Stamp & Deliver

AMY: Hi, everybody. Welcome to Films Not Made. Today's guest is Dan Mirvish, who's a director, writer and producer of a number of award-winning films, including 18½, Bernard and Huey, Open House, and Omaha the Movie. He is also known as the co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival, and he wrote a pretty cool book called The Cheerful Subversive's Guide to Independent Filmmaking.

Welcome to the show, Dan.

DAN: Thank you, Amy, for that very kind introduction. Wonderful to be here.

AVI: And I want to add one thing — I've also known Dan for quite a long time, probably from the beginning of Slamdance. And strangely enough, I have been mistaken for Dan on the streets of Park City more than once. Someone just started talking to me thinking I was Dan Mirvish.

AMY: Did you get a project greenlit for him?

AVI: That would have been awesome. Yeah, we should probably be giving each other ten percent of something.

DAN: Absolutely.

AMY: So, Dan, we're here to talk about a project called Stamp & Deliver. Can you tell us the short pitch for the film — just, you know, telling someone about the project?

DAN: Yeah. Stamp & Deliver is a modern-day postal western. It's about a young man who gets blamed for a postal massacre and has to hightail it out to the small western town where he grew up, where he then runs afoul of a postal vixen and nefarious forces out to get him.

AMY: I love a vixen.

AVI: What was your first spark for this — the inspiration?

DAN: So this started because my first film was called Omaha the Movie, and that was a film we started Slamdance with. We did a theatrical self-distribution around the country and played in a whole bunch of festivals. And of course, as you guys both know, when you go to a film festival or do a Q&A, the first question is, "What's next?" I didn't have a next film because I'd been working so hard on the first film.

AMY: Rookie mistake.

DAN: Exactly. So I needed something to pitch. I had actually just met Matthew Harrison —

AVI: Oh sure. Yeah.

DAN: — Film Crash founder. He had Rhythm Thief, which was kind of on the festival circuit around the same time.

AVI: Slamdance '95.

DAN: And Matt had done a film called —

AVI: Spare Me.

DAN: Spare Me. The bowling noir. And I thought, "Bowling noir — why not do postal western?"

AV: Rings true. Yeah.

DAN: So that was it. I give Matt credit for inspiring that. I had also, before I went to film school, right after I graduated college, interned at the Washington Monthly Magazine, and had done research on an article about privatization of the postal service. It was all about these weird rivalries between the Letter Carriers’ Union and the Postal Clerks’ Union and how they all hate each other — that winds up being a big part of the script.

And also when I was in school in Saint Louis, there was a postal training ground in the middle of the city that was this bizarre — it looks like a fake western town — where the letter carriers would practice.

AVI: One of my best friends growing up had a short job — not as a postal carrier, but as a toll taker at the Triborough Bridge — and he had to train at a toll booth simulator, somewhere in midtown.

DAN: Are you kidding?

AVI: Not kidding. With a little control panel, and they would put images on the screen and you had to press how many axles. Anyway, I love that about the script.

DAN: Yeah. And it turns out it's a real thing. Every big city had its own training center. They would build these things with, you know, paintings of dogs barking at you. It was wild.

AMY: So it's not based on the Bukowski novel?

DAN: No.

AMY: Okay. That's the only postal joke I know. So, Dan, where were you in your career and headspace when you started and finished the script?

DAN: I was living in L.A. and I had signed with an agent at UTA. And I was actually running my distribution for Omaha the Movie out of the UTA mailroom. Not a lot of people know this story, but I was there about four days a week for about four or five hours a day. I was friends with all the assistants, the receptionists, everyone in the mailroom. I would make them cookies. And I literally ran my distribution out of that mailroom.

Eventually they fired me as a client because I had the highest FedEx bill of any client there, including Pamela Anderson and Jim Carrey put together. But while I was still there, I was talking to the agent about what's next. And if you guys remember, in the mid-nineties, the real question wasn't so much "what's your first film" but "what's your big sophomore film?"

AMY: And there is also the second-film curse.

DAN: Thanks for letting me know that, Amy.

