SCREENWRITING, HOLLYWOOD & NETFLIX WITH CHARLEY & VLAS PARLAPANIDES | E024 PODCAST

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ABOUT THE GUEST

Charley and Vlas Parlapanides sit down with George Stroumboulis in Newport Beach, California on the Invigorate Your Business Podcast to talk about all things Hollywood, Screenwriting, Netflix, A-List actors, Blood of Zeus and being professional story tellers.

Charley and Vlas Parlapanides are A-list screenwriters that have become synonymous with blockbuster hits and groundbreaking television series, including Immortals and the Netflix Hit Series, Blood of Zeus. They are leaving an indelible mark on the entertainment industry with a career that would see them penning some of Hollywood's most iconic scripts.

Known for their work on "Blood of Zeus" (2020), "Death Note" (2017), and the epic "Immortals" (2011), their creative genius has captivated audiences globally.  Charley and Vlas have a rich heritage that adds depth to their storytelling palette. Raised in the embrace of Greek Orthodox traditions, they bring a unique cultural perspective to the projects they undertake.

A Journey from Economics to Hollywood: The Parlapanides brothers share a common origin story – both embarked on careers in economics before answering the siren call of Hollywood. Their transition from the world of finance to the glitz and glamour of Hollywood exemplifies not only their versatility but also their courage to pursue their dreams.

Proud Greek-Americans: Rooted in their proud Greek heritage, the Parlapanides brothers infuse their work with cultural richness and authenticity. Their commitment to representing diverse narratives is a testament to their love for their roots and the broader tapestry of human experience.

Living the Dream: From their early days in New Jersey to the glitzy avenues of Hollywood, Charley and Vlas Parlapanides have transformed dreams into reality. As family men, followers of Christ, and storytellers extraordinaire, they continue to shape the landscape of entertainment, proving that with talent, resilience, and a touch of magic, dreams do come true in the City of Angels.

Charley’s IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0663048/
Charley’s LikedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-parlapanides-29496b205/
Vlas’ IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0663050/
Vlas’ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vlas-parlapanides-76a79ba9/
Blood of Zeus IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10009170/
Blood of Zeus Netflix Series: https://www.netflix.com/title/81001988

“We’re like the Rocky Balboa of screenwriters. We just keep getting pummeled and, you know, knocked down, but somehow we always just kind of managed to get back up. ”
— VLAS PARLAPANIDES

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Charley and Vlas Parlapanides sit down with George Stroumboulis in Newport Beach, California on the Invigorate Your Business Podcast.

ABOUT THE “INVIGORATE YOUR BUSINESS” PODCAST

The Invigorate Your Business with George Stroumboulis podcast features casual conversations and personal interviews with business leaders in their respective fields of expertise. Crossing several industry types and personal backgrounds, George sits down with inspiring people to discuss their business, how they got into that business, their path to the top of their game and the trials and tribulations experienced along the way. We want you to get inspired, motivated, and then apply any advice to your personal and professional lives. If there is at least one piece of advice that resonates with you after listening, then this podcast is a success. New episodes weekly. Stream our show on Spotify, YouTube, Apple, Amazon and all other platforms.

ABOUT GEORGE STROUMBOULIS

George Stroumboulis is an entrepreneur to the core, having launched several ventures across multiple industries and international markets. He has held senior-level positions at progressive companies and government institutions, both domestically and internationally, building an extensive portfolio of business know-how over the years and driving profit-generating results. George’s ability to drive real change has landed him in several media outlets, including the front page of the Wall Street Journal. George was born in Toronto, Canada to his Greek immigrant parents. Family first. Flying over 300,000 miles a year around the world puts into perspective how important family is to George’s mental and emotional development. With all this travel to global destinations, the longest he stays even in the most far-out destination is 3 days or less - a personal rule he lives by to make sure he is present and involved in family life with his wife and three daughters. To read about George’s global travels, stay connected with his blog section.

FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 00:00

Welcome to another episode of Invigorate your Business with George Stroumboulis. Today, I get to sit down with this powerhouse duo that has redefined storytelling in Hollywood. Charlie and Vlas Parlapanides are a dynamic force of creativity and innovation. Hailing from humble beginnings in New Jersey, these A-list screenwriters have become synonymous with blockbuster hits in groundbreaking television series, including Immortals and the Netflix series Blood of Zeus.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest

It's really you sell a script that gets you invited to the party and then you have five years to kind of prove whether you should stick around or not and a lot of people fade out.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 00:36

To give you some context. You know Netflix has the top 10. We were number two. Number one was the Queen's Gambit. Charlie said we're like the Rocky Balboa of screenwriters and it's actually so true because, like, we just keep getting pummeled and, you know, knocked down, but somehow we always just kind of managed to get back up.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 00:54

Charlie and Vlas are leaving an incredible mark on the entertainment industry. They are proud Greek Americans, family men, followers of Christ and some of the most down-to-earth people you will get to meet. So sit back and enjoy this episode. My name is George Stroumboulis and I'm extremely passionate about traveling the world, meeting new people and learning about new businesses. Join me as I sit down with other entrepreneurs to learn about their journeys. This episode of Invigorate your Business starts now. Welcome to the podcast, thank you for having us.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:33

It's our pleasure to be here, george. We love what you're doing, we love how you're promoting Hellenism, other Greek Americans and just business in general, and I think this is an important platform just for people to share their experiences, because that's how people grow and learn Amazing.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:48

Amazing.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:48

Thank you. I second all that, and the fact that you're truly a great nice guy just makes it all that much sweeter. That's awesome.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:57

Well done, well done Great intro.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:59

Great ambassador for the Greek people and Canadian you know, don't want to leave that. We got to get that in there too.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 02:04

Yeah, I appreciate it the first person who hasn't mangled our names. So there you go.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 02:08

I mean, if I do. I'll tell you, though, by writing this I'm like Charlie and Vlas, or Vlas and Charlie.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 02:14

Oh, one sec. What is that?

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 02:15

Is that Scorsese Is he calling right now?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 02:17

Sorry, did I not turn my phone off? I'm so sorry.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 02:19

Oh no, no, don't worry, one second, We'll just, we'll keep rocking.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 02:22

Sorry about that.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 02:24

So let me ask you when you're doing this, is it hard doing it together, or you?

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 02:30

know as brothers. It's, you know, it's interesting because a screenwriter that was, you know, far more successful and famous than us, said that writing is problem solving, and it really is. In many ways it's problem solving. So when you have two brains attacking a problem, it's just so, so, very helpful to be able to like bounce an idea off of.

02:54

You know each other, and the other thing is that we're there's no one that I trust more than my brother, and we've reached a point now too, where it's not about Gois Maud or ego. We really, you know, feel like we always, both of us. I know in my heart and my bones that he always has the best interest for the characters and for the story, and to work with someone where I know that's the case, that's just a huge, huge blessing. There are times when we disagree, and that's what I hate, but it's only because we both believe that that's what's best for the character story. It's not from a place of ego, and then, you know, it just comes down to who's more passionate, or if we have a third person, we want it by them, right?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 03:33

So it's not off, a director or a producer be like hey, these are the two versions. We're kind of you know, going back and forth on. What do you prefer?

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 03:40

Yeah, we had a situation on the script that we were working not too long ago, yeah, and where we disagreed and you know, and we did that very thing and the director cited with Charlie and and no, and it was. It was great because, at the end, like, all we want is what's best for the characters in the story, we don't care, we don't care where the idea comes from, whose idea it was. All that matters is servicing the characters in the story.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 04:05

I was watching an interview, one of your clips, and you guys were talking about an idea that came and you were quick flasks to jump in and say, and that was Charlie's idea. Whatever it was talking about, I'm like man, that's really cool, like if some things eating someone inside, usually you just stay quiet, but it was genuine pride, like you guys are a team in doing this, which is amazing.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 04:27

We grew up in a very close you know close, nick Greek family. You know what that's like and we love each other, we love our siblings, we love our cousins and we just want the best for each other. And so there's no like and like. His success is my success and my success is his success, and we don't care, Like it doesn't matter, it's just about moving the ball down the field when it comes to work. That's all that matters. And you know, listen, any good joke and anything we've ever written is always coming from Vlas. You know, sometimes I have an idea, sometimes he has an idea. That's what Vlas said before. What's great is that there's two of us and it's just exponential brain power attacking a problem, and it's good at crossing the bad ideas out.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 05:12

Yeah, Because when you say something out loud and like well, you just know that that like it kind of is dead on arrival or right away, we both light up, you know, so you get to the good idea sooner when there's, when you're a team, because you're discussing things and you're crossing off the bad ideas off the list.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 05:31

Ben Affleck had said recently in an interview he likes writing with a partner because it avoids you from going down unnecessary dead ends. Because he goes, you'll pitch an idea to your writing partner and we experience this like right away. If it's a good idea, they perk up, they sit up, their eyes come alive. If it's a bad idea, it's like well, like then you know, it's like all right, no, don't worry about that, let's let's. You know what about this? You just move on. And so it's a great filtering process.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 05:56

Like reading the road, he's very good to it. Seeing the ripple effect. He's much better at it than I am. So I'm like, if we try this, it's like, yeah, well, if we do that, though, then it'll be this, this, this and this that'll happen, and that's why we can't use that.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 06:07

But sometimes you still have to try because you can be like well again, you know, it's just like Eric Roth, who's a very famous writer. He wrote Forrest Gump and Dune and he's one of the all time greats in our business. He said being a writer what it means is that you'll write 30 or 40 pages of something and be like you know what this doesn't work, throw it in the garbage and start again from page one. He goes a lot of people they want to write, but once they hit that first obstacle or the idea of throwing something away and starting over and having all that sweat equity just go to nothing. He goes.

06:39

That's where you delineate between the writers and not writers, and so sometimes you have to try it and it might not even work and you might go into it saying, hey, I'm not sure if this is going to work, and you crash and burn. But there's other times we're like, even on this script Lost was talking about where we, you know, ask the director when we first got the note, we're like will this work? Does this make sense? We're not sure. But what we've learned over the years is just just be open, try and see where it goes.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 07:07

Best idea wins, Best idea wins. There's so many directions we could go with here. So, jumping we're going to get into heritage and family and everything. But when you're writing something, you guys have had success right. And if you're looking at the start of your career in this space to where you are today, how early on did you see success? Because I couldn't imagine wanting to be in this industry. And years go by and you haven't had success because success means no money to pay the bills. How early on did you guys see success that, hey, we can do this in this industry?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 07:38

The one thing I'll say, bro, then I'll let you jump in. But the one thing I would preface all of this with is that, you know, a good analogy I always tell people is that in baseball if you get a hit, you know one out of every three times, or three out of every 10 times. You end up in the Hall of Fame. If you hit 300, right, but that means you're failing the majority of the time. That's this business. You have to be okay with failure, you have to be okay with rejection, because the majority of the time that's what you're going to face. It is not a business for the meek of heart. There has to be a certain amount of fortitude where, okay, you're going to take rejection and you're going to just keep pushing.

08:18

But you know, listen, there was a lot of struggles and a lot of you know hardship and failure, and it took a long time. And I think even there was a point. I think, like with Live Bet, which was the very first script we ever sold to a studio, to Universal, I think we kind of said, like this is going to be the last one, like if this doesn't sell, then maybe we should do something else. And that happens to a lot of people, our good friend Derek Colstatt, who wrote the John Wick movies, and nobody. He was going to move back to the Midwest and John Wick was like one last script. Come on, yeah, and so it was known as Scorned.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 08:55

Yeah, that was Scorned, okay, and Keanu said why don't we just call it John Wick? That's a pretty cool name, and that name it's actually Derek's grandfather.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 09:05

Come on, so Keanu came up with that, yeah.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 09:07

Yeah.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 09:08

So you're that moment that you guys had. Where were you?

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 09:12

in life. But there's a couple of things that's interesting about that moment, because there was that definitive moment and, you know, because there was a lot of rejection, a lot of struggle, and it really was kind of a moment where I remember just praying and being, you know, god, if it's meant to happen, let it happen. If it's not, it's okay, I can walk away from it. You know, I gave it, you know my all, and we're always kind of looking for signs, and Charlie and I both believe there are no accidents in life. And so at that time I was a golf caddy and that's how I was making ends meet, because I wanted to make sure that, you know, I could write as much as I could during the day, and my day was very flexible, and so I had that intense prayer. And then the next day I went to the caddy shack. I sat down and I was actually reading the Wall Street Journal, because Charlie was getting a free Wall Street Journal, because he had taken a LSAT class. And as I was reading it there, it was like 40, 50, you know caddies.

10:10

In the caddy shack a guy came up to me. He sat down next to me. I didn't know him. I started talking to him and he said that dream, yeah, he goes. That prayer, your prayer is going to be answered, it's going to come to pass. And I just it just hit me like I just got all emotional and like I couldn't believe it and like maybe like a week or two weeks later we sold that spec script.

10:33

Charlie mentioned live bet. Yeah to universal. So you know, when they talk about you know, is, you know, god talking to you, the universe talking to you. You know you, I think you also kind of need those little moments in life to kind of, you know, give you a little more hope and to reinvigorate your kind of psyche and to kind of give you something to kind of forge ahead. But going back to adversity, you know I always joke with Charlie. You know we love Arthur Miller, we love death of a salesman. Arthur Miller is just like one of our, you know, all time favorite, probably our favorite playwright, all time favorite, and better off Dead Then Alive great 11 mandatory reading for me in high school and someone a reporter, asked Arthur Miller, how did you write Death of a Salesman?

11:19

And he said, oh, that was easy, because that was really about failure in many ways. And he goes. You know, 98% of what I experienced before Death of a Salesman was failure. So I knew when the time came to write about it I could do it. So I was like, oh my goodness, if that was true for Arthur Miller, we were failing 99% of the time. So I'm like that's only 1% more than the great Arthur Miller, so we're actually doing pretty well here. That put in perspective for you right.

11:49

So, as Charlie said, failure is a big part of it. But you get some of those wins and those wins sustain you and give you energy and allow you to forge ahead. But failure is part of the game and if you can't deal with it then you're probably not gonna make it. You have to kind of what can we learn from this? And then you move on. You move on, you forge ahead.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 12:12

But for the people watching it was a good, I would say six, seven years of. We were kind of working menial industry jobs, writing, trying to write that script. That would kind of get us get our foot in the door. And there's a lot of rejections, there's a lot of like false starts. We had like a little horror script that we had a really cool Irish director on that we had high hopes for but ended up not selling. But there was a lot of scripts that we wrote and we would send out and pass, pass, pass, pass.

