Tight & Nerdy

Hey Robb, what's your go-to Weird Al song? Uh, it’s “Everything You Know Is Wrong.” And uh, would you strip to it? Who says I have it? [Music] Well, hello, and welcome to the Indie Film Lodge, a podcast about the nuts and bolts of independent filmmaking from the bottom up. I'm Robb Padgett.

And I'm Matt Jackson and today we're talking about discovery. Because even with the best laid plan, sometimes the real magic lies in the connections you don't intend. And being open to it could reveal what your movie is actually about. And to be our narrative Sherpas today are our guests Jeff Nucera and Jonathan Ruane, who made the fun and empowering documentary Tight & Nerdy.

And we're gonna be, uh, this be a bunch of guys talking about female empowerment today. Like God intended, hey fellas. Hello. I've never been a Sherpa before. Uh, I'm sorry you cited about it. You need a special certification, but I'm sure you can get it. Yeah, you anybody can go be a Sherpa now. I heard that the pee on Mount Everest is melting the glaciers so great. Yeah, pretty soon you're just be able to walk right up.

[Laughter] I'm ready. I have a full bladder and a backpack. [Laughter] Off to a great start, guys. [Laughter] Uh, empowerment. So guys, tell us, and everybody listening, uh, what is Tight & Nerdy? Tight & Nerdy is the, uh, it’s a feature-length documentary about the world’s first and only burlesque troupe dedicated to the music of “Weird Al” Yankovic.

Did I get that right, Jonathan? Yes, you did. Okay. I find that hard to believe, because I mean, burlesque and Weird Al, I mean, makes sense to me. It does. Um, you know, troupes that do like one-off nights here and there, just like a special evening with Weird Al songs, but this troupe gathers and travels, and this is what they do.

Tight & Nerdy is the troupe name. Tight & Nerdy is the doc name. Tight & Nerdy is our mantra. [Laughter] It's not our original dock name though, so. Also true, yes. Yeah, so, uh, I know what the original dock name is. Showgals. What, uh, what forced the change of the show— Name. The name of the producer. It strongly suggested it in the post process. Uh, that. At least Smith, in case you know Eddie Schmidt.

Uh, I don't know Eddie Schmidt. Okay. We worked in the same building as Eddie Schmidt. Oh, in the same crummy building or the better crummy building? Uh, the, uh, the Gigolos building. Oh, got it. Yeah, yeah, the better, the better crummy building. Yes. He is an amazing documentary producer and Weird Al superfan, and he came on to help guide us through the post process.

And one of his very helpful pieces of guidance was, “Hey, people may not, if they hear the word Showgals, quite understand what your movie is about, whereas Tight & Nerdy, because that’s the name of the troupe, is right there.”

Like, perhaps that is a better title. Sure. It's fun. Yeah. Showgals, you sort of had to—we had, like, this, you know, Al was highlighted in the graphic design. And, uh, exactly yes, if you're not staring at it like we are all the time, it doesn't make any sense.

Sure. Yeah, plus there’s no association to that horrible movie from the ’90s. Exactly. I personally love that movie. And so, uh, and we were inspired by it. Yeah. Which is, which is actually a phenomenal transition into my next question. So, give me three inspirations you had for this movie. Like, did you watch something to get the right headspace, or what inspired the journey to show off this Tight & Nerdy?

Well, I believe—was I the first one who forced you, Jeff, to watch Showgirls? Yeah. Oh, yes. Yes. So, and that was in early on in our friendship. Yes. So I think we laid the groundwork back in the early 2000s by me forcing Jeff to watch Showgirls and him still being friends with me afterwards.

He enjoyed it as much as I do. So, it's a long con. Yes. And then I tricked Jonathan into working on this movie. I was like, hey, what do you think about this? He's like, yes. Jeff, I know that you come from reality Jonathan. Do you come from reality too? I come from reality and documentary. And, funnily enough, post us starting to make this movie, it’s now my full-time job. I work as a story producer, co-producer for feature documentaries.

Oh my gosh.

The World’s a Little Blurry documentary for Apple. Oh. The Martha Stewart documentary for Netflix. We’re just wrapping up the Julie Andrews documentary for Disney+, which is very exciting. So, I am very lucky. My first job in L.A. was working for documentary filmmaker R. J. Cutler, who also made reality and nonfiction television.

And it's my longest relationship in LA. I've known him even longer than I've known Jeff. Of course. So, I came back and worked and started working with him back in 2017-2018. And while we've been making this movie on this side, I've been doing feature docs for real too. So, this is now for real somehow. That's what's so amazing is we've been doing this on this side for a hobby essentially. And it's very expensive, very long, very sad hobby.

I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's in a bit of filmmaking for you, right? It's like, very long, very expensive, not a good prize at the very end. It's great. Although, I don't, I don't, they've been lucky enough. I mean, unbelievably, we've won awards at film festivals, which is just, I mean, probably one of the more unexpected things that has happened on our film.

