UnchainedTV: Vegan Zombie Movie Director/Star Reveals All!

0:00 Wow, have we got a show for you. You're going to meet Chris Cooney. He has spent the last eight years of his life making 844, the vegan zombie movie. He's the writer. He's the director. He's the star of this extraordinary film. It sends your head spinning with, oh my God, so many wild twists and turns. Prepare to scream. Cooney plays a student trying to figure out why the people around him are turning into zombies. Could it have anything to do with all the cheeseburgers and milkshakes they're consuming? You're going to have to watch to find out. Cooney funded this venture, a feature film, through a Kickstarter, and he made the entire film production entirely vegan.

0:44 No animal products served or used. Along with Cooney, the cast includes famed Dr. Michael Greger in a mesmerising cameo, along with, well, me, playing, of course, a reporter. So make sure to stay tuned for the premiere date of this one-of-a-kind film that will have you squirming in your seat. We have eyes on the ground at Amherst General reporting live. Let's see what's unfolding. Pat, what can you tell us? Hey, how do you think they actually get the milk out of a milk? Maybe we can get together sometime and cook up some vegan cheeseburger or something. Yo, bro, I left my wallet in your truck.

1:28 What the... Hey, we need backup! People are complaining of dizziness and stomach pain. People are, oh my God, what are you doing? Get down! Well, help him! Run! Wait, wait, wait, that's gotta be it, right? Okay, wait, what do you mean?

2:17 So, don't eat animals, fools. Hopefully those things don't want to eat us, too. And we are so honoured to have Chris Cooney, the writer, the director, the star of this incredible film. Oh my gosh, it is just a five -star thriller. And I want to say, Chris, congratulations. I know you spent, what, eight years working on this?

2:57 What does it feel like to have it done? Thank you so much. Yeah, I mean, we did the Kickstarter six and a half years ago, but I originally wrote this in 2009, so 16 years it's been, you know, in the works. It feels incredible to finally have the movie done and looking at what's next. Well, how did you do this? Because looking at this, and of course, like everybody else in LA, I have that screenplay that I pull out when the police pull me over. They say, in Hollywood, you've got to show a screenplay to the police when they pull you over. It's kind of a joke. Everybody's got a screenplay. But the truth is, this is a good screenplay.

3:41 I watched this because, well, I've been involved since you first did the Kickstarter, and that was something like eight years ago, and I honestly had no expectations. Then when I saw the finished product, I was like, oh my God, this is brilliant. How did you put it together? How did you write it, then star in it, and then direct it? Break it down for us. Well, you know, I originally, okay, so it's kind of a long story, but I'll try to summarise it a little bit. Back in 2009, I had a full-time job that I just didn't like, and I remember driving the back roads of upstate New York, where I'm from, and I started saying, I can't do this the rest of my life.

4:25 I don't want to retire at 65 and say this is all I did. I want to be passionate about something. So I started brainstorming things that I really loved. What do I really love? I've always loved filmmaking. I've been around film since, you know, my dad had super eight millimetre cameras since before I was born. So I grew up with him taking little home movies, and I was pretty intrigued by that. And, you know, so I love that, but I especially love the horror genre. So like, you know, monsters, scary things. I've always been intrigued by that. And it was a no-brainer because I, at that point, I had already been vegan for the majority of my life at that point.

5:09 So I'm like, well, how can I take those three elements and kind of like combine them into something that I could get up every day and be passionate about something? And I started brainstorming like vegan vampires, you know, vampires are my favourite. So like, ah, no, I don't know. Vegan werewolves, yeah, that might be too. And then I had an idea, the vegan zombie, where I had a whole idea for a zombie apocalypse that was brought on by the meat and dairy that people were consuming. So I went home and I grabbed a pencil and a notepad and I began writing out a script. And I wanted to make this movie. And at that point, like, I wasn't like a professional moviemaker. I just would put two VCRs together.

5:50 And I remember one of the first videos that I ever put together was a skateboarding video in the 90s. And I put a song to it that I really liked at the time, not even knowing that this musician would align with me later down the road as a fellow vegan, which I would later on meet. And that was the song Go by Moby, who is a vegan advocate. And I later got to tell him that when I met him. But so I decided at the time there was nothing like it on YouTube. There was no vegan YouTube shows or anything like that. I just wanted to start making videos so I could get better at editing with like a home suite.

6:33 I use the Adobe Creative Cloud and I wanted to start making little zombie skits. But, you know, I didn't even know if anybody would even watch us. So I figured, why don't I also share some of my vegan recipes? Because up until that point, my friends and I would get together like every Thanksgiving or Christmas, New Year's, and we would bring all of our vegan, you know, we would make a vegan potluck and bring something there. So I decided, why don't, you know, John's got some great vegan stuffed shells. And I make like a crescent roll, broccoli cheddar roll vegan. So why don't we just start sharing some of these recipes while we do like zombie stuff? So I get better at making, you know, editing and doing special effects and stuff like that.

