DJ Natalie's Neighborhood

Amy Hobby (00:00:04): Hi, I'm Amy Hobby.
Avi Weider (00:00:05): And I'm Avi Zev Weider, and this is Films Not Made.
Amy Hobby (00:00:08): Where we invite directors, producers, and writers and talk about their favorite projects that were developed and never went into production.
Avi Weider (00:00:14): And then we take their original materials, we put it through our own AI pipeline and we create a new deck and trailer. Then to round it out, we have a quick conversation with our own creative AI executive.
Amy Hobby (00:00:26): Could this project be made now? Should it have been made back then? Or are we just giving our guests a little closure?
Avi Weider (00:00:33): Welcome to Films Not Made.
Amy Hobby (00:00:40): Today's guest is Natalie Weiss, a multifaceted storyteller. She writes music, musicals. She's written an opera, children's television show. She's been commissioned by the Wooster Group, Brooklyn Philharmonic. She's collaborated with Mark Ronson, the band Fischerspooner. Remember them? Oh yeah. And I'm a huge fan of her off-Broadway musical Camp Onitachi, which played a run in New York City at La MaMa and had incredible reviews and I saw it twice. I love it so much. Wow. Yeah. Welcome Natalie.
Natalie Weiss (00:01:21): Thanks for having me.
Avi Weider (00:01:23): When we first started talking about the show, this was one of the first projects that Amy immediately wanted to circle back around to. Certainly for me, it's totally unique because it's a children's show. It's called DJ Natalie's Neighborhood. And why don't you just start us off, give us the short pitch of it.
Natalie Weiss (00:01:48): Yeah. DJ Natalie's Neighborhood is a show for families and it's Pee-wee's Playhouse meets Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood set to a DJ beat and trying to take some of my life in Brooklyn coming up with these zany roommates and all these troubles we had and make that the setting for Baby DJ School, which is an actual business that I started and Baby DJ School would take place at the apartment. And so instead of my helper being some actress I hired to help me in my music class, it's like my amazing horse roommate, Ms. Hay Hay. And I just got to use songs that already existed in the Baby DJ School universe. Baby DJ School is a music education program built around pedagogical kids music. So it's like we've got a house music beat and we're building a house or there's a jungle beat and we're acting like animals in the jungle and it's all about teaching musical concepts through song.
Avi Weider (00:03:02): How old are the kids in Baby DJ School?
Natalie Weiss (00:03:07): We started two months.
Avi Weider (00:03:09): Two months?
Natalie Weiss (00:03:09): Two months to five years because that's when the brain is the most plastic and the most receptive to information. And I feel like anything that can be taught with joy can enrich a child. So if you're teaching a child about mathematics but you're giving it to them like that is two plus two. And I felt like if we were teaching a skill that the parents would be able to brag about knowing, they're like, "Well, yeah, I used Traktor. I've been digital for a couple years." If they're learning something too, they're not on their phone and it models happy learning for the kids. Plus if the parents think it's cool, they're taking a picture, they're paying attention, they're not zoning out when they're hearing wheels on the bus for the umpteenth time. So Baby DJ School had this viral success. We were on the cover of the New York Post before we had our first class.
Avi Weider (00:04:12): Were you hosting this out of your apartment?
Natalie Weiss (00:04:16): No, it was worse. I did it out of a vintage store who was not counting on a multinational media circus. They were like, "Yeah, come do a kid's music class. It'll be a little something." And it's like the Associated Press and Russia and everybody's taking turns getting five minutes of the class. So the kind of success of that made me say maybe there's something I can bring to a larger audience that can be interesting for children and for adults, just like the classes.
Avi Weider (00:04:49): So you're saying you had the business going for how long before you had the inspiration to transform it?
Natalie Weiss (00:04:58): To DJ Natalie's Neighborhood? I would say two years. I had my first class in September 2013 and my background is like a composer and a playwright and I worked with characters. So it seemed really natural for me to just put this in a setting with a narrative. And the guy who had been making the beats for the Baby DJ School songs, I was like, "Okay, this is the idea." And then the beat, it sounds like it's a kid song and then the beat drops and he gets the concept and it's like funny. And so working with him, Matthew Young, who's so talented and can do any genre, made it fun too because once we wrote this theme song together, it just kind of congealed.
Amy Hobby (00:05:51): Yeah. So I was involved with DJ Natalie's Neighborhood starting in July of 2016, I got an email from 2016. In 2016, Natalie emailed me with a script and an idea. At that point it was Broad City meets Pee-wee's Playhouse. I'm curious, did you meet anyone a little more insider before me? Actually, yeah. A lot of ways you can go there.
Avi Weider (00:06:27): There.
Amy Hobby (00:06:28): Yeah. Did you meet with other people before me? Who read the script first? You had the pilot script already at that point?
Natalie Weiss (00:06:35): You were the first person.
Amy Hobby (00:06:39): I'm sorry.
Natalie Weiss (00:06:41): My world is like music and barely into theater and musical theater and opera. I've kind of found my way into that. So you were someone who was just fun and I felt like might have fun producing it. I was a huge fan of the work of yours that I've seen. So I was like, well, if she can imagine whatever, my biggest reference at the time was Secretary, which is like one of my favorite movies to this day.
Avi Weider (00:07:15): Hey, look at that.
Natalie Weiss (00:07:16): Hey, there she is. Yeah. And I just thought, let's see if I can get a meeting with you because I know you a little bit plus the Baby DJ School thing had been trending. So I thought, let's capitalize on this if I can.
Amy Hobby (00:07:30): At the time I had a company called Tangerine Entertainment and our company only did films directed by women. So we were focused on female identifying content creators and we had a bit of a team there. I had a development person, my producing partner, Anne Hubbell, we had a production person and even an assistant. Those were the days. And we set up a meeting and you came into the office and the team was honestly really wowed by you personally in your pitch. Everyone thought you were so charismatic. You sang part of the theme song for us. Really it was a green light from us, not that we had money.
Avi Weider (00:08:19): Can we hear the song?
Natalie Weiss (00:08:22): Yes, you can. The beat is kind of what makes it I think a little anachronistic, but the melody is DJ Natalie's Neighborhood where beats are dope and life is good. DJ Natalie's Neighborhood come mix along with me.
Avi Weider (00:08:45): I love it.
Amy Hobby (00:08:46): I love it. It's so good.
Avi Weider (00:08:49): Did you have storylines already there? What was the strategy for developing it? Did you come in and be like, "I got this story and that story and this format?" Or just kind of walk us through how that happened.