And turning—’cause, like, I mean, a movie about Weird Al burlesque dancers, you don’t think, you know, a festival awards darling.

So, until you see it and it's wonderful. I was laughing the entire time, was watching here in the office. My wife was sitting behind me and she's like, what are you watching? She'd look over and see naked ladies like gyrating around and then I was, you know, laugh at something. She's like, what is going on? Very confused. And she knew it was legitimate because you didn't immediately close the laptop.

Exactly. What? I wasn't watching anything. I didn't see an ad, I think. Yeah, what are you watching? I don't know what you're doing. But, but so, was there any other things that you pointed to? Like, this is what we wanted to feel like, or this is like a North Star as you’re going, or just Showgirls, not Showgirls? Was it just Showgirls and the general vibe of making a doc? Some films that—I mean, like Bathtubs Over Broadway, for example, just like this niche fandom that comes out of nowhere.

You're not really sure why anyone's clinging to it, but they're getting something out of it. Like, that is this. That is this. That's the one that's about the corporate musicals. There it is. Corporate musicals are on like 45s or something, right? They're on LPs, but yes. It's amazing, doc, and if people have not watched, I highly recommend. It's so fun. Yeah. I mean, the other one I just watched when we are starting this process was this movie called Finders Keepers.

Which is right. Which and I literally when our camera person on the first initial interview, I was like, "Look at the way these interviews are shot because they're amazing." And so that kind of was one of the things that guided us. And that documentary is almost impossible to describe, but it is about two men,

one of whom loses his leg and the other man acquires the leg and then doesn't want to give that leg back.

What does the man do with the third leg? I mean, you gotta watch the movie. No spoilers. People ask me that all the time. That's awesome. That's awesome. I have to check this out. I've heard of Bathtubs Over Broadway, but I've never seen it. And now Finders Keepers is, like, right up at the top of the list for me, because holy shit, that sounds amazing. He's worth checking out for sure. So beyond inspiration.

Yeah. Thank you. So beyond inspiration. Movies rarely just appear in front of us, right? There’s always a big journey from, like, the initial idea, the initial screening of Showgirls to, you know, making an actual movie.

I always feel like there's three parts of making a movie. There's the obsession part. Like, if you started, there's the pivot part where you realize things are wrong and you gotta change tactics. And then there's the miracle part where something happens that you didn't expect that really makes it sing. So my first question is for you is what was the thing that made you obsessed about making this movie about?

Weird Al Burlesque dancers. My obsession probably goes back to childhood when I became obsessed with Weird Al and his music and his mania, and then flash forward to living in L.A. a thousand years later and going to see the troupe perform and just being blown away by them and having the leader of the troupe, Pickles Kintaro, reach out to me after I saw them a couple times.

And she just was, I mean, literally it was like, do you think there's a film here, a documentary here? And then I ran over to Jonathan and said, hey, we have this person who might be a story.

And I was like, as a fan of the movie Showgirls, and I just watched Finders Keepers, I was like, “I someday want to make a movie like that.”

And I was like, here we go. Let's go. And so one of Vendee, really? And so we, I mean, Jeff and I originally met when he was going to work at Weird Al's Museum at the Orange County Fair.

The Weird Al Experience in 2002. Wow. And so we met out through mutual friends and then he saw me on the street like the day before he was going pulled over and tried to convince me to go go down to Orange County to see this Weird Al exhibit.

I was like, I'm about to go live at the Orange County Fair for a month. Someone please come visit me. And your stranger danger alarm didn't go off that this strange man was going to be homeless living at the County Fair. And while he clearly was a Kenjo spirit, like we, I did not go to the Orange County Fair to go see it.

And yet despite that, we became friends after he came back. I'm just like a month, a month down there. Yeah, I was, I was gone for like four weeks. I wish, was it worth it? I went insane. You had a full experience. Yeah. And yeah, so anyway, our friendship was built on the Weird Al connection. And so like the idea was after he pitched the idea to me, we're like, let's go film interviews with these women to see if there's something there.

And so we were both working on Iyanla: Fix My Life at the time. And we recruited a fellow coworker Ralph Churchill to film these interviews.

And we went up to San Francisco and filmed interviews with these four women. And I mean, almost right away it was like, oh, there's something here. These women are amazing, fascinating. They pop on camera. Like they're wonderful. Yeah. They're so, they're so emotionally open. Like their back stories are tragic and beautiful and so ripe for story tell.

It was, it was incredible. And I mean, a lot of the, that initial interviews are in our final film. Even though we followed them for years, it is a tribute to Jeff's early producing work. He spoke with all these women. I mean, it was pre-Zoom. Was that Skype calls, Jeff? Yeah, we did some Skypes. He did Skypes with pre-interviews with these women and preparing them for the kind of questions we were asking.

And so by the time we even got there, they were ready to go and to share their story. That's amazing. That's so cool. And so you don't have any other connection with them besides you saw the show and you're like, this could be a thing. That is so magical. Saw the show loved it. I mean, they clearly were putting up ton of work into this thing. And loved the music. Like I love the music. And I just connected with it, you know?