AMY: Hot tip.

DAN: I think I first pitched this almost at my second festival Q&A at South By, and I met some investors there in Austin. I don't think I'd written the script at that point yet, but I was starting to pitch it around.

AMY: Amazing.

DAN: And I was like, "All right, I gotta write this thing." I also had a winter Christmas job at the Good Guys electronics store, selling VCRs. So, trying to figure out what to do with my life.

AMY: So who reads the script first? Who do you share it with?

DAN: I sent it to my agent. I knew it was long — about 120 pages. It took him forever to finally read it, and I was like, "Give me notes." And I remember him saying, "Yeah, I liked it. Just change the margins."

AVI: Oh.

DAN: I was like, this is my big Hollywood agent! But I changed the margins and it was 105 pages.

AMY: Amazing. Hot tip, hot tip — here on Films Not Made.

DAN: And he was right. Smart guy.

AMY: And did you have a producer or someone you were thinking about? What was the next step?

DAN: I was already partnered up. I had a producing partner on Omaha, Dana Altman, who's still in many ways my producing partner now. He's also Robert Altman's grandson, so Robert Altman had kind of been our mentor on Omaha the Movie. So Dana was on board as my producing partner.

AVI: Did you think about casting? You've got the money. Everyone's saying yes. Do you have a casting agent? How would you move ahead?

DAN: We did auditions in Paul Rackman's rental house in the Hollywood Hills, which sounds really dubious. We wanted kind of the hot indie-film-scene people. I had met James Duvall — Jamie Duvall — who'd been in three of Greg Araki's films, Doom Generation, and so on. He was still working at La Poubelle restaurant on Franklin.

AMY: Right there on Franklin.

DAN: Yeah. That's where Dean Devlin walked in and was like, "Hey, aren't you the guy from Doom Generation?" Super sweet guy, really nice. And I was lucky enough to work with him.

AMY: And was he name enough for your investors?

DAN: That's a great question. He may be meaningful in the indie world and festival world, but not meaningful in terms of foreign sales, or vice versa — depending on who you're trying to impress. And then we had Laurel Holloman, who had been in Rose Troche's Go Fish.

AMY: Oh, sure. Yeah.

DAN: She was kind of hot on the indie film scene. She was super sweet and nice to work with.

AMY: Yeah. You sent us some great materials about auditioning Jeremy Sisto, and particularly about Brittany Murphy. I'd love for you to tell that story about her auditioning and why you didn't cast her.

DAN: She came in, I think, because I knew Joel Michaels. I actually met him at the Good Guys Electronics store, weirdly enough — he came in to submit a tape for Slamdance. When Variety first announced that we were doing Slamdance, which was around December 20th of '94, we got a front page story in Variety. But this was before websites, so there was no Slamdance website. The only way people could track us down was the end of the article, which said, "By the way, Mirvish is working at the Good Guys Electronics store in Westwood over Christmas."

AVI: They outed you?

DAN: Yeah. So Joel was one of the people who came in. I was in the middle of selling a little Sony kitchen TV to Kevin Pollak, of all people — he was getting ready to go to Sundance with The Usual Suspects. And in the middle of this, Joel Michaels shows up with a VHS tape. Poor Kevin Pollak is like, "What is going on around here?" A couple of times after my shift, the other guys from Slamdance — John Fitzgerald and others — would come in and we'd watch some films on the big-screen TVs, and my coworkers would comment on them.

AMY: But Brittany Murphy — so you hadn't locked Laurel in yet?

DAN: Yeah, I think we hadn't quite committed 100% to Laurel at that point, so we were still looking. Joel Michaels said he was friends with Brittany Murphy. She came in and just blew us all away. She was really good, really took the part of "postal vixen" literally. And she was just amazing. And then her agent told her not to do it because it wasn't a big enough movie.

AVI: But you were on the front page of Variety.

DAN: Well, for Slamdance. Not for me as a filmmaker. I remember at one point she called me in tears and was like, "Oh my God, my agent's telling my mom — who was her manager — don't do this movie." And I was like, what kind of agent packaging is that? That was like unpacking, you know?

