00:00Well, Mike, I want to know about the list.
00:03The movie is going to be on theaters very soon.
00:08And I want to know what are your expectations about the audience here in Paraguay on this movie?
00:17Well, I have extremely high expectations for the list.
00:25The list is a really great movie.
00:30And I'm sure every possible filmmaker has always said their movie is great.
00:35Every person.
00:37But I really believe it.
00:39And I think it's a great movie for Paraguay.
00:45We made it in Paraguay.
00:46Made by everyone in the film is a longtime resident or native of Paraguay.
00:55Everybody.
00:57Except me.
00:58And I made it when I lived there.
01:00And just all talent, Paraguayan talent.
01:05But my expectation is that many thousands of Paraguayans would go see the movie and enjoy it.
01:11It's one of the rare movies where people say words like vos, sos, in the whole world.
01:19So, you know, speak with the Paraguayan accent because it's Paraguayan.
01:25And so I think it's going to be great.
01:28Yeah.
01:28I want to know what inspires you to write the script of the list?
01:34My experience and my background, I was in the U.S. military.
01:39I worked at the U.S. embassies.
01:40And I had a chance to live in Iraq.
01:48Well, not really live.
01:50It was actually war.
01:51You know, a little different after Saddam Hussein and the dictatorship there.
01:57And just being there after the dictatorship of Iraq and the feelings of freedom, new democracy.
02:06And also, I was in the embassy system in Yugoslavia, in Kosovo.
02:14The day when the Kosovo people became free from the dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic, I was there.
02:23And again, the sense of freedom.
02:26And in Kosovo, it was different because they took justice into their own hands.
02:32They said, we're not going to wait for justice or court cases or lawyers.
02:38We're going to do it ourselves.
02:40And so I kept that with me in my heart forever.
02:44And when I moved to Asuncion in 2015, I just fell in love with the city.
02:51And just I felt like I was in Spain or as a kid.
02:56I lived in Germany and I had a chance to.
02:59So I lived in Europe for several years and I felt moving to Paraguay, I felt like I was in Europe in many ways.
03:07And so all of this was moving around in my little head.
03:12And then I just fell in love with the city.
03:15I started meeting people who were filmmakers like myself.
03:18And the story just came together.
03:21My experience in Kosovo, my experience in Iraq, my experience in Europe, and then being in this beautiful city, Asuncion, and with the great talent of Paraguay.
03:32And having been in a dictatorship in Paraguay itself, kind of all of that came together into Lista.
03:39And how was the process of recruiting the crew and the cast for the Lista?
03:49Well, I will tell you, I had, I was afraid.
03:55I was a little bit afraid.
03:58Because in my mind, I knew I would find great talent for actors in Spanish, speaking Espanol.
04:07I was a little afraid finding actors speaking English, speaking American style, close to American style English.
04:18And, but I did.
04:21I fantastically did.
04:23The crew, early on, I did a, I brought a guy named Dove Simmons to Paraguay from Hollywood.
04:32He's a teacher of independent film.
04:35And in teaching a seminar for how to make low-budget movies, I met a lot of Paraguayan filmmakers.
04:44I met a lot of people from Hay Films and other film companies.
04:48And I realized there was so much talent here, in front of the camera and behind the camera.