Do they love it the same way you love it? I feel like there's a deeper connection. Not lunch, Lasagna. No offense. No offense. I don't know. Maybe you are a burlesque dancer and you just haven’t told me yet, which would be great. You don't know what happens in my head. The sequel involves Jeff becoming the last showgal. Yeah. You started firing up any minute now. So okay, well, you know, every production starts with the best intentions.

Plans rarely go off without a hitch. I'm sure you guys ran into some hitches. What was the major pivot you had to make while shooting the movie? Like what happened and why? If you had one, I mean, maybe you did go off without a hitch. The movie came out very smooth. There were so many hitches along the way. There were still hitches somehow. I mean, Jeff, which hitch did you want to... I mean, music was a hitch.

For sure. A hitch and a half. Yeah. You know, Weird Al's team and Weird Al himself, of course, were all very kind and very helpful. Al does not own the rights to the parodies though. Oh. He co-wrote the parodies, but we have to go through the original songwriter, Slash singer, slash performer, slash management, slash lawyers, slash whoever those people are. Songwriters. To get them to sign off. And luckily, we had a great music supervisor who just made this as easy as possible and it was not easy.

But there are some songs that are missing. Yes. And it bums me out. Every time we watch it, I'm like, "There's some songs that I was like, 'Oh, this is kind of like this other song.' But not before." I mean, there's one specifically in the movie, no spoilers, that it's clear that it's not. You know, we did our best. I mean, the other thing that happened was we got into our first film festival and we were not locked.

Done. We were locked. And so we were close. Yeah. And so there was... But we were still like holding on hope. We're like, "Oh, we'll just keep bugging them until they give up." And then it was like, "Oh, we have to get this." We have to get this done. And then... In like two weeks. And then we finally got final nos on a couple of songs in the film. And so we had to pivot a few times. Like “Spam,” which is a song that Pearl E. Gates performs to in the movie,

that originally started the movie, that opened the movie. And then because of the other song, we had filmed her performing too. Did not clear. The original songwriter did not give us permission, said, "No, thank you." And so we shifted a few things around to make that kind of the first big performance you see from Pearl E. Gates in the movie.

And then we had already Shenzhen, his amazing supervisor, had cleared... “I Think I’m a Clone Now” for a smaller moment in the movie. And we're like, "Well, those songwriters gave us permission. Maybe we can shift that to the top of the movie." And so we were able to go back to them and they gave us permission to use a longer part of the song. And that's how the open of the movie became what it is.

So we were able to kind of shift things around and make that work in the final weeks before we had to lock picture and deliver it to the Heartland Film Festival, which is where we premiered.

Wow. Yeah, I heard that music and I was thinking that exact same thing, because licensing can be a bear. So it was like, "Because Weird Al doesn't have the songs." At one point you play my favorite song, which I said at the beginning of the movie, “Everything You Know Is Wrong.” You play the music to that, but you don't play the lyrics to that. But because Weird Al wrote that song, you know, you were able to do that kind of thing.

You can't just play the karaoke version of the other songs. Right, exactly. And Al’s team, again, they were so kind in letting us use Al’s original songs as our score in a lot of places.

And I think it elevates the film and makes it feel like a Weird Al homage, which it is. But we also had a fantastic singer-songwriter, Summer Woods, do some covers of Al’s original songs, which I just...

I love her so much. Her songs are amazing. She plays like 2000 instruments or something crazy, and just is a musical genius, like in every sense of the word.

And she really just took care of us. That's great. I was watching the credit song, which I loved. And I was like, it took me a minute to clue into all this happening. I was like, what is this song? And I had to go back to look. I was like, this is written my Weird Al. I was like, is this an original song? And I just wrote it was done. You have to watch the fake documentary. Yes, indeed. But she was great. She, like, her covers of those songs really give it a nice vibe.

That was a COVID discovery by Jeff, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. She, during COVID, just started performing these piano-based medleys of Al original songs.

And I was like, that's what we need. That's exactly what we need. She's right here. She's like, in Pasadena, how did that happen? Nice. Well, I guess how big of a problem was COVID for you guys. Because I don't remember when you started shooting, but I know. I know. But I could tell by the footage that it was not post-COVID, because I saw no masks. Yeah, it was pre-COVID. Most of it was pre-COVID. I mean, COVID happened and it was just we were in post.

Oh, yeah. And we, just the editing process was a big lift. And we finally did a Kickstarter to fundraise to pay an editor to actually edit our movie together.

Yes, Candace Kregg, who saved our lives many times. If only you guys knew editors who could edit reality or documentary. Yes. She was an editor who we worked with on Iyanla: Fix My Life. And so we met her through that show when she was fantastic and could have asked her material. And yeah, like in the middle of it, she moved to Portugal. She moved her up and moved to family to Portugal. So the last half of the edit was being done remotely. Literally just like, here's a drive. Bye. Bye.

