5 Questions with Jordan Michael Blake
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
When I was nine, I wanted a PalmPilot for Christmas because I thought they were really cool, but when I realized it didn't do anything, I got super bummed. The next year, I asked for a camera, and that went way better for me. RIP my PalmPilot alternate future.
Also, I grew up Mormon and went to BYU for my first two years of college, but was about to get expelled when I luckily got into NYU. I ended up meeting most of the people I make movies with there, so take that, God!
2) What’s the backstory here - what was the initial idea and how did it evolve from there?
My friend and I were trying to convince our other friend that "Chang Beer" was a really funny two words, and he basically just thought we were being racist. He kept saying there's literally nothing funny about "Chang Beer", then tried using "Kaiser Permanente" as an alternate example. But as soon as he said it, he realized he was wrong because "Kaiser Permanente" is really funny.
From there, we basically made up the game, and when we were at Sundance trying to impress the Vimeo people, we made them play it. We kept screaming, "THIS IS FOR TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!" and it was very fun and stupid. Even though there were no stakes, everybody got really stressed when it was their turn, so eventually, I realized it'd be a funny situation to put a couple in, especially if the couple was going through a hard time and really needed the money.
Because the game is completely arbitrary, I think it's a nice stand in for anything you don't have control over.
"Future Technology" was a good one I remember from that night.
3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And generally what part of the creative process do you enjoy the most, and the least?
This movie in particular was super fun to make, so I'm not sure... My producing partner Tyler Walker is a quasi-genius moron, so he thought up most of the two word combos in the movie. Off camera, he'd be feeding them to the actors on the spot, so I was just laughing the whole time.
But also... My relationship was being worked through in the script, so I guess it's maybe revisionist history to think it was all easy. Yeah... that stuff was hard during and after the movie.
Oh, and our creative team got into a big fight about how big the letters in the background should be, lol.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
Anu Valia (the lead actress in this movie, and a great director, too) recommended Portrait Of A Lady On Fire before the quarantine happened, so I saw that and cried my eyes out. It was good crying though, for anybody that gets scared of that kind of thing.
Usually, I watch pretty dumb stuff. I watched Rocketman today - not the Elton John movie, but the 90s kid movie. If Harland Williams is a secret NoBudge subscriber... that'd be dope.
5) What’s next for you?
This quarantine business is forcing me to edit a backlog of new shorts, so that's good (though it's very bad for all other reasons). Also, I'm prepping a feature about a bunch of slackers that work at Domino's Pizza around the year 2000.
PS - if anybody works for a game show production company, let's make Two Words a real boy.
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