Natalie Weiss (00:09:02): Yeah. It was basically like imagine you're at Pee-wee's Playhouse, but the whole setting is like a DJ trying to make it in New York instead of like ... But it's like the place is alive and the way everything is at Pee-wee's Playhouse. When I came up as a kid, I had like a teacher type figure that I watched. It was like Pee-wee's Playhouse or Mr. Rogers or even Lamb Chops. There was an adult who I was like, "Dang, let me learn from you."
Avi Weider (00:09:36): Did you grow up in New York?
Natalie Weiss (00:09:39): No, I grew up in Orlando, Florida.
Avi Weider (00:09:41): One of the things that occurred to me while I was going through the materials was this, you would've never seen it growing up in Orlando, but there was this local show, it actually was produced in Hartford because I looked it up, called Marlow and the Magic Movie Machine, which was this very strange local show about this guy who works in the basement of this big corporation and he has this machine that is like basically like some sort of AI computer. Of course, this is like 1979 and it plays film clips. He punches in buttons and it plays these film clips. And anyway, it reminded me of your show where they have a problem and then they go and visit someplace. There was something reminiscent about that and now you talking about these early shows as a kid watching it and how that influenced you, it just popped into my head.
Natalie Weiss (00:10:45): Yeah. I mean, I don't think I would've been able to ... There was just a cool thing happening in the 80s when I was watching TV. It was like a very psychedelic time.
Avi Weider (00:11:01): Is it Sid and Marty Krofft?
Natalie Weiss (00:11:01): Yeah, weird animation street and Ms. Piggy was this just drag goddess. You know what I mean? The puppets around were also very psychedelic and gender queer, like Gonzo. We don't even know what he is. Why does he like chickens? I don't know if you know Gonzo from the Muppets.
Amy Hobby (00:11:26): It was also around the time of Avenue Q, right? Around 2016, right?
Natalie Weiss (00:11:31): It was a little bit earlier, but it was still in that era. Rick Lyon made the puppets for Avenue Q and we were in conversation with him about music.
Amy Hobby (00:11:41): Yeah. I remember. Yeah.
Natalie Weiss (00:11:43): And he's so cool and practical and being a puppeteer in New York as your job is just like, wow. Even at the highest level, it's a real racket. So it was cool, very practical and exciting talking to him. I love puppets. I came to New York to do puppets. That's what I thought I was here to do. And then I realized at the absolute highest level puppeteers are still broke.
Avi Weider (00:12:14): There's very few venues for that. There's one in Park Slope called PuppetWorks that is a really ... You know the place?
Natalie Weiss (00:12:23): Yeah.
Avi Weider (00:12:24): And then there's Williamsburg—
Amy Hobby (00:12:33): Between Williamsburg and Greenpoint or something.
Natalie Weiss (00:12:28): There's Puppetsburg as well. There's a couple of places.
Avi Weider (00:12:33): There was also Story Pirates. They started a whole thing, which I thought was really funny. And they probably still do maybe have a podcast, which I thought was super fun. We used to take the kids and make the kids listen to it.
Natalie Weiss (00:12:53): Yeah. And my whole thing with the kids is I babysat for so many years. I had no skillsets besides writing musicals and the lights. And puppeteering.
Avi Weider (00:13:08): It's got a perfect CV for babysitting.
Natalie Weiss (00:13:12): Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And that's how the DJ classes started was just being kind of bored when I babysat and I had my DJ equipment with me to go to a gig afterwards. And then I was like, "Well, you guys should play with this." And then I realized how much they liked it and I was suffering through these mommy and me music classes that I would take this wonderful family I worked with.
Avi Weider (00:13:39): Oh, I know the pain.
Natalie Weiss (00:13:42): Oh, you know the pain. Okay.
Avi Weider (00:13:43): I have triplets, Natalie.
Amy Hobby (00:13:46): Two boys and a girl.
Avi Weider (00:13:46): And we did music together and Music for Aardvarks.
Natalie Weiss (00:13:57): Those two are icons. I don't know from a business standpoint, those are—
Avi Weider (00:14:02): Oh, I'm sure they rake it in.
Natalie Weiss (00:14:05): I mean, Music Together does, but Music for Aardvarks is a lot of inspiration there. Oh yeah. And then when I thought if I make this a show, we can make it like I'm pretending to lug my record player and 12 pairs of headphones from place to place instead of actually having to lug my stuff around. So that was the inspiration for the class and the class was the inspiration for the show and I could bring together things I liked, but I ended up learning, God, Amy just like ... I get stuff I can go on my gravestone because of Amy. I got to pitch to everybody and it wasn't picked up, but I can say on my grave, I've been at the Disney Junior office. You know what I mean?
Amy Hobby (00:15:01): Yeah. So let's back up a little bit. So Natalie came in for the meeting and the whole team loved the pitch so much. I do want to state that my company had no experience with children's television whatsoever. So a green light from us was sort of a dubious green light, but we had a lot of enthusiasm and we figured we could figure it out. We'll find a way. That's just how Anne Hubbell and I would roll. So our first idea was to attach a big name DJ as an executive producer and Natalie had a list of people that she knew or admired. We figured that could help get us in the door at some of the companies. Natalie, do you remember who some of those were?
Natalie Weiss (00:16:00): I think Diplo was pretty big at the time and Mark Ronson, I hadn't done anything with him yet, but he was like a DJ whose name people knew. And I felt like I knew somebody who was on his NTS. NTS is like a cool internet radio show. He was a guest on his NTS show. So maybe if he feels like it, he can do an intro. I threw parties for years. I have more connections in that world than I do in children's television, that's for sure.
Amy Hobby (00:16:34): Yeah. And Queen Latifah was on the list at the time because we wanted to be sort of more female creators. We went into a pretty quick development process at the time I had an amazing development person named Elizabeth Caden. She gave Natalie some notes and Natalie went away to a writer's retreat, I think, and then came back addressing all the notes super fast.
Natalie Weiss (00:17:01): Yeah. The cool thing, it was most people on the retreat were puppeteers. It was like an all purpose, like go to Missouri. I didn't know that. I didn't remember that.
Amy Hobby (00:17:11): I didn't know that either.
Natalie Weiss (00:17:11): So at the completion of it, I had puppeteers read it. So they got to do the accents they would do and they were like, "Oh, no question this is going to happen. Just please let me be on it." The just great support from people who are also making super fascinating, deep puppetry work. So that was the greatest place to develop it. It was just really fun having pretend people in my mind and having them do things together and sing and dance together. Yeah, it's like about as fun as it gets. It's that. So it was a blast.
Amy Hobby (00:17:55): Yeah. And there was an initial deck that you had sent, the very first early deck, which my team thought it should be more slick, I guess. But looking back, I kind of really liked that first deck.
Avi Weider (00:18:15): So there are characters here. We've got DJ Natalie and kids.
Amy Hobby (00:18:22): And some kids. Yeah.
