Brennan 0:00
You’re listening to Dodge Movie Podcast. Your hosts are Christi and Mike Dodge, the founders of Dodge Media Productions. We produce films and podcasts, so this is a podcast about films. Join them as they share their passion for filmmaking.

Christi Dodge 0:18
Hey, everybody, we’re back. Personally, I am so excited for this episode. This is, if not my favorite movie easily, easily in the top five of my favorite movies. If anybody says, “what is your favorite movie?” Blue Jay is my go to answer. So you have been warned there will be tons of gushing on my part.

We are talking today about the movie Blue Jay. It had a limited release in October of 2016. And then Netflix released it in December of 2016. The director is Alex Lehman, and it stars Mark Duplass and Sarah Paulson. Put those two people in any movie and I am there. I love those two people. I’ve loved Sarah Paulson since Studio 60. If you’ve not seen Studio 60, go find it right now and then come back and listen to this podcast.

Mike Dodge 0:59
Well, after watching all of my films, too.

Christi Dodge 1:01
Mark Duplass is listed as the writer, although it’s almost like writer of an outline because Blue Jay, which once again is why it’s so cool is largely improv. I can’t even imagine doing an improv movie.

Mike Dodge 1:28
Well, I can because the writing is a lot easier. You just say Jim and Amanda have emotions, and then they take it from there.

Christi Dodge 1:35
And I guess when you when you cast Mark Duplass and Sarah Paulson, you can do stuff like that. It’s just amazing. So let’s get into it. Now it’s time for Mike’s pickup line, which is the first line of Blue Jay, take it away.

Mike Dodge 1:47
The first line of the film is “Jim?” Normally, I like to see some sort of exposition, some sort of narrative question posed, and this one is a little bit more subtle. So you have to wait a few more frames until she then asks Jim, “you’re not married?” And that sets up kind of the narrative of the entire film. But technically, the first line is just “Jim?”

Christi Dodge 2:07
And even though there isn’t writing those first few scenes, because that that line comes in at what like probably isn’t even like two, three minutes in. Yeah, we see a lot of exposition that kind of feeds the narrative even before she says, “Jim.” We learn through the first few clips, that he’s either moved into this house, he’s definitely renovating the house because he puts down-where there’s like a cloth that you put down when you’re painting. So he’s doing something, it’s like a new house to him, maybe or he’s fixing this house up.

Mike Dodge 2:48
He’s packing up boxes of stuff from the past. Ooh, subtle.

Christi Dodge 2:53
And the thing that I love about Blue Jay is to me, they just slowly unfold the story. And so you’re always kind of every scene, you’re learning something new, you’re still kind of, I wouldn’t say confused, but you still don’t know the full picture. They don’t hit you over the head with what’s going on immediately.

Mike Dodge 3:12
No, that’s the brilliance of that subtlety. Because when you actually know people and you have history you don’t have any exposition when you meet them. “Hi, Amanda, remember when we-” That just never happens. So I think that’s why it really resonates so well. Is all of the million the setting the backstory for these characters. They know but we don’t. It leaks through in all of their actions and in the background, the sets and everything, but the viewer is in beaten over the head with it. I think that’s really, like I said, subtle and brilliant.

Christi Dodge 3:42
It’s just beautiful, because the whole movie is done in black and white, which it takes a special movie for me to enjoy a black and white movie, but I think this one is done so expertly so that the cinematography I’m leaping ahead a little bit is just stunning, because of the black and white.

Mike Dodge 4:00
Well, I have this theory. I’ve never heard anybody else say it, but it’s my theory and I’m sticking to it that black and white is more emotional. It taps into the emotions more easily than color.

Christi Dodge 4:10
Well in the whole film. That tagline is “meeting by chance.” “When they return to their tiny California hometown, two former high school sweethearts reflect on their shared past” and I think black and white invokes you know, historical-

Mike Dodge 4:23
Yeah, yeah.

Christi Dodge 4:23
-looking back more we-

Mike Dodge 4:25
We also use it somewhat in film as documentary. Right? You’ll see the black and white is used to indicate no, this is for real. We’re not playing narrative games anymore.

