Michael Wolfe Wins Best Film at the Golden Door Festival for “Maybe Tomorrow”

Jake:  So we’re here with Michael Wolfe. Michael is an actor, writer, director… You just completed your first film—

Michael: This is true.

Jake: —and you have had some pretty impressive success. So why don’t you talk to us a little bit about that.

Michael: Yeah, the film is Maybe Tomorrow and we’ve been doing the festival circuit for about the last 6-9 months.  And yeah, I’m doing well. You know, having some good screenings, winning some awards, and getting a little bit of love. So it’s been an interesting journey, but we’re happy with things.

Jake: So tell us about your awards. What have you won?

Michael: Okay, the last festival we got nominations for Best Film, Best Director & Best Ensemble Performance.  At the Golden Door Festival in Jersey we won Best Picture, I won Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Lead Actor and Dominik Tiefenthaler, my castmate, won Best Supporting Actor.  So yeah, we had a good night.

Jake: So this is your first produced movie and you did it yourself. So talk to us a little about what was the inspiration for this? Where did this come from?

Michael: Well, it came from basically working as a writer and an actor for about a decade and not making the progress I wanted to in either avenue. And sitting down with Mark Montgomery, whose my producing partner on the film, and Dominik Tiefenthaler, who is one of the actors in it.   We were kind of talking about how we weren’t getting the love we wanted from the industry and we weren’t making the progress we wanted. So we just decided to create our own work, and this film came out of that.

Jake: As an actor, how important is it to create your own work?

Michael: It’s really crucial man. I mean, it’s so competitive out there.   There are so many ways in which you can produce your own work and you can really write those great roles that you’re not getting. The roles in this film, they’re all really wonderful roles and the opportunity to play a lead that has that much meat on it—the options are limited for up-and-coming actors, struggling actors, who don’t have representation or who don’t have a name. To get a showcase of your work, like this film does for me and my co-stars, is so rare. So whether its theatre or film, if you’re an actor, writing those good roles for yourself is really something you need to be pursuing.

Jake: So how do you do it? How do you sit down and know what role you should write for yourself? How do you create a character’s journey?

Michael: I have been working for ten years. I know which roles I suck in. I know which roles I’m good in. For whatever reason I play really emotional, volatile characters very well. I like curious, inquisitive characters who are looking for truth–looking for the truth about themselves—those are the roles that I excel in. So I wrote that for myself. And I’ve known Dominik for years and the roles he’s good at, so I wrote a role that was in his wheelhouse. And you really just have to know yourself, know what your strengths are as an actor, know the roles that you can deliver and really kind of tailor make it based on that.

Jake: Talk to me a little about what are the similarities between writing and acting.

Michael: I think of a lot of it just starts with ideas. Like, if you’re an actor and you’re reading a script and you’re like, “Oh, well maybe this character walks this way. Maybe this character orders a drink like this. Maybe he falls in love with every woman he meets. Maybe he’s in love with himself,” and you just have these ideas and you piece together a character based on all that. And you find a way to physicalize it.  And as a writer, it’s kind of the same muscle. It’s like, “Alright, I have an idea about this character who maybe has a fight with his girlfriend about this. Maybe he loses his job and maybe this happens,” and all of a sudden these ideas kind of coalesce into a story, and then out of that story comes, “Alright, well maybe this could happen to him on this journey. Maybe he tries to do this, fails, but this happens as a side effect,” and all of a sudden you have all these ideas swimming around, and eventually they become enough to make a 90-minute script.

Jake: How much fiction and how much truth ends up in your movie?

Michael: A lot of fiction I hope and not much truth—a lot of circumstantial fiction, but emotional truth. Like they always say, “Write what you know.” That’s true to an extent, but it’s also true from an emotional perspective. I write emotional circumstances that I’m familiar with because that’s where I’m comfortable. I know what it’s like to be disenchanted with life or to be hurt by someone so I write about people who’ve been disenchanted by life or hurt by someone. I know what it’s like to be betrayed by someone close to you. I write about that. I know what it’s like to want a better relationship with your parents than I have. I write about that. And, you know, my characters go to jail, my characters do horrible things—I don’t do those, but I know what it’s like to regret things I’ve done. I know what it’s like to do things that I’m not proud of. So I think it’s more about an emotional truth than circumstantial truth.

