The Tracksuit Podcast

The Tracksuit Podcast is media industry professionals sit down with fellow creatives, filmmakers, and experts for wide-ranging authentic, unfiltered conversations about the entertainment industry - covering everything from the business of entertainment to the unexplained. Hosted by BJ Hendricks and James Cullen Bressack.

The Tracksuit Podcast is a interviews podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 15 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts The Tracksuit Podcast, a interviews show with 15 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #15

  Augie Duke - Two Movies, a Million Memories & a Medieval Die Hard

  Sep 4, 202658 minS1

  ## Augie Duke - Cabbages, Ghosts & Half-Quitting Augie Duke — actor, producer, and self-described "eepy" personality — joins James and BJ for a conversation that starts with cabbages being put on a breastfeeding chest at Fantastic Fest and somehow ends with a pitch for a medieval Die Hard shot in a Napa castle. Along the way they cover a decade of indie filmmaking, ghost encounters, and the very real art of the half-quit. **Key topics:** - How James cast Augie on *Blood Craft* (she looked like Fairuza Balk — that's literally it) and their ongoing campaign to actually get Fairuza Balk on a project - Making *The Workout* during COVID and the legendary Fantastic Fest premiere: David Lawrence, tipsy, holding cabbages - The *Yellow Jackets* PR error that gave Augie 15 minutes of IMDB fame for a show she was never on - *Hacked* — how Shane Brady and Emily Zercher turned a real wire-fraud nightmare into a revenge-comedy feature, with Chandler Riggs (*The Walking Dead*) as the hacker - *Morton Meets the Eye*, a whodunit musical that debuted at the Beverly Hills Film Festival - James's VHS horror film — shot with no crew, analog, as a deliberate antidote to AI-generated content - James's Fantastic Fest boxing match: a month of Golden Gloves training, professional sparring, and accidentally hitting too hard — the last fight night the festival ever held - Ghost stories: BJ's shadow figures at a San Francisco Hyatt, the Cecil Hotel's body-in-the-water-tower history, and Shannon's ice-cube message from beyond the fridge - Augie on self-doubt, quitting every day, and why making your own content is the real career advice - The pitch: medieval Die Hard in a castle, starring Augie Duke and Fairuza Balk

  ListenShow Notes
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  Episode #13

  Bryan Koss - The DP Who Wandered Onto Soderbergh's Set

  Aug 21, 202657 minS1

  ## Bryan Koss – Seven Days, Mel Gibson & The Roomba Shot Cinematographer Bryan Koss — collaborator on *Fortress*, *Survive the Game*, *Hot Seat*, and *The Workout* — sits down with James and BJ to unpack the craft, chaos, and camaraderie behind making fast, real movies with big personalities on tiny schedules. ### Key Topics - **Shooting *Hot Seat* in seven days** — how the schedule kept shrinking from 12 days down to 7, why prep ("the seven Ps") was the only thing that saved them, and how Mel Gibson, Kevin Dillon, and Shannon Doherty showing up with 25-page days focused everyone's minds - **The 180-degree line** — James and Bryan's long-running disagreement explained for civilians, including when you're allowed (or obligated) to break it, and what Park Chan-wook does with it - **The Fortress kitchen Steadicam sequence** — one of James's favorite shots in any film he's directed, sacrificed a significant chunk of a 10-day schedule to get right - **The Workout's found-footage approach** — 15 cameras, zero respect for the line, placing every camera where a security camera or webcam would actually be, and the legendary Roomba shot Bryan never got to make - **The Soderbergh story** — Bryan as an uncredentialed background extra on *The Good German*, wandering out of a styrofoam building onto the live set, standing next to the monitor while George Clooney and Cate Blanchett filmed a scene, getting eyeballed by Soderbergh, and eventually getting screamed at by an AD for pulling out a telephoto lens - **Owning your own gear** — the pros and cons of building a full kit, how it opened doors early and occasionally stifled creative choices later - **The Klaus origin story** — Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski, a production office in New York, six weeks of being called the wrong name, and how an entire crew network across LA, Georgia, Puerto Rico, and the East Coast now calls each other Klaus - **Detroit pizza in Los Angeles** — the Detroit Pizza Society, square pans from auto-shop drip trays, and a valley field trip James is apparently now committed to - **UFO sightings** — Bryan and a childhood neighbor, a slow-moving object over Michigan, reconnecting years later and both immediately knowing what the other was about to say - **The air fryer incident** — Puerto Rico, day one with Bruce Willis, cracked pepper chicken sausages, and what happens when a Costco run meets a live take - **Kevin Dillon on set** — why he's a number-one worth having, how his energy affects the whole crew, and the CVS encounter that counts as their third collaboration - **Bryan's path in** — finance degree, Florida real estate, a two-day filmmaking seminar in a Howard Johnson conference room, PA work on big-budget commercials, and bringing coffee to DP Darius Khondji

