Wendy Corr:
Well, hey there folks, welcome to the Roundup. We're a Cowboy State Daily podcast, and we focus on interesting people in the Cowboy State. And the longer I do this podcast - we're now into our second season - the longer I do this podcast, the more I realize how many really interesting people live in the cowboy state, including our guest today, and this is going to be a fantastic conversation. I'm very, very thrilled to introduce you to this gentleman.
First, though, I want to make sure that you all know about the Wyoming Business Alliance “Business from the Basement” podcast. Just like we're a podcast, you can find us on any of those services, on Apple Music, on Apple podcasts, on Spotify. You can find us on any of those. You can also find the Wyoming Business Alliance “Business from the Basement” podcast. Check them out. If you're a business owner, if you are in business in Wyoming, they've got great content and really excellent resources for you, so check them out.
But don't go anywhere just yet, because today we are talking to a filmmaker, a film producer, who lives here in Wyoming, in Pinedale, as a matter of fact. And he has found his way to the cowboy state by way of some really interesting stories.
But one of the things that you might not be aware of is that there's a wonderful film out there right now called “Bonhoeffer,” and this was an independently produced film, and I'm going to let John tell you about this.
But John Scanlon was instrumental in getting this film made, and he's out there promoting it, as you can see from his background. But there's ways that we're going to be able to watch this movie if you haven't already seen it. So folks, let me introduce you to John Scanlon, Hello, John. Welcome to The Roundup.
John Scanlon:
Hi. Thank you so much for having me on. It's a pleasure to be with you.
Wendy Corr:
I have to say, John, I've learned about you because one of our reporters, Dale Killingbeck, he got your information and he did a feature story on you. I'm really curious about the making of this movie, because, I mean, obviously we've got a Wyoming resident who's instrumental in creating this movie!
And so I want you to first tell us, John, how you got involved in this movie, and then tell us about the movie itself.
John Scanlon:
Sure. Yeah. Pleasure. About 12 years ago, some friends of mine named Emmanuel and Camille Kampouris, who live in New York City, read a book by Eric Metaxas called Bonhoeffer. Eric wrote probably the best selling book of all time on this amazing German World War Two figure who was a patriotic German, but very, very strongly anti Nazi from the beginning.
He was a brilliant seminary student who actually studied in New York and wound up in Harlem at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, where he really got turned on in his faith. And he went back to Germany and fought on behalf of the victims of Nazism, and was very courageous in his stand against Hitler and the Nazis.
He had a very interesting life, lots of twists and turns, almost reads like a spy thriller The way Eric wrote it, the Kampourises read that book and were really inspired to dig further into Bonhoeffer's life. A lot of people really became aware of Bonhoeffer at that time, and we went out and raised money from a bunch of friends to make the film.
And we hired a terrific screenwriter named Todd Komarnicki, who wrote the film “Sully,” starring Tom Hanks, directed by Clint Eastwood, about the airline pilot. He was also a producer of “Elf,” which I'm sure many of you are going to be watching this year at Christmas. A lot of families watch that every year, and he has a number of other very significant Hollywood credits.
He's a genius writer and also a brilliant director, and he agreed to write the original screenplay on which our film was based, and he also agreed to direct the film. So that's the story of how it came together.
It was a long journey of 12 years, as I mentioned, but it's finally in theaters. Now it'll probably be in theaters for one more weekend. So if you haven't seen it on the big screen where it belongs, please go see it this weekend.
Wendy Corr:
I have talked to people who have seen the movie and were just blown away by it, and so I've got, I've got so many questions about how you even got connected with a project like this, and how you got into filmmaking. But that's going to require a journey back in time.
So John, tell us a little bit about - because you didn't start out in your adult life saying, ‘I'm going to make films.’ You were going to be, you were an attorney. Tell us about your journey towards filmmaking.
John Scanlon:
Sure. So for much of my professional life, I've been a securities attorney. I worked in Washington, DC, in London, mostly with large international banks as clients doing securities work.
And in about 2005 I remember having a breakfast table conversation with my wife, Heidi, and we were talking about, you know, different things to explore. We both had professions, but I felt I wanted to do something different.