Avi Weider (00:18:24): It says if Mr. Rogers or Barney was a late 20s hipster, that would be her, sole leaseholder of her magical four bedroom apartment. That is magical.
Amy Hobby (00:18:37): Yeah, that's unreal. In New York, probably anytime.
Natalie Weiss (00:18:42): The thing a lot of people, I mean people don't know who aren't in New York is being the leaseholder of an apartment is almost like being a landlord. It's like you can split it up and market it how you want to and decorate it how you want to and it can be its own business. And the place I was staying at the time had four bedrooms on each corner and I always had such characters in there and then we would all convene in this center space. It works.
Avi Weider (00:19:09): Oh, okay. Yeah. Did you have a horse staying with you like Ms. Hay Hay?
Natalie Weiss (00:19:15): Ms. Hay Hay? No, we didn't. I didn't have any drag artists that ever lived with me, but I certainly had some huge, huge personalities. And at the time I think RuPaul's Drag Race was just coming out and there was just camp lives. And I had just learned also about this whole — the next character I'm trying to ... Okay. Yes. Okay. Yeah. This idea of peace, love, unity, PLUR, it's peace, love, unity, and then an R word that's positive. And they all had this candy. They would give each other these bracelets and it was just a real childlike sense of love and acceptance and color at these raves, which was—
Avi Weider (00:20:09): And MDMA.
Natalie Weiss (00:20:11): Yeah, exactly. And I kind of came up more indie rock world where dudes with long hair were just like, "We're unhappy." So that whole culture was soon as I found out about that, I was like, "That's a cool kind of world." So it pulled from people I knew who were involved in these scenes.
Avi Weider (00:20:35): The deck goes on through a couple of other ... These are sort of prototypes for what then got developed. You have LD, the problem solver, tech savvy, a glow worm and up and coming lighting designer.
Natalie Weiss (00:20:55): Lights are so crucial for a party and a competent dyke is central to every endeavor. That's what you want.
Avi Weider (00:21:05): Interesting. It's funny. I didn't read LD as queer in what we'll see later on.
Natalie Weiss (00:21:12): Yeah, I'm not quite sure how it went, but originally just an awesome no nonsense tech lady from Buffalo who's just like, listen.
Avi Weider (00:21:24): From Buffalo. I love it. Then we have Daytime, the cheerful audiophile, a bluebird from East London. Oh, that's funny. Again, didn't catch the London thing. Looks like a blue Big Bird there.
Natalie Weiss (00:21:39): Yeah. At the time I had been like, "What kind of bird should it be?" And David Bowie had just passed, I believe. And his last record, he had all this imagery about a bluebird being this kind of symbol of the infinite. So I was like, "Let's just do a bluebird."
Avi Weider (00:21:59): So interesting. Shellina, the mermaid that gets picked up in Rockaway. Mr. Octopus, we didn't even get Mr. Octopus later on.
Natalie Weiss (00:22:16): Yeah, he was our bad guy. Octopus is great for puppetry because you can employ several people too for each arm.
Amy Hobby (00:22:27): High employment. Totally. More puppeteers work. Yeah.
Avi Weider (00:22:32): Landlord, greedy, merciless.
Amy Hobby (00:22:35): It's called Landlord.
Avi Weider (00:22:36): So it's Landlord. Kind of Landlord, for no confusion. No mystery there.
Natalie Weiss (00:22:41): And Super-Super was the conceit of one of my dads from Baby DJ School and really great actor, Michael Abbott. We just kind of got together and I was like, "If you had a kid's show, if you were on it, what would you want to be?" And the idea of the superhero superintendent is just great. A bumbling superhero is my favorite genre person. Super-Super.
Avi Weider (00:23:03): Super-Super.
Natalie Weiss (00:23:04): Super-Super.
Amy Hobby (00:23:05): It's such a New York character too. Your super.
Avi Weider (00:23:09): Oh my God. I lived in this rent stabilized apartment in Park Slope for a long time and the quote super was this monosyllabic Russian guy and we just called him central services because it was mediocre service every time. Anyway.
Natalie Weiss (00:23:32): The superhero had magic and I really kind of brought in the practicality of like, let's plug in the USB cord and it's a portal because that was what I grew up with was magic and learning. And it's not the educational modality du jour right now, which is really reality based. They would much rather ... I learned this as we went on. They want a woman in STEM being like, "We're going to travel through time through quantum mechanics." And they don't want any magic. They want it to be a lesson. So that's something that came up later.
Amy Hobby (00:24:08): So we saw this first deck or a deck like this and we loved it. We thought it should be glossier. I think from a development point of view, the goal was to get the materials to a certain place and then to get Natalie in the room because Natalie is charismatic and Natalie was a huge asset and the center of the show. So the idea was to get her in the room. I think that fall, the fall of 2016, we were trying to get the materials a little better. I think maybe Elizabeth had another round of small notes. We were doing a budget and breakdown, my team, my production person. We did an initial email to talk to someone I knew at HBO who I was close to, like easy, what I like to call a lob. It's a pitch that's someone, it's a lob. We didn't know the animation or kids shows at any of the places that we would normally pitch. So I went to someone like Maria Zuckerman who probably did scripted or whatever and then she would pass me over to the person in charge of children's shows and then that person would take six months to answer my five emails. So it was moving quite fast, I thought, from my perspective for projects in general. Natalie, you had sent an email to us saying, "Maybe we should bring on, and maybe we had suggested this, someone that's a television, actual television production company, or you had mentioned, and this is only interesting in retrospect, maybe you would otherwise just do crowdfunding and do it sort of DIY and film it in the spring." So we were doing this budget and breakdown and I think puppets, there was a little bit of ambition to it that would make that a little bit hard, but it was an interesting point of view. Was it moving fast for you at this point? Did you think it was like moving briskly or were you like, "Can we get this going already?"
Natalie Weiss (00:26:25): I was just happy when I got emails back. It definitely didn't feel like it was going slow, but I didn't feel overwhelmed like I did when Baby DJ School kicked off. And the New York part of it I thought should be a sell. There's so much Broad City, Sex and the City, a million things set in New York, not to mention the genesis of children's television, which was Sesame Street was all in New York. The original sets had trash on the ground, so it was more like New York and it got super sanitized and that was right when Sesame Street started being under the guidance of HBO, which my hope is that we would be there throughout.
Amy Hobby (00:27:07): I know. That's why we wanted to go to HBO. We're like, "Ah, slam dunk."
Avi Weider (00:27:12): Yeah. So I mean, you come out with all this new material with Amy and the group, but then from your perspective, was there something that just clued you into this isn't going to happen or did it just kind of die on the vine for you?