12:46

There was one script that was kind of like the story of our family and people really liked it. But they said this is really a great story and it's very heartfelt and it's this nice coming of age story, but it's not high concept enough. And so we saw that like okay, people are responding to the writing. But now we have to listen. And that's one thing that I would just emphasize to any young writers or people that wanna get into this business you have to listen to the feedback you're getting and you have to take it in, absorb it and never lose your enthusiasm for what you're doing. But then try and listen to what they're saying, to the feedback you're getting. Now, listen, if one person says it, that might be just their subjective opinion, but if you're giving a script to four or five people and they all kind of give you the same feedback, then you have to listen to that and you have to really look at that.

13:38

But we said, okay, no more of this, like it's just a nice script, but it's too small. We're gonna write something high concept and thankfully we had a high concept idea. But we said kind of like, maybe this is the last swing. Like we had started kind of in the late 90s and it was like 2005 now and so it had been like six, seven years of rejection and it's like, listen, we worked hard, our parents sent us to college and we went to good schools and we could be doing other things that are maybe more financially rewarding. So maybe this is the last swing, but thankfully that one really came together.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 14:13

And what?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 14:13

was it? It was a heist idea. The script called LiveBet and basically the very quick elevator pitch. And when we say high concept for people out there you can write a really beautiful small story, but it's much harder to sell that the execution has to literally be perfect. If it's high concept, it's an idea that the audience can easily understand. So with this idea, we open up in downtown Manhattan.

14:39

We see this guy steal a car. He comes flying out of the parking garage. He goes racing towards the Lincoln tunnel. As he's going towards the Lincoln tunnel, we see there's a police cruiser there and they see this guy like look at this guy, he's going 80. He goes 100 miles past them. They put on the lights, they spin around, they start chasing him.

14:58

He comes out of the Lincoln tunnel, he gets onto the New Jersey Parkway. More police cars and state troopers are falling in behind him. They're chasing him. And then what we do is we pull up and we see there's a drone flying above and it's actually filming this police pursuit. And basically what you find out is that this thief has a team that helped him escape the cops and actually people are taking bets on how long he can evade the police. Five minutes 10 minutes, new York to Atlantic City, place your bet and it's this LiveBet. And then this FBI agent kind of takes note that there's these police pursuits where the guy's actually getting away and getting away from helicopters and like that never happens, and he starts to deduce that there's this ring going on and that they're taking bets and that these whales are betting on these police pursuits. Really cool, and that was the idea it was lightning in a bottle.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 15:46

That one was in lightning in a bottle and we were at William Morris well, we've always were at that time and they had 50 cent and they said what if we make that guy 50 cent? We're like we love 50. And so he got attached and they had a good relationship with Mary Parent and Scott Stuber and Universal, who had a producing deal at Universal at that time. Who ran Universal at that time? Yeah, yeah, and yeah, that's right, that's before Donna. And so anyway, they slipped it to them and they bought it in the room. They didn't even want it to go out.

16:17

Preemptively, Preemptively yeah.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 16:19

So I don't know how much you could disclose financially. But so this is year six seven, early 2000, late 90s. What did you guys do? 2006. 2006, married babies Engaged.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 16:31

Engaged. I was engaged to my life.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 16:33

Yeah, no, I was single. I had started really kind of dating. There had been a time there where things were so lean where I was working, working, working and then writing, writing, writing, that I just put blinders on and I was just so focused on just trying to make it read. Every script I could possibly get right as much as I possibly could. There was a time when I briefly worked on Wall Street. That was an Oppenheimer's foreign equity desk and literally you have to put in I don't know like it was like 10 hour days there and then I would just write when I came home, write on the weekends. That's really sweet. So that when we sold that script that's when I said, okay, now career seems to be we kind of falsely thought, oh, we got invited to the party, now it's gonna be easy.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 17:18

That's what I wanted to ask you At that point when you sold it was it? Hey, now we're here full time.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 17:24

We had a writing friend who was older and very successful and I remember telling him he said congratulations and he goes. Now you'll see if you can actually have a career. Yeah, you'll know in five years. And look, what's this guy talking about? We just sold the script. Of course we're gonna have a career. It's not only hard to get in to Guild and then to be a professional writer, but it's also hard to maintain that career. The average writing career is less than eight years.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 17:50

Is that a hit Less than eight? It's either one out of three or one out of four. Writers, after they sell their first script, never sell anything professionally again.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 17:58

Yeah, see, I thought, if you have this creativity and you're good, you could do this into your 70s, 80s as long as you're.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 18:04

We thought that too. No way, no, it's not that way.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 18:06

It's really you sell a script that gets you invited to the party and then you have five years to kind of prove whether you should stick around or not, and a lot of people fade out.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 18:16

So you guys are the Tom Brady in this space because you've been going and going.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 18:19

We've been very lucky that same writer. He said something that was very true. He said there's writers that are far more talented than me that never made it, and there are writers that are far less talented that are way more successful. The key is just to stay in the business, keep trying them. When your opportunities come, take advantage of them, take advantage. And that's just the truth, because the thing with our business that I think is probably what drives most people away is that, like, if you wanna be a doctor, you go to you study undergrad, you study biology, then you go to med school, then you do a residency and then there's a career path and there's a trajectory.

18:55

You wanna be a lawyer? You go to college and you go to law school, then you work as an associate, and if you work eight years as an associate, then you can make partner In this business. There is no trajectory, there is no path, and so what's hard is you have really smart people, but the only way you get better as a writer is to write. You have to just keep writing, and the more you write, the more you work that muscle, the stronger it gets. But to write you need to basically do some survival job to pay the bills, and then you also have to then make sure you dedicate enough time to writing. So on the weekends you're writing, at night you're writing. You're not going out and doing all these things because there's just not enough time in the day.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 19:34

You guys are all in.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 19:35

You have to be all in. Yeah, you have to be all in.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 19:37

And your background. So this is amazing feedback. Let's go back to New Jersey. You guys are East coasters living here in California. Right, Started in Hollywood, now Orange County, Greek immigrant parents right, Talk a bit about the history. But then you guys grew up in a very entrepreneurial family, right, Hot dog stands, diners, parking lot managing, right Doing all that. And then, to keep your parents, I guess, happy and to show them, you went and study economics at a college. You went on to work on Wall Street, to go for a law degree. Did you guys do that? To come back and say, look, Mom, Dad, I did this, but this is my passion. Like was your passion always this, even while you were studying economics? Like, how did you?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 20:20

This was always the passion and, to be honest, our parents, like we could not ask for better parents, like because it was all unconditional love. They were supportive, thankfully, they were dreamers. So there was never like, hey, what are you doing? Why are you pursuing this? They said if this is what you want to do, go try. And there was never pressure from them?

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 20:41

No, there never was, and I think there's. But we felt a responsibility. Yeah, so you know, we're, all you know, fathers here, and so it's not what you tell your children, it's what you do that truly resonates. So we saw how hard our parents worked. Our mom used to work. She had a county job. She was at the Ocean County Board of Elections. That's where she worked. It was a clerical type job. She did that Monday through Friday and then Friday night she would go to the parking lot and she would try to wave cars into our parking lot that we had, and in Jersey it gets cold in the winter.

21:13

It's like you know, it gets down to 30 degrees and you see her bundled up after she's worked, you know, all week, and she's there Friday night, saturday night, you know, trying to scrounge up $170, $200, you know, because that time of the year it wasn't as busy, it was slower. So you see that kind of hard work, that kind of dedication and never complained, never complained about doing it. Our father also worked, you know, two, three jobs. Yeah, he would, he would, he worked at a county job and then he would bartend on the weekends at a country club. And so when we went so and you know being, you know, raised in a Greek, you know, immigrant home education was always valued and was something that was very important for us to do. Well, in school. They, you know, but they did it in a, I think, the right way. They never said you have to get A's, even though we got A's and B's. They said you have to do your absolute best, just try your best, whatever the results are, but just try your best.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 22:12

You know what I mean.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 22:13

Which I'm grateful that they did that, and that's something that we share with our kids.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 22:18

The effort, not the result.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 22:21

Yeah, exactly. And so we, you know, charlie went to Swarthmore, I went to Villanova and we just felt, even though we had that creative itch or bug, whatever you want to call it we felt like we needed to do something a little more responsible in terms of major. So Econ was just a little more. You know, if you were to tell someone in New Jersey at that time, when we were growing up, that you know we wanted to be a screenplay writer, they would look at you like, yeah, like three eyes on your head.

22:48

Right, you know what is that? That's impossible, that's impossible. His godfather, who was, like you know, in construction, was very successful.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 22:55

Amazing human being. Like the nicest and beautiful human being. Like I thought they needed this this is it.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 23:01

That's it as much as we love our culture. You know Swarthmore, you know building a house.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 23:06

That's a business. You understand that. You build a house for this, you sell stuff for this. I can touch this. I can touch it. I can touch it. Yeah, exactly.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 23:15

You know so. But so we wanted to do something responsible. We kind of went with the majors that were, you know, just a little more acceptable because we just felt like our parents had worked so hard. But you know, then for me I had an epiphany my senior year, and that really kind of pushed me towards a creative endeavor. I still knew that I had to get a job to pay off some of the debt that my you know, my parents had incurred. And they were great too. They took on those student loans and then they paid off those loans and that was a huge gift that they gave us, because they were working class people and they made sure that, you know, our education was gonna be paid for. And but while I worked on Wall Street I knew that I wanted to pursue something creative. And you know that was there and that started for my senior year. And you know we can maybe go into that later.

24:07

but Knowing so your senior year, knowing that my senior year, knew I wanted to do something creative, but I knew in the meantime I had to work and try to make some money. And I was on Wall Street for two and a half years. I made a short film while I was there, learned a lot from that and then was just again reading screenplays as many as I could, writing as much as I could, and then we made an independent film after that, you know, and that film got into the AFI Film Festival, which was a you know it's a prestigious film festival. But it wasn't that film, you know, that launched the career. It got a lot of, you know, got some great press. It got, you know, picked up for distribution by the shooting gallery. The shooting gallery at that time had produced Sling Blade, and you can count on me two films that we absolutely loved, yep.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 24:55

And but, however, we were also very naive too, because, like we came out here for AFI, the American Film Institute, their film festival every fall, we were clueless.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 25:04

And you came out here like California, from Jersey, to visit. Yeah, just for the week of the festival.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 25:08

Okay.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 25:10

And you know, that's kind of the start of, like, the fall awards campaigns. There was, like you know, the Coen brothers had a film there.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 25:17

Oh brother, where are they?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 25:18

Yeah, oh brother, where are they? And these two Greek agents who were at Metropolitan, which was like this really good boutique literary agency, they saw the film, they really like. They said they wanted to sign us and we were like nah, dude, you know, and like, looking back at it now it's like we were idiots.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 25:34

Like you know we signed right away. That would have been your first shot at yeah, what were we? Thinking I don't know what we were thinking, we were talking about that.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 25:41

Holding out for a better deal. I don't know what you know.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 25:44

But you said it earlier though every decision or whatever it was meant to be at that time, that you didn't accept it and struggle a few more years, right yeah.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 25:53

And so you know it was like it was. It proved to us that what we were doing worked because, like you, could feel the audience and the reaction and we got, you know, good reviews and Hollywood Reporter and Variety they were all positive reviews, Wow. So that was some sense of validation. But it wasn't, like Vlas said, like the clerks or brothers McMullen were kicked open the doors and then you work consistently.

26:15

From that point We've, unfortunately, always kind of come in at the tail end of like we missed the indie scene and then, when we got into movies, like the DVD market died and so the movie business kind of died, and like we've always kind of like just come in at the end, Right, right, but you know it's okay, you persevere and you work and you learn. But again, like Vlas had said initially, like there's always these like little victories, we're like, no, no, keep doing this. You're not crazy to think you can do this. But it wasn't again where the floodgates open and okay, great, we, you know we sold something for a bunch of money and we're being offered stuff. Like you know, that was still, you know, six years away.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 26:54

Charlie said we're like the Rocky Balboa of screenwriters, and it's actually so true, cause like we just keep getting pummeled and, you know, knocked down, but somehow we always just kind of managed to get back up, and you know.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 27:06

And get back up with a positive attitude Like all right, this happened, it sucks, we're going to let it suck for a day, but then just move on.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 27:14

With positive results too, though, Like your resume. You know we'll get into that, but like it's been incredible.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 27:20

We've been very lucky, that's, I agree, convinced only through God's good graces and our mother's prayers. I agree.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 27:26

I agree 100%.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 27:27

Honestly Cause like too. It's just always a miracle that any of these things have worked out and come through, and so you know it is.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 27:35

There's nothing. That is the word, you know, when something gets produced, especially nowadays, it's a little miracle because so many things, there's so many variables, right, and everything has to come in alignment and it's just very rare and it's a very, you know, difficult thing to actually, you know, to get a film or a show or anything made. It's, you know, it's truly a little miracle.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 28:01

Yeah, and there's so many. So you guys were in Jersey. You come out here. I'm sure you had to work a bunch of crap jobs in the meantime and you know understudies you worked as assistants.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 28:11

You know I worked as an assistant. You know I worked at a production company. Then I worked for a big producer, Scott Rudin, who was notorious as like the worst boss in Hollywood Learned a lot from him. Was he the worst? I mean, like part of it is like you know. I don't know, I can't probably even say because the times have changed so much, but back in the early 2000s when I worked for him, I getting stuff thrown at you and yelled at Like we grew up in a very blue collar working class town and played a lot of sports.

28:38

I had football coaches, you know, hit me in the helmet and shake my face mask. So Scott yelling at me didn't ever intimidate me, but it was a very tough job. It was a very tough job but you know, from there then I worked as an assistant at Paramount for the vice chairman of the studio and there were just always opportunities to learn. And even when I worked for Scott I would bring home scripts or I would take home dailies and we would watch them, you know, in our little apartment in New York and like it'd be great to see Denzel doing the Manchurian candidate and see him take after take and how his performance, would you know, change and how he would take direction, and all of that stuff was valuable.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 29:15

You mentioned something and you know, and you highlighted it, and I'm glad that you did. You know you have to be all in. So let's just look at some people, cause what we used to do is we used to look at people that, oh, that guy, we really admire his career and we want to have that. Well, how did they break in? What did they do? So you look at Oliver Stone he was a cab driver, you know, and he was riding as much as he can, because you need that job where you know you're focused, you're all in on your writing and you have to write as much as you can, and so you need the job, though it's just, you know, it doesn't consume you per se. Then you look oh, let's look at James Cameron. You know he was a truck driver. Oh, let's look at the you know Wachowskis, you know they were in construction.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 29:57

So you know and Dan Gordon was a garbage man. He did the hurricane. Yeah, he was in the first. He was in the first, you know, even Tarantino, you know he was working at a video store.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 30:07

The video store, so but what they all have in common was, you know, obviously the passion, the talent, of course, but also that singular vision that I'm going all in and I'm going to do whatever. I'm going to have some survival job to do just to pay the bills, but my focus is going to be, you know, my writing.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 30:25

Well, and how do you have parents that left right your family's from Asia Minor? Yeah for the smirny.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 30:31

He has full size lineage traces back there Both okay, and we can talk about it, and then Patra, and then.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 30:35

Patra, right, they come to America like any immigrant, not just Greeks. Any immigrant that came to another country and didn't know the language didn't have helped it. How can we not be successful in our generation? You just said your parents like, put up debt to cover you to go to college. That's helped. Yeah, how?

