Sam Firstenberg: From Canon Films to Breakin’ 2 and Revenge of the Ninja

Sam Firstenberg: The Urge to Tell Stories

Host Cal welcomes legendary Sam Firstenberg Director, known for Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo and Ninja III: The Domination. Sam Firstenberg details his origins as a director. He grew up in Jerusalem and frequented a neighborhood theater that showed Hollywood films. Consequently, this fascinated him, hooking him on the idea of telling a story on a big screen. He quickly realized he was a natural storyteller who wanted to use the modern media of cinema.

 Life in Los Angeles and the Director’s Craft

Sam Firstenberg arrived in Los Angeles at 21 for film school. While in school, he met Israeli director and producer Menachem Golan, who would later head Canon Films. He began his career as a low-level worker on Golan’s first American movie, Lepke. Furthermore, he spent five years as an assistant director before returning to Hollywood to pursue directing. Firstenberg explains the director’s role: he is a craftsman, hired to direct a script developed by the producer. Thus, he does not own the film; he simply creates the storytelling and creative part of the movie. Conversely, he contrasts this with an auteur, like Quentin Tarantino, who controls the creation from A to Z. Check out our interview with Roger Christian, set decorator on Star Wars and director of The Dollar Bottom.

 A Philosophy of Pure Entertainment

Sam Firstenberg Director believes his approach to cinema is purely from an entertainment, not artistic, point of view. For instance, he sees his role as someone destined to entertain people and transfer an audience to another world for an hour or two. He firmly believes that humans need this element of storytelling and escapism from everyday reality.

  The Pivot to Martial Arts and Canon Films After his first independent social drama, Canon Films approached Firstenberg to direct Revenge of the Ninja, a sequel to their successful Enter the Ninja. However, Firstenberg admits he had never seen a martial arts or Hong Kong movie before the offer. His only exposure to Eastern fighting was Japanese samurai movies. Nonetheless, he worked closely with star and martial arts master Sho Kosugi. Kosugi ushered him into the world of ninjutsu, a fighting style that was then rarely introduced to the Western world. Ultimately, Sam Firstenberg Director had the freedom to shape the script and action sequences, ensuring the fights and action aligned with the story he wanted to tell.

 

Full Transcript Outline (Quick Jumps)

00:00 Introduction to Sam Furstenberg

04:42 From Jerusalem to Hollywood: The Journey Begins

08:34 First Steps in Filmmaking: Learning the Craft

12:24 The Rise of Canon Films and Early Collaborations

16:53 Understanding the Director’s Role in Filmmaking

20:42 The Transition to Martial Arts Cinema

27:53 Creating American Ninja: A New Genre Fusion

32:30 The Genesis of American Ninja

39:41 Cult Classics and Their Evolution

46:48 Transitioning to Dance and Musical Films

55:20 The Legacy of Low-Budget Action Films

01:00:29 Advice for Aspiring Filmmakers

Full Transcript

Cal MacDonald (00:00.932)
Hello everyone, welcome to OCAST, the official podcast of Ocon, the Comic Con of the Outer Hebrides. It’s me, Cal, I’m flying solo today. My hosts have all fallen by the wayside in the storms, but we’ve got a good show for you tonight. Our very special guest is director Sam Furstenberg, director of many memorable films, I think, fair to say.

Breaking 2, Electric Boogaloo, Ninja 3, a lot of Ninja films which we’ll probably get into. And thanks for joining us all the way from LA I believe is it? Or California at least. To us here in the Outer Hebrides. It’s quite a thought that.

Sam Firstenberg (00:43.631)
Yeah, I’m here in Los Angeles in Hollywood. And thank you for having me in your show. I’m happy to be here and answer all your questions.

Cal MacDonald (00:55.277)
that’s great. So I think like everything, best to go to the start. So where did you get this hunger for films? When did you have that I want to be a director moment?

Sam Firstenberg (01:08.021)
I want to be director came a little bit later, but I think when I was a little boy, I was a kid, I grew up in Jerusalem and I grew up in a neighborhood in our outside, not in the center of town. And in our neighborhood, there was a theater. It was a neighborhood theater. They showed movies. Secondly, you know, after they after they showed the movie in the big theaters, they came to our.

Cal MacDonald (01:35.396)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (01:35.969)
And during the day, were daytime screenings, two movies, one ticket. I remember myself going to this theater since I was eight or nine. Every week they changed the movie. I was fascinated by this. Probably, you know, it’s hard to analyze when I was a little kid. I don’t remember. But I was fascinated by this idea that I see a story.

Cal MacDonald (01:59.524)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (02:05.111)
unravel itself in front of me on this huge big screen. And most of the movies that we saw were Hollywood movies, course, Western war movie, gangster movies, musicals, etc. So this was the main diet was the Hollywood movies. And so that’s probably when I when I was hooked into this idea of of telling story through a big screen.