7:16 Well, to our surprise, it started getting a lot of views and we got a lot of subscribers. And before we knew it, we had thousands and thousands of subscribers. And then they were asking us to do a cookbook. And we're like, we don't we don't we've never made a cookbook. So we're like, all right, we'll do a Kickstarter. And if we can get this, we can raise this much money. We'll do we'll do a cookbook. And I did not think for a second that we would raise this much money because it was kind of a lot of money. How much did you raise? Well, we we got a hold of another cook, a vegan cookbook author from Germany. His name is Justin Moore. And he does the whole series called The Lotus and the Artichoke.

7:58 And they're really good books. He travels the world, finds different recipes, and then he veganizes everything. All right. I have to jump in because I want to get back to the movie, which is what everybody's talking about. Right, right. Well, this does tie in. This is about to tie in. Yeah. Go for it. OK, so anyway, so we ended up doing this Kickstarter. We ended up raising three times what we were looking for. I think we ended up with like a little over forty three thousand dollars. We made a better cookbook than we were going to do. We toured Germany. We got the 2014 cookbook of the year and we had a successful Kickstarter. So with that success and the channel growing a few years later, I said, OK, now it's time to do a Kickstarter for the actual movie.

8:46 And let's make a real movie. So we put up a Kickstarter. We were looking for we were looking for more money than eighty five thousand. But I didn't think we would get eighty five thousand more than that. So we had to put like an achievable goal. So eighty five thousand for the movie. By the end of it, we made it by the skin of our teeth. And we were now on on on set to make this movie happen. And then a few things fell through year after year went and then the whole pandemic happened. But then in twenty twenty two, I met with a team local. We weren't sure if we were going to film it in L.A. or here in the Syracuse area, which was really what I wanted to do, because I got a lot of inspiration for writing this on real events that happened when I grew up here in upstate New York.

9:33 So we ended up filming it here and production began in August. Actually, Dr. Gregor was on the second day of shooting. That was August 28th. And we shot at the actual high school that I graduated from many years ago. So August of what year? Twenty twenty two. OK, so. Wow. So eight years ago, approximately, you started this Kickstarter. You get the money. Twenty twenty two. You shoot the film. And now are you editing it as well? You're the star. You're the director. You're probably the producer.

10:16 Did you did you edit this, too? I took on like so many roles for this project. I did. I did all the pre-production, the casting. Like I was like overworked, like like crazy. And when it came down to it, after we were done with production, our budget was so low at that point that I couldn't really afford to, you know, look out for, you know, hiring anybody else to do the post-production. I did hire an amazing guy named Rob Agocella who did all of the sound design. Amazing, by the way. I did, in fact, do all of the editing myself. I did the special effect, the visual effects, the colour grading and where it is now.

10:58 So the post-production was done by by myself and Rob. I want to just hats off, like unbelievable, because I did not have expectations when I looked at this. I thought, well, let's see. And it's so good. And I'm not just saying that to blow smoke. I had so much fun watching this movie. I completely forgot that I was watching it for a purpose like, oh, I've got to sort of review this film to. Because it's a vegan event in the vegan community and we cover that here at Unchained TV. I totally forgot all that. I was just watching this squirming because what I love about it is how you build up slowly.

11:46 Like, how did you learn that? And I'll play a clip from the first part of your trailer to give you a sense for those watching of how. Well, yeah, it doesn't just start with like the zombie apocalypse. There is a buildup, which I think makes it more more exciting. So let's play that first part. Sure. Good morning. It's a beautiful day here in Amherst. We do have some breaking news to report. There are several reports of what appears to be a stomach bug going around.

12:29 Now, experts are not quite sure of the cause, but an investigation is underway. You are being advised to use discretion and stay home if you aren't feeling well. I'll be back. Cell mutations. If we consider a virus to be similar to a eukaryotic cell, where would the actual mutation originate? Is there something important outside, Harley? Never mind. I guess it's nothing. Like a ghost town in there. Everyone's going home sick or something. Now, you're looking outside while Dr. Greger's talking and there's a zombie walking down and you're kind of obviously distracted by that.

13:16 He says, is there a reason why you're looking out the window and you say nothing? I mean, this was really, really well written. How did you figure all that out? I mean, I wrote it and rewrote it over the last 16 years. No joke, probably about 50 different times. I love movies and my inspiration... I wanted to make a zombie apocalypse movie that was as plausible in reality as I could make it. And I couldn't think of anything more real than... I don't want to give too much away, but by the meat and the dairy that the people were eating.