So anyway, she was never really in, but then she was out. And then I met with Ed Asner. That was fun — to play one of the union bosses.

AVI: Did he commit?

DAN: Yeah, yeah, he was in. He had been a SAG union president, if you remember. He had a salty mouth, so he was perfect. And then there were a bunch of other people we were talking to at the time — one of the Arquettes, I think, was going to be in it. And then Robert Altman kind of helped us get Lyle Lovett at one point.

AVI: This sounds like you had all this momentum going.

DAN: It sounds like it.

AMY: So what's next? You have these investors. You're talking to someone in Austin and Houston and Nebraska. What's happening?

DAN: So Dana and I both decamped to Austin for almost two months. The investors found us a kind of weird house and we all moved into it. We started doing location scouting and finding the crew. I knew Nancy Schafer, who was running SxSW at the time. Austin was very cliquish — you had the South By and Austin Film Society / Linklater clique, and then people who just did commercials, and then people who crewed on studio films coming into town. Anyway, we got in with the cool kids through Nancy. And Rick Linklater was great — he let us use part of his set from The Newton Boys, which he had just shot. It was still up.

AMY: And this is like summer of '97, right?

DAN: Yeah.

AVI: When were you going to start shooting?

DAN: Well, there were these two Texas ladies — Dorinda Dallas and Sally Jo Evanson, her partner. They wanted me to cut twenty pages out of the script. They said, "We'll send you to a spa this weekend, and you can fly in any one of your friends to help you rewrite." So Paul Rickman came in and Paul and I went to the spa.

AMY: Hey, you want to go to a spa?

DAN: We have these ridiculous photos. We weren't going to not take photos. There are pictures of us in towels working on the script.










AMY: So you're working on the script at the spa, going to parties, meeting people, embedding in Austin. Talk to us about when you started to see some cracks in the plan.

DAN: Well, like a week or two before filming — and to their credit, they had been shelling out money for pre-production. We were building huge sets on the Newton Boys location. We had locations, we had sets. They were spending real money. We bought four postal jeeps — used, from the post office — for like eight hundred or five hundred bucks apiece. They were cheap.

And we were building this massive set where one wall had to come down and do what we called the Buster Keaton gag — where characters would stand in front and there'd be an open window and it would swing around them. You had to actually weld a hinge in order to do it repeatedly and safely. Things weren't painted yet, but they were built.

And Linklater had a fake oil derrick — like a pump jack, "there will be blood" kind of thing — and that was still standing. So we kind of did some rewrites around the fact that this oil derrick was there and built our fake postal town kind of around that.

AVI: It sounds amazing. So walk us through what happened next.

DAN: A couple of weeks before we were going to begin, there were rumblings that they weren't happy. It was pretty clear they were going to fire someone — Dana, Steven, or me, or all of us.

AMY: How do you know they're going to fire someone — just a vibe?

DAN: I think they told us. Someone's going to go. Yeah.

AMY: Do you think they had cold feet? Like the money got real?

DAN: I think they had their own issues. They didn't quite know what they wanted out of the whole thing.

AMY: And suddenly it's real, right?

DAN: Yeah, it's real. And suddenly bigger checks needed to be written.

AMY: I mean, that's happened to me. I've definitely been in pre-production, with a nearly signed finance agreement, lawyers going back and forth, and then when the big check has to be written, suddenly I have a financier saying, "Well, are you paying too much for craft service? Can we re-look at the budget?" And then suddenly this person just fades away. So it's not like it's never happened before, but it's so painful in that moment.

DAN: It was very painful. Because technically, we were the ones who pulled the plug. They were giving us all these signs, and finally Steven was like, "We need to pull the plug on them before they pull the plug on us in the middle of the shoot." So with five days to go, we wrote the letter that ended everything.

AVI: You sent a press release to Variety about the film collapsing. Was that, like, a tactic to maybe get it going again?

