Explore every episode of the podcast The Tracksuit Podcast

Alex Csillag (Proper) — One Take, Real Guitars & the AI Music Debate

Alex Csillag, aka Proper, is a Sherman Oaks-based music producer, sync licensing specialist, professional trombone player, and longtime collaborator of James Cullen Bressack. From scoring Bethany and Restoration to producing Racks on Hundreds and Raise 'Em High, Alex has been quietly behind some of the most fun music in James's cinematic universe — and he got it all done in one session.

This episode covers the craft of music production, the real debate around AI in music and film, and the industry philosophy that keeps both of them moving: do what you love, protect your business, and never forget to take your baby to ballet under a fake age.

Key Topics

• How Raise 'Em High got recorded in 90 minutes — the karaoke-track-first workflow that saved the session
• Why the AI album cover almost killed James's very real country song
• Alex's time at LAMP, the Stargate-founded production school where he leveled up alongside 18-to-38-year-olds who did not get the Anchorman reference
• The Jacob Collier commencement speech at Berklee: the world doesn't need more great musicians, it needs more good people
• AI as a tool vs. AI as a replacement — from Opus Clip to acoustic guitar demos to angry email rewrites
• Why AI music is getting demonetized and what that means for real artists
• The drum machine parallel: every generation panics about the new thing and then builds new jobs around it
• The lo-fi beat market, Johan's 3,000 Spotify tracks, and working under Ramy Yacoub (producer of Hit Me Baby One More Time)
• Performing trombone at Tiny Desk with Denzel Curry, reggae fests, ska, Save Ferris, and top-40 bands
• Staying honest in a business full of wolves — and why you can't keep a lie straight at toddler ballet

James Kondelik — Pitfall, Evil Dead Summer Camp & The Bigfoot Pitch Trailer

Writer-director-editor James Kondelik sits down with James and BJ for a conversation spanning their shared history at The Asylum, the 14-year road to getting Pitfall into AMC theaters, and the pitches that keep him up at night — including a summer-camp Evil Dead reboot, a Cronenberg-style snake-hybrid body horror called The Slithering, and a Bigfoot movie built on Jack Links beef jerky commercials.

Key Topics

• Asylum origins: How James and his twin brother John reverse-engineered Airplane vs. Volcano from a title alone — same year Sharknado hit the schedule
• Pitfall's long road: 14 years of pitching, a fake pitch trailer cut from Wrong Turn footage, and a producer who called mid-May asking if he could shoot in August
• The spam folder deal: How checking his junk mail led to signing with a management company after they saw the Pitfall trailer
• Marketing muscle: 7–8 million trailer views across platforms, a publicist found at the grocery store, and James spotting the trailer at an actual AMC screening
• Help Me: His follow-up horror-comedy starring Virginia Gardner (Fall, Halloween 2018) and Adrian Grenier, produced with VMI
• Condemned: A $15M+ demon-action horror script James Bressack wrote that Kondelik has his eye on — probably needs to be shot in Bulgaria
• Evil Dead pitch: A summer-camp setting, a nerdy kid named Sam, Stranger Things vibes, boat propellers as weapons, and Bruce Campbell ideally involved in some capacity
• The Slithering: A Cronenberg-esque body horror about a man slowly turning into a snake — pitched relentlessly, reviewed with mixed results
• Found footage love: Raven Encounters, Hell House LLC, House of October Built, Sinister, and why Hardcore Henry made everyone dizzy
• Industry survival: Staying visible at The Asylum, the depression dip right before a dream release, and why the congratulations always come at the wrong moment
• Advice for filmmakers: Stay busy, stay in the mix, don't be too proud to take the job, and understand that endurance is the actual skill

Dani Abraham – Cops, Camels & a $7,300 Movie

Producer and co-director Dani Abraham sits down with James and BJ for a conversation that covers a police standoff on a Burbank set, a Birthright trip to Israel fueled by cheap tequila, and how a possessed board game shot in Dani's own apartment for $7,300 became Stupid Games — a PG-13 indie horror that landed on the CW, racked up Letterboxd reviews, and proved that $7,000 is basically the same as $0 when it gets your movie made.