Jake: So drawing on those things that feel true.

Michael: Yes. So when I’m writing about, you know, a 70 year old man reconciling with his son, I don’t know what that’s like because I’m not a 70 year old man, and I don’t have children, but I know what it’s like to reconcile. I know what it’s like to want something to be better and to make moves towards that.  I also don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, but I still have to write them so…yeah, for me it’s about emotional truth, emotional perspective.

Jake: How do you write a woman?  Tell us. Because a lot of women ask, “How do you write men?” and a lot of men ask, “How do you write women?”

Michael: (laughing) My women curse a lot. I don’t know.  They’re kind of just like me with breasts. I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but yeah…

Jake: It’s very true that a lot of our characters do, they grow from a place in us.

Michael: Yeah, and you have to find where that place is. Some people, like, some writers write the world that they come from occupationally. Like, if they come from the food service industry they write a movie like Waiting. If they come from politics or something like that maybe they’ll write The West Wing.  They write the world they know. My world—my emotional world—that’s where I feel like I have the most to lend as a writer, so all my scripts come from there. You know, some are political, some are about sports, some are about psychology, some are about other things. But, the emotional dynamics of them are all the ones I’m familiar with.

Jake: So tell us about your writing process. What is the shape of that for you?

Michael: For me, you know I have an idea that kind of pesters me and it keeps me up at night and it won’t go away and it gets louder and louder and louder until I’ll eventually have to write it down. And what I do is I usually lock myself in my apartment for as many days as I can, uninterrupted, and using index cards, I map out the script.  I know how it begins, I know how it ends, and I know approximately how I want to get there. And usually I barf out a first draft in about a week. I write very fast. I overwrite so it’s not the greatest first draft in the world, but it’s a good representation of the story I want to tell and it’s a jumping off point. Luckily, I have people in my life that I send that script to and they tell me, pretty accurately, what’s wrong with it, and how to make it stronger and better.

Jake: Talk to me about how you allow yourself to write badly.

Michael: Well, you really just have to accept that you’re not going to write perfectly, man. I’ve written 13 scripts, and every one I thought was done after the first draft. Like, “This is it. One draft. I’m done with the movie.” And I was always wrong.

Jake: How many drafts on this movie?

Michael: On Maybe Tomorrow, 27. And then we had to edit the shit out of it to correct all the other mistakes. And it’s a very good movie now.  So be easy on yourself and be honest with yourself when something’s not working, and learn to take criticism because that’s how you get better. And you really have to lose your ego.  You have to know that you have the best story in the world, but at the same time admit that you don’t know how to tell it yet. You need to be able to listen to people who have good ideas about how to tell it better than you can.

Jake: Talk to me about listening to your character. How does getting to know your character change your movie?

Michael: Well, the more you get to know your character, the more you understand where they’re going and why. And, you understand their reason for doing things and that feeds why they do things, why the plot unfolds the way it does and why some moments have to happen because they explain why your character is the way he is, where he’s going, why he’s going, and whether or not he’ll get there. A lot of writers write character bios to help with that. Once in a while I do.  If it’s a character I don’t fully understand I’ll tinker around with something like that just so I can try and get some more colors on him or her. Yeah, understanding character motivation, the reason for being, where they’re going—really informs the plot.

Jake: You talked about this idea of starting with flashcards, having markers for the place that you might go. How does, as you start to get to know your character more, affect the way that you deal with that outline?

