Billy Goodrum

There’s Something About Mary — he gave me the script. They sent me the script. And I read the script and I didn’t think it was that funny. Because so much of it’s visual humor, like the scene where he zips up the Franks and Beans and the whole bit. I read that scene and I’m like, I don’t know how that’s gonna be funny. But it was hilarious. It was like one of the funniest scenes.

Chris Mailander

My guest today is a Hollywood composer. His filmography is insane. It includes There’s Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber, Dumb and Dumber 2, The Three Stooges, Shallow Hal, Me, Myself, and Irene. And the list goes on and on. He’s worked with some of the major studios from Universal to Warner Brothers to DreamWorks and a multitude of others.

I wanted to talk with him today about two dimensions of his craft, one of which is how he creates an experience for an audience, which fascinates me because people don’t understand through one dimension of learning, but rather we have to find ways to influence how they perceive, react, and think, how they emote, how they start to identify with a character, how they start to own a storyline.

And our guest today is gonna talk about that in the context of producing a film, making a film, and the sound that goes with it to amplify the story. My guest today is Billy Goodrum. Billy.

Billy Goodrum

Hey, well thanks for stopping by, Chris. I’m glad you could. That’s quite the buildup. Yeah, appreciate it.

Chris Mailander

We today are here in Billy’s studio. So this is where the magic happens. So it’s a privilege to be here. I’m thrilled that you are going to bring us into the inner sanctum of Billy.

Billy Goodrum

Yeah, this is where I spend all my time by myself writing music because that’s kind of part of the job description. But you do spend a lot of time by yourself in a collaborative way with other — you’re working with other people by yourself so often.

And then, instance, like I’ll be here and I’ll write some music and then I’ll mock it up on the computer and then I’ll decide, well, we need, you know, we need some live strings or we need a horn player. We need people, so I’ll go and work with other people in that regard.

I’ve had a very fortunate career. It’s not easy to break into this business.

Chris Mailander

Tell me the genesis of that. How did you break into the business?

Billy Goodrum

How did I break into the business? Well, I went to Berklee College of Music and got a degree in music, which gave me all the tools I needed. But I moved to Los Angeles thinking, OK, this is what I’ve got to do to make something happen.

And I do believe that because there’s really, you can be more remote now with the internet, but basically Los Angeles, New York, Nashville — those are the big music cities where people are funneling a lot of money into music.

So I moved to Los Angeles and to start to make some money I started working in art departments. I had a friend that was also from North Carolina that had gone out there and become a well-known production designer and art director. And he took me under his wing kind of and I started working in art departments.

Peter Farrelly was getting ready to make Dumb and Dumber. And he came over to this friend’s house — Sidney Bartholomew was his name — and began to describe what he wanted for Dumb and Dumber and wondering if Sid could deliver it.

And I’m sitting there in the meeting. I’ve been doing some art for some commercials and different things with Sid at that point. So Peter Farrelly says to Sid — says, well, now I need this dog van. I want it to be covered with like, carpet or something. I don’t know, but it can’t be too good. It’s got to look like a couple of idiots made it in their backyard.

So we were like, we’re your guy. So we built the dog vans. We built two identical ’cause they were, they were shooting in Rhode Island and Colorado. One of them ended up in like a museum in Berlin or something.

Chris Mailander

Oh, you’re kidding.

Billy Goodrum

Yeah, temporarily I think it’s back in — one of them ended up in Bobby Farrelly’s backyard. But so we made those and I was working in that.

So I continued to work in the art department and I was sweeping up one day at the end of a shoot and we were in Griffith Park in Los Angeles. We’d spent the day spraying foam on the pine trees so it would look like Aspen, Colorado. Got it. Look like snow, all that.

So I was sweeping up at the end of the day and Peter walked over to me and says, hey, Billy, someone told me you’re a music guy. He’s like, give me a song, I’ll put it in the movie.

Chris Mailander

No kidding.

Billy Goodrum

Yeah. And so my friend, Sidney Bartholomew from Tarboro, North Carolina, we wrote a song called Two Foot a Butt Crack, which was a far cry from my graduating with honors from Berklee College.

Chris Mailander

You got the Peter Farrelly Columbia kid and you got the Berklee music school with honors and you guys are making Dumb and Dumber and Two Foot a Butt Crack.

Billy Goodrum

Yeah, yeah. Classy. Yeah, but you got, know, I think with Peter, it’s actually a very smart movie in a way, and it really hits the bullseye of what it’s shooting for. Right. And that’s a success.

