’s still company moves, you know. And those take time. My agent called and said, you know, we’re drawing up contracts, Rex, but they want Pamela excluded as a co-director.

Amy Hobby: Really? So what was their reasoning?

Rex Pickett: I’ll let you draw your conclusion—I don’t want to say, you know. So, Pamela had never made a feature. I’d made two features. Obviously, I had Sideways. She didn’t have a Sideways. She’s a woman. Yeah, she, she’s a Black woman. I don’t know, Amy. You draw your own conclusions. I never was told that, but they, they just canceled the contract. That was it. And actually, First Look went out of business within two years. But it was officially for about a week there greenlit as a $2.5 million film with lawyers drafting contracts.

Amy Hobby: After all these years. You know, it sounds like the project still is relevant. Repairman.

Avi Weider: It’s still a great character. I mean, the setting, all of it. We took everything you sent us, you know, the script, and you even had sent a pitch deck. This is what we do on the show. We take this stuff and we put it through an AI model that we have, and we ask it to analyze all this stuff and help us create a new pitch deck and a trailer, and it’s all done with generative AI, and we’ll get your hot take on what you think about AI as well as in this process, of course. And so now I’m going to show you what—what Repairman could look like if you were perhaps thinking of going out with it today.

Amy Hobby: No! Is that Paul Dano?

Avi Weider: Yes. So we’ve got—

Amy Hobby: Inside joke Rex. Paul Dano’s in every project for some reason. AI loves Paul Dano.

Avi Weider: We have a full-bleed image of Paul Dano in a kind of sun-washed laundromat looking, I don’t know, hapless, depressed, sort of morally confused. I’m not sure.

Avi Weider:  But the logline that, and again, this is all generative— So after reading the script, reading everything, AI came up with this logline, which is: “A gentle, developmentally impaired repairman with a dangerous past struggles to stay sober and decent while navigating corrupt coworkers, a broken mother, and a fragile new love that finally gives life meaning.” What do you think? Does that sound like a bit of coverage that you would agree with?

Rex Pickett: Yeah. I mean, you know, it could be rewritten, but for AI, you know, it’s reasonably, you know, sound.

Avi Weider: Moving on that the style that, that the model picked would be, it’s what it calls melancholic fairy tale realism, which is new—

Amy Hobby: New genre! New genre alert!

Rex Pickett: I can’t even come up with that myself.

Avi Weider: I know it’s a fairy tale, but it’s real.

Amy Hobby: It’s just a picture of, Haps not even in this picture. It’s just, rehashing the laundromat photo and, bags of coins and a table.

Avi Weider: Yeah, it must be bags of coins. It says a US Mint on the bag.

Rex Pickett: The bag would definitely not be that big.

Amy Hobby: It’s a huge bag, like.

Rex Pickett: Your wouldn’t be able to carry it, let’s put it that way.

Avi Weider: Yeah. The style description is it’s sun worn realism where everyday working class spaces feel slightly mythic. Natural light rules pale, bleached mornings and soft amber afternoons, creating a world that’s real but tinged with a quiet glow. Camerawork is intimate and handheld, with shallow depth of field, making Hap feel both small and central in oversize spaces. Textures are tactile rusted metal, frayed canvas salt scuffed windows, caked concrete. Moments of emotion gain gentle poetry, surf light flickers like inner weather. Neon buzzes like nerves. Fire glows. Let dangerous comfort— really went off on this. It’s a grounded, imperfect world, but every frame carries a soft ache of longing. I think it’s a bit overblown, but.

Rex Pickett: It’s purple prose to the max.

Avi Weider: Yeah, there you go.

Rex Pickett: I always thought that the film would start with relatively wide angle lenses, but as the world closes in on them, let’s say you start with 35 millimeter, you go to 50 and that’s a world really closes in on you’re not only using 50 and 100 millimeter lenses. And then at the very end when you’re back, everything is small and you’re out and I go back out to 35. So if you want to add that.

Avi Weider: I like that. Yeah, I would have put that in for sure. Here’s—here’s the casting. Hap Rosecrans: gentle, developmentally impaired repairman whose earnestness, loneliness and stubborn moral compass make him both vulnerable and heroic. And Amy, you can see —

Amy Hobby: They love Paul Dano! Every photo in this deck is Paul Dano. Paul Dano in front of his red truck.

