Hey, y'all.
I am Frank, and today I'm with Nick Roth, TV
writer filmmaker here to talk about Hankie Panky.
How are you doing today? I'm doing.
If I'm being honest.
my my balls are really sore from a vasectomy two days ago.
I was gonna say I'm doing great. I'm not.
My ball hurt.
I have small children, so I'm tired.
I am tired, and my balls physically hurt.
That is how I'm doing. How are you? I'm doing okay.
And you also have a kid just off mic.
So get ready for the noises, guys.
Yeah, that's how life is. You know, mac.
And cheese and strawberries, like, I don't know what else.
That's the best I can do.
Yeah, that is solid.
but let's go ahead to talk about hankie panky.
We're gonna talk about you here a little bit.
But first, can you give us a rundown of what is hankie panky?
It's a movie. It's a real movie.
Despite what anybody tells you.
It's a film, a cinema film.
it's, it's a very zany, silly comedy horror
movie that pits, talking handkerchief, against,
the intergalactic, evil, brain eating, soul sucking top hat voiced by Seth Green.
of course.
I mean, why not?
Because. Because of that. Who else? And,
and, it's, it's now
streaming on Tubi and anywhere else that you do VOD or anything like that.
Yeah.
So, you can stream it on TV with ads, but if you guys want to purchase it,
it's on Apple TV, Prime, Google Play, YouTube, and normal places
where you just get a few bucks to rent a movie.
So check that a.
Couple people about it on Xbox, on the Xbox Marketplace, you can get
you can get it. It's everywhere. There you go.
I, I didn't think you did that anymore.
That's cool. That's all.
A couple people told me they did, so that's cool.
okay.
So let's go ahead and talk about you a little bit here.
one of the more unique things is stood out when I started doing my deep
dive on to you is that you have this PhD in English from Cornell University.
tell us why you decided to do that and what, from that translated into
I want to be a filmmaker.
it. Well, I don't want to go so far as to say it was a mistake.
I don't think it was that bad.
I had dubious
psychological reasons for wanting to go to grad school and get.
I wanted to, I don't know, I probably wanted to prove to my mom I was smart.
I don't know if that's possible.
And found myself in grad school.
you know, in the early two, 20 tens,
I guess, realizing
that the academic world wasn't for me, I like
I wanted to study books and movies and
write about them and read them and understand them more.
And I didn't do that.
But then at some point I was like, oh, writing these movies would be an awful
lot more fun than writing about movies, books and movies.
and so like in 20, that was like 2013.
I was like, I made the decision in my head.
I'm from L.A.
and like everyone I knew was in the film industry
and my parents were in the film industry and stuff, and I was
I had sort of like been running away from my destiny or whatever.
And so I about ten years ago, the lover that I came back
to embrace my fate,
and then spent, you know, the next 6
or 7 years in different assistant gig until, eventually.
Yeah, sort of slowly climbing up from
from aspiring writer to struggling writer, which I think is a good.
Yeah, nice.
I'm, I'm on the on the title train.
Yeah.
yeah. It's a pretty unique take.
Is the fact that you were trying
to get away from the entertainment business
when so many people moved to LA to try to embrace it,
and now you were sitting, I think, like.
I think I vowed and I may have sworn in blood to never be part of it.
I don't know, I broke that like.
Yeah, you broke it. That's your next movie right there.
then.
Yeah. You're.
So you have your dissertation, potential cinema closet film in the 20th century.
Fiction.
sounds like a fascinating title.
What was this about?
What influenced you to to write this dissertation?
Okay, so this is f for for academically minded people.
They will appreciate this.
The this, you know, you have to when you write a dissertation, it's like 250 pages.
It's got to be oh, I know you have to find an original thing
to write about that no one's ever written about.
It seems about.
And so I stumbled upon that in grad school.
I was taking a class on melodrama.
And, you know, we're reading a lot of plays and watching some movies.
And at some point we were talking about closet, closet drama, which is,
an established and very much talked about within academics.
it's, it's people who are writing things that aren't meant to be plays,
but they're writing them
as if it was a play at like it's written in script format with dialog.
This goes all the way back to like Plato was writing philosophy
like Free Dress, and some of his other works are written
as if it was a play, but it's not meant to be performed.
And it's not really a script, but it's like that.