Key Topics

• The 6:45 a.m. gun situation — four cop cars, a swapped license plate, and a first AD who still wrapped an hour early
• Birthright Israel origin story — how James and Dani met, camel rides, hangover hikes up Masada, and bottle service that cost less than the tip back home
• Making Stupid Games — a $7,300 budget, Dani's own apartment as the set, a Jumanji-meets-Game-of-Life concept with a demon, and co-director Nicholas Wendell's vision that got him a million-dollar budget next
• From Knowing Aaron to Meeting Marsha — Dani's unreleased 18-year-old Young Filmmakers Club feature found on an old hard drive, and her upcoming Meeting Marsha premiering at San Diego Out Festival
• Stupid Games one-year screening — still available on Tubi, CW app, and Amazon Prime
• Eric Roberts on everything — Jean-Claude Van Damme fanboying over him on the Darkness of Man set, Q-card mastery on Scissors, three movies in one day, and why he's the lifeblood of indie film
• Forget About It — James, BJ, and Dani in pre-production on Gordon Ressick's script, now reimagined as a puppet film
• Dani joins the slate — live on air, Dani agrees to help James pick next year's 12 filmmakers; DM @daniabe with your logline
• Advice for aspiring producers — make your movie; the stakes are only high in your head

Hana Mae Lee – MAGICK MTN. & Directing Her First Feature

Hana Mae Lee drops into the tracksuits to talk horror roots, her debut feature, and the scrappy, organic magic that happens when you give a powerhouse creative total freedom and a hard deadline. James is hearing most of this for the first time — he still hasn't watched a single frame.

Key Topics

• Horror origins: Nightmare on Elm Street at age six, graduating to The Tenant, The Evil Within, and Terrifier 2 — and why psychological horror still hits hardest
• Jump scares decoded: James breaks down the exact scoring formula that makes them work (and why it no longer works on him)
• MAGICK MTN. — Hana's debut directorial feature: a black-and-white, death-rock rock-and-roll fairy tale set in Laurel Canyon and Joshua Tree, with three interlacing stories, Aleister Crowley, Eva O, Super Heroines, Ross Williams, Lord Murk, and Cleopatra Records' deep catalog (17 tracks used)
• Making the film: crew of two (Hana + partner Hal Sutton), shot over 18 days, zero professional actors — architects, a fashion designer, a punk rocker — everyone a real friend with real IP
• Full creative control: James greenlit the project, was never shown a script, never recut a frame — and received the finished hard drive the day of this recording
• The Cleopatra Records deal: free access to the entire library, including six tracks from Anne Timyassui's band Voyeur, songs from Hana's brother's band Resistant Exists, and an original by actor Ben Price
• Hana's music in Boris Is Dead: her single "Weapon of Performance" (from debut album Atmospheric Paradigm) made it into the film — she found out it was staying at the premiere
• How James's micro-budget greenlight program works: pre-sold to distributors, director gets full creative control and the lion's share of the back end
• James's first film: My Pure Joy — $7,000, camera in one hand, boom in the other, two and a half hours long
• BJ and James's production companies: Robotic Donut (horror/action) and Bent Rest (LGBT-focused), with projects like Bears vs. Karen / Bears vs. Zombies and Forget About It (BJ's first voice-acting gay role)
• Hana's path into the industry: Elite Model Management rejection, Dragon Models and Talent, a Honda national commercial, Mr. Brightside and Hilary Duff music videos, then Mike and Molly, Pitch Perfect, and Workaholics all in the same month
• Playing villains: why it never feels like work — from The Babysitter to Sean Whalen's Swipe to A Company of Thieves (Onur Tukel)
• MAGICK MTN. premiere: World Premieres this September the 22nd at Fantastic Fest
• Advice for breaking in: slide into the DMs of filmmakers whose work you love — that's how Hana met Onur Tukel and how she and James connected