Rex Pickett: Well, you know when I look at him, I think with the right pair of high magnitude spectacles, I think—

Amy Hobby: He’s described here by AI as precise, aching and internal. He also has so many coins in the back of his red pickup truck. He’s about to drive off to Mexico from San Diego. He’s parked near the pier because he thinks he’s going surfing, but I don’t see a surfboard.

Avi Weider: Yeah, he’s got his old, red pickup truck. So the character of Greg, how do you pronounce this name?

Rex Pickett: Halonen.

Avi Weider: Halonen. Greg Halonen. Charismatic.

Rex Pickett:  I use names, that are street names from growing up in San Diego or from the shore. And I had a friend named that, so—

Avi Weider: Okay. Well, the the the first choice for this is, John Hawkes.

Rex Pickett: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Amy Hobby: Great actor.

Avi Weider: Yeah, yeah.

Amy Hobby: Coiled, charming and ruthless.

Avi Weider: Right?

Rex Pickett: Or as I wrote it, it now might be too late, but I always thought of Jeff Bridges circa 50 years old or something. You know, he’s got that Southern California vibe to him.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. Yeah.

Rex Pickett: This is a character who, I just he’s just so stereotypically Southern California. He, he comes across as your best friend, slap you on the back, he’ll have a beer with you, but he’s deep down, he’s corrupt. And he’ll he’ll stab you in the back.

Avi Weider: He’ll screw you. Here’s Maria, shy, hardworking, immigrant woman whose grief and resilience make her the lone source of warmth in Hap’s fragile world.

Rex Pickett: But I always thought of Maria as being somebody who maybe, maybe, maybe not. We don’t know. Crossed illegally. And she goes to work at this place called Surf Wash. And it’s a cool laundromat right by the ocean. But it’s kind of small. And the owner dies and, and at the end, he he actually gives it to her. She’s a single woman and Hap has a relationship with her. And he ends up putting in all new equipment in or whatever. It’s a little bit of a happy ending. And his mother doesn’t want to be in the convalescent home. She wants to be out in Palm Desert. And so Hap gets her out to Palm Desert.

Amy Hobby: That’s nice.

Rex Pickett: It kind of creates these tiny victories for these small people, you know?

Amy Hobby: But, this is a nice photo of, Catalina Sandino Moreno, with some folded laundry in her arms, in a sort of magic hour shot.

Avi Weider: Chicken man. Oh, look, here’s another, favorite of AI.

Amy Hobby: Scoot McNairy, AI loves him. He’s in all our decks.

Rex Pickett: Yeah.

Amy Hobby: From Oppenheimer to—

Avi Weider: Wiry hair trigger bully whose insecurity curdles into gleeful cruelty.

Rex Pickett: Yeah. Well, again, just really reaching for the polysyllabics. But I would agree with that.

Amy Hobby: Nervy, petty, explosive.

Rex Pickett: He’s based on a real character from way back when one of the friends of my brother, you know. Anyway.

Avi Weider: Here’s I guess another of the crew, Wispy Bearder. I love the names.

Rex Pickett: If you were to have plugged the synopsis without any names or whatever into AI, you never would have come up with this. So that’s the one thing AI couldn’t do. So that’s not again to brag.

Amy Hobby: Yeah Wispy Bearder.

Rex Pickett: It can take though, from what I gave you. My brother and his friends, they all had nicknames for each other that weren’t their real names. They just could not call each other by real names. They’d just have nicknames each other. Often demeaning.

Amy Hobby: I mean, Walton Goggins, you know, he’s hot right now. He’s all over my Instagram feed.

Avi Weider: Well, he just did the White Lotus.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. He is a great, great character in White Lotus. Great character arc. AI describes him as sly, charismatic and serpentine. He’s in a picture with I guess that’s him leaning against a van, with some—

Rex Pickett: Washing machine drums. So, you know.

Avi Weider: Those are the drums.

Rex Pickett: But actually, these are all limited choices, and they’re really good ones.

Amy Hobby: I mean, they’re actually good choices.

Avi Weider: Yeah, I think it’s pretty good with the casting. Mrs. Rosecrans, a bitter, stroke-disabled woman whose neediness, cruelty and flickers of tenderness define Hap’s deepest wounds. And first up in the picture here, it’s Jacki Weaver.

Amy Hobby: So it’s a picture of, I guess, Jacki Weaver in a wheelchair. And, it looks like a convalescent home hallway, what’s on the ground there?

Rex Pickett: Its probably an assisted living facility.