Wow. Real international production. Yes. Yes. Well, she did a great job because that's why I've stayed away from reality and documentary as an editor. It's just the lift is too heavy. I like having a little script that tells me what people are going to say. We gave her an outline that was almost accurate sometimes. I don't know. I did too much reality. So I even wanted to edit stuff that I've shot with a plan.

I'm always like, oh, but I could mix and match these lines or cut this up. I shot some terrible footage of me in New York. And I let it sit for 10 years. And when I finally sat down to pick it back up again, I had all these reality tricks. And it was like, it’s great, like creating new meanings out of things. It is the absolute best. Robb, you’re missing out. Well, there is that aspect in narrative.

I'm so old. In narrative stuff, they never quite get what they want. But the blueprint is there for what they were intending. So when they're really wrong, you're like, how do I make it kind of what they wanted? And if I can't, then I can't. I'll just do something else. The secret is that is all reality. That's all probably all documentary is like, everyone goes in with a plan. It's like Mike Tyson. You go in with a plan and then everyone gets punched in the face

and you gotta like figure it out. And it's tough, you know, to be open and whatever. We're going to talk about that in a minute. But before I start talking about discovery and the joys of putting the pieces together, I do want to ask you guys about the last piece of our OPM is the miracle. What was the miracle that happened in this movie? The talent fell in your lap. It was great. Weird Al was very amenable to doing things.

Weird Al was certainly one of the miracles of this. Just reaching out to him and asking if he would be a part of it, asking if we could even like proceed with this. And him just being super like into it and being like, yep, absolutely. That was miracle number one because, boy, that was the scariest email I ever had to write. Whenever Jeff has to reach out to Al like about this, he always panic. Yeah, I get it.

You know, certain people and you just you want them to know that you respect them as a person. You don’t want things from them, and then you want something, and you’re like, “Oh, I gotta ask.” I don't know what he says. If he says no, then we're doing a big pivot. I mean, he got in a bit like the fact that he agreed to an on camera interview, which by the way, he showed up early to what's amazing.

Like, yeah, I mean, it's unheard of for like talent to show up early to something and we were all like, ah, you know, it's a surprise, but it's not ready. Oh, God. He was ready. He came ready to go fully prepared. Oh, what a what a pro. What a nice, awesome human. Everything you hear about him is true, of course. But he just is such a pro and came fully ready. And it was again a terrifying day on in my life, my professional life, my real life.

And he gives you something in those interviews that really helps propel the story. You know what I mean? He's not just like telling you. He's not by rote. He's like, he seems to really want this to succeed. Like, the story to be told, the women to succeed and what they're doing. He's very optimistic. He is. And he's such a great. He's got great energy and we took us a while to figure out how we were going to kind of sew those interviews.

And then might also be one of the miracles of just figuring out how those play worked. It really does work well. I would say the revelation was when we were editing like a sales tape. And Al does the line about, oh, now we're getting to deep stuff transition. Use that in the sales tape. And that I think was the kind of key to understanding how to use Al's interview in the movie.

As like a chapter heading basically. Yeah, because he's, it almost feels like he's driving it in some way because of the way you cut it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, again, Candace Kregg’s amazing work. Yeah. I do have another miracle if you if you'll indulge me. This is a one miracle show. Oh, sorry. Give it to us. What do you got? What do you got? It better be better. Really good. We were interviewing Odessa Lil really early on.

I think it was our first interview with her. Yeah. And Jonathan picked up on this thing she said that I, you know, listen, I really like interviewing people. And I like listening and trying to like follow a plan or follow a conversation. And I didn't pick up on this. And Jonathan, 100% keyed in on it and we were wrapping up and he goes, wait a minute. You just said you're the only, you grew up as the only Jew in Fresno.

And that got us into some of the like real powerful storytelling that she gives us.

Because Jonathan just followed that. Well, I mean, it was also out of personal experience because I grew up one of the only Jewish people in my hometown. And so there was something about that that I was like, I know what that's like. Can you unpack that a bit more? And that led to kind of her talking about her family history. And like what that was like and feeling like, you know, an outcast and how much that affected her and affected how she was raised.

Oh, that's that's incredible because it gave so much depth to her. Yeah. But again, I like not necessarily my insight. It was only because I had had a similar experience. Did it prompt me to be like, wait a minute, let's talk about that more. And so that's what like, but that was the connection with these women that we had very early on was there is a similar shared experience of growing up feeling like an outsider, like feeling like I haven't found my people yet.

Right. And that message came through pretty quickly. And that ultimately I think is the message of our movie. Absolutely. Which is it, which is a good again, transition. And John, we're going to hire you on the show just to be our transition guy because you're fucking great at it. You're the Weird Al of this show. Yeah. I used to have Weird Al hair, but I cut it recently. It's a damn shame. You need to let it go.