You know, with a comedy, the one thing about a comedy is you don’t have to wonder if it works or if it’s good or not. If it’s a very dramatic film with a lot of angst and passion, right, it might touch some people, it might touch other people. But if you go into a movie theater and it’s a comedy and people are laughing, then you’ve won. You’ve won. And if you go in and they’re not, it’s a problem.

Chris Mailander

Give me the sense, I mean, this is a classic film that’s gonna go down in the ages, is one of the leading comedic films of that point in time. I think it really helped to define the Farrelly brothers in terms of their style, their genre, their sense of comedy and how they did it. And it’s slapstick, is toilet humor, it’s brought to life. They had some great actors, obviously, that really made a career out of it.

Give me a sense of what it sounds like. Two Feet of…

Billy Goodrum

OK, well, since we were giving it a vibe, we call it Two Foot a Butt Crack, the song.

Chris Mailander

OK.

Billy Goodrum

Two Foot a Butt Crack was all I did see
Wrong end of the repair man was looking back at me
He jumped out the window as I walked through the door
I saw his repair cover all laying on the floor

Chris Mailander

That’s awesome.

Billy Goodrum

So it’s, I mean, it’s an instant hit, right? Yeah. And in the movie, the version that’s in the movie, I didn’t sing it, a guy named Bruce Greenwood, who was a very great — look him up, Google him — Bruce Greenwood is a very great dramatic actor. Played Admiral Pike in the Star Trek reboots with Chris Pine and all that.

And we went over to his house one day, we’d written it and we went over to his house and recorded it. Sent it to Peter and he’s like, great.

Chris Mailander

And I just read it — fascinated also by how these things come together: that you meet Peter in a meeting, you’re doing art, you’re helping sweep up, you’re putting foam on trees out at Griffith Park. And then all of a sudden you find a singer who’s a character actor, a leading character actor in a sense. How these things, these strings come along as part of that.

Billy Goodrum

Yeah, I think…

It’s kind of synchronicity, you know? You know, there is something to it. I think it happens when you put yourself out there. Sometimes when you take a risk — like I moved to Los Angeles with very little money, I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do.

I did have the advantage of knowing this guy, Sid, who had been my art teacher in boarding school. And he’d gone, he’d quit the — he well, he was like dead… Dead Poets Society, he lasted one year in the job. And then he moved to New York and then to Los Angeles and did things and so just a few years later we called up.

But that was part of the synchronicity too. He came and did a workshop in Charlotte where I had moved back to after graduating. And I saw him and I called him a month or so later and I said, hey, Sid, when are you gonna come back again? He goes, that’s not the question. His question is when are you gonna move to Los Angeles? Because you’re talented and you know you’re gonna stay there and you’re gonna end up playing Jim Croce songs in some steakhouse somewhere if you’re not careful.

Which isn’t a terrible thing either. But he said, as a matter of fact, I’m getting ready to direct a kids special and can you write some music that sounds like Dave Grusin’s Mountain Dance and send it to me.

So I stayed up all night, recorded it, played it for him over the phone. ’Cause this was, you know, and he said I couldn’t send him an MP3 in 93. And he said, great, get a ticket. Come on out.

Awesome. So that, and so that kind of… But you know, I believe this and I know, I know we’ve talked about this before — power of showing up, know, right. I think that, my going out there and also getting a job, being willing to sweep up, you know, because that got me in the game. You I wasn’t, you know, the starting linebacker, but I was the water boy. But it got me in the game and it got me to meet people. And I’m a firm believer in that, showing up and just getting yourself in the game somehow, you know.

Chris Mailander

Awesome. Yeah. That’s great. So that journey then continued to your working primarily as still in the art department or your style converting over as a composer, a film composer.

Billy Goodrum

Good question. I began at that point writing songs. I was also doing some session work here and there.

Peter’s and Bobby’s next film was Kingpin and I wrote a song for that and it was on the soundtrack album and that got me a deal at A&M Records. And so that was huge. But once again, it’s showing up.

They called me into the office at A&M and they said, OK, it’s between you and another band to get this last spot on this soundtrack album. Soundtrack albums were a big deal back then. Right.

Said, but they’re being weird about it. The guy told me, the A&R guy, he told me, he said, know, he said they’re worried that they’re selling out, they’re worried that they’re not being true to their vision or it’s not gonna be a good deal for them somehow. And he says, what do you think?