Avi Weider: No, those those are like a bouquet of dead roses, I think.

Amy Hobby: Oh, right. I thought it was a stuffed animal.

Avi Weider: No. It looks.

Rex Pickett: Oh, you’re right. I think at one point she Hap gives her flowers or something. She just throws them down. She’s got a drinking problem.

Amy Hobby: June Squibb. That’s a good one. Frances Fisher.

Rex Pickett: They would have fun with this role, for sure, you know?

Avi Weider: Here’s some storyboards frames, that we asked it to do. And again, it just picked them itself. I didn’t cue it to do any particular scene. I said, just give me—

Rex Pickett: This is really interesting. I just have to interject quickly, parenthetically. When I wrote for Repairman, I mean, there was real excitement over the screenplay, and I just always thought this was this was just one of the films that, you know—I mean, look, I’ve written over 35 screenplays, but this is just one that I would pull out to show people, because I don’t think it’s dated. And I think it really underscores even issues that seem to be highlighted today. And you’re actually bringing it all back to me imagistically.  I forgot these characters’ names, you know, like the Wispy Bearder. I like to think that I haven’t lost it, you know, because I’m still in Sideways Burgundy right now, but this is bringing back a script that I’m just fond of because, it’s not my past because I lived north of Ocean Beach, kind of more Del Mar up by the University of California, San Diego, where I went to school, but this is this is my brother’s world— Hack. And so it’s really kind of a tribute to him. And that conversation about honesty, you know, he’s just one of these guys. It’s just going to go one day and people are going to, you know, forget that he never, you know, put in a used part instead of a new part. And charged you for the new one. You know he clings to this honesty and I think if there’s one thing missing from the whole pitch deck, it’s how he clings to that honesty.

Avi Weider: I like this discussion about, like, what AI picks up on and what it doesn’t pick up on in terms of, you know, subtlety  and what you’re really interested in projecting in it.

Amy Hobby: All right, let’s watch the trailer Avi.

Avi Weider: That’s the deck.  So now what we have is—

Rex Pickett: Did a machine read the screenplay?

Avi Weider: Yes. Absolutely. Yes. We put it right. Read the screenplay. It read the Deck. Yeah, everything.

Rex Pickett: Does it have notes for me?

Amy Hobby: We’ll get to that.

Avi Weider: There is plenty of notes. There’s a lot of notes.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, we aren’t doing any work here on this show. We just let the machines do it. We just, like, sit back and talk to people.

Avi Weider: Yeah. That’s it.

Amy Hobby: Okay Avi. Let’s see the trailer. It’s my favorite part.

Avi Weider: Everyones favorite part. Here we go.

TRAILER STARTS

HAP V.O.: I just fix things.

OLDER MAN: You heading out already?

HAP: Yeah.

MARIA: That one’s been broken for weeks.

HAP: It’s the belt.

MARIA: You should be more careful.

HAP: I am.

GREG: You don’t get steadiness like this anywhere else.

HAP:  I didn’t ask for it.

BULLY: Hey, you still fixing things for free?

HAP’S MOM: You always make things harder than they need to be.

GREG: Money is late.

HAP: I’m working.

BULLY: Hey, where are you going? Stay right there.

HAP V.O.: Some things don’t get fixed.

TRAILER ENDS

Amy Hobby: I have to say, that was one of the worst trailers that AI has made.

Avi Weider: Yeah. It wasn’t so good.

Amy Hobby: Voice over. Yeah, the voiceover is—

Rex Pickett: And also that little that music in the background.

Amy Hobby:: The music’s terrible, terrible. Like a little tinkling sound.

Avi Weider: Yeah. This one didn’t quite hit it out of the park.

Amy Hobby: Yeah. Very stilted like shot, shot.

Avi Weider: I think it’s kind of a quiet story in a way. And I think maybe it was struggling with it. Part of the whole exercise and interest in this is not to probe it too hard because I’m particularly interested in what it does on its own. Rather than try to guide it for complete perfection. The failure of it as a trailer is interesting.

Amy Hobby: Kind of interesting. I think Avi, it’s because a lot of it is very internal, right? It’s it’s from this character’s point of view and it’s internal and maybe it’s picking these scenes, but it’s not, somehow grasping Hap’s internal life or something.