DAN: I know from my time — I had been a speechwriter in Washington for a senator and worked in a press office. I'd also been basically the publicist for Slamdance the first year. So I know that when there's bad news, you want to write the story yourself.

AVI: Damage control. Yeah, absolutely.

DAN: You know, get it out there. Make sure you're the one putting your spin on it instead of someone else putting a bad spin on it. So I was like, well, at least let's get Variety.

AMY: And so you packed your bags and went back to L.A.? Bring us back to that exact moment.

DAN: I've been spending twenty-five years trying to forget that moment. I don't know — I just remember being very sad, and there were lots of hugs and tears from all the crew that were there. Jimmy and Laurel were there because we had started rehearsals and wardrobe fittings with them. And I took the two of them out to our set and said, "Okay, let's at least get some photos. I think by then we kind of knew the writing was on the wall." I had my Hi8 camera — "This may be it, guys."

And here's the critical thing: they never paid for the script. They never owned the copyright. Which was a big mistake if you're an investor and you start putting money into something.

AMY: Get your chain of title and get the script.

AMY: Okay. Then what happened?

DAN: Four years later, I get a call from one of the Texas ladies. She was dating Neil Young's producer-manager. So she pitched them on Stamp & Deliver and they said yes. Now she's like, "We're back in business, we're making the movie again. Neil Young is going to be your producer. He's gonna do the score." And we started casting again. We hired a casting director in L.A. and had two or three amazing weeks of auditions and meetings with actors.

All kinds of crazy people came in — Mark Hamill, Dom DeLuise — it was a real interesting mix of people. Now I had Neil Young as producer, so I met with Peter Fonda. We got him attached.

AVI: You're not still at UTA?

DAN: Oh God, no. They had dumped me. I think by that point I may have been at ICM. I'm just there for the copy machines usually. ICM stands for International Copy Machines. But anyway, we were having these great casting sessions. Patton Oswalt came in — he was going to play Clem and Barney. He came in with his friend Brian Posehn and they did a scene together, which was really funny.

Meeting Peter Fonda was the weirdest meeting I've ever had. We met at his West Hollywood hotel. He comes down in pajama bottoms and a leather jacket. Orders a latte. And he had just written his memoir. So once Peter starts talking, you cannot get a word in edgewise. For two and a half hours, I stared at foam on the tip of his nose slowly drying, because I'm like, "Peter — Peter, you got it —” No. I think he went to his grave with foam on his nose.

So anyway, he was a very sweet guy, and he agreed he was going to be in the movie.

AMY: So how did this iteration end?

DAN: September 2001. 9/11 happened. And as we all know, that just pulled the rug out from everyone, everything. Also, if you remember, the anthrax scare in the post offices happened right after 9/11.

AVI: Oh, that's right.

DAN: And all of a sudden everyone's like, "We can't do a postal satire." That was the last real time where we thought we were going to make the movie.

AMY: So we've taken all the stuff you sent us, including a script — thank you for that — and some emails you had sent while you were making the film, which was really helpful. We've put it into our AI pipeline.

DAN: Oh, dear God.

AMY: Yeah. And we've created a new pitch deck and a trailer. Avi, take it away.

AVI: Okay. Here we go. Here's your title page. It says Stamp & Deliver in kind of a postal blue going into a dusty red. There's a shot of a rogue postman coming at us on a rural road. Telephone lines going off into a vanishing distance. On the side of the road is a rural postal jeep.

AMY: And there are letters flying everywhere.

AVI: There's a guy in the back. And underneath the big title it says: "Anger. Resentment. Violence." Is that a tagline you used?

DAN: Yeah, that's a tagline I used. It's actually in the script itself. It comes from a speech I once wrote for Senator Tom Harkin, when he was talking to one of the postal unions.

AVI: Ripped from the headlines.

DAN: There was definitely a line in the script that I stole from a speech I had written for Harkin.

AVI: Okay. And by the way —

DAN: God bless AI. But they got the Jeep's steering wheels on the wrong side.

AVI: Yes. Yeah. Well, that was one of those things where I could have iterated and said —

DAN: No, no. We don't want to teach the robots too much.