30:52

like those are the true heroes, absolutely Right. So how do you not go all in? There's no language barrier, right? God forbid, you guys didn't make it. You still have a family to support you. Absolutely Right, like I always say, that people take for granted even the little things on education being covered today, where it's just assumed like, oh no, mommy and daddy will cover it. No, no, it's a grind.

31:13

Working jobs I still do this day and I don't know, maybe I need to talk to a therapist about it, but I feel guilty on weekends when I'm like, oh, I'm not working today, when my parents into their 60s and 70s we're working seven days a week. My first job at a university was in Ireland and I remember when I first moved there at 23, the weekend would come around and it was a corporate job. I'm like, oh no, what do I do? My parents are working back home at the restaurant. I went and got a bartending job just because mentally it didn't make sense. So just tying that all in like, when you come from that you're destined to success just from hard work alone, right?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 31:50

You feel an obligation and it's something I carry proudly and we carry proudly that we had such amazing parents where their children were everything, and that was they didn't want to go on vacations, they didn't. You know, baraea, everything was for their children, and so we now have the responsibility to make sure everything we do is for our children, absolutely, and in a lot of ways, it's also why we've also just stayed focused on writing, because, like it's nice to be home and to be around our children and be there for our children, you know, if you are a director or a producer and you have to go away for four or five months, that's a very different life, and so you know we're very blessed and everything we do is to honor our parents.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 32:37

And I like what I second all that and what I also just want to kind of piggyback off is the hard work. There's no substitute for hard work, and that's true for anyone that's successful. Look at Michael Jordan, you know, when he came into the league he didn't have like the jump shot that he really kind of wanted. The jump shot he ended up, you know, perfecting the melody.

32:58

He worked hard. He worked hard, he would get, he would go. You know, he would practice before practice. That's Michael Jordan who has. You know, look at the talent that he has. Yet he worked very, very hard, you know. So, all the people, in whatever field it may be, when we find out more and more about him, you know, you can look at Will Smith, no one works harder than him. He works super hard. You can't cut any corners, you have to work hard. That just comes, but it does help. Coming from, you know, an immigrant kind of you know family, where you see your parents working hard and we used to work weekends for the longest time. Now we have families and so we spend time, you know, with the kids. But you know there was no like.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 33:42

But even our managers, you guys are always working hard, like you guys don't stop, like you'll finish this thing, you jump to the next thing and that's just. You know, the mentality we have is that and we give ourselves deadlines and self-imposed deadlines, and we push ourselves because in the end, that's what you have to do, like what we've seen. You know people always ask like in any business, one essential factor, unless you're brilliant and you invent something completely new is that you just work really hard. And if you're good at it, you're good at it and you've worked really hard and you've put in the hours. We believe in the 10,000 hour rule.

34:18

Absolutely.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 34:19

And also, too, we were so naive and just when we started out, there were scripts that we shared with people that we never should have shared. You know, and that's also advice we would give to, you know, a young, up-and-coming screenplay writer don't give your first script to that connection that you have, as we did, because you know you're not good enough. And you look at writers who, like you know, look at David Ayer. He didn't say like he got really good about his fourth, fifth script, and that's kind of how it is with writers.

34:46

You're like your sixth or seventh script, your fifth, sixth, seventh script is kind of like where you really, kind of, you know, reach a point like where you can be considered as someone who writes a script that is pre-punicy.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 34:59

You're pre-punicy.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 35:00

Exactly so. But we learned that the hard way because the first script we thought it was great and we would give it to people and you know what it kind of wasn't. We needed more work, it needed the 10,000-hour rule and we've huge, huge proponents of rewriting. Good writing is rewriting. So again it goes back to that hard work. You have to be willing to do that.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 35:20

Absolutely. So I read something online, maybe on your IMDb, imdb, yeah, imdb, immortals right, you guys got a Fat Check right.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 35:32

Yeah, that was a good one.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 35:33

It was a great one. So we're going to talk a bit business podcast. We're going to talk a bit about the business. We're going to get into Blood of Zeus. But you were paid to public so I feel like I can share. But a million dollars for that script, yeah, but to get it made, you guys actually gave back 20% of that to come in within budgets to see it come to fruition, yeah, if you didn't do that, would you still have gotten your million dollars?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 35:58

Well, I'm just curious how Part of it is. You want to be a team player and they always try and squeeze you at the end. One thing that when you read articles in Variety or any of the trades Deadline the way screenwriting works so for Immortals it was 250 against the million is what we sold it for that story, though. What went into that is crazy.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 36:19

We should tell them that that's the part of the business. Tell them the whole thing.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 36:22

It's great, just in terms of the vernacular and the terms of art for our business. So when you say 250 against a million, you get 250,000 now and then if it gets produced, you get a million, with the caveat that if you get sole credit, sole writing credit, you get a million. If you get shared writing credit, then you get half of that bonus and then if you get no writing credit and just a story, you just stay at the 250. But that story what was kind of crazy is that obviously the guys that produced 300 were our producers on that project and Mary Parent, who had bought our first script while she was at Universal, had gone to MGM and she read the script, she loved it and she wanted to buy it.

37:03

She really felt like this is the way into Greek mythology and I think at one point they she had offered like 1.5 million and we could be the first writers in on the Red Dawn remake. But the producers were convinced that Warner Brothers was going to buy it and so they were almost just kind of almost using that offer as leverage with Warner Brothers. But long story short, as that was unfolding, warner's another executive at Warner's had sent their Clash of the Titans remake to Louis LaTarier and he said, oh, I'll direct this. And once he came on board to Clash, warner's was no longer interested in buying Immortals. Another.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 37:40

Greek mythology.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 37:41

Yes.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 37:41

Because now their Greek mythology project. All of a sudden they don't want to compete with themselves, yeah, and all of a sudden they got a director on it, so that became more real.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 37:49

And so basically, once Warner's went away and Mary realized the producers were kind of trying to just use her to drum up the price with Warner's, she's like no, I don't see you, guys, and she was out. And so she was out. So we went from like, oh, we're going to sell this for a million five.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 38:03

We were from three studios wanting it to almost like no one To no one wanted it.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 38:06

In a matter of how, yeah.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 38:07

Two days, two days.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 38:10

You know, a million five to zero To zero. Wow, our manager at the time was like guys, maybe we should consider doing this. This is a lot of money on the table. Like, why are you like, you know, we should just take this offer.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 38:22

We were for it, but in the end the producers kind of controlled.

38:24

We're quarterbacking the situation, we're quarterbacking the situation and we wanted to get the profits from the producers. And then we didn't want the producers to get it. We wanted to get the profits, but we wanted to get the profits. We wanted to get the profits. So we went from the long story short after that debacle. So we went from one, 1.5 million to zero. Then relativity came in, bought it for the, you know, 250 against a million. Then, as they were getting towards production, basically they said like guys, we need to get the budget to this number. If we don't get it to this number, it won't get made. Now our lawyer was like, tell them to f off who we are. Like we're team players. It's still getting made. We still got paid. So you know, we didn't get the million, we got 750.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 39:04

It was, yeah, it was it was something like that we had to give back like 200 grand.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 39:08

We had to give back 200 grand to come it, to see it to fruition to have a game amazing. I remember seeing it at the time too, like that was just such a cool thank you.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 39:17

It was a lot of fun and listen. It was just. You know we're so grateful it got made.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 39:22

But and I just want to add to the power of an idea. So we had this apartment in Park Lebray at that time and Charlie was sitting at a desk. You know, we had two desks, he had one and I had one in my room and he was just working on something. I'm like bro, and he was just working on it. What is that? What are you working on? And what he was working on was basically the way into Greek mythology and what ended up becoming, you know, immortals. At that time we called it War the Gods, and it was just a really, really great idea. We talk about ideas. When he said the idea, it was alive, it was just alive.

39:58

He said, like here's his character and he's gonna kind of he basically pitched the Hyperion character yeah and then I, you know, and then we also, and I said, well, and he should be going for a bow, he should be going for something powerful. At that time it was like a little bit different and then it just all started from there. But it started from that idea him working at the desk and then, when we cut to being on set, and you see all these, you know people that were employed to make the movie. See the art department and Tarzem. There's no better visual director than Tarzem. So to see how he worked and how he, you know, would work with the art department and they would pull different stills from different art books and different images, and to see how, like, that inspired what he was going to do, and to see that creative process was truly amazing. So you guys are on set.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 40:46

So you, you write this comes with fruition, and then you actually go on set, yeah, during, yeah, it's a great learning we had a great you know rapport with Tarzem and and so we went to set on Immortals and it was just great to see him work and see it kind of come to life and and, to be 100% honest, we got rewritten by two other writers, you know, and there were.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 41:07

There was something Can?

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 41:07

you explain, sorry what. What does rewritten mean? They just come in and hijack your script.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 41:12

Well, they come in. Listen. The reality is, in this business, in the movie side of things, it's a director driven business, and the director gets to tell the story he wants to tell. And so they reached a point where, you know, they brought in two other writers older writers more seasoned, who you know. You know, I would say there was one writer. The writer, jason Kelly, did an amazing job.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 41:38

Fantastic. We told him because we read what he did and what was great is that?

41:42

because so. So if they want, you know, like Tarzan wanted this one character that Joseph Morgan played to be a bigger part of the story, and so they brought in another writer, an older writer, to work on that. And then again, in features like Vlas said, the director is king. In TV the writer is king. But in features like if you don't do what the director says, you get fired and they bring someone else in. It's they're steering the ship, they are the general.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 42:07

And there's two points. It's a subjective business too, you know. So the initial idea for Immortals was to do Lord of the Rings in the world of Greek mythology. It was more in that vein, it was more fantastical it was, you know. But as Charlie mentioned, when relativity came on board there were budget kind of limitations and we were never able to really do that.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 42:31

The draft that we sold cost. They said like 145.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 42:34

They said even 160 at that time and they support 40, whatever.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 42:37

But basically what they told us is that if you can get the budget to 75 million, we'll make it. Yeah, and so we just sat with Tarzan. We said, hey, this is like a creative experiment, can we? And we would. We would literally go for six months and this is one of us saying we're working seven days a week we would go to Tarzan's house for the week and he'd lived in an amazing house and he still owns it. It's Herbritz is the famous fashion photographer's old house. Okay, it's this beautiful house up in the hills.

43:01

We would go to his house on the weekends. We would go through the script, be like what do we need? What can we lose? What can we truncate? Is there a version where we basically are cutting the script in half and and then so we would sit with him all weekend, go through scenes. Then we would go right the whole week, send in the pages, then the next weekend we would go. We would go through the pages that we've written and keep reshaping and reforming and then to finally get it to the, to the version that is the movie. Now, that basic spine was what we laid down, but, to be honest, we were burnt out after that. I was exhausted. I never.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 43:33

There's a couple of times where you just remember and I never felt more bad for my brother than during that time, because I was exhausted, right, and we were working our butts off and then he had to go and take a school exam a baby that was, so he had a baby. And he had, and so this guy right here, because I was working with him, I was right there memorized. You know, he they do these outlines in law school and they're like how many pages?

44:02

70 pages, 60 pages, 50, depending on a good outline, you get down to 25, 25, but he's got more than one exam Right and he memorized these outlines in a weekend while he was rewriting he had to go in so he wasn't studying because we were writing seven days a week.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 44:20

No, but you learn to be smart about things.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 44:23

So what I was doing, that that's in class plus a baby, plus a baby, yeah, and my wife, so he was great about kind of holding down the home front.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 44:32

Hercules and hercules, and I just felt so bad.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 44:34

This was a chance for us to get a movie made and we felt like this is an opportunity we have to take and and you know, and also to we've just learned, you know you definitely. I believe, as a writer, the more you do this, the better you get. We would have done things completely different and approached it differently. Now then, you know, back then, but then we were young writers. It was, this was in 2008. It was, you know, we were very lucky. That it's kind of crazy. We'll see what happens, you know. But you know, the first three specs we wrote, we sold all of them. Immortal Scott made that was the second. The first one live bet the heist one is still alive and well at Netflix and we're hoping it can get made there.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 45:14

Oh, so that's still pending, even though that was your first.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 45:16

Okay, they got that turnaround from Universal, and so now Netflix owns it. And then we have another, that third script. We wrote this, the one we were talking about. We got the notes from the director. We're praying knock on. You know, wood, that's acrylic. Let's reach over here a bit. Right that that in April it might get produced in Bulgaria.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 45:35

So fingers crossed we tried to pretty amazing. That's amazing guys. Can we get it to Greece instead of Bulgaria?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 45:45

But their their main studios in Bulgaria and they have a New York back lot there and it's they had us reset it in New York for that reason.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 45:53

That's incredible.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 45:54

It is and you know, again, it's a testament to just how hard he worked and, again, just kind of, you know, doing all you can to try to make things. You know, try to be successful as much as you can be. But the other thing that I just wanted to add to even in that process and it was an amazing process on Immortals and we learned a lot, you know, and the way it works is that, you know, in arbitration the new writers have to prove that they change more than 50%, and they weren't able to do that and that's why we got sole credit. But there were contributions that I think were good and there were other things that you know.

46:26

Maybe we disagreed with one of the things that Tarzem had pinpointed and we had like, when we finally got that final script, one thing that was lost was the character arc of Henry, the character arc of Theseus. He starts off mad and in our initial version what we were hoping to do is to have him go from non believer to believer and and once he became that believer he is able to overcome the adversity in his life, he's able to let go of his anger. That got lost. So he's angry the whole way through and that was a criticism that a lot of the critics had brought up, that you know they.

47:02

There wasn't that character development, but there were four scenes that had been lost in the shuffle. We told Tarzem we need these four scenes and he goes my God, Henry's telling me this. He's telling me this exact thing. This has happened when we were in Canada, but by that time the studio locked the script. They didn't want to go there, they didn't want to rewrite it again and they were a little hesitant, embracing you know the believer side of all of it. So that just got lost.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 47:26

I remember Tarzem saying, because this is one of Henry's first movies, he said if he was Brad Pitt, this would get pushed through. But we just don't have the juice right now. But he goes because we said we read the latest draft. When we flew up during pre production, we said, tarzem, you know, there was these scenes we used to have and we need that. And he goes Henry's been saying this and there's, oh my God. And he made a pitch to the studio but they just said no, they just left it, this is it.