And I said, where do I sign? Because any deal is a good deal. They’re going to pay me money. Then my representatives got a record deal out of it for me. And so it worked out pretty well.

Chris Mailander

That’s awesome. Yeah. And then you’ve continued to you have always continued for several decades to do music with the Farrelly brothers and the various projects that they have coming out in addition to other directors, other films, other projects.

Billy Goodrum

Yeah, a lot of other projects, a lot of other films. I’ve done, I think, 17 songs for the Farrelly brothers for their movies, so that’s a lot. Sure.

And I just gave Pete some songs for his new movie a couple months ago. Something. Yeah, it’s a new movie called Balls Up he’s working on right now.

Chris Mailander

Always classy.

But you know, in the meantime, he won an Oscar for Green Book, right. But yeah, you balance it out a little bit. So I sent him some songs.

Billy Goodrum

I was out there in December before the fires. But and I sent him some songs for this new movie — it’s Mark Wahlberg and Paul Walter Hauser and Benjamin Bratt. It’s great cast. Very funny. It’s going to be very… balance it out.

Chris Mailander

So let’s about collaboration. How does that work with Peter or other, you know, other directors that you work with, but do they ask for an idea? Do they send you a clip? Do they articulate a vision or do you create something based on what you know? How does it work with Farrelly?

Billy Goodrum

Well, sometimes it’s gone different ways. For one, the butt crack song. We didn’t know how it would fit into the film, but we knew it was funny. It was comedy unto its own.

And it had a bouncy, it had the right tempo, it’s up tempo, it’s not gonna drag anything down, it’s gonna push it along. So we wrote it, we submitted it, we crossed our fingers, and it got in.

Kingpin, I sent Pete, I think five — he said, give me some songs — and so I sent him five songs. And I almost didn’t put that one on the album, it’s probably my most popular song.

He picked a song that fit a certain scene with him. A movie like The Heartbreak Kid. I wrote something specifically along those lines. You know, a guy that gets married and goes to, on his honeymoon and meets his dream girl on his honeymoon.

Chris Mailander

Yes, the classic. Does he give you a thumbnail or does he give you the script or does he give you a concept? What are you working with?

Billy Goodrum

Like for instance… It varies. It varies. It varies.

For instance, OK, so There’s Something About Mary, he gave me the script. They sent me the script. And I read the script, and I didn’t think it was that funny. Because so much of it’s visual humor, like the scene where he zips up the Franks and Beans and the whole bit. I read that scene and I’m like, I don’t know how that’s gonna be funny. But it was hilarious. It was like one of the funniest scenes.

I mean, it’s still not very quoted, seen Frank Sinatra, but and so I wrote this song, The Way. It’s the way you look and the way you walk. It’s the way you touch me and the way you say nothing.

And that’s the end credit song for the film.

Chris Mailander

Yeah, beautiful.

Billy Goodrum

Yeah, he really used that. And so different things.

And then other films like Green Book, I’m the wrong fit for that. And it was a period piece, so there were no songs to be written for that.

Another movie, wacky, wacky movie that Peter was involved in — wasn’t his movie per se, but… was Movie 43 where I did a ton of music for that for different directors.

And then film scoring is a whole nother arena. I… well songs, and a lot of people, especially in the 90s, and still use a lot of songs in their films to kind of move the film along, score the film in a way. They’ll put a romantic song under a romantic scene. They’ll put different music at different times.

Chris Mailander

What way? Tell me about that.

Billy Goodrum

Nighttime music, a little more subtle, something like that, some chill elements to it.

But scoring is, you know, scoring is the background music in a film. The music with no lyrics, it’s not a song and it’s written specifically for the film. And ideally, it’s a voice unto itself that tells you something about the movie that you’re not seeing and the dialogue doesn’t reveal. That’s hard.

Mean, the best score, some composers will tell you the best scores are ones that people don’t notice.

Chris Mailander

Really?

Billy Goodrum

Yeah. I mean, obviously there’s different types. There’s action movies where you want a big score. There’s like John Williams, Star Wars, where different characters have their own themes so that you identify heavily with them and it defines them. Right. You know, Darth Vader’s theme defines him in those movies. Right.

The approach can be different and sometimes you want to accentuate what you’re already seeing and that’s like an action movie. So you have heavy drums and you have different things going that make it exciting and really motion, forward motion.

Then, that’s, some people used to call that Mickey mousing where you’re like a cartoon, you’re writing exactly to what’s happening on the screen.