And I remember reading an article about a young girl in Uganda who was undergoing a horrific experience there. And something about that article really planted a seed of my heart. Heidi got online and found a film school that was starting in Kampala, the capital city, a couple of weeks later.
And she said, Maybe you should go to this, learn how to make a documentary, and then go to Uganda and make one. So major points for her for being a supportive spouse.
And I did it. I managed to get my visa and enroll in the school. And as I told the guy who was running it, the ad for the school said, this is for experienced documentary filmmakers only. I said, Look, I'll be honest. I have no experience with documentaries at all. I don't even own a camera. So he said, Well, go out and buy this one and get yourself a MacBook and some editing software.
And I read the manuals on the plane, touched down in Kampala a few days later, and went out and tried to make a documentary on the original subject that I flew out there for.
It didn't really gel. I was heading back to the States feeling sort of defeated, and I got a phone call from a mutual friend who said, Hey, I heard you're in Uganda. Have you met so and so? And I said, No, who's that? He said, Sit right there in your hotel as you're waiting for your taxi to the airport.
And so I canceled the flight. I met this guy. It turned out he was also from DC, area, and was also an attorney, and he had kind of dropped everything to come to Uganda and just do what he could to help the kids, in particular, that were suffering in the IDP camps in the northern part of the country.
You may remember the child soldiers and Joseph Kony in Uganda around that time, and he had just, just really developed a heart for these kids, and was trying to help them any way he could. I thought that was an amazing story.
So I went up with him to a camp called Kitgum, followed him around for three days, shot a bunch of footage of him singing to the children at night in the total darkness, and a bunch of other scenes.
I hauled that all back to the US. Spent about six months editing it into a documentary and got it on TV a couple of times.
So that was really when the bug bit. And I decided I wanted to do filmmaking as much as I could, and I started to look for ways as an attorney to sort of make myself useful to film productions. And that turned into a journey of several years, culminating in meeting a man on Camille right about the time they were looking for a production attorney for this film.
So I started out in that role and eventually worked my way up to producer, and have been really blessed during this process to be able to kind of do a little bit of everything on the film, including spending time on set as we were shooting the film in Belgium and Ireland over the 2223 winner. So that's, that's the long and the short of it.
Wendy Corr:
So what does a producer do? I think that's for those of us who aren't who aren't filmmakers, yeah, what does an actual producer do on a film like this.
John Scanlon:
Sure, it's, um, the easiest analogy for me to make is, if you've ever started a business of any size, you know that when you started as the founder, you're sort of the you do everything, you do the bookkeeping, you do the you know, you clean up the kitchen, you fill the orders, you do the sales, you kind of do it all.
And then as the company grows, you hire different people who are better at those things than you are to take over those roles, and by the end of it, if you've got a successful company, you're the chairperson of the board, or you're one of the directors, and you're kind of calling the shots at a strategic level, but you're not out there doing the day to day.
That's basically what a producer does on a film. If you think of a film is kind of a company that makes one product, that being the motion picture, then the producers are the ones who get everything going.
You go out and find the script, hire the screenwriter and and then hire the director and the actors, and kind of bring everything together, and ultimately license the rights to get the film in theaters to a studio, as we did with Angel.
So you're really sort of the you're the founder, and during the process, you're looking to put yourself out of a job and and play a more senior role.
Wendy Corr:
But you're not the only producer on this, correct? There's a team, there was a team of producers on this to make this film happen.
John Scanlon:
Absolutely, yeah, as there typically is on modern films, there's just so much going on. Emmanuel and Camille Kampouris, our lead producers did a fantastic job of, you know, conceiving the project and overseeing it throughout the production and distribution of the film.
Todd Komarnicki, our writer director is also a producer on the film. Ralph Winter, who's a Hollywood legend, is a producer. And we have other partners who helped, very instrumental in getting us in to our our territories, in Belgium and Ireland, where we shot the film.
So it's a, it's a, you know, cast, every which of, every member of which was critical. But we have, yeah, seven producers total.