Natalie Weiss (00:27:34): Not even anything like that. They were like, "Now we have meetings with Cartoon Network, Disney Junior, Amazon Junior, Netflix." And I was like, "What?" And I got to go to LA and pick out my nail color, but it was such a mind fuck because you guys had been like, "We just get you in the room. You get this girl in the room." I'm like, "Okay, I hope so."
Amy Hobby (00:27:58): It's all on you.
Natalie Weiss (00:28:01): And then we would get there and I was like, nobody's going to see my personality or anything because it would be like — why? Because the person from Amazon Junior would be like, "Here's what we've done," and just talk about themselves for an hour.
Amy Hobby (00:28:17): Welcome to Hollywood.
Natalie Weiss (00:28:19): I was like, "This is so weird. I've been researching you. I know all of this stuff with me on it." And then the first sentiment I got was like, we want someone that the kid can identify with that's at the center of the show. So Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood is a kid. It's Daniel Tiger. It used to be Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood because we used to be like, "Here's an adult who's going to teach us." And now they're like, they want a kid that we can imagine ourselves as doing the learning instead of it coming down from someone on high, which is I'm sure empowering in lots of ways, but you don't get weird pervy experimental Pee-wee as a kid. It's all that stuff and the weirdness in the camp that gives life color that comes with not being a child anymore. When I heard that, I was like, "Ah." So I felt like I was living the life. I've got pictures of my Netflix pass.
Amy Hobby (00:29:28): And Anne went with you on that trip, right? You and Anne went and pitched at all those different places.
Natalie Weiss (00:29:31): The first place we scheduled right before Trump got elected and everybody was so depressed, everything just got canceled. And I was in LA. I was like, "I guess I'll get another massage." It was like nobody wanted meetings.
Amy Hobby (00:29:47): They were like, "We're not meeting. The world is ending."
Natalie Weiss (00:29:49): Yeah. So then a little bit later we went and did it and I had never worked on anything as much as I worked on this thing. We showed up, it was the color print. And then I remember getting to Netflix and they're like, "Do you need an HDMI cable?" And I was like, "A what?" I didn't know about pitching a deck with a clicker. I hadn't done anything like that. So the woman was super awesome and positive and giving me the vibes I'd been hoping. I was like, "Yes, this woman seems like she could get it." Her kid went to a Baby DJ School class in LA.
Avi Weider (00:30:29): What luck?
Natalie Weiss (00:30:30): Then she kind of looked at it and she's like, "I hate to say this seems underbaked." And I was like, "I've never baked something. This is the only thing I've baked."
Avi Weider (00:30:40): It's overbaked.
Amy Hobby (00:30:40): That makes me feel like, "Oh, we guided you wrong." As a production company, we should have helped bake it better.
Avi Weider (00:30:52): Well, you did. The second deck you guys made is definitely more polished up.
Natalie Weiss (00:31:04): Yes. They brought in somebody else who had Japanese money behind it and they paid someone to make this deck, to make the logo and to make this whole thing look very jazzy. I practiced it and they took people in. Oh, it was so cool. I would practice the pitch and they'd ignore me, talk to each other.
Amy Hobby (00:31:26): Yeah, like a mock meeting. We'd act like asshole executives.
Natalie Weiss (00:31:32): I felt like y'all's tack with me was like, "This thing is raging. It's like she's in the Wall Street Journal. She's on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. We have all this momentum. We're not going to wait to spend three years developing a thing. It's like you can see this thing is on fire. And if you want to get on the train, good luck."
Amy Hobby (00:31:50): Yeah. Coming back to the point we didn't have a lot of experience ourselves with children's television and we didn't know those executives. I always looked to myself like what could we have done better? We probably could have gone to a production company that had a track record producing these, but look, we just were like, this is so obviously unbelievably rad. And of course someone is going to greenlight it.
Natalie Weiss (00:32:22): Well, you did do that. And that's what I took into Sesame Street. And that was also like dear diary. And so I was talking to them about the characters and when they were asking me questions afterwards, they were like, so the Muppets, they would be on set with you. And I was like, did you say Muppet? Did you use the word of my life? So that went great. They clapped for me when I was done. I was like, all right, well this is good.
Amy Hobby (00:32:58): I have a big gap in my emails at that point. Let's talk about what happened at the end. When was the big realization for you anyway that this was not moving forward?
Natalie Weiss (00:33:13): Well, I would email you or Anne and be like, "Here's this kind of micro move that we talked about could be a step. Where are we with that?" And then it started to be clear that—
Amy Hobby (00:33:32): We were out of ideas.
Natalie Weiss (00:33:34): You guys threw everything you had at it and we got it in front of every important kids thing that I knew about. And it was like, they were ready for our shit. They wanted sanitized boring ass Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. There was an old man with a sweater change and a live jazz pianist and that's what Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood was. And then they're like, "Let's redo it, make it CGI around a boring child tiger." And that's what was happening. So if the momentum had stayed on that project, it would've been doing it like an off-Broadway show that's a little, that's how Pee-wee's Playhouse started. They did just a live show and then people came and they ended up getting more connects. But there was never like a death knell. It was just like, I think I've reached the point where my emails are bothering people and—
Amy Hobby (00:34:29): I think at one point you emailed us and there was an email like, "Are we doing this finally? Or are we going to do a contract?" And then I found that our email response was like, "You're probably better off not working with us. We feel like we're dead weight." We're like, "We love you. We love this project, but we're not helping at this point."
Natalie Weiss (00:34:51): Having you that I trusted was just cuckoo because I had people flying me to Korea and Taiwan and I was like, "Are they going to tie me up?" I didn't know anything about what was going on and I really trusted you. I was like, "She went to Winter Park High School. How bad could it be?"
Amy Hobby (00:35:09): I think there was a little bit of a whimper at the end. I did find an email where you said, "I met these people who can do podcasts." This is before podcasts were video. They're creating audio content for kids, maybe it could be a podcast. And I think we were just like, "Yeah, I think there's just always a point where you're like, we can only go down so far."
Avi Weider (00:35:34): It turns out there is room at the bottom and here you are.
Natalie Weiss (00:35:37): Right, right, right, right.
Avi Weider (00:35:38): Which brings us to the next part. We took all the stuff, all your materials that you started with that you developed with Tangerine with Amy and Anne and the pitch deck, the scripts. We asked AI to help us create a new deck and a trailer that we're going to share with you now. And maybe this is inspiration, maybe it's closure, but let's walk through it and see what you think because it's remarkably different from the first one.
Amy Hobby (00:36:20): Now we have some disclosures. Films Not Made uses AI to reimagine movies that were never produced. All development materials, pitch decks, trailers, and posters are AI generated. Any likeness of real people are speculative and synthetic. No real actors participated in their creation. This is cultural commentary not endorsed by any individual or studio referenced. For people who are listening as a podcast on audio, we have to describe it a little bit. There's a Brooklyn apartment, I guess, and it says DJ Natalie's Neighborhood in sort of the rainbow colors.
