Films Not Made

This week on Films Not Made, we hang with writer, director, storyboard artist and voice actor Conrad Vernon (Shrek 2, Sausage Party, The Addams Family) and comedian Harland Williams to talk about their not-made animated film Roadside Attraction — the true story of Mulligan the golf ball statue and Betty the blueberry statue, who stare at each other across Route 66 for 50 years before Mulligan becomes the first statue in history to move for love. Jeffrey Katzenberg (DreamWorks) greenlit it on the spot. But since the Gingerbread Man from Shrek and the Pee Drinking Cop from Dumb and Dumber are guests on Films Not Made, you probably deduced that Roadside Attraction is not coming to a theater anytime soon. We do have lots of stories, laughs and original sketches from our talented guests. This is a story about the strongest emotion in all of humanity: love.

Go to https://filmsnotmade.com/ for info on the show, transcripts and more.
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Harland Williams https://www.harlandwilliams.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harlandwilliams/?hl=en
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/HarlandHighwayPodcast
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@harlandwilliams

Conrad Vernon Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conniev711/?hl=en
Conrad Vernon IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0970447/

Before Sideways swirled its way into a Pulitzer-caliber wine country classic, screenwriter-novelist Rex Pickett wrote Repairman — a script about a coin-op laundry repairman with fetal alcohol syndrome, a checkered past as an accidental arsonist, and an unshakable code of honesty in a world full of people skimming, scheming, and selling out.

Rex is the novelist and screenwriter behind Sideways — the book-turned-Oscar-winning-film-turned-stage-musical-turned-Latvian-train-show — and the author of numerous screenplays exploring the messier corners of California life. Long before wine country made him a household name, Rex was sending Amy email dispatches about a script loosely inspired by his brother.

On this episode:
- The wild true story of how Repairman almost got made twice — first with Gil Bellows attached to direct, until a surprise phone call from Christina Ricci that blew up the whole deal
- A nearly-greenlit $2.5 million, 35mm production at First Look — derailed when the studio asked to cut Rex's co-director from the deal
- Why Rex still considers Repairman one of his most personal scripts, rooted in his real-life brother, Hack

We run Repairman through our AI pipeline for a new deck, a Paul Dano–heavy casting board, and a trailer that doesn't quite land — then pitch it live to our AI exec Finn, who calls it "a quietly brutal portrait of what decency costs in a rigged world."

Could it get made now? Listen and find out.

Go to https://filmsnotmade.com/ for info on the show, transcripts and more.
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What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding
Featuring Kristin Newman & Blair Breard
Ten episodes. Three countries. One completed $50 million series — shelved by the network as a tax write-off the week after the 2023 strike ended.

TV writer Kristin Newman (That '70s Show, How I Met Your Mother, Only Murders in the Building) and award-winning EP Blair Breard (Margot at the Wedding, Better Things, Scenes From A Marriage) sit down with Amy and Avi to finally tell the story they couldn't tell while they were still hoping to resell it.

We're talking: a pilot shot in Latvia under full COVID curfew. A chemistry read that, in Blair's words, made the room melt. A Freeform rebrand that confused everyone. And a finished, fully produced, critically promising series that the network quietly wrote off and walked away from.

This one actually got made. Which, it turns out, can hurt more.

Go to https://filmsnotmade.com/ for info on the show, transcripts and more.
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Kristin Newman site
Kristin Newman imdb
Blair Breard imdb
Blair Breard site

Filmmaker Joe Maggio joins Amy Hobby and Avi Zev Weider to resurrect The Fall, a dark comedy about a moral Niagara Falls attorney whose life spirals out of control after he commits a terrible sin and is unexpectedly rewarded with everything he ever wanted. The project, originally conceived as an existential drama inspired by Kafka and Joe's vicious, domineering grandmother, almost became Joe’s breakout film during the early 2000s Indie Boom.

We are also joined by Tom Hall, Artistic Director of Montclair Film, who lends his expertise as a film festival programmer and "walking encyclopedia of film" to assess the project's concept and casting.

Joe shares the incredible saga of The Fall’s near-production: from writing the script on his honeymoon and securing his dream lead, John Turturro, to the painful collapse of the deal. John Turturro perfectly captured the chaos, calling the process like "holding on to the horns of a bull and I'm wearing roller skates".

We present Joe with a modern pitch deck for The Fall—complete with Paul Dano as the lead and a hot take from an AI film executive—forcing Joe to confront his “biggest regret” and consider if the bittersweet film that was not made is now ready for its resurrection.

Tom Hall's Back Row Manifesto https://backrowmanifesto.substack.com/
Joe Maggio's Incidental Films https://www.incidentalfilms.com/
Go to https://filmsnotmade.com/ for info on the show, transcripts and more.
Follow the show on https://www.youtube.com/@FilmsNotMade
Subscribe to our https://substack.com/@filmsnotmade

Host Avi Weider walks you inside the actual workflow behind the AI trailers we make for every guest — shot by shot, prompt by prompt. From Claude Code to GPT Image 2 to Kling to Premiere, nothing is theoretical here. And it's constantly evolving. This is what it looks like when the tools meet the timeline and you're still trying to make something that feels like a real movie. We're showing you how we use AI as a tool to finally see the films that never got made. Here's what that looks like behind the scenes.

Go to https://filmsnotmade.com/ for info on the show, transcripts and more.
Follow the show on https://www.youtube.com/@FilmsNotMade
Subscribe to our https://substack.com/@filmsnotmade