Michael: Well, depending on how you understand your character, you’re either getting him to those markers or you’re taking him somewhere else. You have to be open to both. You have to say, “All right, I think this character wants this and he’s gonna accomplish it by doing this, this, and this.” But if, as you’re writing, you’re like, “Oh wait, this doesn’t work. Maybe if he does that instead it takes him in a different direction,” you’ll still ultimately takes him on the journey you want him to take. You have to be open to that. You have to have ideas, but not be married to them—through every step of the filmmaking process. As an actor, you become so set with the concrete ideas and you’re like, “Yes! This is what he wants!” and then the director might be like, “No. It doesn’t work. Try something else”…same in the editing room. You may have wanted it to go a certain way in your head for four years and then when you get there you have to be able to admit, “Shit, that doesn’t work so let’s find a new way to do this.”

Jake: So how do you keep yourself in that open creative mode as opposed to feeling that something you’ve had in mind for four years doesn’t work?

Michael: It’s the most humbling thing that I’ve experienced as a filmmaker. You know, I’ve written 27 drafts of this moment, I’ve rehearsed for three weeks, I’ve shot it for three weeks, I got the editing bay, I edited together, and fuck it doesn’t work! And if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. And you have to be willing to fail. You have to say, “I tried to make this moment work. I failed. Having it in this movie hurts the movie, hurts the story—lose it.” Every day you’re editing, you feel like you’re killing puppies, you’re slaughtering babies, because these things that you love are just like [fffttt]—getting destroyed.  Lose it man. You gotta be able to do that. You gotta be able to completely divorce yourself from any emotional attachment you have to the work. It’s a weird thing to happen. It’s just a mechanism you have to develop.  If you don’t, then you’re gonna make your life really, really difficult.

Jake: I imagine your acting training probably helps a lot with that.

Michael: It does because you learn to come up with ideas and rehearse ideas and then maybe find out they don’t work. Or maybe they work at first, but then after the course of doing a piece, they stop working and then you have to find a new way to kind of approach those moments, and a new way to kind to look at the character and look at this exchange. So yeah, you do develop that mechanism to an extent—

Jake: Recognizing how many ways you can do this.

Michael: Yes. Your first idea, you may think it’s the best idea to get there, but there’s other ideas that get you to the same place and you have to be open to that.

Jake: A lot of student would love to make movies, but maybe they’re never written one, maybe they’re an actor who’s just kind of getting fed up like you were getting fed up, or maybe they’re a writer who’s just starting a first draft right now and they want to be able to do this for themselves. How do you do it? How do you go from concept to actually making your own movie?

Michael: I’ve worked enough as an actor to know what the [filmmaking] process entails, so I felt confident about doing it myself.  I’ve been on enough film sets to know what I need to be able to do to communicate with my cast and crew and run a set.  Basically, I’ve been on a lot of shitty films, which taught me, “Do the opposite of what those directors did and you’ll be fine.” But yeah, making a movie is team building. So surround yourself with good producers, good cast, good crew. In terms of getting money for a movie, you can use Kick Starter, you can use Indie Go Go—you can use a lot of things like that for crowd sourcing. We wanted to raise a little bit more money so what we did was we started in LLC and we got investors first through friends and families, and then through their friends and their families. If you want to go that route there’s a website called legalzoom.com where you can pretty much set up an LLC for very minimal expenditures and it’s cost effective. Once you do all that, then just make a movie.

Jake: So what was your total budget on this movie?  Was it more or less than a million?

Michael: It was definitely less than a million. It was in the ballpark of 100k and that’s a good ballpark because—I mean, you could make a movie for 10, 20 grand these days. With the technology out there you can make a movie that looks and feels good for much less. But we wanted our production value to be at a certain level. We wanted it to look and feel like a million dollar movie.

Jake: And that’s why I asked you the question. Because I know for a lot of people they say, “A movie costs 20 million dollars. A movie costs 100 million dollars. How am I going to do that?” You know, you were talking to me earlier about how you had a helicopter shot in this movie—

Michael: Yeah, there were certain things that I wanted—aerial shots. I wanted steady cam shots I wanted jib shots. I wanted some more expensive shots. I wanted it to look and feel at times like a bigger movie just to make it, what I hope to be, more commercial. But you can shoot on the Red camera, the 5 D—you can make some very good looking films for very little money these days.

Jake: So that’s an amazing thing for people to know. You also were able to get some money from Suffolk County?