But sometimes you can have a scene that’s kind of somebody’s running but you hear this, you know, maybe a sad thing and you know they’re struggling and you know they’re struggling with something that goes counter to what you see on the screen.

Now these days when I get a film, I generally get a temp track with it, which means the director and the editor have worked together and they’ve taken music from other movies and put it in under the film so it makes it great for the editor because then he can feel the rhythm and then the you know then the composer I get the film and I hear what they’ve temped to and I was like OK this is kind of what they want.

Chris Mailander

So you need to keep that cadence, that emotion, that feel, but create something that’s new in a room.

Billy Goodrum

Yeah, and that’s a tall order. Because people, they have a thing called temp love. People get very attached to the temp track, is the temporary score.

And then also too, sometimes it’ll be maybe an indie film with not a huge budget and they’ll use the score from a hundred million dollar film.

Chris Mailander

They got John Williams working on it.

Billy Goodrum

So you’ve got this situation where you have to write. Yeah.

Chris Mailander

That’s interesting. So do you see the film a lot of times? Like today, will they send you the rough cut of the film or even a tight cut of the film with a temp underneath it?

Billy Goodrum

Yeah, OK, so…

Chris Mailander

How finished is the product by the time you get it?

Billy Goodrum

When I get it to work on, they’ve usually locked picture. That means it is done. They’ve done all the edits they’re gonna do.

Ideally. Then sometimes they might have a test screening and go back in and say, well, you know what, we’re gonna shorten this scene. So can you rewrite the music to make it a shorter? It needs to end right on the beat. It goes with what we’re seeing on the screen or the end of the scene or the change of the scene or the change of the mood.

Chris Mailander

Is that right?

Billy Goodrum

No, when I get it, they’ve done so much of the work and usually it comes to me and it’s a, there’s a temp track in it and it comes to me and the sound designer at the same time. So the sound effects people start working on it around the same time I do.

Chris Mailander

And you guys work in parallel. You don’t communicate. That’s interesting, isn’t it?

Billy Goodrum

Yeah, we don’t communicate. It is interesting because sometimes I’ll write what I think is the most beautiful piece of music I’ve ever written or interesting piece of music or exciting piece of music. And it comes to the mix time where they go mix it and they said, you know, let’s use the sound effect. They’ll mix the music really low and then have…

Chris Mailander

You’re kidding.

Billy Goodrum

Because they got the horse and the carriage in the background coming down through there and they want to amplify that.

Chris Mailander

Barreling through the town.

Billy Goodrum

Which is why often the composer doesn’t go to the mix. Sometimes we go, sometimes we don’t. In today’s post-COVID Zoom world, it’s very rare. But oftentimes you send your music editor because you don’t want your heart broken right there in the mix stage because they’re gonna mix your music down or take out a cue.

Chris Mailander

So, has changed from the early days in which you’re sending a track over a wireline telephone from North Carolina and saying, I wrote this, what do you think? To now you’re dialing it in through Zoom.

Billy Goodrum

Dialing it in through Zoom and sending the tracks through, you know, this thing.

Now, you know, I work a lot also with Edoardo Ponti.

Chris Mailander

OK. Tell me how you came to know Edoardo Ponti.

Billy Goodrum

Yeah, that’s simple, but just through a friend again.

Chris Mailander

Part of that network and being present and showing up.

Billy Goodrum

Well, this one was kind of very Italian in that Edoardo, his daughter, and my son have the same godfather. Got it.

Yeah. So my friend Jeff, who’s the godfather in question, he’s a screenwriter. He wrote In the Line of Fire, which is a great, great Clint Eastwood movie that he was nominated for an Oscar for that.

So Jeff calls me and says, hey, Edoardo’s making a movie, they were working on a movie together at the time and it just got put on the back burner, got put in turnaround as they call it and nothing was happening with it. It was a challenging movie to make. So he was making this comedy and he said, he introduced us.

So I went over to Edoardo’s house and we spent a little time and we hit it off. You always hope you will. You never know.

You know, he’s a super, super nice person. Oh yeah, he’s from a different world than I’m from. His mother is Sophia Loren. Right. And his father is Carlo Ponti, who produced a number of Fellini’s films, who produced Doctor Zhivago. So they’re both Oscar winners. Both of his parents have won Oscars for their film work.

Chris Mailander

Bit of background on Edoardo, his genso and where he comes from.

How interesting. Davidson North Carolina kid, working in the art department, writing music, coming up, journeyman musician. And now he was Sophia Loren’s son.

Billy Goodrum

I’m legend.