Avi Weider: I mean, I think it I think it wanted to it wanted to do a lot of VO which I did tell it not to do a lot of, so it opted for silence. It could have been a much more video heavy thing, which maybe we should have went that way. But again, the shot selection really wasn’t that different. I did iterate it, you know, at least a couple times. It just felt like this was it. I think it kind of saw it as a portrait, and it’s this guy and  it’s really about this tone that it was trying to set. Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not trying to be an apologist for it at all. It is what it is.

Rex Pickett: I think it’s interesting. I think when you go from a pitch deck where you can just have actors and have just a picture or whatever to an actual trailer, you’re you’re in the world of moviemaking now. Yeah, there’s a trailer. And I think what you want is, oddly enough, for a trailer, not that I would ever cut trailers, you want a little three act trajectory in the trailer. I mean, it’s great that you guys are doing it. I mean,  it just evokes so many memories.

Avi Weider: Wait for the best memory of provoker of all— is about to join us on this experience.

Amy Hobby: So we have a pitch meeting. We can pitch the script again, Rex.

Avi Weider: Right now.

Amy Hobby: We’re going to pitch it together.

Rex Pickett: So you don’t have to deal with my agent, Amy.

Amy Hobby: So I’m bypassing all of it.

Rex Pickett: Yeah, you can just send them a dollar.

Amy Hobby: Yeah.

Rex Pickett: What, is he going to give me notes?

Amy Hobby: He can.

Rex Pickett: No, no, it’s all right.  I wouldn’t go back into the script unless somebody paid me. I’ll tell you that.

Avi Weider: We’ve given him everything, just so you know. And he has it all already, including this new deck and the new trailer

Amy Hobby: Or he might just have coverage, I don’t know.

Olivia: Hey, folks. Olivia here, Finn’s assistant. Finn’s wrapping up a meeting, but he’s been talking about this project all morning, and he’s eager to jump in.

Finn: Hey, Amy. Hey, Avi. Hi, there. Good to meet you. Give me one second. I’m pulling up the pages and the deck.

Avi Weider: Just give us, like, a quick hot take on what you think about the script. Just—script only, the story. How do you think it’s fitting into today’s world?

Finn: So, quick hot take. Repairman is, at its core, a quietly brutal portrait of what decency costs in a rigged world. The kind of film where Hap Rosecrans, this developmentally impaired coin-op repairman, is just trying to hold on to honesty and routine while every system around him grinds him down. The story doesn’t chase after easy redemption or dramatic catharsis. It’s about endurance and the toll of staying good when there’s no reward for it. Right now, I think that lands in today’s world, maybe more than ever. There’s something sharp about watching someone try to do the right thing in an environment—Ocean Beach, the repair shop, the Aardvark crew dynamic—that feels both specific and universal. It feels timely in how it tackles dignity under pressure. And the scenes with Hap’s mother, or Maria at Surf Wash, are especially strong, giving that cost real, lived-in weight. My one concern is the script’s restraint is a strength, but it risks getting lost in the crowd if it doesn’t stake out what makes Hap’s decency urgent for us now, not just tragic. The question I’d press in the final stretch, after the violence, after Maria leaves, when Hap ends up alone in the desert—what’s the feeling? You want the audience to walk out with some quiet devastation, or some stubborn kind of hope? Rex, where do you want to live with it?

Rex Pickett: You know, I like the fact that Hap—kind of like in a western, because the scene where they drag him along the beach is right out of a western, where he’s hogtied to a surfboard, he’s walking off and the sun is bleeding down. And you have an Ennio Morricone’s Whistling Man, or whatever it is. And I just love that moment. It just pounds hard, you know, that he’s kind of this lone hero, you know, and that’s kind of what I was going for. I’m not trying to be defensive. I just was going for the fact that he’s gone his own way, a lone hero. And he’s got Maria and her Surf Wash and everything, but we don’t know what his future is. It’s uncertain, you know? But he’s come through with dignity. He’s done the right thing at everything, as well as taking down those Aardvark fuckers. You know? But I think that very last thing, with an Ennio Morricone—and you see Hap silhouetted against a blood-red sun, you know, sinking on the horizon. And you have to listen to the song, because it literally is a powerful moment. About a minute in that song just goes boom and it’s right out of the Sergio Leone film.

Amy Hobby: Yeah Finn. That make it seem like a bigger film to me right?