I have a Weird Al pinball machine in my house. And when his son, when Jonathan's son was was younger, there's a picture of out like a cartoon owl.

There was crazy hair. And his son came over and was like, “That’s Daddy.” [laughter] But so we're talking about the thing we I wanted to bring you on to talk about. I mean, not just the show. Tight & Nerdy is, I keep saying show because I'm such a professional. That's a show. I know. It's everything to show. But we're here to talk about the movie. Tight & Nerdy. And the thing about documentary filmmaking is that level of discovery.

Like actively listening and pulling things out, having a plan and being okay with finding new pathways. And so you mentioned this, but when you started and you're like, oh, this will be a fun movie about this burlesque troupe.

At what point did it become about female empowerment, which is awesome. Like, did you go into it thinking that, or did that come out of Pickles, or did that happen when you interviewed Odessa Lil? No. [laughter] No, we did not go in with a plan, with themes, with anything. It was just sort of like, oh, this is like a fun weird thing that these women are doing.

And you know, certainly early on, we were like, oh, it'll be a fun little short dock. And you know, the more we sort of picked at these stories, we were like, oh my god, there's something like actually here that connects these that's bigger than we thought.

And I don't know when the turn occurred, but it was sometime after that, that first show we shot, where it was like, oh, there's something really special here that is more than just a comedy silly show.

There is feelings, there's art, there's family here. I mean, Pickle talks about like, did an ornithial interview. Like, she's not doing this, none of these women are doing it for money.

They are doing it out of a love of burlesque and a love of owl and a love of wanting to express themselves in a like creative way.

I think Perly Gates's story about how she came to burlesque and what it means to her was pretty informative as to our understanding of why would you get on stage and take your clothes off to weird outsocks.

What is that about? Like, that was a question we had early on and female empowerment and expressing yourself in a creative way in front of an audience is where we got to.

Yeah, right. When we speak to these women, they are fully empowered. They are choosing to be on stage. They are very proud of themselves as they should be because they are gorgeous inside and out. And they are just so inspiring to so many people. We—Jonathan and I were at—the women performed at SF Sketchfest last year, this year.

I don't know at some point. And afterwards this woman who was probably in her late 50s or early 60s ran up to them, just sobbing and she was like, this is so inspiring.

I want to do this now and we were like, what is happening? This is crazy. And every time we screen someone in that audience is like, I want to do this.

It's so cool. It's so cool to see. Well, because we all want to be brave and there takes a lot of bravery to do burlesque. It takes bravery to perform at all, but burlesque especially. Yeah, you’re baring it all. Yeah, literally. So as you are shooting this, how many rounds of interviews did you do? I don't know a lot of people know this about how you make things in Docker or whatever.

But a lot of times you do your initial interviews and then you put those together or missing these pieces and you do pickups and more pickups and more pickups.

So how many rounds of pickups did you guys do? And at what point did you really start how did you do this? And how open was the cast to your personal questions? Were they always super open or were they? They were very open. I mean, we got very lucky with this cast. They were super open. When Jonathan and I showed them the film for the very first time, again, terrifying.

One of the most stressful moments of this process. Because we were fully prepared for, I can't, you can't show this. This is really terrible, whatever. And I think the only comment was from Odessa, Jonathan, who said something like, I can't believe how open I was.

Because they're now seeing this thing five, six, seven years later. Oh, sure. After our initial set of interviews. And so she was like, I can't believe how open I was. And we were like, is.

Absolutely. Yeah. They didn't have any notes, which was amazing. Like, it's great. And kind of unheard of.

That’s why I was—because I would figure you’d get notes from Marla, Marla Spankx, the mysterious Marla Spankx. Yes, Mistress Marla Spankx. I mean, she went on a journey, I think, even while we were filming and after. And like, I think by the time we finally showed the documentary to her, she was in a different space.

Like, just in life and what, her less meant to her and how she felt about that part of her life.

And so she too was happy with all that we showed. And, you know, her mom came to see the movie when we played San Francisco at SF IndieFest.

And she loved the movie, which was fantastic. Like, that was wild. Yeah. And I have her there. You know, so especially about how her, her other daughter, who's that we interviewed in the movie, like talks about her mom.

So, yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. Marla was interesting, because it's, you know, we sort of learned that trick early on during reality TV. It’s just like, if something’s not there, you just lean into it. And she was—I mean, she held herself more, you know, close to the vest.

And just she, but there's that part of all of us that's like, I'm doing this thing, but I know I don't want to talk about it.

And I know it sounds crazy, because she's on camera in a film, but it is this like, it's very personal for her. And I loved that.

That was one of the things that struck me actually was how open these women were about not being very open. You know what I mean? Like, there was a, there was sort of a dichotomy there that was fascinating. It's like, I don't like to talk about it, but here it is. Yeah. So at what point in the process did you interview Al? Was Al early? Was he late? You go into that interview knowing the pieces you needed or did you interview Al and then we interviewed Al in between most of the filming took place in 2017.