## Unique Chung | The Tracksuit Podcast Unique Chung — hair and makeup artist, influencer, trained actress, and founding member of the Dirtbag Crew — sits down with James and BJ for her very first podcast appearance. What starts as a warm reunion between set family quickly spirals into conspiracy theory deep-dives, a heartfelt origin story, and a frank breakdown of what really happens in the makeup chair. ### Key Topics - **How they all met** — the Mondrian pool party, GG Saul Guerrero, and the birth of the Dirtbag Crew at a monster truck rally - **Jim Carrey & the Mandela Effect** — James's theory that Jim Carrey single-handedly implanted false pop-culture memories via *The Mask*, *Ace Ventura*, *The Cable Guy*, and *In Living Color*; the Jimmy Kimmel Illuminati rant and whether the laugh track was faked - **Conspiracy corner** — CERN, the ice wall, hollow moon physics, black holes as a matrix on-ramp, and *The Whyfiles* fish - **Casting without auditions** — James breaks down why he never auditions actors, how watching a full performance beats four sides in a room, and the friendship fallout that happens when he doesn't hire someone - **The Workout & Complex Texas** — BJ on the pressure of hitting every mark with no second takes, shooting out with Kevin Dillon, and auditioning six (eight?) times for a role he didn't book - **Unique's origin story** — Loxa High School for the Arts (rival to James's Hamilton), a theater teacher who spotted her, the clinic waiting room moment that made her mom keep her, and why she wasn't named Cedric - **How she fell into makeup** — a church pageant, a natural-makeup hire, and a special-effects class she only took because theater was full - **The makeup chair as intelligence hub** — actors spilling everything, a wardrobe dog that got dropped and sent someone to the hospital, and why the makeup artist always knows the set's temperature before the director does - **Horror talk** — Chucky as a three-year-old introduction, *Pinocchio Unstrung*, *Obsession*, Backrooms, and why scary movies only fully hit in a packed theater - **Unique's dream role** — a murderer nobody suspects, possibly in a film called *Unique* - **Future plans** — app and invention ideas she won't say on mic, a makeup brand, a beauty school, and reopening her mom's boutique Ice Queen - **Fantastic Fest chaos** — a serial killer targeting chubby dudes in Austin, James sober-wrangling a drunk crew the night before his first-ever boxing match **Find Unique:** [@vain_vixen_makeup](https://www.instagram.com/vain_vixen_makeup/) on Instagram

## Augie Duke - Cabbages, Ghosts & Half-Quitting Augie Duke — actor, producer, and self-described "eepy" personality — joins James and BJ for a conversation that starts with cabbages being put on a breastfeeding chest at Fantastic Fest and somehow ends with a pitch for a medieval Die Hard shot in a Napa castle. Along the way they cover a decade of indie filmmaking, ghost encounters, and the very real art of the half-quit. **Key topics:** - How James cast Augie on *Blood Craft* (she looked like Fairuza Balk — that's literally it) and their ongoing campaign to actually get Fairuza Balk on a project - Making *The Workout* during COVID and the legendary Fantastic Fest premiere: David Lawrence, tipsy, holding cabbages - The *Yellow Jackets* PR error that gave Augie 15 minutes of IMDB fame for a show she was never on - *Hacked* — how Shane Brady and Emily Zercher turned a real wire-fraud nightmare into a revenge-comedy feature, with Chandler Riggs (*The Walking Dead*) as the hacker - *Morton Meets the Eye*, a whodunit musical that debuted at the Beverly Hills Film Festival - James's VHS horror film — shot with no crew, analog, as a deliberate antidote to AI-generated content - James's Fantastic Fest boxing match: a month of Golden Gloves training, professional sparring, and accidentally hitting too hard — the last fight night the festival ever held - Ghost stories: BJ's shadow figures at a San Francisco Hyatt, the Cecil Hotel's body-in-the-water-tower history, and Shannon's ice-cube message from beyond the fridge - Augie on self-doubt, quitting every day, and why making your own content is the real career advice - The pitch: medieval Die Hard in a castle, starring Augie Duke and Fairuza Balk

## Tom Malloy — Magic Castles, Film Markets & The Ant Theory Tom Malloy crashes the Tracksuit Pod (filling in for Brad Pitt, who shockingly could not make it) for a wide-ranging conversation about 30+ years of being an actor-writer-producer-distributor-magician in Hollywood. From his first movie *Graves End* shot guerrilla-style on the streets of Brooklyn with Oliver Stone attached, to running Glass House Distribution's 230-film catalog and now operating inside Shaked Berenson's Studio Dome across 12+ international markets, Tom is one of the most quietly prolific multi-hyphenates working in indie film. Tom also digs into the philosophy of staying in it — the ant theory, the mailman theory, grit over luck — and why Los Angeles is still the only place to be if you're serious. **Key topics:** - Tom's origin story: *Graves End* (Brooklyn streets, Oliver Stone, 1997), the agent who told him to pick one lane, and becoming the "pretty girl at the prom" as a producer who could raise money - *BankRoll* — the bestselling film finance book that launched filmmakingstuff.com and accidentally inspired Mike Flanagan's first feature - Glass House Distribution acquired by Studio Dome: going from 4 markets a year to 12+, doing deals in Mongolia, Malaysia, and Singapore while competitors retreated - Repping the Full Moon / Charles Band catalog (including Surrender Cinema's erotic films — and Mongolia's unexpected enthusiasm for them) - Why Sundance is a lottery ticket, not a distribution plan — and the real numbers behind festival movies that never get picked up - How international territories actually buy: Africa (family-friendly), Middle East and LGBT content, Europe vs. the US, the death of DVD revenue - The Nollywood detour: Nigeria's film industry, *I Do Not Come to You by Chance*, and satellites pointed at the sky - Tom's "Ant Theory" (Brian Regan's ants + film financing = never stop rebuilding), the mailman theory, and the book *Grit* - Why LA is still essential — the Nick Chartier / *Dallas Buyers Club* script-under-the-door story, and hiding that you know Mike Flanagan from your Rochester improv friends - Bringing kids Tyler and Ella to film markets, red carpets, and the set of *The Alphabet Killer* (Tyler as a newborn extra) - Martin Kove, Christa Locan, Sean Ferris — on the surreal moment when people you watched on screen start texting you - *Orge's Justice* — Tom's comedy film with improv partner Scott Baker, born from their extra work on *Anger Management* (Adam Sandler, Jack Nicholson) - *The Wicked of Oz* — Tom and James's horror Wizard of Oz collaboration, now on Tubi and Amazon - Where to find Tom: [@tommalloy](https://instagram.com/tommalloy) on Instagram and [filmmakingstuff.com](http://filmmakingstuff.com) for free lessons on film finance and distribution