13:58 And yeah, some of my favourite movies... This isn't your normal horror movie. It is a horror movie by every means, but some of the movies that gave me inspiration were movies that somewhere in the movie, usually at the end, there's this emotional tug at your heart. And movies like that, for me, I wanted to make a movie that I would like. And I just figured if I liked it, maybe other people would like it too. So if there's a movie that I would watch and it did that to me... If there was a movie that just was happy and cool and funny, I'd be like, yeah, that was a good movie, and then I'd forget about it. But if there was a movie that really pulled at my emotions at the end, I will think about it the next morning, the next week.

14:41 And I will... Basically, what I'm trying to say is my favourite movie of all time I saw in the movie theatres when I was six years old, and that was E.T. And that did that to me at the end of the movie. And I wanted to take the elements of that and combine it into this movie right here, along with some horror. So I wanted the right character arcs, the right... Everything had to be perfect. And I made so many mistakes. If you read the first script, it had all the elements there, but it wasn't what it is now. And over the next how many years, rewriting it... I was rewriting it all the way until we were actually on set. Like, oh, maybe we need to do this. So yeah, it was just a lot of rewriting and getting my producers to go over it with me and taking every little scene like a fine-tooth comb.

15:29 And that went all the way into post -production. When I edited the scenes, I'd be like, how does this look? We would look at it. I'm like, hmm. And that's why it looks as good as I think it does. And to go to your point when you said you didn't really have expectations for it, I see a lot of the comments and a lot of other people are the same way. And what I would say about that is I agree. I feel like it's the movie that nobody's looking for. But once they see it, it's like the diamond in the rough. It's like, you gotta see it. I've been trying as hard as I can to promote this. And I just feel like it's like falling on deaf ears. There's a certain amount of people that do want to watch it, but other people are just like, what is this? And until you actually watch it, you don't really know.

16:12 All right. I'd like to say that I was one of the small backers of it because I interviewed you. And then there was a way where if you gave a certain amount, you could be in the film. So I am in the film as a reporter and I'm delighted to be in it. Now, Mary Zaint, I hope I'm pronouncing your name right, says she's happy to have been one of the kickstart backers for this back in 2018 and really look forward to seeing it. Lindsay Baker says, can't wait for the premiere of this one. And Tom Vincel says, please bring this to Chicago, which brings me to the next point. We would love to help you arrange a screening here in Los Angeles.

16:55 And I think that would be a lot of fun. We could do it under the Unchained TV umbrella and have you speak and get a nice crowd together. But what about that touring? What are your plans? Obviously, you know, everybody wants to have their film on Netflix, but not always does that happen, to put it mildly. So what are your plans for this film in terms of physical tours and distribution? Well, we're obviously trying to get distribution right now. We've looked at a couple like horror distribution platforms, streaming services, but we're also submitted to several film festivals that we're still waiting on to see how that pans out through 2025.

17:43 I've been saying this. I've done everything with the moviemaking business all the way up until where I am right now. I've never done this before, so I don't really know the process here. But what I would like to be able to do, as I was talking to you off camera, is I would like to be able to go to some local movie theatres. I'd like to have the right to be able to, just me, go to a local movie theatre and do a premier, a fundraiser for different animal sanctuaries and split some of those proceeds from an event like that with different animal sanctuaries. I actually had somebody reach out to me from one last month, so that sounds like a great idea.

18:28 That way, we're helping the animals indirectly through the movie, the message of the movie, and directly through fundraising for these different sanctuaries. I know originally when I said I was doing this, that a certain amount of the points, if it were to make a lot of money, would go to a few different sanctuaries as well. That's still in the plan, but I don't know if the movie will make any money at all, so I'm still new to this. I would like it to get some distribution like that. I know it's on your platform right now as far as the trailer goes. We were talking about that, but that's what our goals are right now is ultimately to get some kind of distribution but also retain the right to be able to travel to different local movie theatres to potentially do some fundraising that way.

19:18 Sure, and I point out not all distribution is created equally because sometimes where they distribute to is like Timbuktu. You've never heard of it. Nobody's ever going to see it, so just getting distribution is not necessarily the ultimate goal. It's what kind of distribution. Just word to the wise. So I have to say people are super excited about the idea of screenings in person. So we have somebody, Tiffany, a premiere in LA. Karen. Oh, Karen LaCava. Okay, and here's the ultimate compliment. Chris, I do a biannual vegan horror event in LA. Would be happy to help promote the film in some way.