Christi Dodge 4:35
A couple of lines to me inform the viewer they go to a diner, which the cinematography in the diner is just-that jumping ahead a little bit. There was a pause count on my behalf because I was just looking at this it’s in black and white and it was just beautiful.

Mike Dodge 4:52
Another digression is when you’re shooting black and white, you generally need contrast to help. Obviously if you have sky blue and tan are the only colors he gets pre washed out in black and white. I think that’s why they put Sarah Paulson in that black dress kind of man’s dress jacket almost. But I have to say I was a little confused by that choice for her character. Maybe I missed something. It didn’t make sense with the rest of her outfit to me. But it did definitely give a nice contrast when they’re sitting in that booth.

Christi Dodge 5:23
And she says “the Blue Jay’s gone downhill.” That tells us that that Blue Jay, the diner that they went to, is a place that they frequented when they were in high school.

Mike Dodge 5:34
At this point in Blue Jay, we’re not exactly sure what their relationship is, we know that they know each other, but we don’t really have an idea of what it was maybe they were just friends in high school,

Christi Dodge 5:43
Right. And she makes a comment about, she has some stepped sons and they go on college tours. And it was so subtle and just heartbreaking. He wipes away a tear. We don’t know why. But you can just tell that for some reason, the idea of taking a child on college tours is-breaks his heart a little bit.

Mike Dodge 6:08
You can see Duplass does that throughout the rest of Blue Jay, when there’s an emotional scene he wipes his right eye. Yeah, I want to before we leave that though, I want to talk about that scene in the diner. Because if you were to type up their dialogue and look at it, there’s nowhere near as much going on as actually happens on the screen. This is the first time when we really start to see these actors bringing their A game, right. They’re just phenomenal at the under text that’s going on while they’re talking about those mundane things that two people haven’t seen each other in a while would talk about.

Christi Dodge 6:39
Yep, yep. So they leave the diner and then they-they’re walking. I think at that point, they had decided to walk back to his house because she wanted to see his house. Now we know that that house is the house that he grew up in, and she wants to go back and see it. They stop by this little convenience store. And they see the checker. Once again, these are more facts about their life and how they used to spend time just unfolding.

She goes “no, I can’t believe that’s him. Is that him?” And so obviously, we know that’s the same checker that was there when they were in high school and they make a wager “he’s not going to remember that thing we used to do.” “No, he is.” You’re just you know, as an audience member, we don’t have a clue of what they’re talking about. So they go in and they do this little thing. The checker asks them. “So you guys are still together?” and they pretend that they are. This is when you first see them. Both Amanda and Jim, I believe, right?

Mike Dodge 7:36
Jim, yes.

Christi Dodge 7:37
Yeah, they-they pretend throughout the rest of Blue Jay. And this is something they used to do when they were young kids in high school kind of pretending they were together.

Mike Dodge 7:48
Well, you also see with that “go traveling” bit, which he knows means that they want to get a singles of beers from different countries, that they have a history together, right? Because she’s able to say “go traveling” and so obvious that Jim knows what she’s talking about. So we now start to see they had a relationship, fairly serious relationship. It looks like it was romantic.

Christi Dodge 8:09
Yeah. And so they pretend to be married. They tell the clerk that yes, they’re still together, and they’re married. And then they go down by the lake. There’s some more beautiful cinematography.

Mike Dodge 8:20
Pictures.

Christi Dodge 8:21
Yes, in this lake shot anytime I think you’re by water, who knew that by the water in black and white could be just a stunning?

Mike Dodge 8:28
Well, that’s I mean, I think a great job by the cinematographer and the rest of the camera department in order to get that the contrast and the highlight such that it works.

Christi Dodge 8:36
Yeah.

Mike Dodge 8:36
One of the interesting things about filmmaking where we kind of cheat is there’s a point where there’s some dialogue about the pink and the purple jelly beans in the bag of jelly beans that Jim bought at the store. Now we watched Jim fill up that bag, we can see how big that bag is. If there are 20 jelly beans in there, I’d be stunned. There aren’t going to be a ton of pink and purple jelly beans in there at all. He didn’t pick through them. We saw him just scoop a bunch in doesn’t matter narratively. It’s a great point. So we go ahead and run with it. But also, we never see that actual jelly beans so they can be any color. They didn’t have to exist great cheating.

