Today we’d like to introduce you to Phil Blattenberger.
Hi Phil, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
It was all a dream!
I used to watch 80’s movies as a 90’s kid and wondered if I could ever do that – write a screenplay, throw together some actors, and shoot a Kung Fu movie with all my friends. But I was encouraged to choose adulthood instead, so those ideas languished in a cobweb-ridden attic of my brain until one day during grad school, the existential overtures of impending thesis defense reached a screeching crescendo, and I thought, “Fuck this! I’m going to write a movie.”
And thus, “Point Man” was born, a screenplay set among a trio of Black soldiers in the Vietnam War. Abandoned by their platoon weeks after the assassination of MLK, their arc takes a similar trajectory as Hugh Thompson Jr.’s, the helicopter pilot who ended the My Lai massacre by threatening to (***SPOILER ALERT***) kill his own men if they didn’t knock it off. The story had a nice hook to it, and I set up shop with my business partner, Dan Black, and together we produced the film. He cast it; I directed it. We landed financing, shot it in Cambodia, and at the time, it became the first original narrative feature-length Vietnam War movie in American cinematic history to shoot on location in Vietnam. Not bad!
The film got a worldwide distribution deal with Sony and that set us up to do another one: war/actioner “Condor’s Nest.” This was a different beast: tons of production value, action scenes, and a few names. We labored for four years to build sets (including a full-scale crashed B17 bomber and French farmhouse, which I spent most of 2019 sleeping in a mule barn to create) and prepare to film.
The script and production design attracted some big leaguers to do the project. Arnold Vosloo (The Mummy, Blood Diamond), Michael Ironside (Total Recall, Top Gun), Jackson Rathbone (Twilight), Jorge Garcia (LOST), James Urbaniak (The Office), and Academy Award nominee Bruce Davison (X-Men) signed on as part of an ensemble cast. It was our first time working with bona fide Hollywood stars. What a rush! We were on the moon.
What now? Well, Condor’s Nest landed a theatrical release through Paramount Pictures several months ago, and that’s given us the momentum to do a third. We’re deep in preproduction on “Without Consequence,” a crime/thriller set out west during the Cold War. I don’t get to talk about the attached cast yet, but it’s gonna be a banger.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The only people who have it smooth in the film industry are nepo-baby types with the trust funds or zip codes to make the connections for them. For everyone else trying to break into Hollywood, it’s an absolute meat grinder. You have to be laser-focused and truly, completely, unrelentingly relentless, and unshakable in your resolve to sacrifice everything that gets in the way.
I told myself this would be a heavily sacrificial ten-year sprint. I’m on year seven, and I’m still sprinting. It’s gotten a little easier as I’ve grown in competence – knowing how to pull big names, deal with the guilds, run a show – and that damning imposter syndrome has melted away a bit in the process, which is nice. But it’s a grind. Year seven of an upstart when your competition is Warner Brothers and Universal – that’s just the nature of it. Sacrifice! I still don’t have a life. But we’re getting there. Lucky for me, I love this stuff.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Mostly I just pull my hair out (producing) point my fingers uselessly at people who already know what they’re supposed to do (directing), and occasionally I get to sit down with my laptop in a coffee shop on a faraway island and create stories (that’s the writing part, which is my absolute favorite.)
I wouldn’t say I specialize in anything in particular, though I’m a big fan of pursuit arcs in scripts, in one form or another. I don’t know what that says about me. But no, as a production unit – Dan Black, myself, and Jacob Keohane, who’s become a de facto business partner in this endeavor – sit down and discuss concepts, tone, logistics, casting, and our general trajectory to figure out what kind of film best fits next in our budding anthology. First, it was a slow-burning drama. Then a popcorn actioner. Now a crime/thriller. And we’ve just optioned a concept shooting in Europe next summer, a suspense/whodunit type of thing. So, it’s a mixed bag.
Me personally, I’m most proud of writing dialogue, which I think stems from writing truthful characters. It’s the aspect of my work that’s most rewarding to hear people talk about positively because it happens to be my absolute favorite thing to do. There is nothing more pretentious and groan-inducing than when writers say their characters speak to them or for them, but in a sense it’s really true. If you create truthful characters and throw them into truthful circumstances the dialogue just sort of dumps out of your brain and onto the screen. You’re just a vessel.
Sometimes it doesn’t happen that way due to needing to write within shootable parameters, but when it does, it’s magic and my favorite part.
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
No one cares about your art if your art is only art for art’s sake. And even if they do, you’re not going to pay your rent with it.
It’s a business and that comes first. You have to learn the business end of it inside and out and fit in the art where you can. I think this is the number one mistake rookie filmmakers make trying to break into the industry. It’s a brutal, soul-crushing truth, but them’s the ropes, kid.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @pablattenberger
Image Credits
Kevin Putnam