## Bryan Koss – Seven Days, Mel Gibson & The Roomba Shot Cinematographer Bryan Koss — collaborator on *Fortress*, *Survive the Game*, *Hot Seat*, and *The Workout* — sits down with James and BJ to unpack the craft, chaos, and camaraderie behind making fast, real movies with big personalities on tiny schedules. ### Key Topics - **Shooting *Hot Seat* in seven days** — how the schedule kept shrinking from 12 days down to 7, why prep ("the seven Ps") was the only thing that saved them, and how Mel Gibson, Kevin Dillon, and Shannon Doherty showing up with 25-page days focused everyone's minds - **The 180-degree line** — James and Bryan's long-running disagreement explained for civilians, including when you're allowed (or obligated) to break it, and what Park Chan-wook does with it - **The Fortress kitchen Steadicam sequence** — one of James's favorite shots in any film he's directed, sacrificed a significant chunk of a 10-day schedule to get right - **The Workout's found-footage approach** — 15 cameras, zero respect for the line, placing every camera where a security camera or webcam would actually be, and the legendary Roomba shot Bryan never got to make - **The Soderbergh story** — Bryan as an uncredentialed background extra on *The Good German*, wandering out of a styrofoam building onto the live set, standing next to the monitor while George Clooney and Cate Blanchett filmed a scene, getting eyeballed by Soderbergh, and eventually getting screamed at by an AD for pulling out a telephoto lens - **Owning your own gear** — the pros and cons of building a full kit, how it opened doors early and occasionally stifled creative choices later - **The Klaus origin story** — Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski, a production office in New York, six weeks of being called the wrong name, and how an entire crew network across LA, Georgia, Puerto Rico, and the East Coast now calls each other Klaus - **Detroit pizza in Los Angeles** — the Detroit Pizza Society, square pans from auto-shop drip trays, and a valley field trip James is apparently now committed to - **UFO sightings** — Bryan and a childhood neighbor, a slow-moving object over Michigan, reconnecting years later and both immediately knowing what the other was about to say - **The air fryer incident** — Puerto Rico, day one with Bruce Willis, cracked pepper chicken sausages, and what happens when a Costco run meets a live take - **Kevin Dillon on set** — why he's a number-one worth having, how his energy affects the whole crew, and the CVS encounter that counts as their third collaboration - **Bryan's path in** — finance degree, Florida real estate, a two-day filmmaking seminar in a Howard Johnson conference room, PA work on big-budget commercials, and bringing coffee to DP Darius Khondji 