Christi Dodge 9:13
I think they were jelly beans.

Mike Dodge 9:15
They probably were, but I’m just saying as a viewer, we don’t know.

Christi Dodge 9:17
They leave the lake and then continue walking back to Jim’s house and they’re walking away from us. They’re in silhouette, which works once again, complements the black and white. And you can tell it’s probably dusk, they’re being backlit. I mean, they are frontlit but to us to the audience. It’s backlit and so they have this beautiful aura, both of them and it’s another stunning shot.

Mike Dodge 9:42
It’s a really gorgeous shot because as Christi mentioned, there’s the halo from the lighting but also you have the sun in the upper left and there’s a telephone pole on the left side of the screen that’s acting as a frame. I mean, it’s just really gorgeously done.

Christi Dodge 9:56
They go to the house and he I think excuses himself to go to the restroom and she’s now wandering around and you see her stop at his high school picture. To me that was a sweet moment because it’s like, oh, that’s the boy she fell in love with. That’s the boy that she loves. She just looks at it adoringly, and to me, you can see on her face like she’s flooded with the memories of their time together in high school.

Mike Dodge 10:21
So fun fact, those are pictures of him, I believe, because you see, in the photo of him in a letterman jacket, a “J” and I believe Mark went to Jesuit.

Christi Dodge 10:29
He did go-yes, that’s in my trivia. He did go to Jesuit and, we’ll just throw it in right now. The school’s mascot was the Blue Jay.

Mike Dodge 10:36
Blue Jay. When I first heard that title, I thought maybe his brother was sad, but apparently not.

Christi Dodge 10:40
No, no. And then they go into his room, and she’s reading through some composition books.

Mike Dodge 10:46
Well, he’s, before he comes back, I believe she’s reading through the composition notebook. And I liked it because it was an opportunity to work some exposition into the movie, because this is a book that she has not seen before. It’s his journal. So she would naturally need to read it to know it’s in there. And so we get that dialogue that provides some more insight into the characters and their relationship. Now, at this point, she finds a letter and the letter is important in the film, it comes back. And so she pockets it. And I have to say, the first time I saw the film, I didn’t really understand why you would do that. It seemed like if it was to her, she would just open it. And if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t take it.

Christi Dodge 11:27
But he walks in on her.

Mike Dodge 11:28
Well, yeah, thieves have to work quickly when the guy comes home.

Christi Dodge 11:32
Yeah, so then they kind of go into this playing thing. This is another moment where Jim wife says I because they’re listening to old audio tapes that they have, that they recorded when they were in high school. And they’re listening to their high school selves pretending to be married. But they’re not just married. They’re like, married, and they’re probably 40s, early 50s, because they’re talking about their grown children, calling them and telling them about like, college or whatever.

Mike Dodge 12:01
Now, this is a generational thing. Because younger viewers might not know that cassette tapes and recording your own audio was a big deal. At the time, there is a long period of humanity where we weren’t able to record our own voices. Now we have podcasts, we have to listen to our voices. But at the time, it was a big deal to have done that. But it was also brilliant filmmaking, because you get to see some serious acting chops, we have dialogue delivered via this not great audio quality cassette recorder from the 80s. While that’s the only dialogue that’s delivered visually, we see Duplass and Paulson acting, and it is absolutely a tour de force. I just am so impressed at their ability to have again, this subtext going on outside of the dialogue. It’s just fascinating.

Christi Dodge 12:48
Yeah, when they, I think his character-Jim’s character in in the high school off the tape says, “Did you talk to Jessica today?” And when he when the two actors sitting on the bed hear that they both have a physical reaction. They’re their bodies stiffen and they both all of a sudden become very uncomfortable. And so once again, as an audience member, you’re like, Why does that make him so uncomfortable? What’s going on? What’s the big deal? Why, instead of just laughing?

What was it about this comment, because they had been laughing at themselves thinking like, oh, my gosh, listen to how ridiculous we were in high school. That’s the moment there’s this turn. So once again, it piques our interest as an audience member, and as someone who admires good storytelling, because I don’t feel very confident in my ability to do it. This is one of those moments that I just fall in love with this movie.