And Milton, John Milton wrote these in the 17th century.
Samson Agonist uses a very famous line.
So there's a very long history.
Seneca and Rome. Like there's
a thousands of years of people doing this and people talking about it.
And I,
I think because I was interested
in movies and I had come from LA and knew people in the industry,
I was the person in that class who was like, does this exist for movies?
Is there closet film? Does that?
Is that a thing?
do people have people written things that aren't
meant to be movies, but you but written them in screenplay format?
And the professor,
Nick Sabato, a great guy you mentioned, was on my committee
and helped me with my dissertation. Love him very much.
I think he's still at Cornell.
was like, I don't know the answer to that question.
And that's a dissertation topic is born whenever you find it.
When you come up with the question that the professor doesn't know the answer to,
that became the the subject of my of my research, which was,
has this happened?
And to what extent and how can we answer this?
And so and the answer is, no one had written about this extensively.
A couple people, well, one guy who became my friend
when we Milton, who lived in Huntington Beach, wrote an article about this.
And then some guy in Japan has written an article and now was in.
So now the three of us of a whole field of study,
and, and and the truth is, a lot of people have done this
in really interesting ways.
There was a,
a Japanese writer in the 20s who wrote a lot of these kinds of things.
He was sort of embracing early silent film.
His name is, you know, Sky is a very famous, Japanese modernist author.
it's not really known internationally so much, but he's like one of the biggest
19th century writers in Japan.
And, he wrote it turned out a bunch of these things.
He wrote novellas and short stories.
But then in the 20s, there were all these people who were made
who had these, like, film scenario outs because they were silent film.
They didn't have dialog.
and he was like, I'm gonna start writing poems and stories that use this form.
And then also in in France in the 20s, people were doing this.
The French surrealists, a lot of them were really interested in movies.
They tried to make movies.
They did a really bad job making movies.
They made very few movies. It's hard to make them.
So they actually then they wrote things called cynic poems.
so now Roman, sort of movie
book they like, there's a lot of experimenting with this form.
And then, you know, later people, there's this really interesting guy.
He's still around. His name is Darius James. He's like a
performance artist and a
voodoo practitioner and an experimental writer.
He wrote a novel in the form of a script.
But it's it's it's a novel, but written script.
It's called Negro phobia.
An urban parable, a novel.
It's amazing. It's crazy. It's unfilmable.
It has, you know, all kinds of things, but it's written as if it was a screenplay.
Yeah.
and so there are examples from sort of,
you know, throughout the last 100 years or so of people sort of just messing around
with, like, I want to write a poem, I want to write a novel.
I want to write something that but use screenplay formatting
and make it have that.
What does that do to like how we think about
how we read and whether we see a movie in our head
as we read and questions like that.
So that was what that was what my research was about.
which was more or less because it was like, oh, here's a
this is a thing that's a worthwhile
question in academia that no one else is or almost nobody else is asking.
No one had written anything substantial on on the topic.
So, so immediately my mind's racing with ideas of like, why do this?
Is it easier to then picture the scenario in your mind than it is a regular novel
or something like that? There's all kinds of ideas for that.
There's a lot of really interesting hypothetical stuff like why aren't.
Well, I mean, why are more people doing
it is one question because it's been done so much with with plays.
But one of the chapters of James Joyce's Ulysses is written
as if it was a play that's a lot like it's talked about like this.
Is that there are lots of instances.
There are relatively few instances of people doing this, like movies,
and there's and it's partly just because, like,
film scripts haven't really been embraced as literary
in the same way that I think plays, they're not studied that way.
But it raises an interesting question of like, why not?
Yeah.
And there is a very big community, especially in like the geekdom
of movies being novelists especially, like you think of Star Wars or whatever.
and then they usually add details that weren't necessarily in the movie.
And so it would be interesting to see
how those two correlate, like, what are you adding in to this way?
What do you what's worth taking out when you go the other way?
That's very interesting.
Yeah.
I mean there's all like it's
there's interesting there's another
another interesting parallel is like the storyboard,
which in some cases is very similar to a graphic novel or a comic book.
Right. And like but the storyboard never gets
or rarely unless it's like a big movie
with it's really doing promotional stuff like does that get published?
Right?