Jesse V. Johnson — Action, Authenticity & Watching the Actor's Face Jesse V. Johnson — action director, former stuntman and PA, and the man behind *Savage Dog*, *Avengement*, *Accident Man*, and *Thieves Highway* — sits down with James and BJ for a deep, craft-first conversation about what three decades in the trenches of low-budget action filmmaking actually teaches you. Jesse traces his path from running cables as a teenage PA on Helena Bonham Carter's second film to doing second unit for Spielberg on *Lincoln*, Branagh on *Thor*, and P.T. Anderson on *The Master* — and why those years of enforced unemployment beside the masters were worth more than all his early directing credits combined. Key topics - **The actor roster:** Scott Adkins, Aaron Eckhart, Stephen Bauer (Scarface stories, Ray Donovan, and the heartbreak of scheduling killing the perfect casting), John Malkovich refusing to eat, Ray Park demanding one-take scenes, and Christopher Lee on the set of *Young Indiana Jones* - **Working beside the greats:** Spielberg shooting the Battle of Spotsylvania Ferry with 1,000+ extras and moving on after one take regardless; Kenneth Branagh's notebook method and treating a Thor script like Shakespeare; P.T. Anderson keeping Joaquin Phoenix on a stool facing a corner between takes and the real 1930s museum toilet that got destroyed - **Practical effects philosophy:** why real blanks change an actor's eyes, what Isaac Florentine learned from Sergio Leone's close-ups, and the Gene Kelly trick Jesse stole for *Accident Man* (light shoes = the audience follows the feet) - **The road to *Savage Dog*:** three years unemployable after a black-and-white passion project, the 1942 Jeep with no cup holder, and the roadside moment that reset his entire relationship to the work - **Thieves Highway hitting #1 on Hulu** with zero publicity spend — and *Above and Below* (Antonio Banderas, sharks, a boat) coming next - **Mentoring Luke LaFontaine** on his first feature (*Mexicali*), Jesse's son Aster as script supervisor, and the value of building a set around people you trust - **Advice for directors:** read the masters (Raoul Walsh, William Wyler, Howard Hawks), stop calling it content, and understand that movies are an extension of 2,000-year-old Greek theatre

Nicolas Wendl shot a horror feature in his co-director's apartment for $7,000 and it ended up on the CW.

Nicolas (director of STUPID GAMES, Chapman grad, half French / half German) sits down with James and BJ to break down how he and co-director Danny turned a no-budget apartment shoot into a movie that trended in Tubi's top five horror titles, out-marketed studio campaigns with nothing but their own TikToks, and became the calling card that got him his next feature.

Also: why every effect in the movie is in-camera, the magnets hidden under a board game, the real reason for the green M&Ms, Shannon Doherty's first-ever on-screen death, practical effects vs. aging CGI, a shark-movie bucket list, the dolphin HGTV pitch nobody asked for — and five straight minutes of Jim Carrey being personally responsible for the Mandela Effect.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

— WATCH STUPID GAMES —
Streaming on Tubi and the CW · rent or buy on Prime · also
Or just Google "stupid games" — the marketing worked that well.

— FOLLOW NICOLAS —
@nicolaswendl on all socials

— THE TRACKSUIT PODCAST —
Hosted by James Cullen Bressack & BJ Hendricks
Produced by Bent Wrist Productions

## Jeremy O'Keefe — Casting, Directing & the Bold Choice

Jeremy O'Keefe — casting director, producer, director, acting coach, and tracksuit convert — sits down with James and BJ to pull back the curtain on how the indie film casting machine really works. From assembling the stacked ensemble on *Boris is Dead* to landing Anthony Hopkins for his feature casting debut *Eyes in the Trees*, Jeremy breaks down the philosophy behind great auditions, why actors sabotage themselves by over-planning, and what it feels like to finally step back into the director's chair after 15 years for his passion project *The Avoidant*.

**Key topics:**
- Casting *Boris is Dead*: targeting 90s names, writing personal letters to actors, and why almost every role was a recognizable face
- The Mindy Sterling "sadly passed" email incident that convinced everyone she was dead
- Jimmy Duvall — 12 years of friendship finally landing in the right role
- Jeremy's Meisner-adjacent acting technique: getting out of your brain, into your gut, and making your scene partner matter
- Why over-rehearsed auditions tank on set — and how James spots it by throwing adjustments mid-read
- BJ's Glee audition: nailed the choreography, lost the role to his own tattoos
- Jeremy's shirtless Rallies Burger commercial audition dancing to Nelly — his most humiliating moment
- In-person vs. self-tape: why bringing actors back into the room had them crying with gratitude
- Landing Anthony Hopkins for *Eyes in the Trees* and learning the producing side of star attachments
- *The Avoidant* — Adam Goldberg leads; shooting in Delaware; Jeremy directing for the first time since 2011
- The Dregs (dir. Connor Martin) and chasing Freddie Prinze Jr. across two sitcoms
- James's 100+ tracksuit collection, COVID origin story, and the Emmy tux incident
- LA Metro life, Waymo shoutouts, and how Silver Lake is starting to feel like Astoria
- Networking events, giving vs. getting, and why being useful is the real career strategy