AVI: Yeah, exactly. Let's see what happens. Does the look of this say anything to you?

DAN: Yeah, I mean — the vibe is kind of there.

AMY: Okay, okay.

AVI: Stepping into the deck. We've got high concept — High Noon meets Brazil. Let me read off the logline, "when a gifted but socially invisible postal recruit is framed for a massacre he didn't commit, he flees to his uncle's rural post office, only to become the last line of defense in a small town under siege from privatization, unions, and a future that wants the mail gone for good."

And as a little elevator pitch, it says: Stamp & Deliver is a darkly comic thriller about a gifted but invisible postal worker who's framed for a massacre and flees to a rural town where the mail still matters, only to become the last defender of public service. As privatization, unions, and new technology close in. Think stamps, guns, and a very American nervous breakdown."

DAN: The only thing I'd question is "invisible" — but okay.

AVI: Yeah. We then asked it to give us a style for the film. Amy, why don't you take this one?

AMY: The style for the film is "bureaucratic western." I haven't heard of that before, but — “it's a grounded, sun-burned American realism where everyday systems are filmed like frontier lore. The camera treats mail routes, post offices, and sorting rooms with the gravity of showdowns — wide frames, patient movement, and a sense that violence and absurdity share the same dusty air.”

AVI: And we have a style frame. It's kind of what you described — and kind of not — where you have the postal training ground with these flat facades, fake houses with post boxes, all roughed up, tumbleweeds, a mailbox sitting there. Pretty stark but also strangely absurd.

DAN: That's pretty close to what they did look like.

AVI: Amazing. We then asked AI to cast the main characters. First up: Nick Franklin —”a gifted, emotionally bottled-up postal recruit whose devotion to order and service collides with a world that wants him erased.” First choice pictured here: Paul Mescal. If you were casting today — what do you think about Paul in the role?

DAN: Sure.

AMY: Josh O'Connor? He's pretty hot right now — Challengers. And Logan Lerman, though he's American.

DAN: Yeah. He's good.

AVI: Next up: Jane Franklin — “a seductive, hyper-intelligent postal obsessive whose hunger for speed, power, and the future makes her far more dangerous than she appears.” This is the vixen you were referring to?

DAN: Yes. The modern-day postal vixen.

AVI: First up: Margaret Qualley. She's in what seems like her home, but she's doing some postal sorting there, dressed in —

DAN: That could be in the script. It is in the script, actually — their home is also the post office.

AVI: She's described as "volatile and erotic." Second choice: Florence Pugh. Third: Riley Keough.

DAN: All good choices.

AMY: Those are top actresses working today. Who can complain? Just say yes.

AVI: Next up — Amy, do you want to take this one?

AMY: Yeah. Jeremiah Franklin — “a proud, old-school rural postmaster who believes delivering the mail is a moral act, and he's willing to die for it.” Pictured here: Jeff Bridges, on the same sort of roadside as that earlier photo, but now the Jeep has no top. He's got very dirty overalls and a baseball cap with the postal insignia. AI considers him "weathered and humane."

And then Bryan Cranston — “authoritative and tragic” — and John Hawkes, who AI describes as "lived-in and soulful." It lists his main credit as The Peanut Butter Falcon.

AVI: Who was your last cast for that role?

DAN: That would have been Peter Fonda.

AVI: Oh, there you go. Mr. foam-nose.

Okay. Next up: Jack Montgomery — “a one-eyed corporate enforcer whose childhood trauma has metastasized into a vendetta against the town and the idea of public service itself.” First choice: Jesse Plemons. Right now you can see him in Begonia. He is truly looking menacing and banal.

DAN: As opposed to banal and menacing, which is amazing.

AVI: We've also got Scoot McNairy and Ben Foster. Do you like Jesse Plemons?

DAN: Yeah. He's great. The tricky part was he needed to be the same age as Nick, because they have this tragic backstory together — they grew up together, and they were in a rubber band fight as kids, and that's how he lost his eye. Which, by the way, was influenced by John Heilemann — podcaster and MSNBC pundit. He was an intern with me at the Washington Monthly, and we used to do that. He didn't lose an eye, though. Thank God.