Natalie Weiss (00:37:01): What I think is very saleable about this right now is it looks like it could be a YouTube show. It looks like it could be like we have this shot, this is the world, this is something I could do and essentially produce on my own and pay for myself. And then if it goes viral, then somebody else can put some money in it.
Amy Hobby (00:37:21): Right.
Avi Weider (00:37:22): Yeah. We've got all the characters there.
Natalie Weiss (00:37:24): You got all the characters. I mean, this looks cute. It's actually more like my apartment than the second gen deck, which looked kind of like a lobby at a Disney hotel.
Avi Weider (00:37:42): Here's the logline that AI wrote for us. When DJ Natalie teaches the Word of the Day — play — in her magical Brooklyn apartment, the landlord crashes in with an $800 rent hike starting tomorrow, forcing Natalie and her puppet roommates to hatch an absurd plan, sublet their leaky bathtub, open a magic portal to Rockaway Beach and find a water-loving new roommate who turns out to be Shellina the Mermaid.
Amy Hobby (00:38:21): Well, you know what? This is before Mamdani, because now you wouldn't have that rent hike.
Avi Weider (00:38:25): No, no, there's no more rent hikes. So yeah, your landlord would probably be going to jail.
Amy Hobby (00:38:34): Also, there's pink smoke coming from two directions. I don't know what's happening there.
Avi Weider (00:38:43): Well, it's magic. That's the magic, Amy.
Amy Hobby (00:38:45): Oh, right. Okay.
Avi Weider (00:38:46): The kind of elevator pitch is that DJ Natalie's Neighborhood is a live action kids series set in a magical Brooklyn apartment where DJ Natalie runs Kids DJ School with her puppet roommates. And each episode takes one simple idea like play and turns it into music, movement, ASL and a joyful field trip showing kids that creativity and collaboration aren't just fun. They're how you solve real world problems together.
Amy Hobby (00:39:16): Yeah.
Avi Weider (00:39:17): All right. The style —
Amy Hobby (00:39:20): Are those African masks on the wall?
Natalie Weiss (00:39:22): Yes. I've got culture in my back pocket. That's right.
Avi Weider (00:39:25): The style page shows basically a brown stoop.
Amy Hobby (00:39:33): Yeah, you got some records. You got a milk crate of records.
Avi Weider (00:39:36): I think you're next to a record store too, it looks like.
Amy Hobby (00:39:39): Oh yeah.
Avi Weider (00:39:41): And it says the style is Neon Storybook Brooklyn, which is a bright live action kids TV look that places magical moments inside a real cozy Brooklyn apartment. Combines warm natural daylight with candy colored accents and soft neon, celebrates tactile puppets with visible seams and textures and uses gentle diffusion and subtle grain for a storybook feel without losing clarity. There's a lot of words for what you're trying to pitch as a style, but—
Amy Hobby (00:40:14): Too many style words there.
Avi Weider (00:40:16): Looks like Brooklyn.
Natalie Weiss (00:40:17): Yeah. I mean, this is already just what we have with AI now. It looks just more like it. We could only work with stock images and photos we took. We couldn't generate images like this at the time. But the other problem is that it's like no DJ would ever live in this brownstone, like no broke DJ with a roommate who's also a glow worm. We couldn't afford it. Couldn't afford it. That's part of the—
Avi Weider (00:40:44): Well, but it's the magical part that—
Natalie Weiss (00:40:47): It is.
Amy Hobby (00:40:48): I know. It's a brownstone with plants and look, there's chalk. Look at the chalk notes.
Avi Weider (00:40:53): Everyone's chalking.
Natalie Weiss (00:40:54): Oh, that is so cute.
Avi Weider (00:40:55): So now we have some casting we're going to breeze through. The first is Okashi, the rainbow furry chaos sprite who communicates in beeps, squeaks and pure enthusiasm. And there's pictured here. He's basically like a rainbow pompom with Hello Kitty bracelets in front of a sequencer and—
Natalie Weiss (00:41:23): MIDI controller.
Avi Weider (00:41:24): A MIDI controller, sure. A touch pad.
Amy Hobby (00:41:27): With a very tiny crate and some tiny records.
Avi Weider (00:41:30): Yeah, yeah. Well, it's his size. He looks adorable actually. We've got Daytime. Now this is interesting because your Daytime originally was like a British guy, a cool bluebird crate digger with party promoter confidence and impeccable taste. He lives to hype the room, but underneath the swagger, he genuinely wants everyone to feel included. You're waving your hands like you don't like this guy at all.
Natalie Weiss (00:41:59): I'm waving my hands like they did it. They nailed this.
Avi Weider (00:42:01): Oh, they did it. Oh, I thought you were rejecting it.
Natalie Weiss (00:42:04): Dudes in East London in the '80s who were starting this scene and they were just wearing cool caps like this. You have to hear the accent with it. A lot of people associate British with posh whatever, but there's a whole really deep scene of British. And part of it is the stereotype of the person who thinks they know everything about music is very associated with DJing. So he's the know-it-all, but he's ...
Amy Hobby (00:42:39): He's sitting on a crate of rare grooves and he's got some chains around his neck and a leather cap.
Avi Weider (00:42:45): Leather cap.
Amy Hobby (00:42:46): There's some casting. Donald Glover is a good idea. Smooth, playful. That'd be fun. Daveed Diggs.
Avi Weider (00:42:55): Jordan Fisher.
Amy Hobby (00:42:56): Yeah.
Avi Weider (00:42:57): Your next roommate is Ms. Hay Hay. A glamorous horse diva, who treats her hair like a full-time art practice. Big, dramatic, and fabulous until you realize how tender and loyal she is. And what I love about this shot is the word vogue being held up as the word of the day in front of her.
Amy Hobby (00:43:17): I like her yarn hair.
Avi Weider (00:43:19): The yarn hair is—
Natalie Weiss (00:43:20): I love her. Sparkly crop top vest is very like — do you guys remember that show Zoobilee Zoo?
Avi Weider (00:43:29): No.
Natalie Weiss (00:43:30): It's psychotic. It's like these animal hybrid people who are like ... It's an artist panda, so it also has a beret. And it's around the time of Cats, that musical where it's like — oh yeah, known forever. And I imagine it having almost like a Barbie type horse, it's really fun and doable and you could just make up one horse and just kind of have it be.
Avi Weider (00:43:55): Yeah. I like the casting on this too.
Amy Hobby (00:43:58): Billy Porter. Billy Porter casting idea.
Avi Weider (00:44:01): Would be great. Nicole Byer, hilarious. Tituss Burgess.