Mike Dodge 13:39
So one of the things that plays in there, I think, at least for me, is you now have this adult male and adult female who are in a bedroom on a bed. They’re in physically close, close quarters, not touching, but they’re close together. So when there’s that moment, the first time I saw the film, I see that level of discomfort. I didn’t know if this meant that the you know, something had changed.

Because I’m thinking “man and woman that close together, there’s a natural idea that there’s some intimacy there.” And did that remind them of something? Did it call into the question like, oh, my gosh, we’re actually we’re really close. She’s married, you know what’s going on here? So I wasn’t sure what was going on. But I thought it actually kind of caught my eye to the sexual tension unnecessarily more than other things.

Christi Dodge 14:27
A moment I think they shut off the tape and she says, I don’t know who that person was. But the look on his face is I know who that person was. I think there’s some sadness in her face and acting and appearance because she she wishes she was that person. She’s sad that she lost who that person was. I think she even says like, I used to have fun.

Mike Dodge 14:52
Well, and that’s going to come back in Blue Jay. But it’s an odd statement right? The viewer notices that because she appears to have been having fun with Jim all day. Well, why why would that be an issue?

Christi Dodge 15:03
So then there’s there in the bedroom, I think. There’s almost a smoochy, smoochy smoochy, I believe.

Mike Dodge 15:11
An almost smoochy.

Christi Dodge 15:12
Yes. And then another scene that I just love is they actually reenact the scene that they were listening to on the tape. So he comes home from quote, unquote, work, and she has made dinner. Because he’s a bachelor in this rundown house, I guess all he had was scrambled eggs and Top Ramen and maybe soda crackers or oyster crackers. So she has this very put thrown together dinner in front of them. They’re laughing. And once again, this is all improv. He does something I can’t remember what it is and she Do you remember?

Mike Dodge 15:50
He delivers a line, I forget the exact line, but he delivers a comic line.

Christi Dodge 15:54
Yeah. And she spews scrambled eggs in his face and take it sorry. And I really do believe I’ve watched, like I said, I love Sarah Paulson. So I have gone down the rabbit hole on YouTube of all of her interviews. And I think that that’s a real moment. I-

Mike Dodge 16:12
It looks completely real.

Christi Dodge 16:14
And so and they just ran with it. And so for this and a file, I once again just fell deeper in love with these two in this movie, because in that moment, I felt like that they caught it. You know, on camera, this real moment between these two actors who are improv-ing one cracked the other up, she had an unexpected reaction. I mean, she literally spews scrambled eggs all over him.

Mike Dodge 16:39
It’s really great. But that whole thing-so there’s this recurring theme throughout the film of the two of them, pretending to be a couple of you know first at the at the store, and then with the recording in the bedroom, and now here again, what I find interesting about it is it’s a very ’50s, June Cleaver kind of relationship that they’re portraying. And the guy in the store the characters named Wainy. He says, “here you are the lovebirds the famous lovebirds.”

We also hear through some other dialogue later on that she was into Wuthering Heights and other romance novels in high school. So that makes me now think as a viewer that perhaps she had this idealized view of what marriage would be like what a relationship would be like. Then of course, we start to suspect is that part of what that look was like? Did she have an idealized view that he couldn’t live up to? So you can see him as a character looking like he’s fairly competent early in the film when he’s by himself in the house. But he doesn’t seem like he’s necessarily rolling in it in life, that maybe life has been a little hard for him. So you start to see kind of that crack in that veneer of the perfect little family?

Christi Dodge 17:51
Yeah. So they do, they put on some music, and it’s obviously music from their high school years. And they dance and they laugh. And it’s almost like they’re getting back in touch to the Jim and the 18 year old Jim and Amanda versus the 40 year-old JIm and Amanda and she kind of opens up about her husband and their kids and how she loves being a step mom. She’s talking about a rescue-a dog rescue place that she opened. And I think that once again, this was great “show don’t tell” her a way to infuse the narrative into the conversation. She says Chris thought it would be a good idea for me, meaning that it wasn’t necessarily a passion of hers, but it was something that her husband said would be a good idea. So she followed it.