Yeah, and so we connected through my friend Jeff, who we’re very close to, and I sent him some music, and he ended up initially thinking he was gonna go with someone else. OK. And I understand why, because he had more credits than me, he was kind of a bigger name person, and that didn’t work out for some reason.

So, Edoardo called me back and says, hey, those… recorded some samples. I’d gotten a violin player and did this kind of gypsy jazz stuff, recorded it here in Asheville.

The movie was Coming & Going with Rhys Darby, who I don’t know if you’ve ever seen, Flight of the Conchords or Our Flag Means Death.

Chris Mailander

So what’s that sound like a little bit, that gypsy sound?

Billy Goodrum

It’s hard to get, it’s harder to, it’s more of a guitar thing, but it’s violins. It’s like a Django Reinhardt or yeah. Right. Yeah. Stephane Grappelli.

Chris Mailander

One of the things also that I always enjoy our conversations is because you have this ability to pull down these different libraries of types of music and immediately drop into them. Whether it’s the jazz that you’ve done some work with, with leading jazz musicians and being part of their work, all the way through to gypsy sounding music, some Indian music to rock and funk and you have diversity.

Billy Goodrum

I have diversity and I love music. I absolutely love music and I love songs. I’m kind of versed in songs going back to about the Gershwin era, know, the 20s and Louis Armstrong. Like I love songs. I love music. I love different styles.

And I’ve been playing since I was, I started playing the piano when I was four. I started picking it up and by myself, I teaching myself. Started teaching myself and then my parents said, you know…

Chris Mailander

Is that right? Yourself?

Billy Goodrum

Pretty good.

He’s coming over, we need to get him some lessons. And so the woman in town that they wanted me to take lessons with was a very strict teacher and she wouldn’t take students until they were eight. Very different than today. She wouldn’t take students until they were eight.

And so then I started doing it and I was good. I was no prodigy, but I was very good. And I would be entered in piano competition, so we’d go to these universities in different places around the southeast and I’d do piano. Classical music kind of thing and and and that that helped me a lot.

So when Edoardo wanted that I gave him the examples. He liked it. We started working on it.

I would and and this is back to sending stuff. I could send him, you know just QuickTime or MP3s of music. What do you think of this? What do you think of this? It was great.

And then it came time to actually record it. These are all stuff I’m doing by myself and I said, know, Edoardo, if you came to North Carolina, we could do it in Charlotte and we’d get some players from the Charlotte Symphony and I know some really good jazz players there and all that. And I said, we’ll get a lot more bang for our buck. It’s an independent film.

He said, we’ll get a lot more bang for our buck. He goes, that settles it. We’ll do it in North Carolina. And then he goes, I’ll come. He goes, where’s North Carolina? He grew up in Europe. So, bring schools in Switzerland.

Chris Mailander

Geneva, right?

Billy Goodrum

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Switzerland. Yeah. Geneva, Paris, right.

And, and he’s lived in Los Angeles the whole time he’s been in the U S so he’s like, I’ll come to North Carolina. Was like, he’s like, where’s North Carolina? It’s like East coast.

He goes all the way. He goes all the way. He came and he loved it. He loved it.

We went to Charlotte, which is the, as you know, the headquarters for Bank of America and we’re walking around in downtown Charlotte, going to this restaurant where and a couple of blocks, he goes, I love it here. It’s just like Geneva, banks everywhere.

Chris Mailander

The Geneva of North Carolina.

Billy, tell me about the collaborative process with Edoardo Ponti. You have an Italian compared to our Rhode Island boys of the Farrelly brothers. How is it the same? How is it different?

Billy Goodrum

Well, Edoardo is much more hands-on with the score. Mean, he and I, would spend the day writing music for him. And he comes in with some pretty clear ideas about what he wants. But gives me freedom within that. He’s a dream to work with. He’s a great guy.

I feel very fortunate with both of those people, that they’re such high-quality people and fans of my music, and that we enjoy the collaborative process.

Chris Mailander

How does it work? What does Edoardo start you with? With an I.M. script or a…

Billy Goodrum

He sent me the film and he has a temp. Or he sends me music before I get the film, different kinds of music, like this is what I’m thinking about for this. This is what I’m thinking about for this. This is what I’m thinking about for this.

So we go from there and we, I start to write and I’ll send them and usually because I would send him the tracks in the evening and then that evening he’d call me and let me know what he thought about it.

Like one scene, like maybe one scene, some rough ideas. It might take me two days, it might take me three days to do a scene, depending on how long it is. And we ended up every time with something that we really liked, that we both really liked.