19:59 So definitely check that out. We've got, everybody is very, very positive about Yeah, Mary, that would be awesome. Yeah, using your film to help animals and sanctuaries. What I would say is whatever city or town you're going to help the sanctuaries in that area because people have a connection to their local sanctuaries. They don't necessarily have the same connection to sanctuaries that are across the country. I've experienced that firsthand because that's the idea. Yeah, that's the idea. Go to where they are. Do like a local screening and then split up proceeds for that specific.

20:40 So the event would be like a pre -sale for whatever sanctuary. Like the guy that reached out to me is in Virginia. I would go down there. We would do an event. It could be like a two o'clock and a six o'clock and proceeds would be split between the sanctuary and me and the producers. And we're getting come to Dallas, Texas, please. And Karen LaCava is saying she can help. She's a very well-known vegan caterer. She could do the catering, I'm sure. You have some great events. But yeah, I think there's a lot of excitement about going to different places around the country. And now I want to get back to the filmmaking process because I can't imagine how hard it must be.

21:27 Forget you wrote it and you edited it and you star in it. But directing while you star. That is something that has always perplexed me. How are you essentially behind the camera or directing the cinematographer while you're in front of the camera? How did you pull that off? Well, you know, directing the scenes having it done the way I wanted to. The director of photography was doing some he was watching what was going on so he was directing some of the different scenes of where people should be what should be going on how everything looked when I wasn't able to do that. We didn't have an external monitor for me to check everything.

22:10 And because of limited time and funds we couldn't rewind and watch every little scene. So I had to basically put a lot of trust in the cinematographer that he got the right shots. Stuff like that. But yeah, at all times I knew what was going on. I knew how I wanted things done. If we didn't get something shot a certain way I would like we need to do this a couple more times. Because we didn't really have a budget to go back and do reshoots like other movies do. Well, it's very professionally shot. The zooms, the drone shots. And we have to talk about Dr. Michael Greger.

22:50 I'm a huge fan. He's a very serious guy. He's written many, many New York Times bestsellers. How did you get him involved? I reached out and I talked to his secretary and they didn't even really ask. They were just like, yeah, we'll be up there and we'll do it. You know? Because they said yes way back when when we were going to shoot it when we first did the Kickstarter. And then plans changed. So like years later I'm like, are you still interested? And sure enough he came up for the day and he was great. Yeah, we had a good time. He's a trip. I love him. And I will say that he's the most generous person on ShaneTV has asked him for many, many videos which he supplied without even a blink.

23:37 And I love that spirit because we're all in it for the same reasons. To save animals and the planet. Now, this was an entirely vegan production. So at the very beginning we see people eating hamburgers. Were those vegan hamburgers? In other words, they were supposed to be meat hamburgers in the script. But tell us about that. Yeah, we wanted to make everything. We wanted everything to look as authentic as possible. But in reality, everything was vegan. So those were either impossible or beyond burgers that we got. And like literally everything down. So there's a scene where there's a little kid with a baseball and I went to several different stores so I could find a synthetic baseball not a leather one.

24:26 Everything was as vegan as we could get. All the catering, all the in-movie food and the actual catering were all vegan. When I hired everybody, I mean this is kind of like not been done before. It's not really a normal thing. So every actor or crew member I said, look, just so you know before I hire you like I can't tell you what to eat or what not to eat but this is a vegan production so as long as you're cool with this being entirely vegan if you don't want to eat our food that you're more than welcome to go off set in your car go off somewhere else to eat. Everybody was more than happy to do that. We catered everything vegan. We always had snacks on set that were vegan and yeah, it was fun.

25:10 And we did have a few people that were actually fellow vegans themselves but not everybody in the film were vegan so hopefully it changed other people's perspective that weren't vegan making a, you know what I think would be the first non-documentary feature horror movie so yeah. Wow. Now, so not all the actors were vegan. Interesting. Did some of them change? In other words, there's a lot of horror here. There's a lot of gore. Did it get through to these people who were immersed in the script?

25:52 Unfortunately, no, I don't think so. It became a process just to make this movie and they just did it really not thinking anything of the vegan message and you know, things got kind of, you know, tough and I had to just, you know, shoot the days that I had to shoot and just get the job done. So originally, I had big aspirations like I wanted this to be like I wanted all the vegans to come together but then when I started putting out the casting call and all that I was surprised but like I wasn't nobody was responding. I mean, this was worldwide like obviously they'd have to get to Syracuse area but there was really no vegans that were applying for any of this so when it got down to the, you know, the last days and stuff I basically had to hire whoever I could that could do the parts.