Cal MacDonald (02:29.935)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (02:34.969)
Now, some people are, I guess, that some people are naturally storytellers. They want to tell stories. They have the urge to tell stories. So I’m probably one of them. There are people who write play. are people who write books. And some other people became become storytellers by mean of visual means with this modern new media, which is called cinema.

Cal MacDonald (03:01.072)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (03:02.809)
So I think that’s where I began, but I did not realize, of course, as a little boy, you don’t understand, you don’t know that there is a director, you just see the movie. It looks like a play on, it looks like you’re seeing a theater on a screen. And later on, of course, I grew up, became a teenager, high school, I kept going to movies all the time.

Cal MacDonald (03:10.778)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (03:26.873)
I started to understand better movies. But where I grew up in Jerusalem was provincial. We didn’t have access to this knowledge that today is available all over the internet. How movies are being made? We didn’t have any idea. I didn’t have any idea how movies are made. Like many other people around the world, you believe that a movie is like a play and there is a camera and the camera starts to…

Cal MacDonald (03:38.148)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (03:54.193)
to photograph the movie from scene number one and keeps going like a play on a stage. And there were no film school even when I was a little bit older. I served in the military between 18 and between the age 18 and 21.

Cal MacDonald (03:56.24)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (04:13.679)
I still, was, I never had an experience with a movie, putting together a movie or visiting a movie set. I did have experience, know, they, in Jerusalem, they filmed in Jerusalem, the movie Exodus, with Paul Newman. And as a little kid, I went many times to the set to see how they are filming. And so when I was 21 years old, there were no film schools in Israel.

Cal MacDonald (04:29.392)
that rings a bell.

Cal MacDonald (04:42.533)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (04:43.297)
in Jerusalem. So I decided that I’m going to Hollywood to start to study, to learn how do you make film. I still was not decided. I had not decided yet what am I going to do within this business. But once I went to school, to film school, and immediately I started to work in movies, short movies, big movies, bigger movies. I did many jobs in there.

Then I realized that there are hierarchy, there is different department, there are different people who have different job in putting together a movie. And I knew that my role here will be a director. The director is the one that tells the story. And this was my interest to tell the story, to tell stories. that’s, so I was about 21, I kind of understood, okay, that’s where I’m going to become a director, a film director.

Cal MacDonald (05:15.396)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (05:40.896)
I think given the films you ended up doing, you just wanted films that really just entertain people, just people to have fun with watching.

Sam Firstenberg (05:50.851)
Yeah, I guess so. My approach, the way I approached the world of cinema, the way I arrived at the world of cinema was not from an, let’s say, artistic point of view. Not at all, but rather from an entertainment point of view. So, you know, there are people around the world who are destined to become doctors and heal people, and there other people in this world who are destined to entertain people.

Cal MacDonald (06:02.682)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (06:19.377)
So this was my approach. I’m coming here to make movies and we are using the term entertainment in a way of we fascinate audiences, we capture the attention of audience for one and a half hour, two hours, transfer them to another world. But this is true not only to movie makers, true also to book writers, to writers. They take you on a journey.

Cal MacDonald (06:44.123)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (06:47.418)
And it’s not necessarily artistic, but most of books, as you know, are about entertainment. Most of operas are about entertainment.

Cal MacDonald (06:56.12)
Yeah, it’s like most books are the ones you buy when you go for your groceries. They’re the cheap books that, you know, they’re just for a good, a little bit of entertainment for you. It’s not big, you know, it doesn’t have to always be deep and philosophical. There’s nothing wrong with just getting a nice bit of quick fun, is there?

Sam Firstenberg (07:15.811)
Absolutely correct. As human beings, we need this element of storytelling, this element of escapism. We have our life, we have everything. The reality is happening around us. But once in a while, we want to be in another place, you know, to go with some kind of a legend.

Cal MacDonald (07:26.512)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (07:32.815)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (07:39.121)
Star War, want to be in this other world of the fighters of Star War and the excitement and when it’s over we’re back into our reality and everyday reality. So this is a human necessity, it’s something that we need.

Cal MacDonald (07:41.048)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (07:57.072)
Yeah and so you get to LA, you’re doing your film school, so what was that first film you ever made then? Can you tell us about it?

Sam Firstenberg (08:05.685)
When I was 21 years old I arrived in Los Angeles I went to film school I was in a what they call undergraduate school in America’s the BA Level and I started to understand how you make film and I I started to one thing volunteer working in in student film and I started to make my own short movies in while in school when I

While still being in school, I had the chance, a few, I met Israeli director producer, his name Menachem Golan, later on he became the head of Canon Film, and he was producing and directing a full feature movie in Los Angeles, in Hollywood. The name of the movie was Lepke with Tony Cortez.

Cal MacDonald (08:47.344)
yeah.

Cal MacDonald (08:59.439)
Okay.