And so during that run after Minnesota and before the Los Angeles and Oakland shows, which are kind of the final two shows you see in the movie, we interviewed Al.

Yeah, we had not, I don't think we had even started post. Yeah, we had not—we had no idea. We didn’t really start—I mean, we did a sales tape soon after, but we didn’t really start post for real until years later.

Sure. The pandemic slowed down. We did, we did dig into it. Yeah. But that's incredible, because I kept watching it and I didn't realize how much of a counter-cultural icon Weird Al was.

It was always Weird Al, he was just a fun guy making Star Wars songs and great polkas. And I didn’t realize the power that he has, which was...

I mean, he's been around for so long. The longevity is crazy for a novelty artist especially, but you know, he and his band are so talented and he's so clever and smart and funny.

And to your point, there is this counter-culture element to him of like, he's taking on the popular people. He's almost bullying the bullies in a way or just taking them down a notch.

Sure. Something that like I certainly, you know, as a nerd and a misfit growing up, I looked up to that like, oh my god, look what that guy's doing.

And he's having such a moment, like, right, like you were catching him right on that up swing. I don't know, after COVID, I mean, I'm wearing nobody can see, but I'm wearing the t-shirt from his concert tour last year. He went on another one this year.

And like, I remember when I was a kid, I listened to Dr. Demento, you know, back in the day. Yes. I had to go to the third floor of my dad’s house with an antenna out the window so I could get a signal from Pittsburgh. So I could listen to Crackley Dr. Demento and then he kind of faded away and now he's really, he's like back and people are really appreciating what he, what he has to offer.

So this counter-culture is actually kind of coming up, it's seeping into actual culture now. It's funny. Our film was in post for a very long time as, you know, when we started, people were like, like, you're going to be doing this for 10 years and I was like, I would rather die.

And that remains true, but now. But Al during that time was doing Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, and they shot it, they went into post, and every time I would see Al, he’s like, “Who’s coming out first?” And I’m like, “You have yours.”

So yours. Yeah, it's so funny because I, I'm so jealous retrospectively, but that's a word. When I was younger, I remember I had Greatest Hits, Volume II, and I fucking loved it.

I kept flipping over the tape because I love the, there's a love song, polka in it that I could still sing, like verbatim.

And nobody else understands. I'll do it to my wife and she's like, what are you, what are you doing? Those polkas are my favorite. They're so good. But I never, I never had the confidence to own my weirdness. Like I was student of the month or some nonsense in high school and you had to put in the paper, like what your interests were.

And I was so concerned that people would know that I was a weird comic loving guy that I went too far in the other direction.

So I was like, Matt enjoys reading and computers. And I read that as a 17 year old, I was like, that's a cool fucking guy.

And I'm not. And yeah, so I'm jealous that you guys were able to see this. These women were able to see Weird Al and be like, oh, that is an idol that I should build myself towards.

You know, and I think this, I think it's so beautiful. I couldn't help it. I was just like, well, you could help it. I really sort of had no choice.

Well, when, when I was a kid, because I'm old, you know, Weird Al was on the radio. So you would just hear Weird Al on the radio. You'd hear a song, go, wait, is this Weird Al or is this Michael Jackson? Which song is about to start? Yes. I mean, I have to hear Weird Al at the roller rink. Right. He was big in the early 80s, mid 80s. He was. He's iconic. He's still iconic.

My very first time going out in West Hollywood when I just come out, I was really uncomfortable still.

And my friend took me to Micky’s, which is a video bar in West Hollywood. And it was like a Sunday afternoon and we walked in and they were playing Weird Al videos on the monitors.

What is this? What a welcome wagon. Right? Yeah. Never seen it since. Never can. That was like, I've never seen Weird Al videos. What was happening? Well, they say you come in and they're like, oh, this is not the crowd we want. Just brain pre-arranged. Really. Good. I'm in. A shripper of gayness. But yeah, so I guess to further talk about the discovery and all this, like how did it work with an editor?

You guys are both story producer types. Were you doing pre-cuts? Were you doing paper cuts? Because you live in 1988. Yeah, let's just assume for a moment that some people in the audience have never ever had an experience with documentaries or reality TV.

Like, what is the process to making one of these things? Well, after we filmed it, you put it away for a few years. Cry about it. You let it marinate. You always work. You step away. You step away. You stress about it every single day of your life. Yeah. Then you do a Kickstarter to raise money to pay an editor. Then you convince an editor to come work on the project. And then we started handing...

Some of which she was cutting from raw footage, but some of which we would do what are called string-outs where we took the footage and made our selects of what we thought was the most.

Yeah, we'd sort of chunk it in order to make it seem like a story that makes sense.

And we would hand it over to her and she would work her magic on it or be like, no, when go back to the wrong act.

You're insane. You're insane. Find the right bit. And she would turn around cuts. An original cut of this movie was over three hours long.

We took a long journey to figure out how to get Weird Al’s interviews to work in the movie in a way that felt like it wasn’t disrupting the flow of the story.