And then we get to look at that in the same way that it's like,
you know, when we talk about theater or plays, it's like most people read
plays and study them, not necessarily even having seen them.
Right.
Like you can be a Shakespeare person and just read them.
You don't have to actually plays, right?
I mean, partly that just because it's harder to like a play
has to be staged for you to see it in a movie.
You are you are expected to have this text and talk about it.
Right? But,
certainly when you put like a play script next to a screenplay for a movie,
I mean, the formatting is slightly different, but not insignificant.
Yeah.
So then you get, you know, you decide, hey, I want to be a filmmaker someday.
I want to be a TV writer.
How do you pull that information that you gather that is quite unique.
You're one of three in a field.
How do you pull that into your your career?
Mostly didn't I mean, like, the experiences that I had,
in grad school are formative for a lot of reasons, but
it's not like I was able to I didn't take a lot of, like, practical.
I mean, grad school is mostly about I will say this grad school did help me
with pitching as a as a writer because it's it's a lot of bullshit.
It's a lot of like, how convincingly can I swear on this podcast?
Yeah, of course, of course.
it's a lot of bullshit.
It's a lot of convincing people, you know what you're talking about,
and everyone has to be an expert on a thing.
And like, it is true.
Rigorous training in the art of bullshit.
And I do think that that is a skill that in some cases in television
writing and in, you know, pitching projects and movies and stuff, you do.
I am better at sounding like I know what I'm talking about than than I am
than I actually know. Right. that's useful.
But I, and I read a lot in grad school, and I think that's helpful in my writing.
But like, other than that, it's not like there was a lot that was specific to this
very esoteric project.
Yeah, it's so niche.
I was writing mostly about authors that most of the authors
no one had ever heard of.
and then sometimes I'd be like, oh, William Burroughs wrote one of these.
I can write a little bit about that, because at least he's like, I'm like,
that's great.
He's a name.
But like Darius, James was not really a name.
I was able to go if I went to took a train down to.
I was in upstate New York at the time.
I took a train to Yale.
he was living in New Haven, and like, he hung out with me, and we got a beer,
and I was able to talk to him and stuff, like, he was very approachable.
He's a nice guy. We sort of kept up a bit of a friendship.
He was.
He did come out to LA trying to make actual movies,
and then he ruined the whole thing for me because it was like,
I would love if someone made this into a movie.
And I was like, no, the whole point it's it can't, you can't.
I wrote I wrote a dissertation chapter just about how this is unfilmable.
And really interesting was it was like, no, I think it is.
I was like the Coen brothers. It got it. It was like, no, no, no, no.
so I don't know.
I was like, what do I do?
I did, so it's not like, it's
not like the stuff that I was writing in that is very
practical in any, in any way.
It did get me.
I did have a I was, up for a job.
One of my first job was a writer's pay, mostly just getting coffee for writers.
apparently, I did find out later.
It was like it was between me and one other person,
and the showrunner of the show had been like it was between me and a woman.
She was like, okay, hire the woman.
And then she was like, unless.
Is there anything particularly hilarious about the
the male candidate's resume?
And her assistant was like, he has a PhD in English.
She was like, that's fine, hire him.
So I got me a job.
It's it's terrible that PhD is the joke.
Like he's a writer, but he's got a there's.
A comedy, there's a comedy show.
They needed the name of it to be funny.
Yeah, I was, I on that show.
Oh that's great. Oh, yeah.
You. Aren't you a doctor? And this one too. Oh, they make you pinky.
So show the character. Excellent segue.
The character of Doctor Crane.
You know, is he's a lot of things.
He's based on a lot of things. And one of the
a lot of it was me drawing on the sort of the end of an era of my life
at the end of a chapter of me as an academic in my
I got a big book worm tattooed on my ribs and stuff and made fun of myself.
A lot.
And Doctor Crane is sort of like the most bombastic, over the top,
academic, pretentious, full of himself version of myself as a
PhD and as,
you know, as a, as kind of that guy.
Right.
And also, you know, drawn on some people I've met in my academic travels who are
kind of that absurd.
Yeah, yeah.
Somebody who feels like they should be in a murder mystery that's like,
kind of try to give you a hint as they're talking to you.
Yeah.
No, no.
So speaking,
with with hankie panky, it's a crazy, unique idea.
even the elevator pitch, I'm sure, would be hard to get off.
