Um, so what got you into it and what was it like, you know, having to buy film and shooting on a film?

Yeah, now we, we, we really can talk about, you know, for film geeks, um, and film production, um, aficionados.

Yes.

Uh, we started, uh, John DeBello is really the person that wanted to make films.

And so I think after, maybe after 10th grade, he had made a, a, a film mostly on his own with everybody in the 10th grade [laughs] in it.

And Steve and I, uh, were in it as well.

And then we kind of partnered with John and said, "Let's do...

the film, film stock isn't cheap, right?

Yep.

And people could bring movies home.

And, and, The big studios in the early days of VCR did not want to release their movies on video.

They thought it would undermine their market for television sales and for repeat showings in theaters and so forth.

A lot of studios refuse to allow their titles to go to videotape.

We said, what the heck? So here you are in the early days of video stores and you go in a video store and maybe there's a hundred titles in there and we're one of them.

And the cover art is so, between the title itself and the cover art, which is iconic now, people would pick it up and say, you know, what's that all about? And then thirdly, weirdly enough, there was a television cartoon called Muppet Babies based on the Muppets.

Like what advice would you give to a buddying filmmaker or writer to get into the game?

We

did a short kind of a, I don't know, eight, nine minute short film in college on the idea.

And then after college, State Peace, John DiBello, myself, and a few other partners formed a film company in San Diego.

That's where we're from.

We've known each other since eighth grade.

And we made sports films and TV commercials, things of that sort.

And we decided to try to make a feature film because, you know, you're 23 and what the heck, you know, nobody's telling you you can't.

Did you find that or any other parts of the kind of modern filmmaking to be freeing or enhanced your creativity on set?

[laughs]

...

I'd done, uh, Jerry Potter, Larry Potter.

I was that close before I gave up on that one.

And, uh, then I said, "Oh, let's write a movie." [laughs] So the, um, the idea was originally that, uh, you know, back in, back in my, uh, youth days, which was in the 20th century, the, uh, Saturday afternoons were, on television, were the dead zone where they played, uh, um, Tarzan movies and, um, old science fiction films and cheap Japanese, um, monster movies.

And I just, uh, we were already making, uh, films with, uh, my partners Steve Peace and John DeBello, just little Super 8 movies and- I, I thought, you know, why don't we make fun of these, uh, Japanese monster movies, and, uh, have something that's so pointlessly, uh, harmless for people to be afraid of that it would be ridiculous, uh, as a parody, and that was Tomatoes.

... at Toys "R" Us.

Yeah.

How did you initially come up with the original idea?

You're asking me to remember something from 50 years ago.

Longer ago than most of your listeners are alive.

The I started making films in high school with a couple of friends, John DiBello and Steve Peace and Mike Grant.

And we just, you know, for fun.

Those were the days of Super 8, long before video cameras.

And they were silent because Super 8 didn't have sound in those days.

ever expect that to happen? What was it about that time that you're like, we need another one?