Amy Hobby (00:44:11): Then we have LD. So the glow worm lighting designer—
Amy Hobby (00:44:15): I'm feeling copyright infringement.
Avi Weider (00:44:18): Who turns feelings into color. Char, brilliant. No, no. It just looks nothing like Kermit. It seems a worm. She's dry, brilliant, and quietly in control. If it lights up, she meant it to. So it does use a pronoun there. Okay.
Natalie Weiss (00:44:34): I mean, I think the cool thing about this would be embedding in it oodles of queerness and just like no question, this is like a butch woman who's a little heavier set. I just think kids will receive it with the same amount of joy, but it's just more like a nod to the actual culture, even though there's lighting designers of all kinds.
Avi Weider (00:44:57): I would redesign this then with that in mind. Here's Super-Super. The building superintendent reimagined as full tilt superhero, loud, earnest, and wildly confident. If something's broken, he will fix it heroically. And it went for a kid—
Amy Hobby (00:45:15): Keegan-Michael Key. It's actually Keegan-Michael Key in a Super-Super costume.
Avi Weider (00:45:21): Yeah.
Amy Hobby (00:45:22): I feel that's realistic. I think you could get him. He's such a nice guy.
Avi Weider (00:45:26): He'd be great. Landlord, a polite, smiling menace who treats rent like a jump scare. Never yells, never rushes, always calmly ruining the vibe. And one of our casting ideas is one of our AI's favorites, which is Stephen Root.
Amy Hobby (00:45:46): Yeah. In any of our other shows AI likes to cast Stephen Root for some reason. He's holding a pig.
Natalie Weiss (00:45:55): Yeah. The pig is like his hairless cat in Ace Ventura.
Avi Weider (00:46:01): Piggy Wiggy. The landlord's smug little sidekick who knows exactly what's going on. Cute, sentimental, and silently complicit. Every snort lands like a punchline. All right.
Amy Hobby (00:46:15): I like that actually.
Avi Weider (00:46:16): Yeah. Piggy Wiggy is cute. Then we have Shellina, the gentle mermaid musician whose songs turn feelings into music, quiet, emotional and brave. She brings calm, beauty and a new definition of home. Does that look like Shellina to you?
Natalie Weiss (00:46:39): I love Shellina like that. I think it's very close. I would die to have it be this. If I was in charge of every aspect of it, it would be a bit more like, well, there's a detail that when she cries, it's pearls that come out and that's how she ends up being able to pay her rent because she's kind of depressed.
Avi Weider (00:47:00): Wait a minute. They use her to pay their rent with her pearl tears. Do they just keep her depressed the whole time to keep—
Natalie Weiss (00:47:13): No, no. I think that's the problem. That would be terrible. That's a problem that arises. As she becomes more happy and integrated in the home and having a real family who is not her scary dad, her source of income dries up.
Avi Weider (00:47:27): Oh, okay. I dig it. Yeah. And then something we didn't talk about was Purple Hands. Sparkly hand puppets who pop out to teach the word of the day in ASL, encouraging, playful, and never patronizing. They make learning feel like magic. Do you know ASL? Is this part of your, I don't know, who you are? Are you an interpreter? How did this come up?
Natalie Weiss (00:47:55): Well, it's a huge part of early language development for kids. You'll be hard pressed to find ... Well, I mean, you tell me, you're like a Brooklyn dad. But when I was coming up as a babysitter, I was hard pressed to not find a kid who couldn't go like this for milk or more. And it's like before kids are verbal, you teach them ways to use their hands so they can communicate and then they don't have to just cry. They can tell you what they want. And so I use—
Avi Weider (00:48:24): We had triplets so they probably had to cry to get our attention. One more thing to learn was too many for us probably.
Natalie Weiss (00:48:35): Again, so much of the stuff came from this child I babysat, right? His parents were just really great thinkers, great parents. He had great communication and it was because they were really, they went for it. At the time they only had one kid and a lot of the stuff I saw them doing and being good parents I wanted to put into ... And I read so many books on parenting because they don't have books for child free by choice DJs who want to be good for kids with kids for some reason.
Avi Weider (00:49:13): No manual for that. Yeah.
Natalie Weiss (00:49:15): Yeah.
Amy Hobby (00:49:16): Go figure.
Natalie Weiss (00:49:18): And it was saying that the number one thing that determines their relationship with you, I read this somewhere, is your concept of your relationship with your parents. It colors everything. So I tried to be really specific about my concept of how I became a DJ. And sometimes it was like, yeah, a guy had to teach me and no guys are going to have to teach a woman again. They're going to learn from a girl and then a girl's going to learn from a girl. And that's like a lot of anger. So I was purposeful about my narrative. It's like two of my best friends in the world taught me how to do this for free with love and now I get to pass on that positive energy to the kids. So it's like that person first kind of thing I tried to use in there with the kids.
Avi Weider (00:50:21): Here's some storyboards from it. Some look more like you than others I would say, but again, we treat this as like a first draft kind of maybe like a sketch that you can expand upon. What we're looking at is a page divided into four. The upper left, we see DJ Natalie on her block just being like, "Hey, come on and join me in my—" Come to Wealthy Brooklyn. Apartment. Yes, you're wearing a denim jacket just like you're wearing right now. Inside the apartment, the landlord is sort of busting in and all the puppets are sort of hiding a little bit like what's going on. On the bottom we see two stacks of you and the puppets peering around the corner from the bathroom where the shower is going. And then to round it out, we've got this portal shot of Super-Super sort of behind and you and the puppets are out at the beach on the other side of this portal. He has sent you through the portal to Rockaway Beach.
Natalie Weiss (00:51:36): That portal one looks so good. The portal does look good. Though they randomly doubled all the characters in the bathroom one. I just love heads popping out one at a time. They used to do that in the Muppets. Just seeing that. This is sparking a lot of joy.
Avi Weider (00:51:54): Okay. All right. Moving on. We've got a couple poster concepts here, three of them. The left one is On The Stoop with Ms. Hay Hay at the top like arm raised and the other characters are kind of hanging out on the stoop. The middle one we've got you're in the apartment and it's kind of a—
Amy Hobby (00:52:17): With the characters.
Avi Weider (00:52:19): It also quotes, "Where beats are dope and life is good." I mean, that's kind of your tagline here. The first one, the pull quote is, "A kid's show that actually respects kids." And the last one doesn't look like you at all, I have to say, but it's an interesting concept. It's kind of a split screen where the right side we have the landlord coming in with what looks like the rent hike notice and the left side are the puppets and all the magic happening, though it threw in a couple extra puppets that don't belong that look like just generic Sesame Street characters for whatever reason.
Natalie Weiss (00:53:05): This one on the right is I'm dying for it.
