When I went back and edited this episode with my guest, filmmaker Tom Koch, I realized: he's doing a color series of films! To put that much thought into his work as well as have the creative control to name his films is the perfect way to describe Tom: extraordinarily thoughtful, humble, and a guy capable of doing anything in his films: acting, writing, directing, accents, ballet even!
His latest film, OLIVE (2025) is an absolute treat -- the logline "while caring for grandma, Sam, the character played by Tom -- begins to question the nature of their relationship" -- and it shows his mastery of the craft. He even knows war films, which is my unique quality. If he ever gets into indie film podcasting, I can't say I wasn't warned about how great he'd be.
In this episode, Tom and I talk about:
Tom's Indie Film Highlight: AMOUR (2012) dir. by Michael Haneke; THE PIANO TEACHER (2001) dir. by Michael Haneke; THE WHITE RIBBON (2009) dir. by Michael Haneke; WARFARE (2025) dir. by Ray Mendoza; Alex Garland
Memorable Quotes:
"Nobody saw a stage play or school play of mine...when I was seven and said, oh, that kid."
"The big thing that I changed for OLIVE was that ORANGE was really a proof of concept."
About acting in OLIVE: "And there was a part of me that thought it would make things easier because I didn't have to find an actor and I didn't have to tell them what Sam was, in a way."
"Sadly we're in a world now where we're competing with so many different productions and so many different artists, and funding for film is getting a bit harder because I don't know if people trust the medium as much as before."
More about acting: "It's one of the only jobs where people get placed in it out of nowhere when it requires so much training and people go to school for four years to...get better at acting and do like classical work. You would never do that with an athlete."
"I don't think it's necessary to do stage to be a great screen actor."
"You can take a little bit more liberties with a short...people are not really behind your butt saying oh, you can't write this, you can't write that. Oh, you have to change the ending because you're you're doing your own thing. So it's perfect for that."
"It's a very hard and tedious process where the cards are not in your hands and you work for a year on something that you create with a group of people. You put it on a Vimeo link and you pray."
"They've watched thousands of films and they picked a few, and they're like, go watch those."
"I feel like the more I act, the better director I can become."
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