And luckily, you had practice with pitching things.
what? Did you come up with this idea?
Where did this come from?
You know, week no one can remember.
I've been talking a lot since we've finished the movie.
Yeah.
you know Lindsay, who is my wife and co-director, Lindsay Park place.
Rebecca and Toby. Brian, who plays Norm.
He voices Woody. He did the puppets.
The three of us have tried to remember, but can't remember
who came up with the hat. Like, why?
Why is there a killer top hat?
Why is that the foil to our talking napkin?
We all sort of disagree.
No one really wants to maybe take the blame for it.
I don't know, we can't, I literally don't.
I wish I had an answer for this and I should probably just make one up,
but it was just one of those crazy things where it was like
most of this film came out of
what are the pieces that we have and how can we make
because we just wanted to make a movie and we're a group of friends like this.
There's no company here.
There's no no one hired anybody,
no one like this was just like, we are a very close, small
group of friends and family who are like, let's make a feature film.
Because, yeah, I think we can.
And I think we can make it funny.
That was my only concern.
I was like, can I make I think we can make a movie.
I think we can make it fun.
We had access to that cabin that we shot in.
That's Lindsay's dad's cabin.
Jimmy Hornsby also composed the score for the movie,
and we were like, we have a cabin.
We had one very funky, weird, cool camera.
And, with a short film of ours and a film festival,
I was like, so we have a camera.
We have all our friends are actors.
Because we grew up in L.A., I was like, wait, so Ensemble Cabin?
And then
we had made a talking napkin short film, and that was really fun and funny.
So I was like, all right, I think we could make a horror movie out of this.
And I don't, I don't know how it came to a murder mystery.
Top hat clue meets The Shining, but the is live action Simpsons
Treehouse of Horror, I think, was sort of like the idea at the beginning.
I don't know, I wish I had it, it's crazy.
We're deranged, insane perverts.
Maybe we're funny.
Like which deranged, insane pervert decided to call Seth Green?
So he's a friend of ours.
Lindsay and his wife Claire.
Claire is Seth's wife who plays Ellie in the movie.
She's very funny.
She's from Memphis, so we should have played up this, like, double life for us.
Yeah.
Downhome Memphis in person, which is her actual self with that sort of
stuff in the movie is something, they met,
I don't know, 12, 14 years ago or something like that.
You know, it's improv class and just became friends.
And so then we're they were friends with, Ashley.
Claire and Ashley have been best friends for a really long time. And Christina.
So Christina plays Carla, and Ashley plays Diane.
And then we brought in a couple of our friends.
So it's just like this whole, like, most of this was our,
you know, Claire was a bridesmaid at the wedding.
Most of the Toby was a groom.
Like this.
Most of this was just our, like, closest friends.
And Seth happened to be around.
And we didn't ask him to be in the movie, because I didn't want to think
that we just were friends with them to get him in our weirdest possible movie.
You know, he's famous and we're not well.
And in maybe the weirdest role to like, hey, you're gonna be a bad guy
and your top hat.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So we want you to play a killer. The voice of a killer top at.
Anyway, after we were after
we had shot the movie, I showed Russ that at one point
to Claire and Seth and was like, did you know it would be cool?
Do you want to voice one of these?
Because I think, Seth, it's like, I want to be a part of it, but yeah.
well, yeah, we do.
We know that.
I kind of knew all along, too.
I was like, I had ridden hairy as you know, she has the voice.
So it's kind of inspired by Skeletor.
and, you know,
Lindsay was doing like, it's when Lindsay sort of starts to do that voice.
She had already been doing a skeleton for when tech was like,
what voice do you want me to do?
And I've. No, you got skeleton.
Yeah. Then you do skeleton ly does skeleton
robot chicken and and and in his daily life.
So I was like, just do skeleton.
And he was like, I got this.
So now I know who's playing
skeleton and all the family Guy episodes, and now I know.
Honestly, I hadn't thought about that, but I'm sure it's probably him.
It's probably him.
okay, so we have.
Of course we have the napkin.
how do you develop these characters?
Like with Woody and Sam and their interactions?
How are you going to pull these characters out,
especially with them being your friends?
It seems like that adds a layer of difficulty, like,
hey, you're meeting for the first time and everything.