Kay Day — writer, director, actress, musician, Coyote Ugly veteran, Gloppy the gorilla, and the only person to escape a Brooklyn satanic naked shroom party by borrowing a stranger's clothes — takes over a host seat for a full Tracksuit first. James and BJ dig into her $7,000 debut found-footage horror film *There's a Man Over There*, five rounds of rehab (she hit on the EMT en route to number five), eight years of punk rock chaos at Arlene's Grocery in NYC, the viral Bowser thirst trap, ghost stories that actually scared us, and a remarkably open conversation about living with bipolar disorder. Plus: the satanic Brooklyn basement, Gloppy's origin story, Bears vs. Karen, and the Coney Island acid-trip movie she's already writing.

Find Kay Day: @kraykayday on Instagram

## Peter Jae — Wrenches, Van Damme & Finding Your Voice Peter Jae — actor, stunt performer, K-Town institution, and the guy who carried The Workout on his back — rolls into the Tracksuit for a wide-ranging conversation about grinding through New York, breaking into Hollywood, and what it actually feels like to finally be the lead. **Key topics covered:** - Growing up in the Bronx, LaGuardia High School for the Arts, and ditching menswear design after reading *The Alchemist* on the subway - The New York hustle: bouncing at night, student films during the day, going days without sleep to feed a calling - How the death of two close friends pushed him to move to L.A. — and learning to drive at 28 as the world's worst Asian stereotype on the road - *K-Town Cowboys* — the viral web series that accidentally became a voice for Asian American representation before Asian content existed - **Darkness of Man** (Hulu): playing the main villain, meeting JCVD for the first time mid-monologue with Todd standing in, and shooting the final scene on day one - **The Workout** (Tubi): being handed 16 pages and a lead role, the wrench moment in the strip club scene, 20-camera setups, and the closed-down hospital Manhunt sessions - The April Fool's hospital bed prank that cost him friendships - Josh Kelly double-dipping between *General Hospital* and *The Workout* on the same days - **Black Hat** with Michael Mann and Chris Hemsworth: nearly losing his teeth on a table stunt, and Thor giving him a hug in the K-Town parking lot in front of everyone who doubted him - **Olympus Has Fallen**, meeting stunt legend Simon from *Best of the Best*, and how the stunt world runs on relationships - James training with a Golden Gloves coach for the Fantastic Fest boxing match and cornering with a UFC fighter - Working with Mel Gibson, Kevin Dillon (who knows everyone's lines), and Shannon Doherty on *Hot Seat* - Peter's original drama script inspired by the Bronx, and why he wants to write the stories he needed as a kid - Advice to aspiring actors: know your authentic voice, don't get lost in the smoke, and remember you're playing pretend for a living - *The Workout* officially turned a profit — checks incoming

RJ Cooper — Osmosis, Oners, and Editing Three Movies at Once

James's longtime editing partner and secret weapon RJ Cooper finally sits down in front of a camera. A USC film school grad who started out designing posters for Batman Begins and Spider-Man, RJ has cut the bulk of James's directing filmography — Survive the Game, Hot Seat, Fortress, Darkness of Man, The Workout, Boris is Dead, and I Have Proof — and the two have developed a creative shorthand that borders on telepathy. This one gets into the real craft: how editors read footage, fight for the film alongside the director, and keep the heart of a movie alive when producers start circling.

Key topics & highlights:

• How RJ and James developed their editing language across seven-plus films — and why the first cut keeps getting closer to what James actually wanted
• The frame-blending trick born on The Workout and the Star Wars–style wipe transitions RJ snuck into Boris is Dead over James's objections (and won)
• Hot Seat's unique challenge: building fake computer screens for Kevin Dillon to react to and fighting for every stock helicopter shot
• Why The Workout's extreme multi-camera chaos (15 cameras, cell phones, angles James didn't know he had) ended up changing the way both of them shoot and cut forever
• Editing three feature films simultaneously — and how he keeps the worlds straight
• Reading a director's signature: James = performance + action + dark humor; Matt Eskandari = relationships; John Keyes = women against impossible odds
• Actors who gave him gold he had to leave on the cutting room floor: Antonio Banderas and Alice Eve
• RJ's most panic-inducing job: Hot Seat, with its blank monitor problem
• His first feature: Game of Assassins shot in China with Bai Ling
• Three Bruce Willis films with Matt Eskandari
• Pre-production involvement on Boris is Dead — hired before cameras rolled, suggesting shots and knowing the film needed heavy needle drops from day one
• Music as craft: temp tracks (Dark Knight, Interstellar, always Sicario), playing the edit like an instrument, and using his wife as a fresh-eyes test audience
• AI in post: Night Driver as a real-world test case, AI ADR via ElevenLabs, the color-space limitations of AI-generated visuals right now, and why storytelling with a point of view is the only real moat
• RJ's directorial ambitions: sci-fi (loves Denis Villeneuve), Westerns (already collecting sound effects just in case), and James's on-the-record promise to produce his first feature
• James's $7,000 first-film program and the indie model (No Stars, $200K budget, $4.5M at AMC with no P&A)
• UFOs, Tesla life, Gerald the Dolphin, and alien cinema (Blurp 3 is apparently the masterpiece)