Michael: Yeah, after we had shot the film we got a post-production grant from Suffolk County Film Commission that helped us with money for sound mixing, for color correction, stuff like that. We also used a trailer to raise more money. And for filmmakers, especially if they’re making a documentary, or something based on a social issue, there are a lot of film grants out there that are available that they can use in conjunction with crowd sourcing if they’re going that route, or in conjunction with getting investors.

Jake: It’s this idea that sometimes as writers, or as producers, or as directors we think we are the beggars. Realizing that there are also people out there who are fighting for your business, that you have something valuable for them is important. In fact, cities and states are fighting to attract filmmakers and they’ll give you money and give you credits to do that.

Michael: Yeah, and that’s another thing. If you’re making a film, research different cities and states and what kind of tax breaks they’re giving for shooting films there, because a lot of cities and states are really making an effort to promote the arts. You can get tremendous tax breaks in states like Louisiana, Michigan, and New York.  If you shoot in a studio for a day, a percentage of your entire production budget is tax deductible. If you build your own set in a studio, it’s even more so. If you look into that, there’s a lot of money that can be trimmed from the budget from tax breaks.

Jake: So tell us one good experience you had on set. Something that surprised you, that was amazing, that changed something creatively for you.

Michael: We had a location for a courthouse in Brooklyn and we had it all set. I think it was like, five or six days before we had to shoot there, and they backed out inexplicably. And I was losing my shit, I’m on the phone, the guy doesn’t return my calls. I don’t know why (laughs). So we went on this scramble trying to find another location, and we found the New York Court House, and it was huge and beautiful and so much better than anything we had ever imagined. So once we got there, we had to rewrite scenes, or chop up scenes based on the amount of locations we actually had access to. And we got, what I think, are some of the most beautiful images in the film shot on locations that we didn’t scout, didn’t think we were going to have to find. Some of the most visually stunning moments in the film, in fact, the climax of the film—which takes place on these steps in front of this gorgeous building—it’s very cinematic and came out of a really big headache because the members of my location team scrambled and they found that location.  And once we got on set we were like, “Okay, what do we have to do to take these four pages of dialogue that were supposed to take place in an office, but we don’t have an office, so how do we make it take place in this hallway, in this stairwell, in this little nook?” And it turned into some of the most beautiful shots we have in the film. When you’re making a film on this budget level, you gotta think on your feet like that.

Jake: If you’re hiring a crew for your first production, you only have a certain amount of money, and you want everyone to be an expert and that’s hard. If there’s one person who you think is the person that you should blow your money on, who’s that person?

Michael: I think there’s several. I think the cinematographer and the sound guy and the first A.D. I mean, I could go down the list and say there’s a thousand, but the bottom line is, if the movie doesn’t look good or sound good, it’s a piece of shit. I mean, you could have the best script in the world, the best acting.  But it’s film, you know. You need it to look and sound good for it to be a good film. The first A.D is pretty much the guy who runs the production, but a lot of small sets can’t even afford that. And we had a big enough set where if I was the one running the show and acting in it, I would have been overwhelmed. I had a first A.D. who kept us on schedule, who kept us moving along. It was great.

And obviously, my producing partner.  Having a partner in crime who shares all the headaches with you and all the glory at every step of the road helps, because if you don’t have that kind of support, then it’s going to feel like a very long and lonely road.

Jake: So congratulation on all your success. I’m sure a lot of people would like to check out Maybe Tomorrow. So can you share a website, Facebook?

Michael: Sure, the website is www.maybetomorrowthefilm.com and the Facebook is also {Facebook/MaybeTomorrowTheFilm}. If you like the Facebook page, then we keep you posted on all screenings that are coming up down the road, and any other press and fun stuff.

Jake: And you have a new screening coming up in New York.

Michael: Yes. We have a screening November 18^th.  That’s going to be screening in Tribeca Cinemas. All the info will be on our Facebook page.

Jake: Fantastic. Thank you so much.

Michael: My pleasure buddy, my pleasure.