Wendy Corr:
That's just so neat. Now, before we got online, folks, before we started recording, John was telling me a bit about how we can see this movie if you miss it in the movie theaters, because this weekend is going to be the last weekend for it.
But John, this was produced independently, and it was produced through Angel Studios, which you got the hat on, and it's behind you and stuff like that. Angel Studios has done a lot of movies that we have seen and that many of us have seen.
In fact, they are the studios behind The Chosen which so many people know about, and has just made huge, huge waves, wonderful waves in the Christian community and telling the story of Jesus. Tell us a little bit about how Angel studios got involved in all of this.
John Scanlon:
Sure, we love working with Angel Studios. They're a well established major studio now, but they made Sound of Freedom, which is a film that was a huge hit a couple summers ago with Jim Caviezel about human trafficking. Very significant film.
And Angel has a very interesting sort of intake process. And if you're a filmmaker, or you're involved in filmmaking at all, this should be of interest to you. If you go to pitch your film to Sony or to Lions Gate, you'll be sitting in a room with a small group of people who will ultimately decide whether their film, your film, is a good fit for them.
And what they do mainly is get your film in theaters and then get it on streaming, so they do all the advertising and the promotion of the film. They work with exhibitors to get the film on screens and so forth. That's that's their job, as Angel was for us. But you know, everything comes down to a group of a few people.
Angel does it completely differently. They have a group of about 400,000 to 500,000 people who they call Guild members. And the Guild members are the ones who watch a nine minute clip of your film in the beginning, and if they like it, then you get to submit your entire film to the guild.
Then the guild watches your whole film. If they like your film, then you get an offer to distribute from Angel studios. So it's a terrific process. Angel doesn't, you know, put their thumb on the scales or anything you either get through the guild or you don't, and so it's this very democratic process that feels good.
As a filmmaker, you feel like you've already been exposed to the audience before you even roll out. So that was, that was the process we went through. And the guild members have a lot of perks, as you might imagine, being on the inside, one of them is that you get to watch stuff coming out of theaters and onto streaming on the angel platform before anyone else.
So right after we end our theatrical run, we are going to be streaming on the angel platform. So I can't give you the exact date, if it'll be sometime soon. So if you're an angel guild member, you'll be able to see it right away. If you're not, it's easy to sign up. Just go to angel.com and look for the guild stuff.
But I'd encourage you to do it. There's a lot of great content on that platform. It's not just stuff that they've made. It's stuff that they've licensed to. It's stuff like ours that was made independently and then put through them. And then they're also just building their library out, generally to be family friendly and sort of faith friendly as well. So it's a great platform.
Wendy Corr:
That is so interesting. So if anybody can join the guild, anybody can be a part of that, you just it's a few dollars a month. And just like any other streaming platform, correct?
John Scanlon:
Exactly, exactly.
Wendy Corr:
This is just, the whole process is just fascinating. What's also fascinating to me is your journey to get from a Washington DC attorney to a film producer. But let's make it local here. How the heck did you get to Wyoming? I mean, you've done a lot of things worldwide, but you're in Pinedale Wyoming. Tell us about your journey to get to Wyoming.
John Scanlon:
I would say I got to Wyoming by the grace of God. I love the state. I love living here. I love Wyoming-ites, and I'm happy to be one.
Basically, the long and the short of it is that my brother in law and my brother started a clean energy company in Pinedale several years ago, it started growing very quickly, and it became clear at a certain point that they needed my help full time. So I moved out here in 2021, full time. I've been traveling back and forth from DC before then, but that was when I made the move.
Heidi and I are out here now full time and just loving Pinedale and loving being here. And the company is a great one. It's called Raven SR. We take municipal solid waste and other feedstock and we turn it into clean fuels. So hydrogen, sustainable aviation fuel, we have a very green process, and we're using stuff nobody wants and turning in the stuff everybody needs. So it's a great company.
Wendy Corr:
So tell us about - I want to know more about this company now. Are you, how does someone get fuel from Raven?