Mike Dodge 18:35
And it’s interesting, because we know that the actor himself went to Jesuit which sounds to me like a Catholic school. And there’s a part where they’re dancing. He makes the joke, “leave enough room for Jesus in between,” right, a fairly standard line. But we also see it close at one point of his hand on her lower back. I can tell you as a gent, there are very few places is acceptable to put your hands on a lady. So that I think was a great way to “show don’t tell” of showing a level of intimacy, that his hand is fairly low down on her back there and then they pan up, excuse me tilt up to her face and his face and their foreheads are touching. I thought that was really cleverly done. Especially, right, because there’s improv.

Christi Dodge 19:19
Mm hmm. Then cut to they’re sitting in the back of his like old Chevrolet that conceivably could have been his pickup truck when-oh, and when in fact, we know as to his pickup truck, find out his truck in high school, she’s talking about her sadness, and he says, “I get it.” There’s something about the way he says that, you know, he does know her sadness, and we find out later he actually has shared her sadness.

Mike Dodge 19:45
Right and so I think it was a good way to end up Act Two on her sharing that she’s not happy when the end of Act One was him at the lake sharing why he’s not happy. Now we’ve kind of balanced out those characters.

Christi Dodge 19:59
Right. She says she appreciates him because “you know me, and you never made me feel wrong for who I am.”

Mike Dodge 20:05
Obviously, she’s trying to compare and contrast that to her husband.

Christi Dodge 20:10
Right.

Mike Dodge 20:10
What I found was interesting also is that she’s telling him about her taking antidepressants, and his arm is around her. I mentioned earlier with dancing, his touching was in the acceptable zones for Catholic high school dances, this is definitely not an acceptable touch between two people who aren’t in relationship. Now here’s this level of intimacy, where he’s physically there, they’re touching. He’s got his arm around her, they look like they’re ready to make out in the back of this truck. Then she tells him something that she has never told any other person. I mean, it just raises the intimacy stakes really high.

Christi Dodge 20:44
And he mentions that, you know, that in this exact place is where they had sex for the first time. And I think was it his first time? I think he says?

Mike Dodge 20:53
It was 38 seconds.

Christi Dodge 20:55
Yes. And then she asks if he will kiss her. And he hesitates. Because he is like-

Mike Dodge 21:03
“This is crossing a line.”

Christi Dodge 21:04
Yes. And he knows it. I think he has, he never stopped loving her. He’s aware enough if he does kisser that his heart, if it wasn’t already, all in is now all in.

Mike Dodge 21:18
Well, I think it’s the line that follows. Where she says, I know what I’m asking shows us that she knows that he has not fallen out of love with her. And she’s asking to basically release the avalanche.

Christi Dodge 21:32
Yes. So then they we see him go into the house. It’s obvious, they’re going to get it on-

Mike Dodge 21:37
Wakka wakka.

Christi Dodge 21:38
They’re on his boyhood bed, and he says, “I love you-“

Mike Dodge 21:42
Oops.

Christi Dodge 21:43
-and it comes to a screeching halt.

Mike Dodge 21:45
Yeah, that was not the right move for him at that time if he wanted to get intimate with her.

Christi Dodge 21:50
Really quickly, we are just probably launched into I would say, the third act at this point, because she kind of freaks out and she goes back into the living room. She’s taking off like a sweatshirt he had given her and she’s putting back on that black coat.

Mike Dodge 22:05
The great thing about this is we at that point, the first time I saw it, I was thinking, Oh, she’s just realized she’s about to sleep with another man and her husband would be upset, and she would now be the cheating wife, etc, etc. But-

Christi Dodge 22:19
-he comes unglued. He says-and now we now learn almost everything.

Mike Dodge 22:25
There is exposition in his massively awesome crying fit.

Christi Dodge 22:30
He says “it was my baby, too. It was our baby. Why did you do this? Why did you have to do this?” She says “you weren’t ready.” He says “I was a scared kid.” And-

Mike Dodge 22:41
I think it would have been easy for that to be a scenery chewing kind of performance, but he pulled it off. I mean, he went completely toddler on that. And it’s just perfect. It works.