26:47 Some of them were hired the day of certain small scenes but yeah, some, there is, well, there's a character named Drew you've already seen the movie in real life he is a vegan and then there's a girl in the movie her name is Paige in the movie she's also a vegan and it was funny because when she when she answered the casting call she, she said I just want to know if there's going to be anything on set I can eat because I am a vegan and I was like oh wow like everything is going to be vegan and everything you can eat and she was like oh wow and I'm like so I got to meet a fellow vegan just coincidentally like that.

27:33 Now this may seem obvious first of all everybody wants to know what is A44 mean? I have a feeling you don't want to give that away I can't give that away you gotta watch the movie yeah exactly you've gotta watch the movie but in terms of the message you know I really admire what you're doing because I look at hundreds and hundreds of videos our streaming network is right behind me we have 2,000 videos and that's all I do every day is look at videos about animal rights and veganism and so you know there's many powerful films but a lot of them are luxury you know don't do this don't eat meat one of the things that I was talking with the head of Veganuary the US head of Veganuary is why they called it Try Vegan and that that psychologically takes the pressure off people and they don't feel ordered they feel invited so messaging is so crucial how we approach telling people hey you should try this other way of life for your own health for the planet for the animals for a gazillion reasons if you want to end world hunger if you want to end water pollution ocean desertification we could go on but the point is that the medium is the message as Marshall McLuhan said what I love about your film is that you're being entertained so you don't even realise you're getting a message but

29:03 what is the message well as you know like I wanted the message to I wanted this to be a standalone um horror movie and I would just expect that since it is a vegan a pro vegan message movie that most vegans would support that you know even people that just don't like horror movies maybe they're like well I'll support the movie whatever um I wanted to make this for like the horror fans that aren't vegan because as you already know you already saw the movie but I wanted the message to be there where you don't really hear the message until you're already like connected you know to certain characters where it's like in order to like say no to this you're kind of like at that point you're kind of lying to yourself if you say no at that point and then the message comes in and you're like oh man I didn't really think of it like that or so yeah there's a character in this movie which I don't like I don't want to give away that um hopefully most people fall in love with right away and at that point you're basically being hypocritical not to you know connect the dots at that point but I did want to do this like as an entertainment movie I'm not expecting everybody to go vegan after seeing this movie and really all my you know I just want people to watch the movie and enjoy the movie um I do think that some people will have different choices they'll make different choices after watching and yeah

30:34 maybe some people will go vegan after watching this movie but um it's just my way of doing something differently um rather than telling or or something somebody to do something basically showing something that's fun and entertaining and then the message just comes in there and hopefully I did a good enough a job with you know what I was explaining earlier the emotion uh tugging at your heart you know by by the time the movie wraps up that you know it's kind of hard to just like say okay let's go out for burgers at that point um we have eyes on the ground at Amherst General reporting live let's see what's unfolding Pat what can you tell us hey how do you think they actually get the milk out of a note maybe we can get together sometime and cook up some vegan cheeseburger or something yo bro I left my wallet in your truck hey we need backup people are complaining of dizziness and stomach pain people are freaking oh my god what are you doing no no get down what the hell oh oh oh wait wait that's that's that's gonna be it right

32:07 okay wait what do you mean So, don't eat animals, fools. Hopefully those things don't want to eat us too. It's so good. People are saying, I'm dying to see this. I like that, Scarlett. This looks good.

32:47 It is good. I have to say, I watched it and I had no expectations and it blew me away. It's fun. I'm not somebody who wants to see sadistic violence, people being tortured. So it doesn't go into that realm. It's not gross in that sense, but it is keeping you on the edge of your seat. You're like, no, I can't describe it. You caught it. Whatever that it is that makes people squirm and makes a horror movie good, you caught it. And what would you say that it is? What is that thing?

33:30 I mean, so many people love horror, not everybody, but there's a lot of people that love horror and just something, I just wanted, like you said, the story just progresses from the beginning and I wanted it to slowly progress to a point where some movies they get to the middle and it kind of dies down. I wanted this movie just to keep going to the climax of the movie and then boom, it's like, wow. And I feel like, I mean, I've seen it a million times because I know I've edited it so many times, but I feel like by the time you get to the end, you don't even realise how long it actually was. But what is it? I don't know, it's just something from my childhood that I've always wanted to do. I put everything into this.

34:11 I showed this to some movie making consultants of mine that I've met over the years that live in the United Kingdom and they're not vegan and they didn't even really know what this movie was gonna be about. They were helping me with technical difficulties. And when I finally showed it to them, they were like blown away. They said, Chris, what you have here is something very special and you can tell that it's from the heart. And to me, that means everything because I put everything into this movie. So you can tell that this is from the heart. It really is. Okay, I wanna ask about mistakes, blunders, things that you can teach us to avoid.