I think it makes it a lot easier because I really we really the, the
it was very collaborative, like I had some semblance of a script very quickly.
But there was, you know, early on we did a lot of like
improv games with where we got as much of the cast together as we could.
And just like, all right, you've discover your snow.
Oh, you found a body go like. And what we
both wanted to
shape was like the story and like, see what was funny and what worked.
And but more is like,
everybody got to really sort of develop their characters.
And we got to see what was funny in the characters
that interacted with each other.
And then that led to a lot of like,
really fun, creative things we were able to do in the movie.
The, you know, if you you wouldn't get to do if you just, like, wrote a thing
and then cast them because we did that. If.
Yeah, you have strong opinions about it too.
I like Natalie's character, Diane, and our friend Anthony's character,
who plays, Cliff.
Like, it's not obvious that these two characters will be
the ones who get to end up,
you know, snowed into an ice shack together, which leads to this whole, like,
she's going to save their marriage.
She gives them therapy.
This, this very fun, sort of surrealistic
mushroom, but it's like psychoactive therapy scene.
Right.
And I only became because we saw that when we were just messing around
that Anthony and Ashley, just incredible improv chemistry.
They're both great and funny.
And it was really funny to have those characters
interacting with each other and in a room together.
So we were like, let's make the story also go that way, right?
Like, I don't know.
Yeah, you got a strawberry?
Am I just not listening to you?
And that's a problem, I know, I'm sorry.
I'm I'm I'm on a podcast.
Well, speaking of the improv, it sounds like it was a big part
of the creation of the film.
did you have much improv in your background,
or you were you working with a lot of just improv, but.
I have a little.
Lindsay has a bunch, you know, everyone has.
It's, Yeah, like, I like we're not like an improv troupe
that does as perform together, but everyone has.
And, like, mostly what the cast is made up is like is,
you know, people would have, like, who are really used to TV, the pace
of like working on a lot of TV shows and guest I need to be chosen
a lot of the sort of like bad for like, you got to get your ass down.
You don't get so many takes.
and like, that makes them.
I'm thinking of Jacob, who play salmon and Ashley replaced Diane.
Like, these are like, working actors who are just really good
and have very highly attuned instruments and they're very funny.
And so we really sort of goes around like, well, we have them.
They'll be funny. If they want to improv.
They're going to like, yeah, we're not stopping them.
yeah.
And then and Christina also
did a ton of improv, not everybody, because some people stuck to the script.
We were like, sticking to the script more.
I think I stuck to the script mostly because I wrote it.
Yeah, but the best, all the best stuff in the movie
is stuff that was not in the script is like, is all this, even this?
I say this, but I think my favorite moment of Doctor Crane is an improv where
Anthony is like, feel kind of shitty about giving that five bucks
and then doctor friends like, oh, I don't I do not have it like that.
That just like a it's like it's just feels very real.
Anthony.
Yeah, but I think it's sort of feels like this brotherly moment
that like the, the little micro,
tiny things that you discover when you're shooting and
you know, and those I think are the, the things that ground
what is otherwise such a zany, preposterous, absurd big movie with.
Yeah, all this multi-dimensional, you know, napkins.
You can see the puppet strings nonsense.
I think it's good to swing it back and just have a lot of these.
Just like little
beats between people that that are, I mean, that feel a lot more real.
When you're doing that, when you when you improv, improvise, improvising,
and you find the grounded moments, how do you recognize them in the moment?
Are you too far into it?
did you find that in editing?
I think you just try to shoot as much as you can and then.
Yeah, you know, the first cut of this film, the script was 110 pages,
and then the movie was three hours long, and and then it took a really long time.
We spent a really long time trimming and cutting to get the movie down to,
you know, now it's like just under 90 minutes.
It's like 80, 87 credits or whatever.
but that that was what that process was.
It was just like, there's all like finding the right balance
of these little moments that are just like,
that doesn't really advance the story, but I like it.
It tells us something about the characters.
You know, this is really important to the plot, but it's not that funny.
Is there another way of doing this better?
Like, yeah.
And so yeah, so being open to those improv things,
you just you find that later I think.
Yeah, being a part of the entire process
because you actually have seen it from start to finish.
what do you think is the most rewarding and most challenging part
of making the films?
Okay.
Most challenging?