How the interview bites are working. Jeff had a eureka moment about in terms of the performances.

I believe how we incorporate the women's stories into the performances to be revealing.

And as they are revealing themselves on stage, they're saying some revealing things on that interview and finding that balance.

A real part of that process. A real thesis bite. Yes indeed. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff and I used to work on Gigolos, the sexy show for Showtime. Yes. And the big trick of that show was when you have a sex scene because watching a sex scene and having somebody talk about ample breasts or big butts or whatever the hell.

Like that was no fun. But to have some kind of weird hook where you can have the performers go off in some weird direction was wave and we're interesting and we're more fun as they talked about something about themselves.

And it added a real depth. And it's something that I do every time I work on shows ever since then. I always try to find that thesis bite. Yeah. One of my favorite examples, Christian Patterson and Mike Burke put this together. There was one of our guys was hired by an older woman and he just went off about his grandmother in the lessons she taught him.

And I maybe never laughed more on that show. From that day. That show was so great. I just love it. I, you know, it's still a high watermark for me. That show. It was great. We just trying to get out of the soup. Oh yeah. It was like, hey Dave, everything. Oh my god. Anyway, sorry. But so you have these thesis bites as a girls were stripping and revealing themselves or revealing something about themselves.

That’s great. Did you have, like—were you carding the whole thing, or were you just kind of slapdash, like, here’s a scene? Here's a scene like go with God. Candace. We had an outline. We worked on an outline together that we came up with and handed over to Candace. I haven't looked at it in a long time. I don't know how close it is to what we ultimately ended up with. I'm not sure we ever need to look at that again.

But like we definitely found it in the edit. And as we were doosed, it became clear what things are the most important and necessary.

I mean, we filmed the women going to see Al get his star on the walk of fame. We thought that might be an interesting way to start the movie. At some point we realized it was kind of besides the point. I got taken out of the movie things like that and like the order of how things play in the movie. We kind of found within the edit of which things to play. And even in terms of like which performances to do in order of the within the film.

We kind of found that in the edit. And so that took that took what two, three years. The edit was two or three years long before we kind of arrived where we got to. And we got it to a good place and that was a fine cut. I'd say it's what we submitted to festivals originally. Yeah. And then once we got into the heartland, then we really had to be like, okay, we have like three, four weeks to actually finish this movie.

And that is when we had this great associate editor, Araleo, who we were able to go sit with because Candace was in Portugal, to sit with to kind of fine-tune it and get it to...

Okay, this is picture lock. This is what we want to film to be. And so you didn’t—you got into Heartland, but you didn’t... This is going to be a strange question. You didn't continue to edit the movie after it premiered at Heartland or like it's locked. We're done. Walk away. I mean, we still, as we mentioned earlier, music licensing continues to be the thorn in our side. And while we did clear it for festival use, there’s an additional cost with making it available for streaming.

Because we're now talking about doing a self-distribution model for online. And so that gets to be expensive. And so we're working through our options on how maybe to relieve some of the number of sheer number of cues we're using in the film.

There's a lot. Yeah, there's a lot of music. And so we may be reducing the number. We're tweaking. We're tweaking. So there's still tweaks happening before the streaming version will hit the available streamers that we can self distribute to.

Yeah, but the story is the story we're not changing the cut. That’s—we’re not changing bites. That's not going to be a bite or anything like that for sure. Right. Until until you really get in it, you're like, well, I'm just here. So when it's just, this one dies inside.

We just get just a little bit. That's a little too long on that one. Just a few nips and tucks here and there two years later. The good news is the movie’s playing at festivals and playing with audiences so well, like why mess with that too much?

Because I passed it. Because I must be perfect. Well, it plays it's going to do really well when you finally get the music stuff sorted out. The streaming thing will do really well. I predict that this movie will do very well. Even self-distribution, you know, even if you don't have any placement, you're paying for whatever. I don't know what relationships you might have self-distributing, but I predicted it would do very well.

Thank you. That's the hope. That's the dream. Yeah. Yeah. The movie is for the people it's for. I mean, I know that sounds sort of stupid, but it's the people who want this are going to love it.

And the people who don't care about it also can go fuck themselves. No. It also helps that it's good, you know? Right. The hook is good. The concept is good. The movie's good. So that's good. Yeah, and I feel like, you know, the idea of making something for everybody, it just makes things really bland.

Like, I enjoy the celebration of the counter-culture. I go on this rant every once in a while where I get really bothered with the modern. The modern world and how everything is just fucking samey all the time. And there's no like, it's not that there's no culture. It's both like, there's no monoculture and there's, and everything's just flat and dull. And I love things that delve into little pockets of counter-culture, like little pockets of subcultures that used to get play.

And used to be fun to discover, but then the internet, like all things destroyed how that works. Yes. It's like a cultural suburbia, like a sprawl, cultural sprawl, just kind of flattens out.