Finn: Yeah, it does. That’s exactly the shift I’m feeling. When you talk about silhouetted against the blood-red sun, more clearly swelling, it’s not just small-town grit anymore. You’re pushing the movie into mythic territory—a kind of working-class western, right? The scale is emotional, but that final shot makes it visual, almost operatic. The trick is that last image reframes the whole story. It says this isn’t just a sad slice of life. This was a showdown, and Hap’s stubborn decency is almost a heroic act—that can make the movie feel bigger and more urgent. Not just a character piece. So for the rest of the script, do you lean into that? Are there visual or emotional setups earlier? Little Leone touches—the way he faces down the Aardvark crew, the way the surf shop feels like a frontier town—that earn you that final mythic image? Or do you want it to come as a surprise, this one operatic punch at the end?

Rex Pickett: I like the word mythic. I think I was going for that in that final image, because you really think about—as is, he’s obviously damaged. He’s found this little niche, but he has to make a huge compromise. And he knows where he’s going into. He’s going into the den of iniquity. And that’s Aardvark.

Amy Hobby: So Finn, it’s an operatic western. What do you think the budget could be? Are you are you guys interested if we get the right talent attached?

Finn: With the right cast—someone who gives Hap that mythic weight without needing a movie-star salary—and a director who lives for this kind of emotional scale on a budget, I’d say you’re in the low single-digit millions, maybe 2 to 3 if you keep your days tight. If you start stacking the talent, or try for period authenticity everywhere, that number floats up. Amy, Avi, does that sound right to you, or are there financing angles I’m not factoring in?

Amy Hobby: Yeah. Listen, Finn, here’s what I think the character of Hap is incredible. It’s a great opportunity, for an actor. So we think we’re going to get a really good actor for a really good price point. So I think you’re right. Two and a half to three. No problem. So are you guys interested? We’d like to close this deal today. We’d like to walk out with a greenlight Finn What do you think?

Finn: Is it a green light for me? Creatively, yes. I’m in. I think we’ve got a film that’s timely, muscular and has real emotional punch. The only thing I’d push for is to make sure some of those Leone vibes are seeded earlier in the script, so the ending doesn’t feel like a left turn, but a culmination. Amy, Avi, are you ready to put the stamp on this, or do you want to see a pass that threads in a bit more of that mythic tone before you call it?

Avi Weider: I’m in, I don’t know.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, we can do it.

Olivia: Oh, but hey, folks, Olivia again. Finn had to run straight to set, and today was a hard ten-minute window. I’ve got the thread, the notes and everything you sent, and I’ll make sure he picks up right where he left off. Drop anything you want him to respond to next, and we’ll get you back on his calendar soon. Bye.

Amy Hobby: He left right when we were getting a green light. We were, like, 30 seconds away from a $2.5—We were getting the first-look deal back for Rex with whoever he wants to co-direct with.

Avi Weider: But, you know, some interesting notes there. You wanted notes? Those are some notes.

Rex Pickett: They really weren’t, you know, minor, you know—

Amy Hobby: Requires a rewrite,Rex, you got to go back in and seed those operatic moments.

Rex Pickett: But Repairman has gone through a lot of—it’s gone through a number of drafts. I think after Gil Bellows went out, I went back to the original. After Greg Germann, I went back to the original, and that’s what I always do with my work if somebody isn’t in and I’ve made changes according to their aesthetics.

Amy Hobby: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think, this has been a very productive podcast. We almost have a greenlight. We’re practically greenlit.

Avi Weider: Before we got hung up on.

Rex Pickett: I’m heading to the BMW dealer right now.

Avi Weider: Amazing.

Amy Hobby: See, you should have stuck with me, Rex. I would have pushed through that greenlight.

Rex Pickett: No Amy, I’ve always admired you. And that was totally my agent’s fault. And agents are trying to sell you and just do a deal and everything. Yeah, when you’re a failure, no one wants to know you. And when you’re success, everyone wants to hustle you, not want to be your friend. They want to hustle you and they want to leverage you. And I’m bad at that, you know? And if you turn it over to agents, they’re not necessarily on your side either. And they just want to do deals. And, I wish I’d made some different decisions back then, to be quite honest with you. Not to be, you know, but—

Amy Hobby: You never know. You know, you might have made different decisions and ended up in the same place. It’s hard to know.

Rex Pickett: Who knows—

Amy Hobby: Well, thanks a lot. Thanks, Rex, for coming on our show.

Rex Pickett: If you have any work to do you need to work on that trailer. Yeah, that’s a bit of a clunker.

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.

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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.