34:55 Like I said, I too have written a script with two colleagues. I can just tell you Jamie Logan, the actress activist and Justina Adorno, who is a well-known actress who has appeared in Grand Hotel and other major films. And so I'm sure we have some rewrites ahead of us, but first of all, you made an independent film for what? Under $100,000, that's extraordinary. You look at the budgets of some of these films, it's crazy, hundreds of millions of dollars. This was money well spent. What would your advice be to people like myself, Jamie and Justina about pitfalls to avoid?

35:37 Some of the worst mistakes were in the contracts. So make sure your contracts are ironclad. Most of the budget will probably go towards actual cast and crew. There were some continuity errors, so we did our best for that. And I think I did, you can still find some, but I'm okay with it. I feel like we'll have fun finding some continuity errors. But for the most part, I was able to fix most of them. Make sure the cameras, like if I can go back, like there's some things that is out of my control, like with the camera that was used, hot pixels, dead pixels, that's gonna be extremely difficult to fix.

36:29 Just make sure you're communicating very well with the rest of your team. And scheduling is extremely difficult with that many people, especially when you're doing an independent thing and it's not their full-time job, trying to get everybody together on a certain day and then hope it doesn't rain. So yeah, have a team. Unfortunately, I had to do a lot of this stuff myself or with my producer who happens to live in the UK. So she wasn't able to be here to help in person. So we had to like communicate that way. So there's a lot of things that, I will tell you that all the difficulties I went through, it feels so much better now than knowing that I'd done and I got through it.

37:12 And I think I've learned so much more because of these difficulties that I just would not allow to happen in my second film. So let's talk about second film. You brought it up. Where do you go from here? Are you going to do a sequel or is it gonna be something entirely different? Well, I mean, I definitely wanna do something. I want the doors to open up and be able to do another film. But I would definitely want a proper budget for that one because I did not pay myself at all for this. So all these years I've been working full -time hours, I've not taken any money.

37:57 So I've pretty much driven myself into extreme poverty right now. So I'm hoping I have another chance with another movie with a real budget. They say that if you prove successful on a first movie, then you could possibly get funding, proper funding to make a second movie. I would hope that that would be the case. You've seen the movie, so you know that people are probably gonna want a sequel to this movie. And we had to go out to make this movie the timeframe that it is, but there's more in my head that I've already written out all those years ago.

38:38 I know what happens next, so I need to put that on paper so people can see a sequel to this movie, yes. So over the years, since you sat in this very spot with me when we announced the start of the Kickstarter, I got updates from you. And I'll be honest, at one point, maybe five years in, I was like, what's going on? Is this ever really gonna get made? And you would send updates saying, don't worry, it will get made. But over the course of what, seven, eight years, what were your low points? What were the moments where you wondered to yourself, is this gonna get made?

39:23 Because every biography I have read of people who achieve extraordinary things, there's always this moment where it seems like it's all falling apart. And the people who power through are the ones who are the change makers. Yeah, it wasn't easy making this movie. And there's a lot that I haven't made public, but when it was done, I was like, what just happened? But I don't wanna get into all the negatives about that. I didn't touch it for a little while because I literally couldn't. I couldn't even look at it. That's how bad things were.

40:03 And then I told myself, I need to do this no matter what. And I just started working on it every single day until it was done, and I did. I worked on it for like a little over a year straight, almost every single day, eight to 14 hours. And I did all that myself until it was done. And yeah, there was- What do you do when you're not making films? What is your day job? Well, YouTube, I've been doing YouTube for 16 years. I'm one of the oldest running vegan YouTube channels in existence. So that's your full-time job? Well, that's what it... I did have a full-time job that I quit and I became a full-time YouTuber.

40:47 Since then, things have changed a little bit. So it's not as lucrative anymore. And I totally neglected it because I was working on the movie. So there was a long time where I wasn't posting any YouTube videos. But yeah, I know what you mean. Like people were asking me like, you scammed us, like where's our money? Where's the movie? And I get where they're coming from, but the person that I've always been since I was a little kid, I've always been the person that if I say something, no matter what, I'm gonna do it. And I did that. I would never let anyone down. I make sure that I fulfil all debts. And that's what I had to do here. I knew that I need to get this movie done because there was, to me, there was no alternative.

41:31 If I didn't do it, I would be wasting a huge opportunity to fill one of the biggest dreams I've ever had, which was to make a feature movie. And I wasn't gonna let that happen. So I just did what I had to do. And I rose above all the challenges that were there. And there was times that I was like, I don't know how I'm gonna make a movie out of this. And I can say now that I'm very happy with the way it came out. Hey, we've got Jenny Desmond watching from Liberia, another one of my heroes. And she says, great work. And talk about perseverance and sanctuaries.