47:50

We want to shoot this.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 47:51

I have so many questions because I know nothing about this world right. So, for example, 250 grand against the million, if it gets produced when you're doing these six months of rewrites on the weekends and the Hollywood Hills, that doesn't change. That's you saving the script, essentially, yeah.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 48:06

I mean there are steps built into a deal. So for that 250 against a million, it was called the four step deal. The first step is the script, then there are two rewrites and a polish. So in that 250 grand, you don't. They don't just give you a check for 250 grand, they give you like 100 grand and then for the first rewrite you get 50. And the next rewrite you get 50 or 75, 50, and then 25. They break it out into steps. Now do they adhere to those steps? Do you do tons of free work? Yes, you do tons of free work, and there's a whole campaign by the writer's guild to stop this free work and to try and get that. Sometimes you can fight to get put onto a weekly. But part of it is that like when a project has momentum, and this is the thing I didn't understand when I was like growing up.

48:49

so I went to work at Paramount. I'm like there's projects where the studio says they'll make it and they're giving offers to actors and the actors say no and otherwise the movie would get made. Like I was like oh no, I didn't understand. Like what happens in in. Scorsese had said this once, that that great, great directors chase great stories and then great actors chase great directors. Because the actors know the directors will make them look good. The directors want to tell stories they're interested in, and it's the projects where you get the actors and directors at a budget number that makes sense, that then those movies go forward, and so it's this strange kind of alchemy that has to happen. So part of it is like you want the director to be happy, because the director may be developing three or four projects at the same time, and whichever one he's most passionate about, whichever one, comes together, you're trying to kind of please him, you know. And then the director's job with the studio is to try and convince talent to get involved or to attract talent.

49:48

One of the reasons I think relativity bought immortals at the time too is that Tarsem had a good relationship with Channing Tatum Because Channing Tatum was on the verge of quitting the business and Tarsem cast them in a commercial. Tarzem was a huge commercial director. I think he put him in like a Pepsi commercial, the Michael Jordan of commercials. He was massive Him, Michael Bay, Marcus Nyspel those were like the huge commercial directors of the 90s. And music videos. Tarzem did the Losing my Religion, the REM song that won him like a MTV award. But so Channing was always grateful for the opportunity Tarzem gave him and so I think even for like a couple of days Channing was attached. But then Tarzem had Channing come over to the house and he's like do you really want to do this? I'm just kind of doing it because I feel like I. Oh, he was like no, no, no, then this isn't right.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 50:33

Well, he was concerned too that he looked kind of too American, which was also true.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 50:37

Like in Greek mythology, he didn't and I think his concerns were were were valid.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 50:43

Yeah, he is your Abercrombie looking

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 50:46

guy yeah exactly that's so exciting. So now, on the mythology play, let's talk Blood of Zeus. Yeah, you guys go from Hollywood traditional in theaters now to Netflix and you guys have a great relationship that looks like with Netflix.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 51:02

It was a massive, massive blessing. And you know Charlie talks about it and maybe she even speak to it. But, like you know, we had been up for, like you know, four or five jobs and we were like perfect for a lot of them and we just weren't getting them. We're getting them, and we were just really kind of bummed out.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 51:16

And then you know and to the way writing works is that you have. You have in features. You have two options. You either write something on spec, which means speculative work, which means you're just writing it, you're taking your time and you hope that when you're done someone will buy it, but you're going to invest six months of your year. You know writing this.

51:35

Or you can kind of go for what are called OWA's open writing assignments, and what those are is that, like the studio will, will we just option this new book and Harry Potter, and what they'll do is that they'll have an approved list of writers that they would consider hearing takes for. Or your agent will try and submit you for it and they, hey, will you hear a take? And this is how writers audition. So, oh, there's this new Harry Potter book that's just been optioned by Warner Brothers. We asked our agents hey, we read that they option this. Will they consider hearing a take for us? And then, if they say yes, you go in. You say, well, this is how we picture the movie. You open up and you and you pitch your version, and that's how you audition as a writer in person.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 52:13

You guys go and you pitch it, you go into the studio.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 52:15

You pitch them, your whole take, and that's what Voss was referring to. There was four or five OWA's that we chased that we pitched one in particular, the one at MGM. Like the executive wanted to hire us, he said your take is by far the best take we've heard, but the rock was attached as a producer and both potentially to star and he's like we you have to pitch his producing partner and you have to pitch him. And, long story short, they ended up hiring a friend of theirs. And so, even though the executive wanted us and we had an awesome take and I still think to this day at some point we'll sit down and write that because it was an original take on this idea that they had but we were really kind of like this is crazy, like we should have gotten this job.

52:55

And then John tell them John Derdian, who's the head of animation at Netflix, he had sent an email, said hey, do you just want to come in for a general meeting? A general meeting is we're just like you go in, you meet them, you, you. It's a general meeting. There's nothing kind of on the docket, but you smart writers, and what you kind of are taught to do is that you bounce a couple ideas off of them. They'll tell you what they're developing and to see what you might be interested in and you tell them any ideas you might have.

53:21

Gotcha, and at the time you know John had come up from business affairs and was a practicing lawyer I said, you know, I'm so tired of these like IP deals. I'll spend a year, 18 months, negotiating. You know he was the one that was behind Castlevania becoming an animated show, which has become a huge hit for Netflix. But he says sometimes I try and do these deals and the companies are so difficult. Do you have anything in the world of public domain that could be a cool animated show?

53:48

And we're like, oh, funny enough, we've always had this idea for a cool, you know, greek mythology show. It's kind of a deconstruction of the Hercules story and these two brothers and you know, but in you know, obviously Hercules and his brother they're allies and they both go on to become, you know, part of Jason and the Argonauts and they, you know, but it would be cool if they end up becoming enemies and and so he's like, oh, that sounds very interesting and we kind of wrote some pages for him. But part of the whole point of that is that you know we were lamenting that we didn't get this MGM job. But if we did we would have been busy writing and we might not have gone in for that general meeting.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 54:24

Right, right. And that basically led to us working in animation, and that was a prayer answered, because COVID happened after that. So all the you know live action, television shows, live action of movies they came to a grinding halt and here we were. We were kind of protected during that period of time because we were working remotely. We were working in animation, which is where everyone wanted to work, and that literally saved us that was a lifeline in many ways.

54:55

In addition to that, that became one of the most gratifying projects, creatively and professionally, because it was the first time in our career where we were involved from inception of idea to completion, because we were the creators, the executive producers.

55:11

So we got to tell the story we wanted to tell. We didn't get rewritten for better, for worse. We said this is the story we want to tell, this is how we want to tell it, and we were blessed to have a group of people, from our director, sean Negotian, on down to all the animators, who embrace the mantra of best idea wins, keep the boys more out, keep the ego out. Best idea wins. And everyone bought in and everyone focused on that. And so it's the story like I would say even for myself, like that I'm most proud of, because also, too, you have an arc for our main character. We remembered in the mortals you know how those scenes that were taken out, and then we're going to make sure we're going to give our main character this arc and we also have an idea for his long you know, series, series arc, for the antagonists and for the protagonist.

56:02

So, and it was just so gratifying to work on that, you know, to work on Blood of Zeus, because, again, like the story was just unfolding exactly as we had hoped it would, and it was also for us, and I would say even for me, and I think it's true for Charlie too it's always about creating a, you know, a television show or movie telling a story that moves us emotionally, does it move me emotionally? And then you hope that if it moves you emotionally, that it'll move the audience emotionally. And that's something that Scorsese had said, and when I had heard that, I'm like that's exactly it. So for me, it moved me emotionally, I was engaged, you know I was. I just wanted to see what was going to happen next, and so when you believe in it, and when we saw it, we really felt very good about it, and then you share it with the world and thank God, it was a massive hit.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 56:51

Massive right In 2020,. It was huge.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 56:55

Number two animated show in the world that year in terms of views.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 56:58

Number so Blood of Zeus. Just so the listeners understand, we're going to put up the visuals and everything in links. In 2020 was the number two animated show on Netflix In the world, not in the world. In the world Come on Outside of China.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 57:12

They don't release their numbers and also in China you can be like the 10th show and do like a billion people because there's so many people.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 57:18

They don't count.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 57:19

In terms of our parlance and what we talk about in our industry, because we don't take those numbers into account. But yeah, you can say we were the number two show animated show in the world that year, outside of not including China.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 57:32

To give you some context, you know Netflix has the top 10. We were number two. Number one was the Queen's Gambit.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 57:37

Which deserved to be number one.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 57:41

But it was an anomaly, that was like a juggernaut, otherwise we would have been number one and the beauty of that out of all their shows, not just number one or number two.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 57:50

You know, in the animated space, in the live action space, so all of it, when you go to Netflix and it says the top 10, is that based on just total?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 57:58

views, views.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 57:59

There's no algorithm that pulls, we had close to like 16 million views.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 58:03

Are you using so?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 58:04

normally in the first 30 days and you get more context.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 58:08

Netflix normally waits at least at least a month before they decide whether or not they're going to renew you for a second season. After 10 days they came back to us and they said we're ordering more. We're ordering not only a second season, yeah, but just still yeah. And so after 10 days, based on the numbers they said, we're going to order. You know, and they like our producer, you know, who worked with them on many projects, that they've never done that.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 58:34

Guys, that's incredible.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 58:36

Very lucky, and you know. But to bring it back to our panel, the one thing I will say is that we knew John D'Aaron because I went to Swarthmore with him, okay, and I got into other schools and it had been offered scholarship money. Our parents like no, you're gonna go to the best school you get into, and it doesn't matter what we can afford or what we can afford, that's where you're gonna go. And so, because I knew John, we had this general meeting and so that's why, like, I don't care what anyone says, whatever love and effort, and you know.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 59:07

And.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 59:07

I'm selfish. You put into your children. God will find a way to reward it somewhere down the line absolutely because you know, again, we've loved working on blood of Zeus. We've loved working in this animated space, yeah, and and during COVID, when we were rewriting the second season, all of our live-action friends are like there's no work, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna start Uber driving, but there's no one to pick up. I might have to do, was it when they deliver the food?

59:31

You know, I just like Postmates and what, where they go to the supermarket and they grab all your stuff. I'm like, thank God, we have work and that's why we say it's, it's, it's. You know, our mother's, you know very devout in the most beautiful kind of way, yep, and I really believe sometimes her prayers. They go, they go, you know, they.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 59:49

They get us where you know, thank God your product of that like you're obviously living it Like.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 59:54

I absolutely believe that because, again, we were trying everything. We were trying to, you know, book these, all these other. You know jobs no one knew. You know what the pandemic was going to be, and so you know, when John said, hey, do you have this, an idea for an animated show? And then we came up with it, that was like you know, that was a prayer answered.

01:00:11

It really was and then it became something that was very successful and something that we just absolutely loved doing and something that we want to continue to do absolutely want to continue to work in animation and, you know, are the you know writer, who has, you know, been a, like a dear friend had said, it's always about trying to keep the momentum going, and this is advice you can give to like young screenwriter. So he would say, you know, try to keep the momentum going. I didn't fully understand it until we really, you know, started working in the business. So you have some momentum in the feature space great. And then that can lend you maybe momentum into the TV space and they just have a movie coming out, so maybe you can sell a TV show pitch something in that arena.

01:00:49

Yeah, or maybe you have a movie that didn't perform and that kind of gets cold, but now you have a TV show that all of a sudden is getting some momentum, or if you have an animated show, so you're always trying to keep the momentum going.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:01:00

Yeah, the iron top right now. It's always been hot, but it's like now. People are seeing and and the following for blood of Zeus. You see it socially online. I recently downloaded them and I started and I'm like man, this is great. Like I studied Greek mythology as a kid, you would read the basic stories, right less gruesome, and then in University we had courses and, and now I'm like it's bringing me back again right.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:01:24

We stand on the shoulders of our heritage.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:01:27

Absolutely.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:01:27

I mean, we read all the time and we always tell young writers if you, if you want to be a writer, you have to read. And we've read other, you know, mythologies and other corpses of Literature and man, greek mythology. It is amazing because everything we're doing we're using all the archetypes and tropes From the ancient stories, absolutely.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:01:46

We always say it the popularity of the show and it was Extremely popular is a testament, not about us. Yeah to Greek mythology.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:01:55

Yeah, but you guys are bringing it though, like you like. Yeah, you guys are very people, love, love.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:02:02

Yeah, so they even had a metric, you know, at Netflix because they have metrics for everything. So it used to be called you know gods and heroes and John Dadarian actually say hey guys, you know what, like, if you take the word Zeus, you're gods and heroes. He had like the metrics and like some people and then the, especially in the Asian countries. They didn't kind of know what that was about. But when you take Zeus, the metric of Zeus, like everyone had heard that and it was like it was in the Global here.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:02:28

Oh boy.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:02:29

Just, you got to have Zeus in the title. Just come up something, zeus, you know said two or three words.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:02:33

Yeah, I'm the title, but yeah, and we said blood of Zeus, because that's it you got to be blood of just that first, to be fair, we were kind of stuck and we're part of a writer's group and we said, hey, you know, this was the title and Matt Altman came up with it. Yeah, we said our current titles. You know Gods and gods and heroes but they want three words and with Zeus, and this is kind of what the story and one writer, friend Matt, almost a blood of Zeus.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:02:58

Oh, that's pretty good and we.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:03:01

John. We gave John like five of the suggestions and he's like no, no, that that one blood of Zeus see so Netflix, that's interesting.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:03:07

You get that instant data driven feedback. Absolutely where, if you're sitting there and the person that you're pitching may have a bad day or yeah, you're getting that feedback Instantly. That's incredible.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:03:18

They know like, okay, so something needs to happen. At the two-minute mark, at the five-minute mark, if you pass the seven-minute mark, then the Probability that you're gonna see the whole episode goes up to 90%, right, we also had a very high Completion completion rate where people saw the entire season. That's important because then then the executives know, oh well, if they saw the whole show, there's an appetite for a second season, right? So, like you know, you can look at some of the shows. I'm not gonna mention them. There's one that was huge on Amazon, but there wasn't a big completion rate. Yeah, there were initial a lot of people, a lot of checked it, checked it out.

01:03:52

So the pilot didn't really care for it. The first episode off. Yeah, and then it dropped off, wow, so we're proud of that, you know. So how do you write?