AVI: We have some style frames. The big high-concept reference is No Country for Old Men meets Office Space.

AMY: It's getting better every page.

DAN: Yeah. Right on.

AVI: We've got a few frames here. First: our hero Nick in what looks like the aftermath of a massacre — blood on the floor in a sorting facility, bullet holes everywhere. Next: he's racing away in a postal jeep from what looks like a city on fire, just smoking. It looks like a metropolis, but then it goes right out into the fields. And then the private mail service truck —

AMY: What is going on? Like bags flying out or —?

DAN: Yeah, yeah, there's the postal dump in the script. That's definitely in there.

AVI: And then lastly, a kind of Western shootout — hiding behind a mailbox.

AMY: Like a Western showdown where the mailbox is your cover.

AVI: Yeah. The villain is shooting at him in a very Western style. We have some poster art coming up.

DAN: Oh, wow.

AVI: Three posters.

AMY: So the first one is really fascinating. It's a mailbox in a field — open — with letters flying out in a big swirl that ends in an American flag. It looks like it premiered at South by Southwest. There's a pull quote: "A savage satire with the pulse of a thriller." IndieWire.

AVI: The middle one is what I'd call a festival prestige piece. Very moody cul-de-sac with a post box in the middle and some constructed fake houses. A pull quote: "An American parable — as funny as it is unsettling." The Guardian. That's in competition at Cannes.

DAN: That's really nice.

AVI: And then lastly, this is kind of a nod to you — the Slamdance, maybe nineties version. Big picture of a rural post box open with mail coming out of it. And the pull quote: "The funniest postal thriller ever made." Film Comment. And it's an official selection of Slamdance.

AMY: That was hard to get it to be an official selection. This was definitely like the low-budget indie ideal.

DAN: Yes. Okay.

AVI: We like to have a range. Under the title — in old typewriter font — it reads: "Neither snow nor rain nor corporate greed."

DAN: Yeah, I dig that.

AVI: I could see this one on Main Street back in the day, plastered everywhere with the showtimes at the Treasure Mountain.

DAN: Well, you know, IMDb says we made the movie, so.

AMY: Oh, really?

DAN: Now AI thinks we actually did too. Lastly, we have a little shot of you in situ on set, and a bio.

AVI: Dan — look at that.

DAN: He's leaning on a fence. Look at how much hair I have in that picture.

AVI: He's got a full golden mane, backlit in front of a western post office. You are the salt of the earth. That's all I can say.

DAN: I gotta use that picture on my website. Yeah.

AVI: So that's our deck.

DAN: Wow. That's some big deck energy.

AVI: Now we're going to show you a trailer that we made with the same AI pipeline. Give me a second to queue that up.

[TRAILER PLAYS]

VOICE: Franklin, slow it down.

VOICE: Yes, sir.

VOICE: A violent incident at a downtown post office.

VOICE: This doesn't look good.

VOICE: Out here, the mail still means something.

VOICE: Delivering mail ain't a job. It's a duty.

VOICE: I just like things on time.

VOICE: Progress is inevitable.

VOICE: That's not mail. That's an attack.

VOICE: Service delivers everything. Even the crap. Get down!

VOICE: I know.

VOICE: He believed in something.

VOICE: Belief is slow, Nick.

VOICE: Keep it moving. Not in my town.

VOICE: You're obsolete.

VOICE: I deliver.

VOICE: It's already over.

VOICE: What's this for?

[TRAILER ENDS]

DAN: Ooh. I got chills.

AMY: The end is amazing.

AVI: What do you think?

DAN: It is. The little button. Wow. Yeah — I was literally getting chills thinking about how the robots are taking over. Which is kind of the theme of the movie. It was weird — when I wrote the script initially it was a little sci-fi in the sense that it was all about the coming internet. Now it's a period piece.

AVI: So to round out this experience, Dan, we're now going to have a ten-minute conversation with our own AI creative executive. We can talk about these issues — period versus now. Her name is Meredith. She's a new executive at the same company we have this relationship with. Let me try and get her on the call now.