I don't like sound editing.
I had to do that myself because that's expensive.
I don't think I do a great job, but I did a serviceable job for, you know.
Yeah, for doing it basically by myself.
like.
No, the most challenging thing is keeping up some sort of, like,
you sort of
tell yourself a lot, like, I was like a cheerleader of this
who was telling everybody, we're going to make a movie,
we're going to finish a movie.
It's going to be a real movie.
And I did not know that. Right?
But I had to pretend to like a lot my wife, my father in law,
a lot of my closest friends, some of whom were successful, like,
I had to sort of be that cheerleader who was like, I have no job, right?
There was no room for that.
We got to soldier on and,
that is, you know, to keep that up over the years of developing,
writing, shooting and then editing and then releasing, right.
Like the other thing
that's very rewarding, but also challenging
that I have never done before is like the part about finding
distribution, getting the movie out, promoting the film, like
that is a lot of work.
I now
have a tremendous amount of respect for the people who do that professionally.
I this was not a part of the industry that I knew is like the PR
and the marketing and the
you just kind of know that that's somebody else's job as a as a writer, right?
Like you're on the other end of it usually.
So when you're when you get all the way here,
I will take that.
And it will, it shapes the way I think of what projects to work on
and kind of work on them and how much I pour into them. And,
like I, I learned a lot about writing and doing all the other things.
Writing the movie didn't get anything done accidentally
releasing a movie, promoting a movie that taught me about writing.
Yeah.
Probably told you, like where the budget needs to go?
yeah, stuff like that. That's probably when you're a writer.
You're imagining, oh, I want to create this world.
When you're the producer, you're like, this world needs to cost this much.
You know?
I mean, yes.
And also, like, what are the like, no matter.
You know, I sort of went in with, like,
I'm just going to make this funny and as good as I can.
And then, you know, when you get to the distribute,
the you're selling it to a distributor, you're trying to put this on platforms.
Nobody's at no point in any of that conversation
is anybody talking about how funny your movie is, right?
Like, that's all I cared about as a comedy writer.
I was like, how funny is this movie?
But at that point, the conversation was how much
or organic promotion on social media will Seth Green do for the film?
And like, how do we sell this movie as a horror film and how do we
what is the key art that sells the concept of the horror of it?
And so and not that any of not that they're wrong.
Like, I don't know like that is what the conversation is about your movie.
But like I made the movie to be funny, right.
And but it doesn't.
You just have to hope that that helps the movie once people click on it.
But people aren't, I don't know.
The idea is people don't click on a movie because they think that it's get like,
I don't, I don't,
you know, you can't sell a movie based on how funny it is, I guess.
I don't know, maybe that'll change. I hope so, because, oh.
Yeah, it does feel like kind of a 90s early 2000 things where it was just like
the word would spread quickly, like, oh man, this is the funniest thing ever.
People will watch it.
But now you have to like, know the director, know the writer,
or know something about the movie ahead of time.
So much so that it kind of ruins it, frankly.
Yeah.
So we thank you.
Pinky out.
Now, do you plan on expanding the hankie panky verse or do you have another project
coming up?
I mean, I can't help myself.
I've written most of a second, sequel, all the all the money
that we were ever able to get.
We'll go into more blood, I think, and gore effects.
That's the feedback that we've gotten from, you know, we had a really good time.
We took the movie to
we did a panel at Monster Palooza, which is really fun convention.
And like, I don't know, people seem to like or and the everybody
who wanted to market it, the horror element over the comedy element.
Yeah. All right. Well, I can do that. We can do more horror.
We can do that. Cost a little bit of money.
Like you can
you can
make fake blood, but you can't splatter it on everything for free.
You know, if you're gonna blow up a head in a seat,
whatever shirt that person's wearing, you got to have, like, a high end
piece of that shirt. Yeah, that's, you know.
There's rentals involved a lot of times and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah.
So that costume, geysers of blood shooting out of people's head cost money.
You can't just do that at home and ruin the.
Note to self. Yeah.
So we've done that before.
We made a short film,
Lindsey and Toby and I and a couple of, I think a couple of the other members
of the Hankie Panky team worked on a short film called Nano Blood many, many,
many years ago. That was a sci fi horror drama short.
It's out there on the internet.
You can find it, we did something.