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:04:01

if Netflix chose to carry this on for eight season, ten season, could you like? At what point does the, the story, the mythology stop and then you take it further? Can?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:04:11

there's a natural endpoint that we have for five seasons.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:04:15

Okay.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:04:16

And now their business model now is to do like three or four, because they've said that you know, unless it's like a Classic show, like it's friends or suits, that already exists, that was built under the syndication model. Most people, if it's too long, they're almost.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:04:31

Dauunted and take oh, this is a hundred episodes. I'm not gonna never get through it.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:04:36

So they've seen that three or four seasons like that's like the right amount for them and their business model and what they see young people in terms of their streaming habits Okay, so that's their sweet spot. We have five seasons kind of arched out. We've never seen kind of you know, what ended up happening is there's no kind of end times kind of Armageddon type story in Greek mythology, because basically Christianity came over and overtook it. So we have an idea for that would be the end of blood of Zeus, like this amazing Armageddon story. Now, whether we get there or not, it will all depend on view.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:05:10

I just want to say something to we love, love, love, love our fans. Yeah, our fans have been like. They're some of the best fans in the world and we feel their pain because there's been you know a big, you know gap in time from season one to win. Season two comes out and you know we feel their pain. We can't get into the particulars of that but, like I totally Understand where they're coming from, the good news is that you know it'll be here, the, the, the May 15th, the second season, may 15 24 super, super proud of the story.

01:05:44

The story, we think, is really great and it's timely and it has a great message, without being preachy, and it's, all you know, entertaining and so and we just encourage them to please watch, because if they do watch it, it all depends on how season two does. Yeah, if season two does well, then we'll be able to get a season.

01:06:01

You know more seasons more blood of Zeus more blood of Zeus and there's also a spin-off that we have from Medusa that is awesome where we cross pollinate some of the characters in blood of Zeus and we bring it into the world of Medusa. And so if they want that and if they want more blood of Zeus and if they want a Medusa spin-off, they have to watch season two, until their friends to watch season two amazing.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:06:24

We gotta make sure that's why George is like the blood of Medusa script I'm super proud of like that is awesome where I like, now, god willing, we'll get to tell it, but in this business you never know you never know.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:06:37

Do you guys own the IP for blood or Zeus, or once you work with Netflix? That's there. They own it all. They own that okay.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:06:43

That's true for every studio Streamer that they you know the writers lost that. What was it, bro? We gave up copyright.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:06:50

Yeah, to get back in the years ago eighty years to get to get health and pension. So to have insurance health insurance for writers and pension, we had to give up copyright. And that's the guild will tell you. It's one of the things they regret most. But when you give up the copyright, then they own all those bundles of rights. And George Lucas, who made Star Wars he negotiated a deal to keep the because at that time merchandise was it was didn't exist, and then he made so much money on it, the snooze, that never again never again, right right.

01:07:18

We give that.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:07:19

I love that and and also tune. This isn't a roundabout way. Going back to live bet in that you know you never know what's best. And again, there are no accidents, because there was a time you know we can even just walk you through that, because that's also that's a great story yeah so.

01:07:35

So basically, we had live bet. We wrote the first. You know we got this the notes from the studio, mary parents, very smart, so that was great, great rewrite. Everyone's excited our, our agents at that time. Well, they went out to directors. Well, renson.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:07:49

Yeah, they went out to director.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:07:50

They went out there was a director that was had a big hit at Sundance. We're not going to mention his name. They went to him, he loved it, he wanted to do it our senior agents at that time.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:08:03

Rances and.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:08:03

Charesti were saying posters on the wall, posters on the wall. At that time Fast and Furious 3 was out and they said, okay, they want to make this. Universal wants to make this their next.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:08:14

Fast, because they thought fast was done on fast 3 at that time to perform yeah how do you not sorry just at this point how are you not getting excited like this? You're like vacation homes in that central pay.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:08:28

You know, because also we believed in that script. Charlie pitched you. You know the elevator pitch and when we took meetings, you just tell them.

01:08:36

They were just super excited about that script. They were like it was. They were telling us it was lightning in a bottle, like that script was just something. Everything just came together and it's like character and action and it had all the elements. It was just super entertaining. Posters on the wall, posters on the wall. Then the director, with his writing partner, wanted to change it and they wanted to get writing credits. So they changed more and more and more of it. They handed it in and the executive at that time, becky Slover, told us he goes guys, this is gonna make you cry, you're gonna make me this draft. And we read it and it was awful. It was almost like unreadable. I hate to say it, but it was just really awful. And then Mary said what are you doing? What? Why are you guys changing it? She fired that director and his writing partner. They got thrown off and but then in the interim, you know, before we could get a new director, the new Vin Diesel said that he would come back and do one more fast and furious.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:09:30

He talked to Paul Walker and he put a silly what if we all come back with just do?

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:09:34

one more, it's just one last before the next five.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:09:37

Last Exactly and then that became a big hit. But the rest is literally the history with history.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:09:43

So that just overshadowed.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:09:44

Yeah, we got the back room.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:09:46

That was we were supposed to take over and be their new car franchise. They, but then you know it got botched. That director basically dropped the ball. Yeah, the momentum of like this is a go movie. The studio wants to make it because he delivered died. Yeah and then, while Mary tried to find a new director, yeah, those guys came back. Universe said okay, we'll do one more, let's just see how this works out and then the rest.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:10:09

Which is funny because we know the writer of.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:10:11

It's a great.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:10:14

Human being and very talented writer. But that's a funny story and also just and during that process too, there was a time when Warner Brothers was trying to do hot wheels and they basically the producers that. We knew the producer at the time. They said we looked at every single car script and Yours was the best one, and at that time they were gonna try to buy it out of turnaround for like a million dollars, try to get it out of universal, bring it to Warners. But the producer had to deal with a different toy company.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:10:42

Yeah, so Mattel was on one side and Haswell was on another side, because has, because they were doing battleship at universal and and and so the two toy companies is like no, no, you can't buy something out of universal like they put the. So what.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:10:57

So we were just like, oh my goodness, like we really were right there, you know, and it was gonna be made at Warners and great, and didn't happen. And now you know, netflix, you know, pulled it out of universal and hopefully they'll make it and it would be great if it came out, you know, in the next couple years. That would be great for our career.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:11:14

But you never know it now, we don't own anything. Oh, you know.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:11:20

Universal bought it from us and now Netflix bought it from Universal. Yeah but you always just hope you know that it gets made. But in the end you know it got us invited to the party. We'll be forever grateful. I'll always remember meeting 50 cent. We went to this like he was filming a music video in Long Beach and we went down.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:11:38

It was Lamborghini in it, and at that time, though, it was like wasn't working, so they had like push it into the shot. Oh my push it.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:11:47

Trying to dodge. So a Couple things, a list celebrities right that you work with you, right for can you share any stories, any names of people that like the positive or negative?

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:11:58

the best one is so best, Sylvester Stallone. You know we really love, so that's just long respect what he's been able to do. I mean you know so much respect, so much respect.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:12:06

Yet we told them created three franchises, yeah, and you know as a star, to write your way into the. You know to do Rocky and Rambo and then you know Expendables to write. Come up with three franchises. You know nobody does that and you know.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:12:20

Yeah, and it's funny because he goes. You know he was oh writing, so oh, that's, that's the toughest now, that's a guy.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:12:26

He was like having homework every day.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:12:29

He said it, like you know, and it is. I think it's the hardest out of out of all the discipline. I think they're all hard. I'm not diminishing any of them. I think you know to be a director is challenging and and writing and acting, but like I do think like writing is man, that one's. Like you're looking at the, you know the blank page, yeah, and so anyway, we told him you know he loved Vlas after this.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:12:49

Look, because we went in for a general meeting. It was an open writing assignment. There was a movie he wanted to remake, yeah, and. But then when Vlas, we sat down with him, vlas said this and from that point on he loved us the rest of the way.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:13:01

Well, wait, so before you say it's where do you sit with them? You go to his office in Hollywood, okay.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:13:07

What's crazy is that, you see, he's still jacked.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:13:09

Yeah, he looks like it's unbelievable, he's still jacked.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:13:13

He shakes your head. Oh my god, yeah, this is. You know, he was probably because this was 2007, so this is probably gosh. Like you know, he's probably like 60 or 70 and he was way better shape than.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:13:25

And you guys are in shape, so for you to be saying that, yeah.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:13:28

Well, we love, we love Rocky. If you see Rocky, that film still works and that Things that we love. It has heart. You know it's a love story and the genius of it is that it culminates. Everything culminates to that last moment when he's calling out to Adrian which is really hard to do, you know, I mean just to have it all culminate there, because you know, even Tarantino says it's your ending, it's how you end. When you end with a bang, that's what people leave the theater with and he just nailed that. So we told him our favorite scene in Rocky it's not even the fighting, it's none of that stuff, it's the scene where he's in bed laying down next to Adrian the night before the fight and he tells her you know, basically, you know, if I can just go those 10 rounds, I'll know I'm not another bum from the neighborhood and I just said I just it kills me every time because it sets up how he can win even though he loses.

01:14:22

it sets up the end line, and he's just not another bum from the neighborhood, it's the humanity and the humanity of it and, and it's just to me, it encapsulates, like the movie, in such a beautiful way and it's such a beautiful tender moment. And when we told that, just alone, he, just like right away, got all animated because the producers Told me that we don't have time to do this scene, we're gonna go from the scene before we're gonna go right to the fighting. And Salon says no fucking way.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:14:47

I Today in that location, in his apartment, only had two days and they had filmed everything else. And enough time there was running out of time, so we're just gonna cut it.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:14:56

He goes if we don't do this scene, I will not do any of the boxing scene. I won't do any of it. And they said, all right, all right, finally do, but the whole time too, like you know, because Salon wasn't you know anyone at that time the sound guy was yelling I'm so. Come on, man, we're all tired.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:15:10

I'm really getting the sound man.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:15:14

Sadity. They finally the person. Okay, okay, we'll let you do it. So he said that we'll let you have one take one take. One take yeah so he said that he went to like the 7-eleven. He pounded a cult 45, he went back in and a lot of pressure. Yeah, and they did the scene the next morning. He said that he was walking, you know, onto set and the producer just came over to him and hugged him and said it's the best scene in the film.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:15:42

He had come out of there, yeah, and it was like, oh, my god, and so ever since then he loved us.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:15:47

Yeah, he was showing Like sorry. What's more magical, the fact that he fought and left that in. But you guys brought that out like he must have Just connected it low instantly.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:15:56

He loved that because it's, it's the character moments, it's the human moments, it's where we see ourselves in the character. We recognize that character. You know, that's what makes movie magic, that's what makes movies memorable, that's what makes movies, you know it, just the truly great ones have those types of moments. So like I can't picture Rocky without that moment, without him in bed next to you know, adrian just kind of opening up the way he does, and and and Sylvester Stallone understands that, he understands the humanity of his characters. And you know, I know it's, you know, some people in the media kind of attack him for, like, different reasons. But man, that guy, I feel, understands humanity and you know you can ask him. And I was telling Charlie, you got to see his documentary slide. I thought it was fantastic right.

01:16:45

You know, because he, he asked, like, what is this movie about? And you have to be able to distill that. And I would offer that advice to young screenwriters like and, and storytellers in general, like, know what your movie is about. Is it about redemption? Is it about, you know, revenge, is it? You know there's a Woody Allen talks about that. You know, once he knows what it's about, it almost colors every scene, and so I think that's what we've gotten better at. Like, you know, we have a you know character, overcoming the external stakes, the personal stakes, and then if we can tie in a theme, then that's the real home run and that's what we try to do. What is this? What are we trying to say here? And so, yeah, and then he showed us like footage from Rambo at that time.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:17:28

It was like talking to our father because, like we were talking about, he's all the Russians.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:17:32

You can't trust the Russians. He was right.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:17:34

He was right. He was right, he was right.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:17:41

He meant it. He was still fighting the Cold War, and it was just great and listen.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:17:45

there are times, like you know, there's some obviously silliness in our business and like there was an A-list director we went to his house in Bel Air to pitch and I won't say his name, but he had just got back from making a movie and his best friend was the producer that ran his production company and what was funny is that he was living in Bel Air and he was rebuilding his pool and he was having custom Tile from Italy that was imported in make sense.

01:18:11

But there was too many trucks like bringing all this stuff in and the neighbors were complaining about the trucks. So he just bought the neighbors house and knocked it down and made it a parking lot and but we got there he was a 10 against 10. Which means he makes 10 million and then 10% of the gross.

01:18:27

Yeah, oh, that's what that's a million dollars, and then if it doesn't really that, she makes another hundred million and he had a couple billion dollar movies, geez. And so he was out there at the pool with the workers, kind of like overseeing them, and we were waiting and and this is his Best friend from college and he's like I don't know, do you think he sees us? Should I go tell him? And it's just like dude, this is your best friend and we sat there for like an hour and a half. We're like, oh, we don't care what we wait, but he's trying to wait for the right moment, like that's when it's the high school. With money, our business can be like a little ridiculous and like and he was totally cool, but like you do come across those kind of like what we call like entourage stories like these. You know ridiculous things, but most people in our business are but also like celebrities.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:19:09

This is a really, you know, a good celebrity story and he was just a pleasure to work with and it's just interesting because you know people in our business talk about they. Certain actors just got that thing and it's hard to like identify what that is and I think it's mystical in some ways. But when you try to explain it like it, just you don't even come close. But when we were on set for Immortals, when you saw Mickey Rourke through the camera lens, there was something that just you just gravitated towards him. It was something about him and and I think he's one of the best actors. You know he's, he's, he is so, so good.

01:19:45

And what was kind of funny, they asked him in the press. You know this was a very physical shoot. You know he got into shape. You know they asked him like what was the hardest part of production and he said the hardest part was seeing his lines through the smoke machine and like he would lean against the wall and his lines were written there, that even over here. But he was just such. But he was a true pro. He was always on on time on set, did the work and was just a very generous actor. Oh yeah, we, when he dealt with Henry Another just you know a thing that we should mention with Henry Cavill, just a great guy, yeah, you know he had been starting. He just kind of that was like his, one of his big roles he's in the future side on the future side.

01:20:29

after about two weeks he took out the crew and they're a party for the whole party. But he did it. He's one of the good guys. You know was never a prima donna, no, it was always super cool. Frida Pinto was as sweet as they come. A professional, really, really nice.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:20:50

She played the priestess.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:20:52

John Hurt, another just true gentleman you know there's no one with us got rest of soul.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:20:57

He was a true pro so it's interesting, you know, when you deal with directors they're very interesting. You know, I've always found meeting and working with directors are very interesting and you see that like they put themselves in the movie, their sensibilities, like there's a, there's a very famous writing team. They said you can give three spec scripts to three different directors and you'd end up with three different movies, absolutely. And you see how they work in their process and how they shape it. And then it's just interesting because actors, they view very much the project through their role and Really get underneath the hood of that character and why they're doing it.