John Scanlon:
Yeah, we're planning to start our first plant operationally next year, about the middle of the year, and the first one will be in California, which has the largest hydrogen market in the country, so we're near our consumers. If you drive a hydrogen fuel cell truck or car, you'll be able to pull up to a fuel pump that we sell our hydrogen to and fuel your car up with the greenest possible hydrogen.
It's made with a non combustion process, so nothing's burned during the transition from trash to hydrogen, and it's going to cost, you know about what hydrogen does now, so it's not going to be any more expensive, and it'll all be proudly owned, operated and directed from Wyoming. So win for everybody.
Wendy Corr:
That is a win for everybody. I'm very curious as to how something like that, a business like that, starts in Wyoming, just because, I mean, who's the scientist behind this? Because someone has to engineer this.
John Scanlon:
Yeah, I would say the chief minds behind the company are number one, Matt Murdock, our CEO, who's also the mayor of Pinedale and my brother in law, and he's an incredibly intelligent, driven CEO who discovered a family relationship to a scientist on the University of Berkeley chemistry faculty back in the mid teens.
And over a period of time, Matt and my brother, Matt Scanlon, got together. Matt Scanlon has got a finance background. He worked overseas for the Aga Khan for many years in Central Asia, and they developed a business model to use the patents that that this visionary scientist, Terry Galloway, developed over a period of decades for this process.
We put the deal together to buy those patents into Raven SR, which is a Wyoming company, and that's when things really kicked into high gear. So you know, Matt's leadership, Matt Scanlon is financial acumen and my support in the legal area are what makes the company go here.
Mike Fatigatii, our CTO is absolutely invaluable. He's an energy industry veteran and a brilliant engineer in his own right, but the company's headquartered here. Most of our families are here. Most of our family is here, and it's just a pleasure to be able to work and live in such an idyllic place.
Wendy Corr:
That is just fantastic. We're kind of getting a two for one topic here, folks, we're learning about this fantastic company and learning about the film industry at the same time. Now, John, you've you're raising your family here. Your kids are almost grown. Is that correct?
John Scanlon:
Well, I actually have two grown kids. One lives in Los Angeles and is a screenwriter, and the other is in Fort Collins, Colorado, and we'll be joining the military shortly. But they're coming here for Christmas, so, and it'll be a couple of days, and we'll all be back together.
Wendy Corr:
That is so important. I identify with this absolutely. So we're your daughter. Is it your daughter who's a screenwriter? Is that correct? And did she get into the screenwriting business because of your connections?
John Scanlon:
You know, I'd love to be able to say that I do what I can to help her, but she is a brilliant writer on her own. She had a 10 year career in politics, and she was incredibly successful at that, working on elections and campaigns. She still works in that area, but on the side, she does screenwriting, and she's incredibly gifted. She's a much better writer than I'll ever be for the screen. Very, very talented. And, you know, like a lot of people in LA, she's hoping to make that her, her, her profession.
Wendy Corr:
So that's fantastic. Well, that does bring us back to films then, for our topics, because you've got more projects in the works. So John, tell us about what you’ve got coming up, and the projects that you're excited about.
John Scanlon:
I'm working on a couple of films. I think the one I'll lead with, though, is a film that's near and dear to my heart. It's about the legendary Pittsburgh Pirates baseball player, Roberto Clemente, who played during the 60s and 70s.
He was a just a brilliant ball player, but also a civil rights icon, tireless humanitarian. He actually died in a plane that he commissioned to deliver relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua from his home territory of Puerto Rico. He's a brilliant guy. He was one of those people who made lifelong friends at the drop of a hat and has fans, sort of at every level of society.
The interviewees in the film are amazing. People just can't say enough good things about him, and it's a very exciting film to watch as a sports drama, but also just as a history piece and as a kind of human interest piece.
It was shot by my good friend and genius filmmaker David Altrogge, who lives in Pennsylvania, he's an award winning documentary filmmaker, and the film premiered this year at the Austin Film Festival South by Southwest in March and won the Audience Choice Award there. So look for it in theaters in 2025. We're very excited to be bringing that forward, and it's a great film.