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  Episode #12

  Jesse V. Johnson - Getting to Number One on Hulu

  Aug 14, 20261h 1mS1

  Jesse V. Johnson — Action, Authenticity & Watching the Actor's Face Jesse V. Johnson — action director, former stuntman and PA, and the man behind *Savage Dog*, *Avengement*, *Accident Man*, and *Thieves Highway* — sits down with James and BJ for a deep, craft-first conversation about what three decades in the trenches of low-budget action filmmaking actually teaches you. Jesse traces his path from running cables as a teenage PA on Helena Bonham Carter's second film to doing second unit for Spielberg on *Lincoln*, Branagh on *Thor*, and P.T. Anderson on *The Master* — and why those years of enforced unemployment beside the masters were worth more than all his early directing credits combined. Key topics - **The actor roster:** Scott Adkins, Aaron Eckhart, Stephen Bauer (Scarface stories, Ray Donovan, and the heartbreak of scheduling killing the perfect casting), John Malkovich refusing to eat, Ray Park demanding one-take scenes, and Christopher Lee on the set of *Young Indiana Jones* - **Working beside the greats:** Spielberg shooting the Battle of Spotsylvania Ferry with 1,000+ extras and moving on after one take regardless; Kenneth Branagh's notebook method and treating a Thor script like Shakespeare; P.T. Anderson keeping Joaquin Phoenix on a stool facing a corner between takes and the real 1930s museum toilet that got destroyed - **Practical effects philosophy:** why real blanks change an actor's eyes, what Isaac Florentine learned from Sergio Leone's close-ups, and the Gene Kelly trick Jesse stole for *Accident Man* (light shoes = the audience follows the feet) - **The road to *Savage Dog*:** three years unemployable after a black-and-white passion project, the 1942 Jeep with no cup holder, and the roadside moment that reset his entire relationship to the work - **Thieves Highway hitting #1 on Hulu** with zero publicity spend — and *Above and Below* (Antonio Banderas, sharks, a boat) coming next - **Mentoring Luke LaFontaine** on his first feature (*Mexicali*), Jesse's son Aster as script supervisor, and the value of building a set around people you trust - **Advice for directors:** read the masters (Raoul Walsh, William Wyler, Howard Hawks), stop calling it content, and understand that movies are an extension of 2,000-year-old Greek theatre

  ListenShow Notes
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  The Tracksuit Podcast

  Nicolas Wendl - $7K to $1M & Stupid Games

  Aug 7, 20261 hourS1

  ## Nicolas Wendl — $7K to $1M, Stupid Games & the Jim Carrey Conspiracy Nicolas Wendl, director of *Stupid Games* and the only person who could out-market a studio release with TikTok, good instincts, and magnets under a board game, sits down with James and BJ. What starts as a conversation about grinding a $7,000 horror feature onto the CW quickly spirals into practical effects philosophy, the real reason rock stars demand green M&Ms, Ian McKellen having a green-screen breakdown on a Hobbit set, and a genuinely disturbing theory about Jim Carrey rewriting the Mandela Effect one comedy impression at a time.

  ListenShow Notes
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  The Tracksuit Podcast

  Jeremy O'Keefe - Casting, Directing & Audition Myths

  Jul 31, 202658 minS1

  ## Jeremy O'Keefe — Casting, Directing & the Bold Choice Jeremy O'Keefe — casting director, producer, director, acting coach, and tracksuit convert — sits down with James and BJ to pull back the curtain on how the indie film casting machine really works. From assembling the stacked ensemble on *Boris is Dead* to landing Anthony Hopkins for his feature casting debut *Eyes in the Trees*, Jeremy breaks down the philosophy behind great auditions, why actors sabotage themselves by over-planning, and what it feels like to finally step back into the director's chair after 15 years for his passion project *The Avoidant*. **Key topics:** - Casting *Boris is Dead*: targeting 90s names, writing personal letters to actors, and why almost every role was a recognizable face - The Mindy Sterling "sadly passed" email incident that convinced everyone she was dead - Jimmy Duvall — 12 years of friendship finally landing in the right role - Jeremy's Meisner-adjacent acting technique: getting out of your brain, into your gut, and making your scene partner matter - Why over-rehearsed auditions tank on set — and how James spots it by throwing adjustments mid-read - BJ's Glee audition: nailed the choreography, lost the role to his own tattoos - Jeremy's shirtless Rallies Burger commercial audition dancing to Nelly — his most humiliating moment - In-person vs. self-tape: why bringing actors back into the room had them crying with gratitude - Landing Anthony Hopkins for *Eyes in the Trees* and learning the producing side of star attachments - *The Avoidant* — Adam Goldberg leads; shooting in Delaware; Jeremy directing for the first time since 2011 - The Dregs (dir. Connor Martin) and chasing Freddie Prinze Jr. across two sitcoms - James's 100+ tracksuit collection, COVID origin story, and the Emmy tux incident - LA Metro life, Waymo shoutouts, and how Silver Lake is starting to feel like Astoria - Networking events, giving vs. getting, and why being useful is the real career strategy

  ListenShow Notes

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