01:21:35

And sometimes, like you know, I feel like sometimes we're more the architects, kind of overseeing the whole thing and they'll be the one that comes in that will to make this kitchen really nice. We need to do this. That I'm like, oh, that's great and that, just you know, elevates it that much more. So every time. And some producers are really good creatively and some producers are just, you know, in it for a million other reasons. You know what I mean and we've dealt with all different kinds.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:21:59

Could you guys, without stepping on anyone's toes now, could you guys, or Do you have aspirations to go to the direction side? Absolutely.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:22:07

I've always that's, for me, is like always been something that that I wanted to do. It's always been something that you know I have a true passion for, because you get to tell the story the way you want to tell it, and we had that experience, though, thank God, because we had a very talented director in blood of Zeus, we were able to tell the story that we the way we wanted it, exactly the way we wanted to tell it. We've not been afforded that opportunity on the feature side or even in television, but we're. We have a project that we would love to direct, and and and again. For us, it's all about telling the story the way we want to tell it, for better, for worse and again about evoking emotions, you know, first in ourselves and then, in doing so, god willing, in the audience.

01:22:47

So there's a project that we're trying to, you know, you know, put together where we would be directing and I feel like we would, we would do a good job with it because we can wear that hat. We have theater experience. Charlie studied with a very, very talented, you know, theater professor at Swarthmore. I studied with William Esper for two years. He was a disciple of Sandy Meisner. Sandy Meisner was, you know, one of the kind of huge, famous, super talent is Hyman Roth and Godfather 2, the you know who not Sandy, that's actually.

01:23:22

Uh, say us, uh, what's his name. Oh, my goodness, stamper, now Gosh, let's see, that's not my, that's a chinos. Acting coach, yeah, from method acting, yeah, I'll think of it. You know you had. You had Adler, you had Sandy Meisner and you had Lee Strasburg, and that's who was in the Godfather 2, but they were the pioneers when it came to acting techniques and it all stems from Stanislavski, who was in, you know, the base some of this stuff on the traits of orthodox monasticism, but that's like a whole nother conversation, really, yeah.

01:24:00

But but the get back to it is it's all about films that we love have an emotional truth. You know, some of our favorite films, like obviously the Godfather's emotional truth, and we're always chasing that emotional truth and when an actor works in that space and he's not indicating he's really doing it, that's what you try to capture, that's what you try to, you know, put in into the film and, and I think, audiences they may not be able to articulate why they like a certain performance over another performance, but nine times out of ten it's because someone's really doing it. They're in that emotional truth space and that's something that we would, you know, imbue in our work Directorily and that's something that we would chase and we have an actor attached to play one of the main roles.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:24:41

We were waiting for the the sag strike to end to go try and get the the female lead, and so we hope. Like with this business, you have to have many irons in the fire and and you, just you, hope they come together and you hope and pray, which everyone is meant to come into fruition.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:24:58

That it, that it happens that it is coming again blood of Zeus. You know, we never would have guessed would have been that project.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:25:04

That was just, you know, a godsend, and when we say that to you work as hard as humanly possible. You do everything within your purview to make it come to life, but then it's out of your hands.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:25:17

I thought you're.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:25:17

So it's not just like oh, we wrote this today, we hope what you know, let's see what happens, right? No, we're always working and pushing and trying to think, but what we've learned is that, like you try, you do what you think, you come up with a plan and then after that, if it's meant to be, it'll be, and you know who knows when, what happens and why.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:25:36

And we're in a, you know, in a position now where we can direct, you know, charlie's, you know daughters a little bit older, you know my kids are a little bit older. I have to, you know, and it would be an indie film. So you're gone for a month and then, like you know, you do post wherever it is you can. So it's more doable now, you know, as opposed to say, like ten years ago or what have you. So, like I do think that Everything does happen for a reason. I feel, like you know, god has a plan for all of us. The only choice that we truly have, in my opinion, is are we going to be honest with ourselves or not? And once you're honest with yourself and you really kind of listen to that inner voice and you pray for strength and guidance, it leads you down a path and They'll always be adversity. I mean, that's just part of it. You know, as we talked about, there's failure and adversity. It's how you deal with that.

01:26:22

And there's, you know, we did a project with about Elizabeth Cuba Ross. She came up with the five stages of grief and what she believed was that during adversity and during even something that happens to us, that's, you know, tragic. You can either come out shining you can become a better person for it or it can cripple you, it can destroy you, and life can do that and we've seen, sadly, even friends like that have had difficult experiences. Life has crippled them, you know, and it hasn't. You know they haven't come out shining, and that's why it's also great in that documentary the sly talks about the adversity.

01:26:57

It's so good, I'm telling you can't wait, yeah, because life will always have adversity, you don't? He said it in and I'm. You know I'm paraphrasing, but, like you, don't beat life, life just keeps coming at you. It's how you deal with the adversity. That is kind of that you encounter and, and that's so important, to try to learn, try to grow. We're all here to grow and learn, you know, I think, psychologically, psychologically, physically and spiritually, and and you can't grow in a bed of roses, it's just, it's not how it works.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:27:28

Yeah, that that insights incredible. I have a few questions from the community, right, and they wanted me to ask this, but before we get into that and advice in general, your insight has been phenomenal.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:27:40

Like just into this space a good host, yeah, well no it's not.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:27:43

I feel like we could talk for hours and we're going to do more segments because you guys are amazing. You going back a bit, you talked about Netflix At minute two. You need to do this to hook the audience and I'm in at five and you have all these metrics. And then your Guild had a strike and then AI is the big thing that everyone's talking about. Yeah, does it concern you? Right, when there it's so data driven that, hey, at minute two, just put it into the bot and we'll get something written Like maybe not today, but as it goes, isn't that a threat to what you guys are doing?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:28:18

It's an existential threat and that's why the guild kind of drew a line in the sand and, to be honest, floss and I, when all of this was happening, we said thank God we've had the career that we've had, because I don't know how long our business is going to continue to exist right you know, because Currently, you know, this technology improves exponentially.

01:28:35

Now what they approached a showrunner with, and what kind of raised flags for the guild, is that, hey, what we want to do is have AI pump out the scripts and then hire instead of like normally, in like a say, like a network show, they have 10 to 15 writers, will have AI write the first draft and then hire three or four writers just to polish them and make them more human, Cause they're not at the level yet where you know they can get it. But you know, in 10 years five years, like, I mean, if you look back 20 years ago like the idea about a smartphone seemed impossible. So who knows what they're capable of? And I think it's a question that becomes a more fundamental societal question is that who do we want telling our stories? Because our society is shaped by stories. That's how society works. The stories we tell and share are what shape our ethics, what we think is important, and do you really want a computer doing that?

01:29:27

You know the authors guild, which are the people that write books. They did some of their own market research and they pulled people and they paid for this research. If a book was written by AI. Would you want to read it and would you want that on the title? And, like 95% of people said, no, I don't want to read it. And 99% of the people said it should be made clear on the cover. And so do I think at some point that technology could exist that could replace this. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm always blown away by what my friend who's a doctor in Florida from college. He said that in 10 years you're going to walk in and AI is going to do all the initial screening and then, if something gets flagged, we deal with it.

01:30:07

Do you say that's going to happen with medicine, where people's lives are at stake? You think in our business where we're just telling stories, you know if they could use it. You know Jeffrey Katzenberg said for animation it's going to decrease the cost by 95% and so animators might be out of work. So it's a question of you know one of our writer friends. She said like can't the robots fix, like getting all the garbage out of the ocean first, before they become writers.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:30:31

But, you know, we'll see. It's really. It's very interesting. It definitely rarely in history does a technology come along where it has an effect on multiple industries, so this isn't just in the entertainment industry, this is in just all over, you know, and that's rare, I think. So the ramifications of that, I think, are going to be pretty big. But I also think that I do think that, yes, as the technology advances and gets smarter, that it'll be able to do and write certain things and that those scripts will get better and, you know, and maybe on it'll become close to replicating something that's say, on broadcast TV.

01:31:17

But I don't think it'll ever it is just my opinion it'll ever give you the Godfather. I don't think it'll ever give you Chinatown. I don't think it'll ever come close to giving you something as beautiful as the piano, where there's something that in those movies I feel like that can only come from a living human being, that sense of soul, that humanity. I don't think an AI will ever be able to write the Godfather. That's just me, ben Herr, something like that. I think that requires a human being, and so you know, what it will be able to create remains to be seen. But when I think of. Like you know, I don't think you can be able to create the Sopranos or Breaking Bad. That's just my opinion.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:32:12

These iconic, memorable yeah.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:32:15

These movies that have the thing that we discussed about before, where you have characters that are growing, that have internal, external stakes and thematic that are about something Right. But you know I could be wrong. You know I don't think so.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:32:27

Our best hope is that copyright law saves us, because basically, the way AI works is that it doesn't actually create something new. That's what we do we stare at a blank page, we take all the influences and everything we've read, but we stare at a blank page and we create something new. Ai scrapes through all of this open source material and then, by taking that, then it creates and follows those patterns. And there is a very good chance where, if you can prove that oh, it scraped this Tarantino film, well, that's copywritten. You can't use that to influence the new script, and so I think, on legal grounds, maybe that'll get stopped. But who knows, any technology we've ever invented, we've always used, including the atomic bomb, you know what I mean.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:33:12

But there's nothing that humans have ever created that they didn't use, and I think they will use it and I think it'll be a tool, and I think that that tool requires a human being, requires a writer, requires an architect, requires a filmmaker to bring the humanity into the piece. Otherwise, then you have something that's soulless and it's very mechanical, so on its own I don't think it can create something that's great as a tool, with people that are very talented around it and using it and imbuing their soul into it and their humanity into it. Yeah, then I think there'll be some iteration of that.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:33:51

Well, think of the way, and by no means a movie buff. But when you look at social media, right, and you scroll for the day and you're just looking at mindless stuff, that's all it is. It's mindless. What really resonates after a few days, on a one minute clip or very few pieces, to me it's like movies. You know, my favorite movie of all time again not a movie buff is Shawshank Redemption.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:34:11

Oh, that's great, I've seen it, I've seen it 10 plus times.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:34:14

And then I've seen probably hundreds of other movies where it was like, yeah, that made me laugh for an hour and a half. I couldn't. So you have that type of stuff. We're seeing AI even in my space in lighting and design, where, hey, design some lighting. And you have these bots that are doing stuff like that, and then even our marketing teams talking about, hey, we should use AI to write press releases and to do this, and it's that catch 22,. Like, yeah, it's easier and you could save money, but then we're feeding this machine. Where's this gonna be two, three, five years from now? And we're just kind of becoming so dependent, eliminating people. I don't know, it was a big topic in your industry, but it's affecting everyone.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:34:54

It's affecting everyone and there's gonna be a cumulative effect. But I just want to speak to you. Just piggyback off the Shawshank Redemption, so we go back to him we ask ourselves what is that film about? And that film is about one very specific thing. Do you know what that is? No, hope, it's about hope. It gives you hope and when you can, when you make a movie where you can encapsulate hope, whoa, you have something there.

01:35:19

And Jeffrey Katzenberg had always said if you make a movie that can move people emotionally, you got something. But it has hope and that's why so many people love it. And sometimes we don't know that, even when we're watching the film, but we know that we love the movie. Why do we love this movie? And if you distill it, distill it, distill it down and, down and down, and you say that movie there is about hope and that's why people love it. And I think that's why it's so popular. Like that's a movie that when you're on TV and you kind of just channel surfing and you just stop and watch the Shawshank Redemption, oh, absolutely, and there's so many scenes.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:35:53

They're great Just out of curiosity what scene sticks out most for you in that movie?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:35:59

I always love the rooftop scene when he Over the Edge yeah, Move over. As fuckers about to have himself an accident. And then I also love. I love the scene after Andy escapes and Morgan Freeman says maybe I just missed my friend, but I have to remind myself, some birds aren't meant to be caged. It's just amazing, amazing oh yeah, such an amazing.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:36:22

And when he's there and he's free and he's reaching up to the sky and you just feel everything that he's feeling and you're just like there, you're with that character and I would say the ending too, just such a beautiful ending. You see the two friends together on the beach, it's like, and you're left with this sense of hope. And then the old man.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:36:42

Yeah, brooks, brooks, brooks, right Carves his name.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:36:46

He couldn't figure it out. That's great. It's such a great movie. It's great. And then they move into his like voice, frank.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:36:51

Darabont should have won an Oscar for that.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:36:53

Oh, you know sometimes what I'll do whenever we have, yeah, but there was like Shinra's List. So the Shinra's List oh, was that Shinra's List that year?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:36:59

No, I think it was the next year?

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:37:00

Oh was it? I thought it was the same year. Okay, maybe.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:37:03

I'm wrong, but you know, I went back. It was from a novella that Stephen King wrote, and sometimes I'll go back and I'll read the original source material and then see how they adapted it, and they did a masterful job.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:37:14

Oh really.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:37:15

Yeah, because basically, like the whole thing about having that other identity that he was laundering the money through Right In the novella, he was doing that because he realized he was being charged with his wife's murder and he created another identity in case he would have to make a run for it. And then that identity is already sitting there waiting for him when he gets out of jail. But it's so much better that he's do. He created that for the warden and then uses that to you know, to get out. He's not doing it out of a selfish need. Like you know, there were so many changes in there that are just amazing. Great point.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:37:45

You guys have a different head in this. It's incredible. So I've said this before you guys from the first time I think we met through Spiro.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:37:54

Right Go to dinner and I'm like man, great, great guy, great guy Spiro Didi's doing his thing Makes us all proud.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:38:01

Yeah, he's incredible. But first dinner we're going out and I'm like, oh, spiro, they're gonna come along or I'm gonna come along.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:38:09

Actually it's not Right. No, no, no, we're gonna come along, we're gonna play in the party. It's a good group.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:38:13

It's a good group Greeks just getting together Exactly you guys Great butter, like you're doing your thing in Hollywood, like just at the top of your game. The script on how you guys got here is not conventional, like your family didn't grow up in. The entertainment Just doesn't make sense and you guys are killing it. Everything's coming together, you're just gonna keep rocking. But even the first time I met you guys, and every time after was always like cool, cool, cool. You guys share stories about what's going on and then how are you? What's going on in your world? Like you're just good humans. Like it's just, it's so, it's amazing. And here's a great example too.