I am working on another project that I can't say much about for confidentiality reasons. It's a project that will probably be out in a couple of years. It's about a national tragedy that everyone watching this probably remembers vividly. It's one of those moments that you remember where you were when it happened and it seared itself into the national consciousness.
But the story is about the resilience and recovery of the community that suffered that tragedy more than it is about the tragedy itself. And that's that message of hope and recovery and resilience is one I'm really proud to be associated with, and very much looking forward to bringing that to the big screen in a couple of years.
Wendy Corr:
That’s fantastic. I see a theme here. I see a theme in the projects that you choose. And so are there, are there other projects that are kind of, you know, rolling around in there that you would like to make at some point.
John Scanlon:
You know, I've had an idea for a while about a life of David, not unique in that regard. There's tons of filmmakers thinking about a David saga. What I'd like to do is a limited series, and I'd like to set it in a time period other than ancient Israel. I'd love to do something like David as a young man in New York or Chicago in the 1930s and 40s, or maybe set in Victorian England.
I think it, it would really help fresh in the story, and I think eliminate some of the problems with it from audit audiences. If you had a kind of recent, past or current, or maybe even future setting for the story. So that's all I'll say about that. I don't want to give anybody else too many good ideas.
Wendy Corr:
No, no, you don't want to give the ideas away. But John, this is just absolutely, absolutely fascinating. I'm going to ask you, just from your perspective, now that you're here in Wyoming, do you think you'll be drawing on your experiences here in Wyoming for future projects? I mean, it's, and you've probably already run into this, that Wyoming is a difficult place to get a film made because of the lack of film incentives.
John Scanlon:
Yes, that's, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a big problem. I think Wyoming is a fantastic place to set a film. I mean, my goodness, just to, just to drop one name - Taylor Sheridan, who made Yellowstone and continues to make a number of really, really good TV series, Landman, Lioness, Tulsa King.
He's a fantastic writer, very prolific television executive producer. I think he'd go crazy to do something in Wyoming if we had the incentives to attract, you know, the type of production that you'd need to do to do something like that.
I mean, I'm looking out my window at the Wind River Range, incredibly scenic, the Bighorns, you know, the Gros Ventre, of course, the Tetons, I mean, and you've got, you know, tremendous lakes, rivers, woods. It's a terrific place to shoot films. And I just wish more could be done with the incentives.
I will say one thing that I really want to do long term is, I think I'd love to host writers at our place here in Pinedale, and just give them a place to retreat and ponder and create. Writers are really the lifeblood of the film industry and television, too.
Nothing really happens without them, and I'd love to create a space where they can just come and be inspired by the natural beauty that we see all around us, and enjoy the quiet and really turn their creative engines on and make great content. So that's another way I'd like to personally be involved in, in helping great movies happen.
Wendy Corr:
That's fantastic, John, this has been just a wonderful conversation. It's been so great to get to know you and to introduce you to our audience here on The Roundup and at Cowboy State Daily. And we look forward to finding out when your Bonhoeffer project is going to be streamed. And when will we know? Do you have any idea when we'll know when Bonhoeffer will be available, if you're not a member of the guild?
John Scanlon:
I would, I would if you're hanging out over the Christmas holidays, I would just check the Angel site. You'll see promotional stuff about the film on their site. So it's just angel.com go there and check it out, and hopefully you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Wendy Corr:
I'm so impressed that they got the angel.com rights to that, that domain there. That's pretty great. John, thank you. Welcome to Wyoming. We're so glad that you're here.
John Scanlon:
I wouldn't I wouldn't be anywhere else. It's the best place on earth.
Wendy Corr:
We completely agree. Thanks for being with us today, and folks, thank you for being with us today. What a fantastic look into the ins and outs of the film industry, but also what a wonderful new resource we have here in Wyoming, someone who has embraced the state as much as as the rest of us love it.
So John, thank you. Folks, thanks for tuning in. Don't forget the Wyoming Business Alliance “Business from the Basement” podcast. You might want to check them out too if you're a Wyoming business person.
But until next week, when we're going to have a very special episode, we wish you all a fantastic week. Take care.