And the houses are similar-ish. They're not too samey, but they're not too different either. But then you go in those basements and who knows what you’re gonna find? Yeah, naked women dancing to weird music. So guys, this has been wonderful. I have a couple of final questions for you. Unless Rob, you have other final questions before I dive into it. I don't know. I have no questions. I know all now.

Unless you guys have some kind of nugget you want to drop on me before I drop into my final question. I did write a poem. No. So now that you're at the end of the road, so to speak, I know that you're still dealing with the music, licensing and all that.

But if you were able to go back in time, it's 20, what, 20, 2002 when you started this process.

If you're able to go back in time and tell yourself about something about the process, to make it easier, to kind of put yourself at ease, what would you tell yourself at the start of the whole thing?

It's the big one. Please don't. I mean, there was a lot of fear along the way. I would say I would go back and tell myself that the movie is gonna turn out great, I think. And then you're gonna like it like because I think there's a lot of self doubt that happens and you're like, who are like, what is this?

Is anybody gonna tell what are you doing? Yeah, are we gonna is it worth it? Is it worth the amount of time and our own money that we're putting into this to like see it through?

But there is nothing more satisfying than going to see this film play to a packed house. I mean, seeing the film in San Francisco with like a hometown crowd because so many of the women are from the Bay Area was just amazing.

And as a performer's family, I mean, it was so fun. And the film played like—I mean, it almost—I almost wish we kind of recorded the audience reaction because they were laughing, they were gasping.

And they were cheering. It was like, what is happening? Did Pickles’ ex show up to the show? He did not. Oh, okay, good. I was on the edge of my seat for that one. I was like, oh, maybe there's gonna be some action. So I'm like a fight. Yeah. That we getcha. Yeah, I know, right? So then I know that you guys are so working on the distribution model and Rob's a big fan of the indie distribution if you have any questions for him.

But I have I'll have no answers, but great. You can ask questions distributing it everyone. Yeah. I'll do I'll do exactly what I did for my movie. Good luck. So I know somebody through the festival scene. So where can people keep up to date with where Tight & Nerdy is playing and, more importantly, where can we keep up with you two on the interwebs?

Well, I mean, Tight & Nerdy. You can follow us on Instagram and TikTok and various socials at TightAndNerdyMovie. We also have a website. Is it TightAndNerdyMovie.com, Jeff? It is. Jonathan. Thanks for asking. Great. So TightAndNerdyMovie.com, and that has the latest, like, where it’s playing in festivals. We're playing at the Kansas City Film Fest International. Is that the right order of words?

Yes. We're playing a couple of festivals in November, which is exciting.

And then we're if you follow us on socials, we will be sure to tell you over and over again when you finally can stream the movie somewhere on the interwebs.

Someday. Someday. Som... I mean, hopefully within the next ten years. Ten years. Ten years. And also, I mean, if you have seen the movie, go review it on Letterboxd. Like our friend Matt did. Oh, thanks, Matt Jackson. I gave it four and a half stars because it's really great. And I tried to write something very nice about it. You did. Thank you very much. That's always appreciated. So you can add it to your watchlist on Letterboxd for those of you who do that thing.

There you go. And then one day it'll be available for you to see. And then you'll really be sorry. Yeah. Or you'll want to dance or get naked. Both. Or be sorry that you want to dance. Matt, you asked Robb this question earlier, but what Weird Al song are you performing to? Oh, I'm a bad dancer. This is why I asked Rob the question. I don't know. That may not matter. Yeah. It's a... Oh, actually, I had it stocked and it was...

But now I forget what it was. What's the... It's the money song. Money for nothing? No, it's not money for nothing. It's the other one. It's the original one. Oh, God, I'm trying to think. Yeah. It's on... It's on greatest hit. It's fine too. Damn it. My dad's on. Oh, Matt is thinking about that drift. Please, please share which song you would perform to. What? How dare you? This is not about us. It's not about you.

What is your... Do you have a favorite Weird Al song? I love “One of Those Days.” More than I should. It's just this deep, kind of original song that just delights me in every sense of the word. So probably that, just a disaster on stage and off, because that's who I am.

“This Is the Life.” Oh, yeah. That's great. Oh, yeah. Isn’t that from Johnny— Was it in Johnny Dangerously? It was, yeah. I've never seen Johnny Dangerously. You got to watch Johnny Dangerously. Don't we think it holds up? Probably not. But, man, I loved it when I was younger. It's like Joe Piscopo. Yeah, Joe Piscopo, Michael Keaton. Right. I remember it was always in Comedy Central and I would always turn the channel.

Okay, so I should bring the show to a close. Yeah, if you want to. Okay. All right, and that does it for us. If you have any questions about filmmaking or movies in general, please email us at IndieFilmLodge@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you and we may even feature your question on a future show. And in the meantime, tell your friends about us. And remember, the only thing holding you back is you.

So get out there and shoot your feature. I’m Robb and I’m Matt. We'll see you next time. Thanks, fellas. [Music]

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