We blow up ahead and we slit her throat, and we we did all kinds
of that kind of stuff in it, and, it was art, and it's expensive.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
We had to get actual special effects people
to help us make prosthetics and stuff. It was a whole thing.
It's much harder. Thank you, thank you.
We were like, I don't know, just I don't know, I'll just put a
I mean, Toby designed those the blood bags.
It's just a Ziploc bag.
Full effect blood on the inside of a hat with a needle that sort of,
when you put it on, squeezes it, and then, like, comes out.
It works.
Yeah, but it didn't.
It wasn't.
It was not, it doesn't look tremendously expensive.
And it wasn't.
But it looks fun. I think that's the main thing.
People need to go watch this.
the trailer and all the links will be in the description, guys, but, yeah,
at least watch the trailer.
It looks like it's a blast.
And you just want to kind of join in on the fun.
Yeah.
I mean, I think I think if you if you get the comedy from the trailer,
then the movie will deliver on the promise that comedy.
Right?
And if you watch the trailer and you think this is this doesn't look funny, maybe.
Maybe it will be.
I don't know if I give it a shot,
but if the trailer is funny, you're going to love this movie.
That's cool. All right.
Well, guys, thank you so much for joining me today.
I appreciate that so much. Nick.
There's so much
mac and cheese on the laptop actually.
The timing is perfect.
Oh, he's just been like all day.
I've been in a writing session with a writing partner.
He's just been hanging out
as it's just been sort of just chilling and then took too long a nap.
And now we've just turned into
a, mac and cheese demon who just wants to throw away everything.
And, yeah.
where can people find you when they if they want to keep up on the progress
for the next? Thank you. Thank you.
hankie panky movie on all of the socials is the best place.
you know, we're on Instagram and Twitter
and TikTok and all of that stuff.
I'm not really on social media.
Okay, that's good for you.
But we wish I could.
It's just me. I just I run most of it.
Yeah. So.
Okay. All right, guys, there's going to be links in the description.
Make sure you click around start following up on everything again Tubi.
It's free with ads. And then you can watch trailers.
Really good.
One last geek related thing that I forgot that I should pitch is that for for those
who are in the Dungeons and Dragons,
niche of geekdom, I am as well.
And I am a DM and enjoy homebrewing things.
And so I, again, I can't help myself.
I did design.
If you go to D&D beyond, if you go to a link tree, you'll get links to it.
I did design some homebrew races for the hat and the napkin if you want to.
If you want to create a character who has the hat, the hat folk or nap kind
are are races that I've built for for five that are, you know, they're very fun.
Immediately, I had a friend tested out who was like,
yeah, so I made a hat character in a napkin character.
They've infiltrated a group of adventurers who don't know that
they're, other adventurers, you know?
So it's it's if you want to find a character with a brain soul sucking mechanism
and you want to,
And you see beyond it's there, it's brains, it's whatever.
But I tell you what.
So, I mean, the co-host and I'm the DM.
Of course I am.
we have a session coming up, and I'm going to test them to see if they
listen to this interview,
and they're going to be running into a bunch of loot
that happens to be at a chest, and one of them will be a top hat.
And so we're going to see how they, you know.
It's a yeah, you could definitely run like mimic vibes on it.
That's how think of this mimic.
Yeah I put some pretty good rules about you know the hat has to
you know if it grapples you it sucks your soul.
gets longer after that. It's a whole thing.
You'll see. It's pretty cool.
There's some fun funds in there.
I don't know why you're so upset, but you just go from that big map and you.
I know
I need to. All right.
All right, Nick, I'll let you get back to the mac and cheese.
all the chaos.
Thank you so much for hanging out with me today, man. Don't much.
And for putting up with all this shenanigans.
Well, of course, happy to let me know when the next one's coming out
so we can have you back on and talk about the next one.
I'll hold your breath.
You know what I mean?
Other than these things, take these things take time.
I'm hoping this I'm going to write it, that I also have a third one.
The third one is very fun. So I think.
Thank you. Three hat trick. It's going to be like Apocalypse Now.
We got to go to the hat realm.
Save all the. Spirits.
Up there.
Yeah.
Doctor green probably going to make a comeback at some point.
Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah.
All right guys, again follow the links and we'll see you guys next time. Bye.