42:12 What they've done with Liberian chimp rescue is extraordinary. They're taking care of more than a hundred chimpanzees who are abandoned on their own. And so there's so many people doing such incredible work in this movement. And I love the fact that everybody is sticking together on this one. Like sometimes we have a guest on and people are like, why do you have to do it that way? Why do you? And I always say, then you go do your own thing. Don't criticise them. Let, do it your way. It's so important that we gather together in the vegan movement. I always say, anytime we're fighting, the other side's applauding, because that's what they want.

42:55 Maybe we can all come together around a film like this because it's fun. And the fact is, and I'll say this, I've learned it myself. We need to have more entertaining content in this movement. People need to laugh and laughter is one way that the resistance is dropped. When people are laughing, their resistance to an idea drops and they become open-minded. What would you like to say about that, Chris? Well, we do have elements of comedy in this. Like we don't take everything so seriously that it's, oh, it's just so serious, but there are elements of comedy in this movie and we wanted to just entertain.

43:40 There is definitely a message there. And like I said, some people might change their choices and some people won't. And I wanted to put something out there. I love a lot of these vegan documentaries. Some of them, I really love them, but I feel like, at least for me, I watch them once and that's great. But I feel like a movie, like an entertaining movie like this, it's something that somebody can go back and watch maybe every few years around Halloween or something like that. I watch the same Christmas movies every year and the same horror movies around Halloween time every year or every other year. I'm hoping that this can be something like that where somebody is like, A44 is my go-to fall movie or Halloween movie.

44:25 And they can always go back to it and reshare it because once it's out there, it's the world's movie and it does have an entertaining yet vegan message there. So- Yeah, let me ask you a question. Okay, so I was one of those people who donated a little bit in the initial Kickstarter when you were sitting right next to me in this room and we talked about it back in, I believe, 2018. And there were many, many other people. How many people total and how much did you raise in your Kickstarter? We raised a little under 85,000. It was more like 80 after they took out their fees and the taxes and stuff.

45:09 And there's a little under 1,100 people came together for that. So that's a lot of people that already, right off the bat, want to see this movie. And you don't have to pay them back. They didn't donate. I certainly didn't donate thinking I was gonna get anything back. I donated just to support the project. So that's good. You don't have to pay those people back. Right, the way I see it is like, you're not giving the money to me per se. You're giving it to a campaign, a project that I'm going to oversee and create. So yeah, they were all involved in making this movie. Some of them were, you are one of them, and there's a few other people that are actually in the movie.

45:55 So you can see them throughout the movie. And then everybody else, they get perks and stuff. So there's different, some people get the script and some people come to get to see the premiere. And some of those rewards still have to be given, but they have to wait until the movie comes out. And the other thing is, is I'm currently, I just actually watched this on the big screen here in Syracuse, New York. My friend runs one of the movie theatres there, and we're just looking at it to see if everything's right. And then we're gonna probably do a premiere here in Syracuse somewhere around the end of March. But yeah, I want there to be a premiere here because this is my hometown, but also out with you in LA.

46:38 And I also remember before this was completely done, you were reading the script and you were like, oh no, I don't like how this is. And I'm like, oh no, she doesn't like it. So when I actually gave you the movie, I was like, oh my God, I really, I really hope she likes this. I was super nervous and you were just like, I'm like, oh, she probably doesn't like it. And then you text me like two minutes after I thought that, and you're like, oh my God, it's so good, I love it. And I'm like, oh no, I was so relieved. Oh, well that means a lot to me. And I just wanna say you did make some revisions. I did. Because I'll say I'm squeamish and you had a few people throwing up in the beginning of the movie and I was like, cut that out.

47:20 Because it'll turn off a section of the population that doesn't like to see that. And I'm a member of that sector of the population. So I'm glad that that- Nobody wanted to do that with me, but the good thing was, it was my movie, I was the director. So I had the ultimate say, but they didn't agree with me on that. But I think it worked out. I think it worked out. So, especially because you have people eating food in the movie, it really worked out. Whatever you did, you worked your magic. It's a great movie. You know, when there's a movie that's disjointed and just doesn't work, you kind of feel it. We have that feeling back in the old days, leaving a movie theatre saying, why the hell did I waste two hours and 20 bucks on this?

48:02 This doesn't leave that. This is, it takes, it takes. It's like, it has that beginning, middle and end, the arcs. And that's one of the things that I do wanna ask you is, you said you watched a lot of movies, but I've actually taken a screenwriting course where they talk about, you know, the arcs, and there's gotta be act one, has to have something happen at the end that triggers act two and the arc of act two and then the arc of act three. It's even called a formula. But you intrinsically just incorporated all that without really studying that craft? Well, okay, so I originally, the original story that I wrote was there as a skeleton, but it wasn't ready to be seen.