01:38:49

So a couple months ago I'm at my daughter's soccer game. She's eight years old. Her teammate's brother was at the game 10 year old Jackson Gunderson, right, just shout out. And he's sitting there at the field and he's writing stuff. I'm like, hey, what's up, bud, what are you writing? He's like, oh, I'm writing a script for a TV show idea, whatever. And we started talking and I'm like, dude, that's just so cool. And he's an athlete, right, and this is his spare time thing. And I go, wow, I know a couple of cool guys in the industry that do this professionally, who?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:39:18

are they? I pull up your website.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:39:20

Yeah. And he's like are you kidding me? You know these guys? I'm like, yeah, he goes, man, I would love to meet them. At the field. I text Charlie. I'm like Charlie, this this and this, I go. Can you make yourself available for a coffee or something? He's like tell me when and where and I'll be there. I would love to. So it just shows right. And this kid, every time I see him I'm like man, I go when your dad's ready. We'll send Charlie some dates and he'll. So in the meantime, he has three questions you wanna ask you right now.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:39:47

That's really cool.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:39:48

We've touched upon a few of these, but his first question how did you sell your first screenplay and who bought it?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:39:55

Great question. It's a great question. So, part of it, what did help? There's two sides of this business. There's the actual work and then there's the business kind of hustle side of it. So when I got out of school, I worked a couple of jobs as an assistant. I worked for Scott Rudin, I worked at shooting gallery, I worked at Paramount. And working as an assistant, you just get to know people and we had actually befriended a manager, todd Harris. Todd Harris, but no, no, but no, no, no, no. We got the script to Dan Farrah and he gave it to Brooklyn, because Brooklyn was the first one on board for live bet. So through a relationship that as you work in the business, you just get to know people, and they gave it to us all.

01:40:41

All the assistants have other aspirations. We're not there to answer phone calls or get coffee. And so, through a young manager that I got to know working as an assistant, we gave him the script. He really liked it. He gave it to a more senior manager. That manager, brooklyn Weaver, really was like this is great.

01:40:59

And then what happens is a lot of when you're an unrepresented writer. The major agencies will not take unsolicited work. You can't just be like oh yeah, I showed up at your door and I have this script. They won't accept it. The way they kind of vet them is usually through managers, and if a manager they know and trust reads it and likes it, they're more likely to take unsolicited queries and scripts that are not from unrepresented writers. So Brooklyn liked it. He had a good relationship with this young agent, mike Asola, who was at the William Morris Agency at the time, which was one of the three big agencies. He slipped it to him. Mike's like I love this, I wanna, and it's not that they sign you, it's that we'll try and sell this and if we sell it we'll work together. But if we don't hit the road, Multifaceted stuff, right he also gave it to senior agents like Ranjit Shuresky Mike.

01:41:45

Shuresky loves it. They loved it Okay.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:41:47

And then so like they got a certain momentum, so Asola loved it, ranjit Shuresky loved it, and then they gave it to 50 cents agent, who also loved it, and then he became attached.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:41:58

So then he became attached. No way, and that helps you sell it once someone big is attached.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:42:02

Yeah, because then it's talent friendly. Yeah, okay.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:42:05

Because a lot of times you know it is a very subjective business and some people are afraid to say like, oh, I read this, I like it, I believe in it. The way they judge it is does it attract other talent, does it attract actors, does it attract a director? Oh, if these talented people like it, then it must be good. That gets the stamp of approval. Like Vlach said, it's now.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:42:24

And, to be clear, that was when 50 was at the height of his success.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:42:27

Yeah, there was no one bigger. He was nasty. There was no one bigger.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:42:31

That was when he was on the top of the mountain.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:42:33

There were two leads and it was gonna be 50 cents. And then Wahlberg. Mark Wahlberg was gonna play this, but at that time 50 was bigger than Wahlberg. Now Wahlberg from then you know he was always great in like Boogie Nights and was a star in his own, really loved him Challenge client boxers.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:42:48

He's great. We love Wahlberg, but I have so much respect for him.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:42:51

Okay, we love him.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:42:53

But that shows you at the time that was 50's moment. But then those agents because they had a relationship with Universal and it just were representing other clients that had had a big hit at Universal the breakup they slipped it to them and they bought it preemptively. Sometimes I think we could have made more money.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:43:10

We could have If we went out to the town Did more.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:43:12

Because there were other studios that wanted to buy it. But at that time we had struggled for six or seven years. They offered us 400 grand to just take it off the table preemptively. We were like 400 against 700. Like we were talking about four. That's nice 400, and then, if it gets made, 700. And so we're like done, done.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:43:28

Just take it, you know what I?

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:43:29

mean Because you could go out and no one would wanna buy it, or because no one else wants to buy it. Now Universal offers you less, but that's also phenomenal money.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:43:37

Now, if you only have one in your career and you're done. But if you have a lot of opportunities, like right now, you have so many things going on, that's phenomenal money. When things are great, right Cause you're your own agent, that's you know.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:43:51

But you also have to take off 26.5%, because there's 1.5 that goes to WGA dues, 5% goes to your lawyer, 10% goes to the agent and 10% goes to the manager, and then you gotta take 30% out for taxes. So like you just start, and then you gotta divide it by two cause there's two of us. So it's good, we're not complaining, but it's peaks and valleys. We've been in the writers' guild 17 years.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:44:16

We had two years where we made nothing and other years. There's other years we did really really well, and then there's two years we did nothing and there's other years that were solid and other years that were not as good as the year before. So it's very up and down. Now, thankfully, we've been able to have a few things produced, so we get residuals, which is a nice kind of stream of income, and residuals are what you get paid when the movie shows up on TV or they sell a DVD, and so those help.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:44:44

It's interesting. I remember the phone calls. I remember the phone call we got from Mike Asseld, exactly where I was getting it, when he said he loved LiveBet. I remember getting the phone call from Ramsey since you're asking saying that Universal wanted to buy it preemptively. I remember that. I remember the phone call we got from Todd Harris, who was a manager at that time he was the head of literary at William Morris when he loved that independent summer rental Because it's the best thing I've read in 10 years. Come on and so you just remember those things and those little moments, those little victories. They sustain you during the leaner years and they help you overcome the adversity that you're bound to encounter.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:45:23

And you know what I will say, it does help. Another reason why it helps that there's two of us is that something will happen, and I'll be really down and boss of big F Screw those people, don't worry about it, it's true. Or he'll be down. I'll be like hey, don't worry, what about this idea?

01:45:36

And we'll just push each other along and they can say, in survival situations, if there's two of you, you get further because one is pushing the other Instead of if you're just on your own. It'd be easy to wallow and just spiral. So I do think that helps 100% and your brothers.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:45:53

It's not just a partner where you just come together. It's like if you're not eating, he's not eating.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:45:56

And vice versa. I know that this is bad for his kids and you feel awful.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:46:01

And you want to make money so that his family can have whatever they need. Pros and cons, right, and then you guys can bash each other's head when you disagree and that's the cons.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:46:10

And that's it, because it's unfiltered we would never say some of the things to a fellow writer and it's like oh, but there's also all that positive.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:46:18

Absolutely.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:46:19

With animation, because now we work with lots of people. It reminds me sometimes because we'll be very direct and wallow with each other.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:46:25

But we can't do that in this modern world. No, no, no, you're offending everyone. This sucks. What are you talking about? We can't do this.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:46:32

I would never say that to the people that we work with, but we say that, so then it's helped also make it where smooth the edges, even just when we work.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:46:41

Now just try to be more mindful of life. We have been more mindful. We should even be more mindful of just getting out.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:46:46

Well, yeah, and you've got to be on eggshells especially. Everyone's offended by everything now and in your industry it's magnified, it's like just cookie cutter. Amazing Question number two from 10-year-old Jackson Gundersen Is it cool knowing that you guys made Superman famous? Oh listen, Henry made himself famous, so he's talking about Henry Cabo.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:47:08

Cameron Cabo. There's a story, I'm not sure.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:47:12

No, I want you to tell the story, but I just want to speak to that very quickly, so just so maybe the audience they may not know where that question is coming from. So we had cast Henry and then, while we had cast him, zack Schneider Made the movie, we shot the film. Yeah, we made the movie, shot the film, and then Zack cast Henry to be Superman. So that was a really big moment for our movie too.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:47:40

Yeah, so right after Immortals he got.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:47:43

We filmed the summer of 2010 in Montreal and then that fall, when he went home, he auditioned for Superman and then got cast, and then our film came out in November of the following year, and so it was great Like this is your chance to see the new Superman you know what I mean With his shirt off and fighting and doing it, yeah.

01:48:02

That's huge. I will share this story but I will lose some names because Henry's a first rate guy. But what was really interesting Is this the casting yeah, the casting. So two things. I'll share another quick story Because just to show you how little say writers have Tarzan, because he's a class act. He's a genuinely great guy. He's the director of Immortals Awesome. He would always keep us involved and always kind of loop us in and one time he had us come over the house to see some auditions and we actually saw. This is before we get to the Henry story. Another story we saw Luke Evans, who's gone on to have a really wonderful career. At that time he hadn't been in really any movies.

01:48:38

He's been mostly a theater guy, and we said Tarzan, this guy, this guy, luke, he's great, you got to find a part in the movie and Tarzan, okay, you know whatever, he didn't really pay too much attention to it.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:48:49

But then the next.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:48:49

Thing he called us he was.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:48:50

I showed my girl from the audition. He goes, he goes, he goes. You're fucking Greeks.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:48:54

Yeah, that's how he started it. He's like Greeks. You were right.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:48:58

I showed the audition to my girlfriend and she really liked the same guy he liked, and so we're going to find a part for Luke and afterwards.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:49:04

Blasphemy joke is that the director's girlfriend has more say in casting A lot more than the writers, than you guys, but the one story I'll share about Henry.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:49:15

I don't think this has ever really been told.

01:49:17

I hope it's okay. But before the movie got made, henry was up there in Montreal for like three months training and working out and he was like they had amazing trainers and they had nutritionists and like they had to eat and work out certain times of days and they were doing two or three workouts a day. And right before the movie filmed, someone very high up involved in the production had a dinner and invited all the cast and so and they kind of wanted them to kind of kiss the ring a little bit and kind of, you know, show some love to them. And the whole cast showed up but Henry had just worked out and so he came and kind of like workout close and they had the dinner, everyone else was all dressed up and this person felt like hey, you know what, I'm not sure he should be the lead of the movie. He doesn't feel like a movie star. That's crazy. And he's like maybe we should recast and put someone else in this part. And this is like a week before they start filming.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:50:09

So sorry who was saying this. One of the senior you can't say, but it was a senior.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:50:14

Someone high up in the kind of hierarchy of chain of command.

01:50:19

And so they approached Tarsem about this. He's like no, no, absolutely not. He's the right guy. Just give me I don't know if he said a week or two, because the first week they were filming, when Henry's mom gets killed and he runs and he kills all these guys, and Tarsem knew he said just give me this first week, let's see how he does, don't recast them.

01:50:39

And long story short. You know, eventually, as they start filming, like words start to trickle out that there's some concern and they might want to replace them. And even gets back to like Henry's agents. And Henry's like what's going on? And he asks Tarsem Tarsem's like just trust me, like right now they have the power, but you're going to deliver and when the movie comes out you'll have the power, because then they'll need you to help sell the movie and this and that. And he's like don't worry, I have your back. And sure enough, they filmed that sequence. Henry did great. They said I don't know, we'll keep them in the movie. But the irony is is that then, when he got cast as Superman, this person that wanted to replace him was like I knew we had the right guy. I knew it, you know.

01:51:16

That's just how like Hollywood is? You know it's, it's, it's amazing job.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:51:21

And there was no one more dedicated no for that part than Henry.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:51:25

And it's not easy to play a hero, it's not easy he gives. I'm telling you, there are scenes that I wish that we had written, that didn't make the movie that I wish we had. Right and it wouldn't have given Henry even more, but even what he had, I'm telling you, I think it's a very good understated performance and I think he's very good in that. But that's how ridiculous our business can be sometimes Right right.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:51:48

So you guys gave him his opportunity to be a superstar, as what Jackson said, tarzan.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:51:53

And then Henry's hard work and you know what was cool is that Henry, like Lars said, was just super cool, awesome on set. He would always hang out with Mickey Rourke's body double, mark Kuber, who's this super cool stuntman who was like the Marlboro man back in the day. He's like the Brad Pitt character in Once Upon a Time in Holly.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:52:09

Oh, really Okay.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:52:11

And then his makeup person, who's this amazing Greek woman, who's this amazing makeup artist and they would always just like you know, nicoletta, and they would just always smoke and hang out and like he was such a good dude but and so that's why we were so happy for him that then he got casted super good.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:52:26

She blew up. Yeah, side note Mickey Rourke, the guy's legendary how is? He in real life. He was great, he was just great.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:52:33

He was just a really, just really professional good guy, was very giving to Henry. There was even some things that you know. Maybe Tarzan overstepped a little bit. He's like to get Henry mad. He would have Mickey say something kind of like really crazy, but Mickey wouldn't do it, you know. And but all of them, everyone again, was working to try to, you know, to do what was best for the movie, best for the characters. But Mickey Rourke was great man, he was just like a true professional and I'm telling you and we spoke about it briefly before when the camera was on him the emotional truth.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:53:03

Mickey Rourke brings emotional truth to Henry Rourke, and he just holds the camera.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:53:07

He holds the camera has that magnetism and there's that, that it factor.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:53:12

There are some actors, you meet them and they just radiate, you know, oh wow.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:53:16

Yeah.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:53:16

Like you understand why they connect with the camera, because, as the audience, you're just peering through that window and you're connecting with them. And some, some actors have it and and and others know as much.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:53:27

That's amazing, yeah, and that's an action all right. Any movies, show scripts that I should be watching, he should be watching that have just great writing that he should start learning from, aside from anything that you guys are assigned to Okay, so age appropriate.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:53:42

That's the, that's the. Yeah, yeah.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:53:45

Well, you know, at some point I feel, and because, again, maybe this is just colored, you know, or maybe I'm looking at it through the lens of, like, the experience I had, but I remember, and Charlie knows this, I remember reading all about Eve, that script, and I was just blown away by it, just blown away by, like, how well it was written, how well it was crafted. And you know, he might have to get a little bit older, I mean, it's not really inappropriate, but just the, the, the craft and the writing was, was fabulous. And you know, paul Nostasio and I loved his work too, I love Quiz Show, I love Donnie Brasco, the way he writes, the way he talks about like you always got to keep tightening the screws. He's just a great writer.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:54:27

And then what I would say for age appropriate. There's a bunch of scripts we can give him to read. I think that in terms of just read novels, there's great like read all the classics, read, you know, dickens. I think those are still very accessible, even for a younger reader. And then in terms of TV, just because, like I know how we are with our daughter and what we let her watch and not watch, like go watch old network TV shows from the nineties that are good. And then there's Quantum Leap, which you can now watch, the old Quantum Leap, because what's great is that all those stories have great beginning, middle and ends and and they're really well written and and they're age appropriate and they're just great stories. Like I remember watching that you know in middle school and and you know when that was out and in high school when that was airing, like some a show like that, like the original Law and Orders are so good, but now there's death and murder and 10 years, like he's a little young for that Quantum Leap he can watch.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:55:28

For age appropriate, like the best ones, in my opinion, read Toy Story One and Toy Story Three. Those are great scripts.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:55:36

One and three.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:55:37

One and three, three, two especially. And it's funny because we worked with Dan Lin who is a, you know, huge producer, and he he says, like you know, toy Story Three is his favorite script. That's a really, really great script. Because, again, I think it's very important, you know, maybe not necessarily for a 10 year old, but as he gets older, to be reading, whoever wants to become a screenwriter to be reading as many screenplays as you can and and teleplays, and that's so important because you just and and books absolutely too. But it helps to read good screenplays and to read all kinds of screenplays, even ones that aren't so good, because then you're going to see, kind of a what did this writer? The choices that that writer made weren't as good. But when you, when you read the Pixar, especially Toy Story, toy Story One and Three, you see how they do again the things that we're talking about internal, external stakes, and there's a theme. Now, he may not understand that, but as he gets older and if he re-reads them, you know he can only learn from them.

