Mark Moran: Correct.
La Libertad: Is this project still at the top of your list of projects?
Mark Moran: We are fine-tuning the Red-to-Greenlight project, it has not yet been officially launched. It's coming; it's still at or near the top of our list -- it's just taking its good old time to be ready for industry wide dissemination. When it finally comes out, people who have scripted projects will be scrambling to get this tool for their own use. If someone's listening, has a scripted project that they've shopped and gained interest in but no green light to fund it yet, the Red to Greenlight Project is exactly what the doctor ordered to turn the corner.
La Libertad: The second project on your list of "current projects" was "Yard Sale 411," a reality television series in development, starring George Selby and Ellyn McLaughlin. How is that going?
Mark Moran: Yard Sale 411 is definitely a top priority project for Breadwin Productions. The show is for sale to a television network, cable or broadcast, in the reality programming market segment. There are lots of interesting reality TV series on the air nowadays, but few if any of them combine the warmth, sweetness, passion, all-American ingenuity, and organic "reality" of Yard Sale 411. Yard sales bring together a diverse and passionate community from every walk of life, but no show has ever captured the real flavor of this All-American passtime -- until now!
La Libertad: How did you meet George Selby and Ellyn McLaughlin?
Mark Moran: George wrote the book on yard sales. He is a walking, talking, yard sales encyclopedia. A while ago, he approached me about the idea for a show. I loved it from the start. Our first step was to shoot, unscripted, George at yard sales. There were veins of gold in that random footage. I introduced George to a potential co-host and we shot a few scenes but the first co-host, a medical doctor, received an extremely high-paying job offer soon after and moved out of the area. In the beginning, we were shoestring, and we had no way to compete with a high-paying medical job. But the good thing was he set the pace for the co-host of the show. Another co-host came along, at George's suggestion, but eventually this person decided his Grammy-nominated hiphop career was his priority. Finally, a team of us -- George as Showrunner/Host, me as Producer/Director, and our Editor convened to audition almost 30 applicants from all over the acting/on-screen talent community, and that's how we ended up selecting the best candidate of the lot, Ellyn McLaughlin.
Ellyn is a fun-loving, nutty, warm and delightfully inventive complement to George. She and George have a great camraderie. When George waxes too serious, Ellyn can be cheeky. When George goes over the top, Ellyn makes sure he stays on task. Together, they make a great duo, and everyone LOVES them. Did I mention that Ellyn is an accomplished actress and absolutely at home on camera?
La Libertad: What's it like working with them?
Mark Moran: What's great about them is how agile they are to handle entirely unscripted bonding with folks at yard sales, people they never met before. Yard Sales really tap into the spectrum of personalities, demographics, and cultures: old grandparents, young kids selling lemonade, toddlers, couples recently married -- you name it. George and Ellyn know how to deal with each person on his or her own terms, and their warmth is contagious!
La Libertad: How many episodes of "Yard Sale 411" have you produced?
Mark Moran: Yard Sale 411 is our most developed and refined television series pilot at this stage. We shot an initial, unscripted compilation, a pilot with co-host Cisco, and finally the pilot for which we are shooting pickups and working on post production, co-starring Ellyn. More or less two "episodes" but from these two episodes we have the ability to extract mini-episodes that could be inserted into on-air newsmagazines to help draw a bigger, broader audience to them. A&E has expressed interest in seeing future versions of our shows, among others.
La Libertad: As a director, how much, if at all, do you rely on IMDb.com to vet people you hire to work on your projects?
Mark Moran: For A-list actors, we use James Ulmer's scale, which is the industry standard. For "B" actors, IMDb can be a helpful tool to check on credits to make sure they are real and not phoney. For day players and extras, you don't necessarily need IMDb -- you can decide in the audtion itself whether you've got the right talent for the job.
La Libertad: During our last interview, you said that your company, Breadwin Productions, had several projects "under wraps"; which, if any, of those, would you like to divulge now?
Mark Moran: At this moment we are working on a wonderfully exciting and lucrative movie package, aimed for a young audience demographics. This is not Yard Sale 411, not Red to Greenlight, not a sequel to "Blast and Whisper," but a new project. One of the key players in the deal, who is actively helping this movie packaging from his office in California, has been personally responsible for raising millions of dollars in funding for Hollywood films. The budget for this project, shall we say, is at least two or three dozen times larger than the budget was for "Blast and Whisper" which starred, of course, Libertad Green and Mehran Haq. I dare not divulge much more about this exciting project, because the last thing I want is for this train to come off the tracks. We already have two production companies, one located in Colorado, and our own, Breadwin Productions, working on this. Breadwin Productions is the lead production company on the deal. The film will definitely, God willing, be a theatrical release with A-list talent.
La Libertad: Are you going to/did you spend any time with your parents, children and/or siblings this holiday season?