Christi Dodge 22:53
The pain of both of them, you immediately-they’re these 40, like I said, 40 year old people, but it’s almost like they’re dealing with it in their 17 year old selves, just how maybe a conversation that they never had, then they’re having right now screaming at one another of both of them equally saying “you handled this poorly and I’m mad at you.”

Mike Dodge 23:15
Well, and there’s great physical acting from Duplass at the end, he’s collapsed to his knees. And he’s hugging her legs. It’s like, a child would hug someone, which is the fundamental heartbreaking issue here. So superb acting fantastic over the moon. I just this is so impressive to me.

Christi Dodge 23:34
It is, it is and so now it’s dawn. They’re walking back to the house, or I mean, they’re walking back to their cars that they left at the grocery store. And once again, another beautiful shot.

Mike Dodge 23:46
Oh yeah.

Christi Dodge 23:46
It’s black and white. How do I know it’s dawn? I mean, that’s good cinematography, right there.

Mike Dodge 23:52
It really is.

Christi Dodge 23:52
And there’s no one on the street be-and that just tells us how early it is that even in the sleepy little town, there will be somebody driving down the road and there’s no one. So they are talking by the car. And when she was telling him how depressed she was. She says I can’t even cry. So now at the car. She starts crying. This is what I love about Sarah Paulson, she can go zero to 60. So she’s crying by the car and all of a sudden she just points at her face in her eyes. She’s like, like this look like, “Oh my God, look, I’m crying.” He gets it. So it immediately goes from complete sadness. Two, they’re both laughing at one another. And it pretty much cuts to black at that point.

Mike Dodge 24:36
Now I would argue that we all know that they get back together again and live happily ever after.

Christi Dodge 24:42
That’s what I want to believe. I want to believe that she went back and said to Chris “it’s been great. Thanks for sharing your kids with me for a couple years but-“

Mike Dodge 24:50
“I can’t feel emotion with you but I can with this guy we kind of made up.” I’m sorry for Chris maybe we can make a short film about his journey but they need to end up together.

Christi Dodge 25:00
They do! And so I-Mike hates it usually when movies cut to black, I want to ask how-

Mike Dodge 25:06
That’s not true because I do believe that the filmmakers made a statement. I hate when they cut to black out resolving the narrative question. This is me personally, I know it can be done well, I just generally don’t like it. But in this case, the narrative question that she asked at the very beginning is, Jim, you’re not married.

Hey, in my mind, they resolve that issue in that we see that I believe their relationship has repaired itself in a true and adult fashion. Not in the high school, dreaming of I Love Lucy kind of style of marriage and relationship but an actual true human beings who have their own baggage, their own problems, their own struggles, and they’ve become honest with each other and they have an authentic love for each other. So I believe they did actually resolve the question, and it was fine to go to black.

Christi Dodge 25:52
Do you think that Amanda moves back to Crestline and lives-like does she opened up a little boutique? A little doggie biscuit boutique?

Mike Dodge 26:00
No, Blue Jay’s gone downhill that town’s dying, he’s gonna sell that house and they’re gonna move. Yeah, I think instead, they’re gonna move to Santa Cruz. And he’s going to open a surf shop where he sell surfboards to people, and she’s gonna run a cute little vegan cafe.

Christi Dodge 26:14
I was just gonna say a smoothie. A smoothie bar next.

Mike Dodge 26:17
Maybe, maybe yeah, smoothie. That makes sense.

Christi Dodge 26:19
We need a driving review. There wasn’t much driving in this movie. Mike, do you have any driving?

Mike Dodge 26:26
Why do you have an automotive review. First of all, why was at a Chevy pickup should have been a Dodge? Obviously, we have quite a few models for them to choose from. There is another automotive tion.

Christi Dodge 26:39
Tell us.

Mike Dodge 26:40
The composer for this. Julian Wass also composed music for Hit and Run from Dax Shepard, which is all about cars.

Christi Dodge 26:47
Which we will be talking about at some point.

Mike Dodge 26:50
And I’ll try to keep my fanboying to a minimum. And that was about it. No driving at all. There are some walking some sitting in a truck bed but no driving.

Christi Dodge 26:58
Yes. So we do actually have some head trauma and this do-we alluded to it earlier.

Mike Dodge 27:05
Some head trauma? I just remember the spit take.