01:56:37

So, he's always going to be good age appropriate.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:56:39

And you should watch.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:56:40

It's a Wonderful Life because that's the one I'm writing oh wow, that's absolutely one of my favorite films.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:56:45

And it's just important just to to just be. You know what we always say, like whenever we have a, something bad happens or there's a disappointment, you know we say either go see a movie or read a script that's sold, because if it's a good movie, it inspires you. If it sucks, it's always like, oh, we can do better than that, and that got made, you know so. So it always lifts us up and we feel the same way when you read something. If you read something that's sold, like, oh, this is really great, and for whatever reason, we felt like, no, we can do this. Like either you're like, oh, I can do this as well, or this isn't that good, and you know, and this sold. So you know, we always just, we always say sometimes we just need to fill the tank and we'll just, we'll read for two or three days or we'll binge a series, Right, you know. And it's just important to always do that, because the more you take in, the more you have to give out.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:57:36

That's incredible feedback. True Guys, this has been, this has been incredible. Thank you for taking the time to sit down.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:57:43

Thank you for having me Just open up man Like this is again.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:57:46

this isn't written that you guys should be where you are so successful and coming from Jersey doing all this. It's incredible. We're proud. In general, I'm proud that you guys are Greeks, doing this right From our community, our people.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:58:00

You know we are very lucky. You know we always say we're very lucky to be Greek and George, we're proud of you, we're proud of Spiro, all those guys when we meet up because, also to the, we're not defined by what we do for a living or what money we make, or what money we have or don't have. So what kind of person you are? Absolutely Do you have filottimo? Are you valuing the things that are important in life? And that's what's great about that kind of dinner group it's all good guys. Absolutely, it's all good guys.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:58:28

We live in a society you know, because we all live in Southern Orange County and a society, sadly, that defines people by the wrong things. You define by what you do, you define by how much money you make, you define by what car you drive, what house you live in, and none of that's important. All that turns to dust. You truly define by your moral core who are you as a human being, and that matters. You know that this person is a good, honest, decent human being, that they're humble.

01:58:53

We just try to stay humble, absolutely, you know. You say we're successful. I mean, like you know, I just like we're just trying to stay humble, we're just trying to work hard, we're trying to provide for our families and we're trying not to force things in. Where it goes, it goes, but we always along that journey have to be growing and learning and just trying to be the best versions of ourselves and then to be kind and to treat other people with respect. And if we can do that and if we can be, you know, good human beings, good parents, then that's success, you know.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:59:25

It's inspiring guys.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:59:27

Thank you, I'll applaud that. It was a pleasure.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 01:59:29

What's the best way for everybody to get in contact. If anyone wants to get in contact or not, maybe no we Well just be mindful too.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 01:59:36

Like you know, people come ask us, you know, all the time. So there's only so much time in the day and the only thing I would say is that it's important for us to be, you know, good fathers, good husbands, and so like. When we're doing some other things, we always have to be busy Like that. Sometimes we don't want to take away from families, so there's, you know, be mindful, but we're always the door's always open. If someone puts in the hard work, we want to try to help them.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 01:59:57

Yeah, what I've started to do and tell people like there's a very famous article that went around Hollywood no, I won't read your effing script. And it was this very Oscar-nominated writer who you know. At a party his cousin's boyfriend said, oh, I have a script. And he said, will you read it? And he felt obligated and he read it and he gave the guy notes and the guy was like angry and he became this like disaster, and this guy like hounded him for months and so he goes. That's why I don't read anyone's script.

02:00:25

We don't take that approach. We always try and you know, if we can give advice, if we can help, we've helped. You know. We helped a writer friend sell a script to MGM. We helped a writer friend sell a script to Warner Brothers. There's other projects. We've helped people. If we can help, we will try and help.

02:00:41

But the one rule I take is that I will only read your script once, and so there's times where I've read something, I've liked it, I've been able to pass it on and help. But I will once I've read one of your things, I will never read anything else. So make sure and this is a thing that took us many years to learn like when you write, you're excited, you've written something and there's this excitement that you've finished it. But, like, make sure, this is the one that, like, other people have read it. They're excited and you know. And if I can, because part of it is every time I read a script like Vlustra, that's two or three hours away from my family, and so I say I give no notes unless it's something that I want to share. So don't expect it, because then that's more work and more time.

02:01:21

And just know that if you ask like there was a girl who she was a huge blood of Zeus fan on Twitter and she said, like, will you read my script? And I said I will, but this is my rule it's one time and that's it, and then I read it. You know there were some ideas that were interesting, but it needed a lot of work. And I said, listen, for me this isn't something that I'm excited enough to pass on. She said will you read a rewrite? I said no, I told you this is my rule. Like, this is time away from my family, my wife, my daughter, from doing work that pays my bills. You get one chance and I stick to that rule, absolutely.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 02:01:58

And that's extremely. Let's just talk about this, right. That's extremely generous that you even read. Just because I always say this to, I get frustrated. In my space People say, hey, we're doing this new design of this. Can you jump on an hour, call with your designers and come up with some renders and whatever? It's asking a lot, just like an hour, two hours. You can't just ask oh, I met someone today who writes I'm going to try to milk you. People need to be respectful. And then you get the other side of it, where these guys are assholes. I asked them to read it and they said, no, they're too high up in the chain. Well, no, like two hours out of your life.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 02:02:35

And also this, our business. The currency you trade in is your relationships and your taste. So if I recommend something, people will read it, but that's why it has to be good, and I always tell people too. This is just my opinion. The first script we sold there was a manager we knew that was like a hustler and we're like, oh, he's going to love this and we're going to you know, and we gave it to him. He's like that's a pass for me.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 02:02:57

We were surprised.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 02:02:58

Two months later we sold it for half a million dollars. You know what I mean. I just say this is my opinion, absolutely. If I really respond to something, I'm always happy to try and help people, because the way we feel as writers is that what you write is going to be different than what I write. We write what we write, you will write what you write. So I don't view it as competitive and if I can help someone, I always try and help someone, you know.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 02:03:21

But there's only so much time in the day, there's only so much and even like.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 02:03:26

what I always ask is like how many scripts have you written? If it's your first script, I guarantee you it's not going to be the one.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 02:03:31

But you can't read someone if it's their first script.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 02:03:34

Like you guys are at such a level?

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 02:03:36

No, but it just won't be any good. It just won't be any good.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 02:03:40

And so again, like, listen, there's nothing we like more. There's nothing that makes me happier than seeing family succeed, and the only other thing I like than that is seeing Greeks succeed. And so if there's someone that we could help and they're doing the work and they're doing the right things if we could help absolutely. But you also have to remember too, we're not Leonardo DiCaprio where, like you know, people jump like you have to deliver. There are no favors in this business, not like at that level where they'll buy a script. It has to stand on its own. Writing, of all the disciplines in our business, is the one that's a meritocracy. Either this is good, this is commercial, and also you can also write something that's very good, but this is a business. People have to feel that it's going to get eyeballs, that they'll make money off of it. It also has to be commercial too. You know what I mean.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 02:04:28

Time is our most valuable asset. So, as you mentioned, you know, we just ask that. You know we're, you know people are respectful of that and, as Charlie mentioned, if there's someone that we can help, absolutely we will try it, because we've been there, we've been those guys looking up trying to make it in and we always wish to have someone to take us under, you know, just someone to help us in any way. So we would definitely do that, but as long as they've earned it. But you get some of it.

Charley Parlapanides - Guest 02:04:56

like I know, like Melinda Kanick-Riz is a friend, she was in Providence CSI in New York.

02:05:01

She's like as good of her and her husband, pete, are like, they're as good of Greeks as you will find, like truly great people that we would be friends with, even if we you know, we were just back in New Jersey, I know, but like you know, they'll get approached like at church and be like okay, you read this script. It's like you know what do you want her to say? What do you want Like on the spot, what do you want the?

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 02:05:21

other thing. I, even my eight year old. I'm teaching her this from now Don't ask anything from someone. Try to see if you could bring value, whatever that may be. Information, charlie Vlaas, is there anything I would like to be in this industry 10 years from now? Is there anything I could do to just bring value to you guys? Research, whatever. It's great. It's great value to someone before you start even thinking, because I would say this one email. Anyone could just send an email. Well, guess what? You're just trying to suck time out of my 24 hour days.

02:05:51

I have kids. That's my free time. You know what I mean, so people just need to be more aware of that.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 02:05:56

More mindful. Absolutely, it's good advice.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 02:05:59

You guys are awesome man, you're awesome.

Vlas Parlapanides - Guest 02:06:01

Thank you so much.

George Stroumboulis - Host 00:00 02:06:03

Thanks for listening to this episode of Invigorate your Business with George Stroumboulis. Please hit the subscribe and like button and follow me on all the main podcast streaming channels. Also, please share your comments when you can. I appreciate your help in expanding this network to a worldwide audience. Until next time, stay invigorated.

CONTENTS OF THIS VIDEO

00:00:00 Powerhouse Duo

00:12:12 Persistence and Success in Screenwriting

00:18:22 Navigating the Path to Writing Success

00:26:50 The Rocky Balboa of Screen Writers

00:28:02 Hard Work, Immigrant Roots Importance

00:36:04 The Making of the Film "Immortals"

00:47:26 From Hollywood to Netflix

00:56:55 "Blood of Zeus" Success on Netflix

01:07:37 The Journey of a Script

01:15:00 Filmmaking and the Entertainment Industry

1:19:00 Mickey Rourke is the Best Actor

01:23:00 Emotional Truth in Acting and Life

01:27:30 The Future of AI in Storytelling

01:36:41 Movie Discussions and Industry Success

01:40:07 From Assistants to Success

01:49:33 Casting Henry Cavill (Superman)

01:53:31 Learning From Great Writing and Growing

01:59:29 Guidelines for Contacting and Seeking Help

ABOUT THE NETFLIX SERIES: BLOOD OF ZEUS

"Blood of Zeus" is an American adult animated television series that premiered on Netflix on October 27, 2020. The show is created by brothers Charley and Vlas Parlapanides, the same talented duo behind other notable works such as the movie "Immortals" (2011) and the live-action adaptation of "Death Note" (2017).

Synopsis: "Blood of Zeus" is a fantasy series that draws inspiration from Greek mythology. The story follows a young man named Heron, who discovers that he is the illegitimate son of Zeus, the king of the gods. As Heron grapples with his newfound divine heritage, he becomes embroiled in a conflict between the gods and the giants, threatening the very existence of both Olympus and Earth.

Monumental Stats and Achievements: While specific viewership statistics can be proprietary information held by streaming platforms, "Blood of Zeus" has garnered substantial attention and acclaim since its release. Some notable achievements and features include:

  1. Positive Critical Reception:

    • The series received generally positive reviews from both critics and audiences for its animation quality, storytelling, and its fresh take on Greek mythology.

  2. Global Audience Impact:

    • As a Netflix original, "Blood of Zeus" gained a wide international audience, contributing to the show's global popularity.

  3. Awards and Nominations:

    • While it may not have received major awards, the series has been recognized and nominated for its contributions to the genre and its creative storytelling.

  4. Cultural Impact:

    • "Blood of Zeus" has left a significant mark on popular culture, particularly for its imaginative retelling of Greek mythology and the infusion of compelling characters into the narrative.

  5. Renewal and Future Plans:

    • The show's positive reception has sparked discussions about potential future seasons. While the creators and Netflix have not officially announced a renewal, the fan base eagerly anticipates more adventures in the world of Greek mythology.

It's worth noting that the impact and success of a streaming series like "Blood of Zeus" extend beyond traditional viewership statistics, encompassing social media engagement, fan discussions, and the show's lasting influence on the fantasy genre.

advice on becoming a SCREENWRITER IN HOLLYWOOD

Becoming a successful screenwriter in Hollywood is a challenging yet rewarding journey. Here are some pieces of advice to help you navigate the path to success:

  1. Master Your Craft:

    • Learn the fundamentals of screenwriting. Understand story structure, character development, dialogue, and pacing.

    • Read scripts from successful movies to understand the industry's standards and trends.

  2. Write Consistently:

    • Set a writing schedule and stick to it. Consistent practice is crucial for improvement.

    • Don't be afraid to write multiple scripts. Each project contributes to your growth as a writer.

  3. Networking is Key:

    • Attend industry events, film festivals, and networking mixers to meet fellow writers, directors, and producers.

    • Utilize social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter to connect with professionals in the industry.

  4. Get Feedback:

    • Join writing groups or workshops to receive constructive feedback on your work.

    • Be open to criticism and use it to refine your skills.

  5. Understand the Business:

    • Learn the business side of the industry. Understand how deals are made, contracts work, and how the industry operates.

    • Familiarize yourself with industry terminology and standard practices.

  6. Create a Strong Portfolio:

    • Develop a diverse portfolio showcasing your range as a writer.

    • Have a polished, attention-grabbing script ready to be sent out when opportunities arise.

  7. Build a Professional Image:

    • Create a professional website or online portfolio showcasing your work and achievements.

    • Develop a concise and compelling bio or resume that highlights your skills and experiences.

  8. Enter Screenwriting Competitions:

    • Submit your scripts to reputable screenwriting competitions. Winning or placing in these contests can gain industry attention.

    • Use competitions as a way to validate your skills and build credibility.

  9. Seek Representation:

    • Once you have a strong portfolio, consider seeking representation from a literary agent or manager.

    • Industry professionals can help open doors and negotiate deals on your behalf.

  10. Stay Resilient and Persistent:

    • Rejections are part of the journey. Learn from them and keep moving forward.

    • Hollywood is a competitive industry, and success often comes to those who persevere.

  11. Stay Informed:

    • Stay updated on industry trends, new releases, and emerging voices.

    • Understand the evolving landscape of content creation, including streaming platforms and changing viewer preferences.

  12. Be Adaptable:

    • Be open to adapting your writing style and stories to meet the demands of the market.

    • Embrace feedback and be willing to make revisions to improve your scripts.

Remember that success in Hollywood often involves a combination of talent, hard work, networking, and luck. Stay dedicated to your craft, continuously hone your skills, and be persistent in pursuing your goals.

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