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GR: was/is it hard for you to get actors/actresses?
jon: it's never been hard, like when i first started out, i asked friends, like "hey, you
wanna be in my movie?" and it's still pretty much how i work now. i work with both professional
and non-professional actors but it seems like everyone i do work with, i know them and
there's some trust there...like terminal, i actually had a bad experience, because it was
such a big project. i got a huge bunch of money and i was making it for television so it
was actually on PBS. the sad thing is...check it out...terminal u.s.a. was part of a 7-part
series so there are 7 movies altogether and they were supposed to show them ever in all
these cities...and soon los angeles, when the series started, terminal got some good write-ups
in the la times and then it was week 6, and then it was week 7 and they bumped it...the same
thing happened in san francisco, they never showed it...in chicago, they never showed it...
and its all because when they showed it in new york, people got pissed off, they're like,
"our tax dollars are going to make this repulsive shit? what's going on?" so it got a lot
of controversy and people were afraid of losing their jobs so that's why i think they decided
not to show it in other cities.
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GR: that is so fucked up!
jon: i know! everyone's just so fucking lame i think...those film programmers at tv stations...
people are just afraid to take chances, thinking that they'll lose their jobs...i don't wanna
show something cool 'cos i'll lose my job...a lot of the cities were like, "ok, we'll show the
first 6 movies but this last one's too fucked up so we're not gonna show it." that happened a
lot and the administration for itvs/pbs or whatever you wanna call them, they're just so fucking
ass backwards...like i couldn't even get a list of where it was gonna play because i have friends
in different cities and i wanted to call people up and tell them to check it out and they're so
disorganized, they don't even have a list of where it was playing...and a couple of times in new
york, it played and i didn't even know about it. a week later, i was talking to a friend and
he's like, "oh yeh, it was on tv about a week ago" and i was like, "man, i didn't even know
because these lame-oes didn't tell me."
GR: when it was on, did they edit it?
jon: i actually did that...you've seen the uncensored, right?
GR: yeh!
jon: oh, cool!
GR: what did you cut out?
jon: you know how there's a lot of blood in the end, even though it was
fake blood, all the pbs people got really flipped out about that so what i did
was, you know in talk shows when they smudge faces and stuff, i totally smudged
out scenes and stuff and used all sorts of beeps to censor out...because the dialogue
is normal, no fucks or shits...but they still got upset because "you can't use the
word 'sperm' on tv" or "you can't say masturbation" and i was like, have you ever
watched masterpiece theatre and seen frontal nudity and people saying "fuck"?
and they were like, "well, uh...in yr case, it's different cos this is...uh....
crazier"...so they wanted me to cut out words like 'sperm' and 'masturbation'.
i got so pissed off that i just said, "well, i'm just gonna take it to the extreme
and really overcensor it." so every other word is like, 'beep' and 'boop'...
completely innocent words that i censored out but i was trying to say,
hey man, here's what you want...you got it!
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