Christi Dodge 27:07
No. They-in that toddler tantrum that Jim has he slaps his head about two or three times.

Mike Dodge 27:13
Oh, good job, Jim.

Christi Dodge 27:14
Yeah, he was really mad. So is there anything else that you want to talk about?

Mike Dodge 27:19
One thing I really liked was a callback to a sleeper hit Minute Work, Charlie Sheen and Emelio Estevez who has made a movie about being garbage men. That was a personal favorite of my good buddy, Joe and I back in the day. We love that film. I have met zero people who have also seen it, so I love seeing it in this film.

Christi Dodge 27:36
I’ve seen it but I don’t. I know I saw it because I had a huge crush on Emelio Estevez.

Mike Dodge 27:42
Didn’t we all?

Christi Dodge 27:43
Okay, so should we do a little by the numbers?

Mike Dodge 27:47
Let’s!

Christi Dodge 27:47
Okay, so this, like I said was released in December of 2016. It made $21,000. But that’s mostly worldwide because it did it made like $5000 I think I saw on its debut-

Mike Dodge 28:01
Limited release.

Christi Dodge 28:02
Yeah, well, and then it went to Netflix. So I wish I could find if anybody knows how I can find metrics for how many people have watched this on Netflix. I don’t know if they publicize that. But that would be curious to me.

Mike Dodge 28:14
Also nice if we knew how much it quote unquote made in the sense of how much credit it got.

Christi Dodge 28:19
Right. Couldn’t find that either. And it’s unrated. It runs an hour and 20 minutes, Blue Jay is listed as a drama, slash romance.

Mike Dodge 28:27
Fair.

Christi Dodge 28:28
I guess we do have the kiss when they’re making out on the bed briefly.

Mike Dodge 28:32
(as a sound effect) Smoochy smoochy smoochy!

Yeah, one hour, five minutes into the film, there is a Smoochy.

Christi Dodge 28:38
And like I said, Blue Jay was filmed in Crestline. California, if you don’t know where it is, look it up. It was filmed over the course of seven days, which is very Duplass.

Mike Dodge 28:48
So yeah, it’s a good point to maybe mention that this is, in some sense, a premiere independent filmmaking because they’re using a lot of their techniques to keep the budget down. Very few sets, one set of wardrobe for the actors, very few actors, a compressed time frame for the film, so you don’t have to worry a lot about moving cars back and forth, filling traffic in the parking lot and mixing different or something like that.

It’s all those techniques. It’s really a wonderful, independent film that was made on probably a fairly low budget. I don’t think we have budget numbers, but definitely, you know, not not a lot of CGI in this one.

Christi Dodge 29:25
Right. This is the Duplass brothers definitely inspire Dodge Media Productions and how we approach moviemaking and for a lot of the reasons that Mike just said, this is a very Duplass movie and I think another reason why I love it so much. One last little bit of trivia. It was filmed on a Canon camera without built-in recording or built-in power source.

Mike Dodge 29:46
So it was like a security camera.

Christi Dodge 29:47
Yes, that was created as an Army or security camera.

Mike Dodge 29:51
That’s maybe to get really good black and white imagery would be my guess maybe it has a specifically sensitive sensor.

Christi Dodge 29:57
So you guys, I hope that you watched Blue Jay before you listen to this, and then appreciate it even more, if not, you will still enjoy Blue Jay after knowing all of the secrets, please please please go watch it. Tell me what you think. Hit us up on Facebook and Instagram.

Shoot us an email at christi@dodgemediaproductions.com. I would love to know who else watched this and what you thought of it. I promise you won’t be sorry if you’ve burned through the office a couple times, Breaking Bad you’ve gone through, if you’re looking for something to watch on Netflix, please please please spend an hour and 20 minutes watching Blue Jay.

Mike Dodge 30:36
Dodges never stop, and neither do the movies.

Christi Dodge 30:38
Bye, everybody.

Brennan 30:39
Thanks for listening to Dodge Movie Podcast with Christi and Mike Dodge of Dodge Media Productions. To find out more about this podcast and what we do, go to dodgemediaproductions.com Subscribe, share, leave a comment and tell us what we should watch next. Dodges never stop, and neither do the movies.