[AI EXECUTIVE SEGMENT]

DANNI (AI assistant): Hi, everyone. It's Danni. Meredith is running a few minutes behind on another call, but she asked me to get you rolling so we don't burn the window. We've got a hard out at ten minutes today. She's looking forward to catching up with Dan — it's been a minute. She's also really intrigued by Stamp & Deliver. She'll be on in just a moment and will jump right into the big turns in the ending. So feel free to start wherever you want.

DAN: Danny didn't offer me water. I'm a little disappointed.

AVI: Hey, Meredith.

MEREDITH (AI executive): Hey, Amy.

AVI: All right. We've got Dan here, and we sent over the pages — the new deck and his original script for Stamp & Deliver. Let's just give us the hot take on the script.

MEREDITH: All right. I've got Stamp & Deliver in front of me now. Nick is the lead, and we're in his world. Opening with the post office chaos and Nick caught in the middle works. It sets up tone and stakes fast. What I love is the massacre-scapegoat twist in the back room. It's bold, and you feel Nick's confusion and panic.

My one worry: right after Nick's framed, the script leans hard into postal procedural gags and union politics before the thriller really kicks in. I'd tighten that middle stretch so Nick's paranoia and the town's suspicion hit faster. Keep us with his point of view and ramp the tension. Where do you want the audience to flip fully — comedy to thriller?

DAN: Thriller comedy. It's a thriller comedy, Meredith. It could be a comedy thriller — it depends where you put the slash.

MEREDITH: Totally get that, Dan. The slash placement matters. Looking at Nick's arc after he's set up as the scapegoat — you want the comedy to come from his desperate moves, or is the tension the main driver with the laughs as release? Where's the sweet spot for you, tonally?

DAN: This is creepy. The tone is right there between the thriller and the comedy, but it depends where you put the slash. And I think that's execution-driven, don't you think?

MEREDITH: Yeah, absolutely. It's all in how you stage Nick's panic versus the absurdity around him. Would you lean into more surreal humor as Nick gets paranoid, or play it straight and let the weirdness come out naturally?

DAN: Great question. I would let the humor come out naturally and play it straight.

MEREDITH: Love that. It's usually funnier when Nick's not winking at the camera. So in the scene where he's interrogated by his coworkers in the break room — would you want the comedy to come from their bizarre logic and how seriously they treat it, rather than Nick cracking jokes?

DAN: Yes. Nick would not be cracking jokes.

MEREDITH: Perfect. That's clear.

AMY: Meredith, sorry to interrupt. As a producer, I'd like to know — can you see yourselves at the company financing some pre-production for Dan? Is it in your wheelhouse?

MEREDITH: Yeah. Thanks for asking, Dan. Based on what's on the page, Stamp & Deliver has a clear tone, a strong protagonist in Nick, and the premise is tight enough to package. The win is that it's contained — mostly in the post office and local settings, so production-wise it's feasible.

The thing I'd want to clarify before moving to pre-production: are you open to a little structural polish to make Nick's paranoia and the town's turning on him punchier? If so, I'd say it's in our wheelhouse. Are you looking for full casting support or just soft prep at this stage?

DAN: Avi is my other producer. Do you want to answer that question?

AVI: Well — Dan's basically gotten to the start line twice on this and not been able to get over that last hurdle. Look, I think there's an audience for it. I think it can be done. We just want to know — who do you think would be hospitable? Would you take it to a streamer or a studio?

MEREDITH: Good question, Avi. I would say the contained setting and offbeat tone make it ripe for streamers — Netflix, Hulu, maybe even Amazon. It's the kind of high-concept, character-driven thriller comedy they'll take a swing at, especially with the right cast. Would you be open to targeting a streamer first with a sharp reel and casting wishlist before knocking on studio doors?

DAN: Amy, I'll let you take that one.

AMY: For sure. Look, we're open.