Find RJ: rjcooperfilms.com | @rjcooperfilms on Instagram

James brings his big sister Samantha Sellars onto the podcast — curriculum manager by day, BookTok evangelist by night — and the result is an hour of family chaos: the graduation purse cigarette ambush, a toddler-James getting tricked by Toy Story walkie talkies, how Sam accidentally introduced her boyfriend to extreme M/M torture fiction, and whether 300 years of alien luxury living is worth getting eaten at the end.

Watch on Youtube: Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Creators & Guests

• BJ Hendricks - Host
• James Cullen Bressack - Host

Kelly Lynn Ryder -  (actress/producer, Deadlock, Complex Texas, The Leader) sits down with James and BJ for a wide-ranging conversation about building a career entirely on her own terms — no reps, no fallback plan, no safety net, and apparently no Die Hard. Kelly and James have worked elbow-to-elbow producing Complex Texas and The Leader (a Heaven's Gate biopic that just got into Tribeca), and this episode is part industry masterclass, part warm roast of someone who sprinted to South Georgia at 5:36 p.m. for a last-minute Bruce Willis recast. 

Key Topics

• From quantity to quality: why Kelly went from saying yes to 95% of jobs to producing her own projects — and how cultivating financing relationships became her leverage 
• The Deadlock call: getting phoned by director Jared Cohon at 5:36 p.m. and driving to South Georgia overnight for a three-and-a-half-week lead role opposite Bruce Willis — while her mom read the script to her on Bluetooth 
• Bruce Willis from Friends: Kelly's now-legendary confession that she knew Willis primarily as a recurring guest on Friends, not from Die Hard 
• Slotherhouse: the killer-sloth Tubi movie where an American sorority house doubled for the Serbian royal palace 
• The first Deadline mention: sitting at Grumpy Grizzly coffee shop in upstate New York with her grandmother when the notification hit — and sobbing into her cup 
• Producing Complex Texas: first full producing credit alongside James, including James knocking himself out cold taking a baseball bat to the head (one take, one piece of sugar glass, one dented car)
• Kevin Dillon on set: powering through illness for every take, running lines with the full cast, staying for everyone's coverage — and Kelly not knowing who Johnny Drama was until halfway through filming 
• The crab bucket theory: why success creates enemies and why you have to build your own table 
• The Leader at Tribeca: the Heaven's Gate biopic Kelly co-financed and acts in, with Joel David Moore's Balcony Nine and director Michael Gallagher 
• Wes Craven's advice: the people who make it aren't the most talented — they're the ones who don't quit 
• James's knuckle tattoo: deliberately making himself unemployable in restaurants to remove every possible exit from filmmaking 
• The go bag: always packed by the door since Deadlock, ready to drive to Georgia at any moment 
• Advice for aspiring actors: outlast everyone, say yes to the rooms the universe opens, and remove every escape route

David Lawrence — Cancer, Cannes, and a Fake Australian Accent

David Josh Lawrence (actor, writer, producer, acquisitions at Studio Dome / Bloodstream TV) pulls up a chair in the most eventful tracksuit session yet. What starts as a conversation about his self-produced passion project *Lincoln Must Die* quickly spirals into a deeply honest — and deeply funny — account of how he actually got here: surviving non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at 16, becoming a firefighter in San Bernardino, finding acting through exposure therapy, and learning to write scripts because the 2007 WGA strike shut everything else down.

