Charles Hood
Description
I feel like this would be a good plotline for a gonzo Mission Impossible movie: make romcoms and comedy dramas relevant again. In one sentence, my guest, director and podcaster Charles Hood, declared “comedies and comedy dramas are dead, sadly” but also came back in the next few sentences with the announcement, I’m releasing a romcom feature later this year.
This sounds exactly like a challenge, if you choose to accept it, for one of the co-hosts of the official Mission Impossible podcast. And here’s to thinking he’ll be successful.
In this episode, Charles and I talk about:
- His journey to hosting the unofficial — and then the official — Mission Impossible podcast, “Light The Fuse”;
- Why more filmmakers aren’t podcasting and what it takes to be successful in the medium;
- How he got his start in filmmaking;
- Should you make a microbudget feature like Charles’ first film, FREEZER BURN (2007), or a great short film?
- How he found himself in the comedy-drama romcom space;
- The ten year anniversary of NIGHT OWLS (2015), his reflections on the film, and his focus on screenplay structure going into making the film;
- His work at go90, a Verizon “mobile-oriented social entertainment platform” (who knew about that?!);
- The value of structured, well written script;
- Whether the official MI podcast helped him get “above the noise”;
- When we should expect his next project, THERE SHE GOES
- How the vote of actors participating in an indie film project is so important.
Charlie’s Indie Film Highlight: Josh Greenbaum; GHOST BOY (2025) dir. by Rodney Ascher; THE NIGHTMARE (2015) dir. by Rodney Ascher; A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX (2021) dir. by Rodney Ascher
Memorable Quotes:
“ We always talk to everybody about Tom Cruise's hairstyle, their favorite haircut from the different movies. And we also would jokingly talk about how we're in a golden age of dog cinema because there were a lot of dog movies that have come out in the last 10 years.”
“ If you're gonna do a big short with a real budget, you might as well try to figure out how to squeeze that budget into a feature and do a feature.”
“Comedies and comedy dramas are dead, sadly.”
“ Actually if you make a romantic comedy, you get to sneak in a lot of character work that you wouldn't get to do in a lot of other genres.”
“We learned a lot over those years, writing studio comedies and learning structure and that applied to this movie that is mainly just two people talking.”
“So I’m still chasing that feeling again of making NIGHT OWLS.”
“They always say that, you have to know the rules before you can break them. And I was breaking them on FREEZER BURN without knowing them.”
“What Tom Cruise is all about is….serving the audience.”
Links:
Watch Indie Film Highlight: NIGHT OWLS (2015)
Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/first-time-go/exclusive-content
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