MEREDITH: Sounds good, Amy. If we go streamer first, I'd push for a short proof-of-concept reel — Nick in the post office, total chaos, union politics, maybe one tense town scene. Would you want Dan to shoot something rough and scrappy, or do you need a polished sizzle to get attention?

AMY: Hey, Meredith — that's a solid question. We were thinking about using AI to create this trailer. How do you feel about that?

MEREDITH: Honestly, I'm into it. AI visuals can sell tone and world without blowing the budget. The key is to get the vibe right — Nick dead serious, chaos swirling, not joking. Just make sure what you show matches the script's straight-faced weirdness. Would you frame the trailer as mostly Nick's POV or mix in how the town sees him?

AVI: I think it's going to be plot-oriented — keep it moving, get people interested. Really kind of a sizzle.

MEREDITH: That works. Plot-forward is smart for selling the concept. Just make sure Nick's tension anchors every beat.

AVI: So let's talk money.

AMY: How much? We need some money. If you want to be involved in this hot project that's definitely going to be greenlit with or without you — we need you to put your money where your mouth is. We need you to option the script for six figures and get our pre-production going.

MEREDITH: Look, I get it. You want to see six figures up front. The thing is, for contained projects like Stamp & Deliver — mostly one location, character-driven, streamer — pre-pro options are usually closer to low-to-mid. Just checking: do you want a straight answer on feasibility? Honestly, I'd say six figures is ambitious for a contained indie unless you have cast attached or streamer interest. Want to talk cast, director, or stay on financing for now?

AMY: I don't know, man.

DANNI: Dan, I'm so sorry. Meredith just got pulled off for a hard stop and had to drop. She's got a lunch she can't miss, but she wants to keep talking. Maybe you guys can meet up in Park City. Thanks for making the time and for walking us through Stamp & Deliver. If you want a next step, send the two scenes or pages you most want her to react to — the ones that best capture the tone and lean into the ending — and we'll make sure she hits them cleanly. Thanks again, everyone.

[END AI EXECUTIVE SEGMENT]

AMY: Okay. Well. Dan, I guess we could take the meeting in Park City.

DAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll be there. I think all three of us are going to be there. I love taking meetings in Park City. The altitude makes everyone say yes.

AVI: Another hot tip.

DAN: Hot tip. Yeah.

AMY: Well, how did you feel about that, Dan?

DAN: That was great. That took me right back to the nineties and all the meetings I did have.

AVI: So it was on brand for creative executive meetings.

DAN: One hundred percent. The only disappointment was Danny didn't offer me water. But otherwise, that's — welcome to Hollywood. Takes a little while to know what you're talking about in a meeting.

AMY: Just a reminder of the project. Anyway, that's our show. Dan, that's what we do here on Films Not Made. I don't know how you're feeling about the film now. Do you think there's a life for it?

DAN: Yeah. I think it's — this is creepy as all hell, but I really appreciate you guys doing this and bringing Stamp & Deliver to life. Undead, in a sense. Why not? I mean, you guys just showed me that trailer. We can put out our own Paul Mescal movie — you guys are the producer brains.

AMY: I don't know how SAG is going to feel about it.

DAN: Yeah. But it would make casting much easier. So, yeah — we're in a brave new world. Anything's possible. With AI, you either embrace it or completely reject it. Or — my next film!

AMY: Tell us.

DAN: It's a Cold War thriller slash comedy — or comedy thriller, depending, as Meredith says, where you put the slash — about a planeload of Air Force wives who have to thwart World War III while balancing infidelities, spies, martinis, and fondue. Tonally it's not that different from Stamp & Deliver. And we just launched the Kickstarter campaign today. We're planning on shooting it this summer.

AVI: Tell everyone where they can find you and find that.

DAN: If you go to Kickstarter and search for Atomic Fondue, it's on there now. Or just go to DanMirvish.com and look for Atomic Fondue. We're on Instagram everywhere at Atomic Fondue. Things are going well — literally while we were on this podcast, we raised like four hundred dollars.

AVI: Solid start.

DAN: Whatever it is, you guys are great. Keep doing what you're doing.