Avi Weider (00:53:09): It looks totally fine. The pull quote is, "When grownup problems show up, kids make the beat." I don't know. Could use work there.
Amy Hobby (00:53:18): That's kind of lame.
Natalie Weiss (00:53:20): But the implicit conflict of this magical world and then this greedy landlord with Piggy Wiggy.
Avi Weider (00:53:25): I did like the concept.
Amy Hobby (00:53:27): Good underlying idea there.
Avi Weider (00:53:28): Oh, here's a little bio of you written by AI. DJ Natalie, picture of you in your Brooklyn apartment at the decks with the crates of records. DJ Natalie is a real life DJ educator—
Amy Hobby (00:53:42): A real life DJ. Real.
Avi Weider (00:53:44): Not a puppet.
Amy Hobby (00:53:45): Not a puppet.
Avi Weider (00:53:45): Community builder who uses music as a tool for creativity, connection and problem solving. With a warm, playful authority and deep respect for kids' intelligence, she translates DJ culture — listening, timing, collaboration, and self-expression — into experiences children can feel and participate in. In DJ Natalie's Neighborhood, she guides kids and her puppet roommates through big ideas and real world challenges by mixing empathy, curiosity and joy, showing that music isn't just something you hear. It's something you use to build community and find your place in the world.
Amy Hobby (00:54:24): Nice. Good use of mixing.
Avi Weider (00:54:25): There's no credits though. I mean, if you're looking for that sort of thing.
Amy Hobby (00:54:30): True.
Avi Weider (00:54:25): And that is the end of this deck.
Natalie Weiss (00:54:34): Wow. No closure. Total fire under my ass. Just want to work on this again.
Avi Weider (00:54:41): Boom.
Amy Hobby (00:54:41): Uh-oh. Wait.
Avi Weider (00:54:43): Wait till you see this. We made a trailer for you. Now you get to ask for the HDMI cable next time you show up at Netflix.
Amy Hobby (00:54:53): You pack that HDMI cable.
Avi Weider (00:54:55): All you do is snap your fingers. Give me that cable. We're going to drop this now.
Amy Hobby (00:54:59): I'm never letting you leave home without one, Natalie.
Avi Weider (00:55:02): Here we go.

[Theme Song / Show Audio] (00:55:05): DJ Natalie's Neighborhood where beats are dope and life is good. DJ Natalie's Neighborhood come mix along with me. DJ Natalie's Neighborhood where the beats are dope and life is good. Neighborhood come back along with me. Neighborhood come mix along with me.

Amy Hobby (00:55:58): Lots of great stuff there.
Avi Weider (00:56:00): There you go.
Natalie Weiss (00:56:01): I cannot exist anymore. Wow.
Amy Hobby (00:56:07): I'm so baffled. I don't understand why the record player is going so slow and is so dusty and the toxic smoke is coming.
Avi Weider (00:56:15): That's the magic. The smoke is the magic.
Natalie Weiss (00:56:19): Smoke equals magic. I just thought that the joke was going to be that the AI was so shitty and it's so good.
Amy Hobby (00:56:29): I was surprised because we've had other trailers that get really flattened. Everything gets flattened and boring. I thought whatever Ms. Hay Hay was doing was kind of awesome. And marching on the boardwalk at Coney Island with the puppets, that was rad too.
Avi Weider (00:56:46): But having your music really made a big difference because we didn't have to try to make our own with another—
Amy Hobby (00:56:54): Or a voiceover or a generative AI.
Natalie Weiss (00:56:57): Yeah. And that's the thing why I'm not scared about AI at all because I just feel like it's always about the concept and the strength of the concept. I use ChatGPT for a fair amount for things as needed. I'm like, okay, this is what I want her to say, but we want to say it like an 1800s Irish peasant.
Amy Hobby (00:57:22): Yeah, for example.
Natalie Weiss (00:57:23): Let's just say. Yeah, this is just so great. All I'm thinking about is the practical stuff. It's so producible in a single kind of shot thing like that poster.
Amy Hobby (00:57:40): Yeah. I mean, the thing that I love about this, Natalie, is it hearkens back to that email that you sent. We could crowdsource and do this DIY. And we got roped into this idea we're going to set it up in kids TV and we're going to do all this stuff. But shows like, I don't know if you ever saw Wonder Showzen. It's not quite a kid's show, but it was a band and comedians and they just had a super eight concept and they slung it around and made some stuff and had fun. And I think there's some merit to that. I mean, certainly in this environment, new environment where corporations have sort of taken over a lot of the means of production and distribution. I think making it a little bit its very own thing and unhinged and taking the core spirit of it, no matter how you can produce it, no matter what the budget is, exciting, right?
Natalie Weiss (00:58:45): Yeah. One of the biggest problems with doing stuff with kids is that you've got kids and their momagers and like all of like ... But when you have babies and you're like, "It's a free music class." People are like, "Sure, parents don't have a lot of money." You're saying they can be on TV and they can do a music class. The kid part is pretty, it was pretty easy when I was doing the Baby DJ School classes a lot. I had an infinite source of fun parents and their kids, but now it's all been — the business model is a little different. Other hard thing is that all my friends who were fun making videos with me when I was younger, now they're all pros and you pay them. So I'm a little bit psyched to be in San Diego. I met people who just love puppetry and they're like, "I'm interested in TV vaguely." I'm like, "Exactly. Where have you been? Come back to New York."
Avi Weider (00:59:42): Well, we have one more thing since you're so amped up to work on it again. We have a film development executive that we like to talk to at the end of these shows once you've seen some new stuff generated with AI. We're going to try and get him online. He's always really busy. His line is always really — there's always kind of a delay, but we're going to try to hook up. His name's Finn.
Amy Hobby (01:00:14): Yeah, it takes a little while for him to respond sometimes.
Avi Weider (01:00:16): Yeah. But he gives us about 10 minutes. I'm going to try to—
Amy Hobby (01:00:22): Yeah, go see if we can bring him on. Trying to get with him now.
Natalie Weiss (01:00:24): Yeah. Hopefully we can grab him.

Finn (01:00:28): Hey, Amy. Hey, Avi. Hi, Natalie. Give me one second. I'm pulling up the pages and the deck. All right. I've got the materials in front of me. So focusing on DJ Natalie's Neighborhood. The pilot, "Play," is locked around Natalie and her puppet roommates scrambling to solve the $800 rent hike by subletting their leaky bathtub, opening a magic portal to Rockaway Beach and finding Shellina the Mermaid. The repeatable engine is word of the day, ASL, song, story problem, field trip, wrap up. Next. What part do you want to hit first? The story structure, a character, or the episode's engine?
Natalie Weiss (01:01:06): For me, I'm just interested in how much money you're willing to put down upfront.