I saw him in December and we were talking about it. We had one cue that was in a part of a film that was like, you know, it didn’t really need music. So we decided for the next one we’ll have a safe word. If we feel like music’s going anywhere and doesn’t belong, we’ll say something like Miles Davis who always said it was, but you don’t play, that’s the most important.

Chris Mailander

Yeah, that’s awesome.

Because one of the interesting things about Edoardo Ponti is several of his films have been designed to showcase Sophia Loren in her later stages and in a different way and it allow her to act using Italian and Neapolitan Italian, etc. And his music is very different to allow that showcasing of one of the legendary actress and his mom.

Billy Goodrum

Yeah, yeah, like we did this film, The Human Voice. That was a real pleasure to do because she was brilliant in it.

An incredible cinematographer named Rodrigo Prieta was the cinematographer. It was, a beautiful film.

We did, we went, it was interesting because the film was gonna have a special screening at the film festival.

Chris Mailander

You went to Cannes for that.

Billy Goodrum

And, Edoardo called me and he goes, you know, you really need to come. You should really come. And that’s a, it’s a friend. He knew it was going to be good.

He goes, they’ve announced now that my mother, Sophia, is the guest of honor at the festival this year. Every door will be open.

It was everywhere we went. The director of the festivals, they’re making sure we got what we needed into where we were supposed to be. And the screening, seeing it in a big… on a giant screen there, it can, with her, with a 10 minute standing ovation at end of the film, really was amazing. It was a great experience.

You know, my wife was like, Billy, you have to go. She goes, if you don’t go, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.

Chris Mailander

Experience to be a part of that.

Billy Goodrum

Now those kind of things are funny because you never know if you don’t know what you missed so it’s hard but I think I would have regretted it. Yeah. Yeah I would have seen the photos from the thing but…

Chris Mailander

Beautiful. Give me a sense of like, what is the texture of that sound? Sure. voice.

Billy Goodrum

So here’s what I started with, you know, I…

Guys, you know.

So that’s the basic framework of it. That’s the theme.

So, and let me see, I can pull up that scene and you can hear with her and the orchestration, everything.

I see status all in Bruton. They have a shame.

See, that’s it with the orchestration, with the strings.

Chris Mailander

Beautiful visuals, her dialogue heavy, bring her character out to the front and then you’re using this orchestrated to come underneath it and provide some support.

Billy Goodrum

And just some tenderness, there’s some sweetness to it.

It’s a sad story of a woman, she’s the only person really in the movie. She’s the only person that has dialogue in the movie. Classic play, Jean Cocteau play. Yeah, and it’s been done as a film before, and it’s been done as a film since, but she really wanted to do it, and so Edoardo was like to do it, and then following that, they did another movie together called…

Chris Mailander

Right.

Billy Goodrum

The Life Ahead, which was a very successful film. I was the music producer on that. I wrote a lot of music for it, but I wasn’t the main composer for it. I pulled everything kind of together on it and as the music producer.

Well, that was a different kind of role for different reasons. One was it was COVID. So I was doing it in a way that would be different than as just the arranger. I was an arranger producer.

Chris Mailander

You like that role, that producer role.

Billy Goodrum

Maybe differently because the composer, there was a composer in France, there were musicians in Los Angeles, were pulling it all together and getting it all together, it was mixed at, I think, Air Studios in London. So it’s like just staying involved with the process from it. We all had to be at a distance, you know, because of COVID. It worked. It worked.

Chris Mailander

You mean it happened? The film worked.

Billy Goodrum

Sure, it came out great. Was nominated for a Golden Globe for best international feature, so it was considered a big success.

Chris Mailander

Great.

So there’s something else that you’ve been working on for the last what five, six, eight years, which is a bit of a transition as well, right. So you’re writing screenplays, starting to write movies, now producing them, you’ll direct them.

And I love the first one. I love the first one because so Billy grew up in Davidson, North Carolina. So growing up in the South…

Billy Goodrum

Yes, I am.

Chris Mailander

And the first screenplay is called How to Die in the South. So you’re going to bookend it, Growing Up in the South and How to Die in South. Tell me about that. What’s the sketch on that?

Billy Goodrum

The story is about, and it’s about a Los Angeles record executive on a losing streak. It gets called back to his small Southern town for the funeral of an uncle who isn’t dead yet. So, I mean, what could go wrong?