Mark Moran: Yes, I always try to spend as much time with close relatives and family during Thanksgiving and Christmas especially. I was very glad that all our immediate family were together this year. God is good.
La Libertad: What Christmas traditions do your families observe?
Mark Moran: We celebrate Advent and the birth of Christ through Church, through nativity displays, through special meals, through exchanging gifts, and through just being together. I would love to sing Carols, but there are a few party-poopers in the gang who wouldn't go along with that.
La Libertad: Do you have any Christmas songs in your repertoire, and, if so, where can we see or hear them?
Mark Moran: You have given me a challenge -- and I want to take up that challenge! No, I haven't composed any Christmas hymns yet, but I want to do exactly that now that you have suggested it to me. Thank you!
La Libertad: What is your favorite Christmas carol, BTW?
Mark Moran: I love virtually all of them. Ave Maria may be the most beautiful. What Child Is This? Go Tell It on the Mountain. Little Drummer Boy. Joy to the World (I like both the Christmas song, and also the Jeremiah was a bullfrog song of the same name by Three Dog Night). O Christmas Tree. O Holy Night. I could go on and on. Now, to be able to write one that would fit in that list!
La Libertad: Which version(s) of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is/are your favorite(s)?
Mark Moran: The one that Charles Dickens wrote. :p LOL.
La Libertad:Have you played any Porcio lately?
Mark Moran: Yes, I try to play Porcio when I can. Only problem is that more people need to learn this fascinating card game. If you like card games with the standard deck of 52 in spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs -- give this game a chance and you'll fall in love all over again with card games. If you would like to learn it, but don't know where to find the rules, get the book "52,000 Hands Later" by yours truly on Amazon.
La Libertad: What are your thoughts on the re-election of Barack Obama?
Mark Moran: Don't get me started. The worst president in U.S. history gets his second chance to wreck it to pieces.
La Libertad: What are your thoughts on Benghazi?
Mark Moran: Shame on this administration.
La Libertad: What are your thoughts on the Newtown Massacre, and the current gun control controversy?
Mark Moran: More gun control will only take guns away from the kinds of people who fought for their lives in Newtown, and do nothing to stop the guns in the hands of the evildoer. The second amendment is part of our constitution for a reason.
La Libertad: What are your thoughts on the war against Nativity Scenes and Christmas carols and greetings?
Mark Moran: I am wholeheartedly in favor of Nativity scenes, Christmas carols, Christmas greetings. Jesus brings peace to this world: who compares to Him? But the peace He came to bring came at a cost to Him, and comes at a cost also to each one of us.
La Libertad: You mentioned working with a man who was disqualified from "the astronaut program" because he was too tall. Have you noticed similar "heightism" as well as "age-ism" and sexism in Hollywood?
Mark Moran: In the case of my friend, the height issue had to do with the limited size of the Command Module where the astronauts would sit for hours upon end. It wasn't a prejudice against him, per se. Had they built a larger vehicle he might have qualified. Some prejudices in casting parts for films are, unfortunately, a fact of life. Suppose we shoot a movie that depicts racism against blacks. We would want the victims portrayed to be actual people of African descent, not Al Jolson painted whites. At the same time, the fact that a lot of parts require specific demographic types, or males or females, can become camouflage hiding real prejudices. I wish it weren't so prevalent, but it does happen now and then.
La Libertad: When selecting people to work for you, what do you look for? How important are their politics, religion, height, weight, age, nationality, race or ethnicity when deciding what roles, if any, to give them in your projects?
Mark Moran: Breadwin Productions happens to be looking for a passionate few Principal Managers who bring to the table their own brands, their own production teams and hardware, their own ideas. These Principals would combine resources with us to shoot their own brands, sharing with us costs and generously in profits. But all these subsidiary brands brought to us from people like you need to fit what our overall brand brings to the consumer. We bring to the movie-goer, the TV viewer, and to the DVD consumer a new form of edgy in stories and creative content. Edgy stories have been around a long, long time. They have gotten stale and outworn. Nowadays we need something different, something radical in a radical new way. So our brand at Breadwin Productions rejects the vision of edgy of the past, which only serves to make people who embrace tradition and family morals uncomfortable: the time has come, instead, to project a new vision of edgy, one which makes people who despise tradition and family morals uncomfortable, not the other way around. Beyond this, we are open to all walks of life, all races, all ethnic backgrounds, all kinds of people. You do have to be a member of the human race, please. LOL. As for acting roles, we try to be as specific as possible to the role that's prescribed in the script -- could be any ethnicity or personality or creed but whatever accords with the needs of the story.
La Libertad: What would you like/did you want to tell the world this Holiday Season?
Mark Moran: I would like to tell the world this Holy-Day season that God is real. The purpose of life is to seek God. The purpose of death is to meet God face-to-face. The purpose of eternity is to live with God forever.
Interview by William Mortensen Vaughan
Yard Sale 411's Facebook page
Yard Sale 411 trailer
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