Topics & highlights:

• Lincoln Must Die — how David pitched the story from nothing at Cannes, waited five years, and finally got it made in a month with indie collaborators Leanne Bauer, David Mitchell Park, and Mario Garcia Duenas
• Cancer at 16 — non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, the Make-A-Wish negotiation (Jackie Chan was busy, Jet Li was busy, Britney Spears was apparently doable), and why surviving it made everyone else's excuses hard to tolerate
• Firefighting & exposure therapy — how anxiety attacks on medical calls in San Bernardino led him to a therapist who told him he was actually just an actor
• The Australian accent arc — faking a full Aussie identity to book a role, accidentally getting signed by an agent, booking Bundaberg rum and Outback Steakhouse commercials, and the moment it all unraveled at a client mixer
• Breaking into distribution — filling in for a no-show at the American Film Market and getting offered an acquisitions job by the end of the day; working with mentor Tom Malloy
• Why you shouldn't put your indie film on IMDb too early — a genuinely useful breakdown of how festival dating kills your international sales window
• Complex Texas, I Have Proof, and the buddy-cop-with-a-monkey movie — the ongoing collaborations between David, James, and BJ
• Weed brownies, alien theories, and the case for just going out and making your movie already

Jessica Russo — Sales Agent, Producer, Hat Assassin Jessica Russo (VMI Worldwide / Vantage Media) joins the tracksuit table for a genuinely rare perspective: the sales and distribution side of indie filmmaking.

She and James have collaborated on a string of films — including Darkness of Man (starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, currently on Hulu) — and BJ just wrapped The Night Driver with her. So the war stories are real, the industry takes are sharp, and yes, the dolphin kidnapping story is discussed at length. 

### Key Topics 

• How the indie market has shifted — quality over quantity, the death of easy pre-sales, and why the financial model for indie films has fundamentally changed post-strikes 
• The Van Damme hat story — how Jess saved the *Darkness of Man* poster on day one of filming by killing James's fedora
• Library acquisitions & consolidation — Netflix/Paramount, Gravitas/Shout, Chicken Soup for the Soul/Redbox/Screen Media, and what it all means for indie filmmakers
• AVOD vs. SVOD — why ads came full circle and what Tubi's rise means for the market
• What actually gets greenlit — script, team, name, and financials that make sense in today's landscape
• Delivery schedules — the unglamorous paperwork mountain that filmmakers are never taught about in film school
• Film school vs. real-world training — why internships and networking beat most curricula
• The Sex Pistols documentary — Billy Idol cameos, Glenn Matlock, and a Netflix sale 
• Jess's first producing credit — Awake (Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Francesca Eastwood), shot in Oklahoma during tornado season
• Crystals, tarot, D&D, and Harry Potter — the full nerd profile of the most organized person at VMI
• Aliens, Mayan temples, elongated heads, and one architect allegedly kidnapped by dolphins (James later discovers it was an April Fools story — BJ chooses to believe it anyway)
• Advice for aspiring filmmakers — read a delivery schedule, do an internship, go to networking events, be a good person 

> Want a delivery schedule? Reach out to Jess and tell her you're coming from the Tracksuit Pod.

Today’s guest is our good friend, the incredibly talented actor, singer, and artist, Justin Cornwell!  If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to hit that SUBSCRIBE button and leave a comment below! Justin sits down to share wild stories from his decade-long run working consecutively in network and studio television. He talks about his nerve-wracking audition process for Spike Lee's Chi-Raq, improvising a scene with Dave Chappelle and Wesley Snipes, and acting alongside Tom Hardy in the upcoming Netflix film Havoc. He also reflects on starring in Training Day with the late Bill Paxton and surviving intense 16-hour days on set.  Plus, we dive into Justin's hidden talents—from his killer karaoke skills and spot-on impressions to his jaw-dropping portrait art. We also discuss his new indie film Million Dollar Bet (releasing on April 30th), the crazy world of prediction gambling apps like Polymarket and Kalshi, and his dream of starring in a triumphant biopic. 

Welcome to the Tracksuit Podcast! 

Hosts James Cullen Bressack and BJ Hendricks kick off episode one with actor Jesse Kove - son of Karate Kid legend Martin Kove - who showed up late, sans tracksuit, and immediately made himself at home. They cover Jesse's career in action films, working alongside Jon Voight and Kelsey Grammer in The Last Firefighter, his playable character in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the upcoming Boris Is Dead, peptide therapy, men's health, ditching his smartphone for a flip phone, and his work with Wings of Rescue - flying hundreds of dogs to no-kill shelters across the country.

Click here to view the episode transcript.
Creators & Guests

• James Cullen Bressack - Host
• BJ Hendricks - Host
• James Rundquist - Producer

🐾 Support Wings of Rescue: wingsofrescue.org 
📸 Follow Jesse Kove: @jessekove
📲 Follow us: @thetracksuitpodcast