And so I’ve been working on that. Started writing screenplay and I had been kind of moving thinking about that. My brother and I…

Chris Mailander

Yeah, right,

Billy Goodrum

Had always, he was a movie buff, same as me, we both love movies. And we would talk on the phone or in person and we’d say, here’s an idea for a movie. And we’d talk about it and laugh about it and never did anything about it.

My brother passed away in 2012 and when I went to clean out his house, I realized he had a whole shelf of books on screenwriting. And I thought, he was serious about this. So I thought, I’m gonna take the books.

And I’d kind of been obviously thinking about it, but so I took the books and read different books on screenwriting and wrote a screenplay and it came out really well. Mean, it needed work.

I was able to call on my friendship with Peter Farrelly and he read the script and gave me four hours of notes on it. Really wonderful notes. And he was so, so great a friend to do that for me because he’s a busy guy.

Chris Mailander

Right. And it took months for him to read it.

Billy Goodrum

Yeah. And then first he didn’t want to, goes, I don’t know if I want to read it because if it’s not good, I’ll have to tell you that it sucks. And you’ll have, and I’ll tell you to throw it away and start over.

So he finally read it and he called me goes, Hey, I read your screenplay. It’s good. And his comment was like, you’ve been saving tidbits of conversation and sit in different events in your life for…

Chris Mailander

Is it? Yeah, right. Give me a sense of that. Mean, I think we all do that, particularly when we have these small town eclectic experiences, that there’s little fragments that you hold onto that are just emblematic of that part of the world and how people think.

Billy Goodrum

Well, yeah, there’s, know, and in just a phrase, it can be just like a little phrase.

It’s like, OK, so in the opening scene, the sister calls him and says, you need to come for a funeral. And he says, oh no, he doesn’t. Says, no, he’s not there, but the funeral’s next Sunday.

So, but, and then she tries to guilt him into it. And so she says, instead of saying like, you should come because grandma’s getting old, we don’t know how long she’ll be around. Instead of that she goes, you better come because you’re going to blink your eyes and grandma’s going to be gone to glory.

Because you never say they died or passed away. Went to the dawn to glory. He went to heaven.

And I had a relative that actually this was a true to life experience with me that I got the call that says, his funeral. The funeral’s next Sunday. He’s like, no, he died. No, no, but he’s close. This happened to me.

So just putting all that together, and I want to film it here in North Carolina. Possibly in Asheville. It’s tough to film in Asheville, but because there’s not a ton of crew, like all the crew people you need. You’d have to put them up in hotels and things probably. It’s expensive. Charlotte, Charlotte has them.

But I think the film, so I’ve been slowly working on it. I’ve hired a casting director in Los Angeles and we’re going out, we’re sending an offer to a, can’t say who, but we’re sending an offer to our main lead actor this week.

Chris Mailander

Yeah. And you’ve shared.

Billy Goodrum

Yeah, it’s a name. Big name. But you know, gotta have a big name. It’s such a crazy thing to get the money to make the movie. There’s a list. The distributor will give you. You get one of these guys, we’ll fund your movie.

Chris Mailander

The one piece in that movie I think is the snake story.

Billy Goodrum

The snake, that’s near the beginning of the thing too, because he calls the woman, the sister calling her brother, he’s in Los Angeles, it’s seven a.m. in North Carolina where she’s calling from, that means it’s four a.m. where he is in Los Angeles, he just went to bed.

And he says, you do know it’s four a.m. She goes, well I wanted to call you earlier, I know you’d want to know about the funeral.

And we gotta get over to the church, because pastor has to get the snakes out of the air conditioning.

And that came from a story that my sister has these couple of cabins that she rents, and one of them is an Airbnb, and it’s very nice, modernized and all that. But some people come, and there’s a snake in there. So they go in there, they’re trying to get it, they can’t get it.

There’s a kid standing across the river, he’s just a local kid, very local, rural Virginia kid, heart of gold kind of kid. And he goes, I can get that snake for you.

Comes over and he goes and he walks out with this big black snake holding it like this is as tall as he is, you know. And my sister offers to give him some money. And he’s like, ma’am. He’s like, I do this all the time. I do it every Sunday. I have to go get the snakes out of the air conditioner at the church.

And I was just like, this kid has got like heart of gold.

Chris Mailander

I love it. I love that you’re grabbing things like that and then able to put it into a structure of a film and work with it.

Billy Goodrum

Well, that one happened after I’d finished the script and I had to do it, add it. Add it back here. I had to open it back up.

