A Moviemaking Conversation with comedian and Director Dan Perlman

Here’s something that is a little different than what I usually do here, but look at me using all of Substack’s new functionality with videos and everything. As I’ve maybe mentioned here, I’m producing an independent feature film, and what that means is there is a lot of lead up to it. As a way to deal with the long lead up, my friend, co-producer, and the film’s writer/director Roland Ellis and I started a podcast called Dream Baby Dream, the same name of the movie. The podcast is about everything that goes into making and indie movie from scratch, which is what we are both doing, mostly for the first time (Roland made his first feature in 2022 which I marginally helped out on, mostly by driving a $400k picture car from NYC to the set which was one of the most stressful things I’ve ever had to do; but for both of us, this is the first feature either of us has produced and we are learning a lot). We’ve talked to a lot of interesting people and covered conversations ourselves about the processes of production, and usually we don’t video record but for this one we did so I figured I’d make use of it and put it here. Our guest, Dan Perlman, is a comedian and director I met in the mid 2010’s doing open mics in the city. Dan has always been interesting to me because as well as being a really funny stand up, he’s had an entrepreneurial spirit in making his own things which led to him getting a series on Showtime and now to directing his own independent film. I love hearing people’s origin stories so hopefully this is of interest. I’ve made so many videos, TV shows, live shows, podcasts, blogs (this counts as one even though it’s a ‘newsletter’) etc in my many years in NYC, but I’ve never made a narrative feature film and so far it is a different process which is why I’m glad we’re documenting it on the pod.

Soon enough I’ll be back on brand with posts about food and photos but in the meantime enjoy, and enjoy this photo I took from the set of The Reunion, Roland’s first feature, while he was directing and I was remembering driving a $400k Aston Martin up the highway to start making movies:

on the set of The Reunion, dir. by Roland Ellis, 2022

If you want to follow more episodes or see more about the movie check out www.dreambabydream.net and find the podcast wherever you listen to them.

cory