48:48 And like I said, we would rewrite it every time. We would go over it and I would go over it with my producers and we'd be like, okay. And between the three of us, we really knew, we really knew movies. I had other people working with me earlier on in the Kickstarter that kind of fell off. And then we just kept rewriting until everything was basically perfect. So we couldn't figure anything else that could be better for that scene. And that's the way we did it. And yeah, I basically wrote this if I was writing a movie based on everything that I've ever seen that I liked. Some of my other inspiration were like Goonies and Stand By Me.

49:30 Not necessarily horror movies, but movies that I really loved. I just wanted to get that goosebump factor. I wanted people to get goosebumps at certain parts. And I've already had like feedback where people did say that. People have said they had goosebumps. People have said like, wow, that was really good. Some people have said they cried. Like to me, that's like, if a movie can do that, then to me, that's a success. So what are your tips on casting? Because you had a really good cast and you said it was hard to cast up in Syracuse, New York. But I think casting is one of the most important aspects of filmmaking. The thing is, it's a collaborative process and it's like a three-dimensional chess game.

50:13 There's so many things that you have to get right. How did you nail the casting? I just set out for casting and people sent me their auditions and some of them were like, amazing, I gotta take this person. Other people were like, I definitely might want this person, but I gotta look at what else I have. And then when it came down to it, like, yeah, some people I had to just get on the fly. And then my character that I played, I was looking for somebody all the way until the day of the shooting. And I was like, if I can't find somebody, nobody really applied to that part.

50:53 And I really looked for, like I sent, I specifically sent emails to people to play that part and nobody did. So I was like- Like your mom. That was your mom just there. How did you find her? Well, my real mom is in this movie too, but then my actor mom. So she's a local actor here in Syracuse and she applied for the part and she reminded, like I had in mind like a Dee Wallace kind of character and I told her and I think she played it perfectly. She's good. And I also like your sort of love interest, the girl who's got a crush on you and keeps wanting to go and have vegan cheeseburgers with you cause you're pretty much the only vegan in the cast, in the script.

51:40 Right, she is also a local actor. There she is, right there. There she is. And she does a lot of things with American High, which is a local Syracuse base. They did a lot of movies. Well, they've done stuff with Pete Davidson and some other things. So she works with them and I see a lot of reels that she does lately. So yeah, that's cool that we have her. And Nick, the guy that plays Nick, he released his own movie, a horror movie just this past September and it did really well over on ScreenBox. It actually moved into first place above Terrifier 2 for a week or two. So he's actually in the movie. He did the same thing.

52:21 He directed, acted and wrote his movie and that's called Creeping Death. So yeah. You know, I think as you, this is just my idea of what do I know cause we are almost out of time, but before I forget, what about if you start raising money for your next film while you're doing the premieres around the country? Because people will be inspired. Certainly you wanna give a percentage to charity, but it could be a good way to start your fundraising for the next film because I can't wait to see a sequel. So I know that you're saying that cause you watched it, but I feel like I'm not gonna be able to raise what I could raise without people seeing the movie yet.

53:07 Like I said, I feel like it's the movie nobody's looking for until they watch it. So once people see it, I feel like we have a way better chance of being able to raise money for a second one than if I did it right now. People might be like, well, I don't really even know what this one looks like. So I don't know. I'll hold off, you know. Is there a website where people can go to learn more about the premieres? The premieres. Well, they can follow me over on A44movie. We have a website which is pretty much like 95% done. It's called A44movie.com. There you go. It shows everybody on there. It shows social media, all that stuff. A44movie.com, easy to remember because that is the name of the film.

53:52 Chris, I just wanna say I am super impressed. I think you're absolutely amazing. We're just about out of time, but I love your perseverance. I love your attitude. I love the finished product. And I'm really humbled and grateful to be a little part of this venture, a very small part, but I'm excited. I'm glad you are. You played a great part. And I think, you know, I have it looking even better than when you saw it because I fixed a couple of things. So it looks really good. We at Unchained TV wanna help you with your premiere in LA. Let's plan it maybe for April.

54:33 Sounds like a plan. And everybody go to A44movie.com and get involved. And of course, we always tell everybody, please, please download Unchained TV. We are the world's only vegan streaming television network, vegan animal rights streaming TV network. So it's a vegan Netflix. Okay, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard. I love Unchained TV. Unchained, Unchained TV. Your life will change. It's just that easy. Unchained TV has all sorts of content for everybody. Unchained TV changed my life. Unchained TV is crushing it. I love Unchained TV.

55:14 Unchained TV is my go-to. Unchained TV. Who knew? Unchained, baby, yes.