I mean, you’re always polishing a script. You’re always, I read it every week and I’ll be like, this could be better, this could be better. And then some scenes we might have to change just due to budgetary.

Chris Mailander

Yeah, so that’s one of the dimensions you’re working with is that budget then defines a lot of the elements about how you’ll shoot it and who’s in it and you’ll have to recraft how a scene or a dialogue unfolds, right? To hit that number.

Billy Goodrum

Yeah, like we had a scene where these guys get chased by bear and jump off a cliff at a rock quarry. That’s an expensive scene. You gotta have an ambulance. You gotta have EMTs on hand. You gotta have all this stuff. So I think I’m changing that.

It’s a game of free range golf where you go out in the country and pick your targets. Know, take a couple clubs and some balls and you say like, OK, that tree over there…

Chris Mailander

I got you. I got you.

Right. That’d be great.

And then you have another one, Andy Gupta.

Billy Goodrum

Yeah, Andy Gupta, which I wrote with, have as a script with my friend Marijuana Ronnie.

Chris Mailander

And Marijuana, just for the record, is a James Beard nominated chef here in Asheville with a very successful series of ventures and restaurants and that sort of thing. So he grew up in India. And so you guys collaborated on this.

Billy Goodrum

Yeah.

He grew up in…

We, and because we were during, during COVID, we would take all these walks and I’d tell them what I was writing about Andy Gupta. It’s a story about the dumbest genius in the world. And, um, you can tell some of the Farrelly brothers rubbed. But, um, it’s about the dumbest genius in the world.

And it starts in Silicon Valley and then the bulk of the movie would be shot in India.

And so I would go on these walks with marijuana and he would talk to me about things and he’s like, nah, that’s not realistic, but this is.

And he goes, you know, they do this thing called missed calls where they’ll call and hang up before you pick up because every call costs a little bit. So I wove that into the plot a little bit. Different things like that.

So, yeah, we’re working on getting that. That’s a whole nother venture.

I’m focusing most of my energy right now on How to Die in the South, because it’s immediately in front of me. We’ve had some investors and we want to make sure that it all comes together when it needs to come together. And I think that’s this year. Yeah.

Chris Mailander

That’s awesome. Fantastic. Congratulations.

So Billy, let’s role play for just a second. Let’s play with this concept of collaboration and how you do it. So if I were to say for this podcast that I want to create something which is sophisticated, intellectual, but yet playful. I don’t want to get too serious. This is not CNN. This is not NPR. We don’t need the drama associated with that. But I want something that’s elegant and yet clean and pure.

If I gave you that amount of instruction, is that enough? Could you do something with that? And knowing a little bit about who I talk to in my audience.

Billy Goodrum

Right, you talk to a lot of different people that do a lot of different things. So it needs to be broad enough. It needs to be a big enough umbrella to keep everybody dry. You know what I mean? It’s to tie the thing together.

Also, I think for something like this, you want something that you can make some variations of. So maybe goes up, maybe it goes down a little bit, gets a little more optimistic at times, if that’s the nature of the conversation you’re having, or a little more gravitas.

Chris Mailander

So perfect.

Billy Goodrum

Yeah, it’s got to have.

Chris Mailander

Now would you you like piano?

Billy Goodrum

Yeah, I I think there’s probably a bias to doing something that involves piano and horn or something like that. You know, it’s fairly classical treatment. We’re certainly not doing EDM. We’re not doing a dance beat. There’s nothing underneath it. I think it’s pure and classic.

Chris Mailander

Yeah, something.

Billy Goodrum

Yeah, pure and classic.

You know, you could, we can start with a chord like that. That might seem a little dark, but then we go to a major and then, you know, something like that. Three chords, you know.

You probably what you’re going to do is going to be very short. Sure. You know, it’s not going to be some long theme or something. It’s going to just have…

And then you want to give it some movement so you know…

Something like that.

Then maybe you could just, you know, I should give it little more tempo because you want to keep things moving.

Chris Mailander

That’s beautiful. Thanks, Billy.

Absolute pleasure to get inside your head and understand how these processes, which are so different and mystical almost, or mythical in terms of understanding how to create those effects, those experiences, how you collaborate with some of the best artists in the world. It’s fantastic. Thank you. Absolutely.

Billy Goodrum

My pleasure.

Chris Mailander

For those of you who have followed this podcast through to this point, as you listen to the outro, you’re gonna hear the fully produced version of the song which was written and created by Billy Goodrum. That’s all for now. I look forward to talking to you soon.