Finn (01:01:12): Yeah. Fair question, Natalie. On the DJ Natalie's Neighborhood pilot, the thing is your cost hinges on a few drivers — puppet design and build, live action and animation mix, music rights and originals, and location work. That portal to Rockaway bit isn't cheap. If you had to start with just the pilot, what's your minimum version? Is it puppet heavy or mostly live action with puppets as a garnish? That'll swing us from bare bones kids special to something closer to a proper cable pilot. Where do you see it landing?
Natalie Weiss (01:01:43): I don't think we need that much money, like maybe half a million just as an advance for me. I would say that's the minimum.
Finn (01:01:52): Okay. So that's your floor. Half a million as an advance, not including production. That puts this in the premium creator driven territory, not bargain basement kids TV. Just so we're aligned, is that advance for your role as creator and showrunner or does it also cover starring, music and maybe writing?
Natalie Weiss (01:02:11): It's to compensate me.
Finn (01:02:13): Got it.
Natalie Weiss (01:02:15): There was a lot of hangovers and just slowly sipping Gatorade that I had to go through well before I made this pilot to be the culturally informed person you're seeing today. And I just feel like I never got paid for those hours I put in. So that's really what it's for. It's back pay for all the hangovers.
Finn (01:02:40): That's pretty great, Natalie. I appreciate the honesty and the math. So the half million is retroactive hazard pay for becoming — not just for show running or puppet wrangling. I buy that, but here's my practical. If we break it down for a buyer, do you want that built into the creator fee line or called out as cultural R&D? How do you want that positioned in the package?
Natalie Weiss (01:03:02): I think it's the latter, the R&D.
Amy Hobby (01:03:08): Finn, this is Amy, the producer. Are you guys even doing deals like this right now? Because I feel like we may be wasting our time with you here and we really appreciate you hopping on this call, but do you guys have output deals? What are your connections? Where do you see this project going and do you have the connections to make this happen?
Finn (01:03:30): Amy, fair ask. Let me be straight. I'm not a studio check writer, but I've got relationships at streamers and a handful of kids and family divisions who'd at least hear a pitch. Especially with DJ Natalie's angle and the show's bilingual and ASL hook. What I can't promise is a blind output deal or a guaranteed half million advance upfront. That's not really the climate unless we're walking in with a streamer attachment or a pre-sell. But I can get it in front of the right buyers and help frame the R&D ask so it's not just talent fee, but part of the creative value prop. Is your goal to get this straight to buyers or are you hoping for a development partner first?
Natalie Weiss (01:04:08): Avi, that's a question for you.
Avi Weider (01:04:10): I mean, I think we're open to anything. I mean, we just want to get this made. It's kind of evergreen. They worked on it for so long. We've got some new materials we created as kind of proof of concept with some AI. It doesn't have to be super expensive except for the fee, of course.
Natalie Weiss (01:04:31): Yeah. Yeah, except for the fee. And you know what? After hearing your framing, I just feel like I can waive that fee.
Finn (01:04:40): That's generous, Natalie. Waiving the fee to get it made, at least at this stage, is a real signal you want this out in the world. That makes the deck stronger for buyers. We've got the creator, proof of concept, and we're flexible on terms to get to green light. So next step. Do you want to focus on tightening the proof of concept materials for buyers or do you want to talk about which buyers and strategize the pitch approach?
Natalie Weiss (01:05:07): Amy, I'll just lob that to you.
Amy Hobby (01:05:10): Yeah. Finn, I want to know what buyers ... I have a lot of connections at Netflix, Amazon, Hulu. So I want to know what you bring to the table. What are the top three buyers that you would pitch it to?
Finn (01:05:25): Okay. Here's my shortlist. If it's a kids show with music, bilingual and ASL elements, and a quirky creator-driven vibe like DJ Natalie's Neighborhood, I'd prioritize. First, Apple TV Plus. They're investing in premium kids and family originals. They like inclusivity and they're open to creator voices. Second, PBS Kids, especially if you can keep costs down and really lean into the educational and ASL pieces. They're slower, but they care. Third, if the slate is lighter, so they're looking for distinctive pitches and musical hooks. Those three would be my first calls for a show like this. Want me to zero in on pitch strategy for one or go broader?
Amy Hobby (01:06:05): Yeah. I mean, Finn, I think I don't know if PBS is going to exist next month. So I'd love to hear your strategy for pitching at Apple TV Plus. That sounds like a great place for us. I know the head of documentary there, but I don't have any connections whatsoever in the television division.

[Finn's Assistant] (01:06:28): He asked me to pass along his thanks to DJ Natalie and we'll follow up with anything he referenced or promised to send. If you have questions or next steps, you can route them through me. Thanks again for your time today. Did we push too hard?

Avi Weider (01:06:43): I think.
Amy Hobby (01:06:44): Yeah, maybe we did. I think we should just make it in my apartment. We could build a set in my garage in South Jersey.
Amy Hobby (01:06:56): Yeah.
Amy Hobby (01:06:56): We have a boardwalk right here that can double for Rockaway.
Avi Weider (01:07:00): Could you see doing it like DIYing it on YouTube?
Natalie Weiss (01:07:04): I mean, 100 million percent you guys have sold it to me. I forgot about the Purple Hands. I'm just remembering how much I love the idea and yeah, I mean, this is like the opposite of closure. And that's kind of what closure calls are about. If you're like, "I just need to talk to my ex for some closure." And we're like, right. Never really about closure.
Amy Hobby (01:07:30): I'm glad this could be a positive experience. And it also reminded me, I thought sometimes I feel like I didn't do a good job or I didn't try hard enough, but I was reminded we did go all out. We came out of the gate fast, we developed it and we got out there and pitched it. It's just we hit a wall and maybe a little pivot and persistence to a more independent approach would have been a thing.
Natalie Weiss (01:08:03): Yeah. Cool. So I just need to do these rewrites on Camp Onitachi screenplay in January and February.
Amy Hobby (01:08:11): I'm going to hit the ground running. Okay, great.
Avi Weider (01:08:12): Okay. Fantastic. Dang. Well, keep us posted. This has been a great show, Natalie.
Amy Hobby (01:08:15): This was super fun.
Avi Weider (01:08:18): Thank you for coming on. We'll spend time with you. You've been listening to Films Not Made, but if you want an even better experience, check us out on YouTube where you can see all the new materials, including the pitch deck and trailer.
Amy Hobby (01:08:31): And subscribe to our Substack for show notes, more about our guests and industry insights.
Avi Weider (01:08:36): And please follow us on Instagram and TikTok as Films Not Made.
Amy Hobby (01:08:41): And of course we have merch. Check that out and all things Films Not Made at filmsnotmade.com.
Avi Weider (01:08:46): Thanks again for listening and watching. We'll see you next time.