Sam Firstenberg (08:59.621)
because I met him by chance, I asked him if I can come along and work with him. And, you know, he agreed not just work with him, work with the crew. And this was the first time I worked on a big movie, on a full movie set in a studio. I did a very low job, lowly. I was just maybe giving coffee, moving chairs, helping at the art department, whatever they needed me to do. So this was the first time I encountered the…

feature film big movie and from this point on I kept working while I was going to school I also kept working on movies etc while I was in school until I finished my studies I became assistant director in movies I worked in many functions I did a lot of technical functions in the movie but I became assistant director and while in school I directed I made four

Cal MacDonald (09:45.871)
Alright.

Sam Firstenberg (09:57.281)
small feature, know, short movies. That’s how directors usually start, usually by making short, small movies to see, to understand.

Cal MacDonald (10:07.62)
Yeah, you mentioned Menachem Golem, I’m taking there was quite a tight-knit sort of Israeli film community going, was there? It was kind of a little group of yous. And was that kind of just naturally how yous bonded at first? Just a fellow, it’s one guy from my homeland.

Sam Firstenberg (10:29.339)
So yeah, when I grew up in Israel, it was 1960s, 1972 I was already in Los Angeles. I grew up in the 60s, the film industry was very primitive. It was nothing like Hollywood or Italy or England, nothing. It was a primitive, primitive filmmaking. So here and there movies in the Hebrew language.

And then came into the scene this man, his name was Menachem Golan, and he revolutionized the business, the movie business. It did not become big business. It was still sporadic making movies here and there, but he became the main force in making Israeli movies. I was a high school student, so I knew his name. I went to see every Israeli and Hebrew speaking movie that ever…

Cal MacDonald (11:23.962)
All right.

Sam Firstenberg (11:24.529)
Produced so he was the big name So I already knew his name when I was in Los Angeles in 72. There was no Israeli Community film community and in Israel. I never collaborated with the Israeli film community It said it was a I didn’t know I didn’t get there. So when I met Menachem Golan in Hollywood, it was 1973 he came to Hollywood to make a movie

Cal MacDonald (11:40.41)
Alright.

Sam Firstenberg (11:53.613)
His first American movie he really wanted to make he made many Israeli movies either as a producer or director But then he just came to Hollywood and he wanted to make this movie. He wanted to become A Hollywood player. He really wanted to be so this was his first attempt Producing and directing this movie lepke. He still he still didn’t have any serious company or any serious print in in Hollywood, but

He was together with his cousin and partner, Yoram Globus, and they have offices in 20th Century Fox Studio. And when the movie was over, when the filming and producing of the movie, I stayed with them in the office, working for them in the office as a runner. I had a motorcycle. I was the runner, bringing, taking script, bringing script, sending contracts. So I had a chance. Now I had the chance to also

Walk around in in 20th century folks because our the office was in 10 20. So there were no yet Presence is really present later on there was much bigger israeli presence in hollywood, but at that time So there were the only people menachem golan and europe globus And this company which was called a mary euro picture ceased to exist at some point No more

Cal MacDonald (13:03.342)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (13:16.537)
Yeah. And is that one Canon pictures then started up? Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (13:21.147)
Correct. I became assistant director for five years. I was working in many movies for this company, for them. They had a company in Israel, Noa Film. And the biggest movie they produced was Operation Thunderbolt, the Antebe, the raid on Antebe. I was assistant director in this movie. And then I decided after five years of working as assistant director, which I did not want to be assistant director. I didn’t see it as…

my direction. I wanted to direct the movie and I directed one television movie by then already, 30 minute movie for the sake of a dog and I decided I’m going back to Hollywood. I was working in Israel. I’m going back to Hollywood to graduate school which is MA level and I went back to Los Angeles, to Hollywood, to university, Loyola Marymount University.

went into this three-year studies. At the same period, this was 1979, they bought a company. When I say they, Menachem, Golan, and Euroglobus, had a chance to buy a small company from New York. It was a distribution company, and the name of the company was Canon Film. So they did not establish this company. They bought, they took over a company, and immediately they moved it to Los Angeles, to Hollywood.

Cal MacDonald (14:43.087)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (14:47.022)
Yeah, if I remember right today, not, sorry carry on.

Sam Firstenberg (14:48.044)
I was

This was 1979. I was in school and I decided that while I’m going to school in the university, I’m going to make a movie, to make a full feature film while I’m in school. And I started it together with a friend, with a producer, with David Warmer. And I directed, he produced, I wrote a script and we filmed it. And it was a full feature, but…

Helping with with the help of students and the university and it took a long time a year and a half of filming because we filming only in the weekend and I could not complete it but So I did we were looking for money I was looking for more money and distribution and I knew that they moved back I knew the people because I worked for them Menachem Goddard and Yoram Globus I worked for them before and I brought the material to the to their office the new offices of Canon and I said

I explained I don’t have money to finish it, here is a movie, it’s almost done, we need distribution. They saw the material and they decided to give me money to finish the movie. So here we reconnected and this was the beginning of my relationship with Canon Film.

Cal MacDonald (16:01.52)
Mm-hmm.

Cal MacDonald (16:05.776)
Alright, yeah it’s just you’re talking about 1979 on the other side in Scotland. I was being born then. Start of a lot of great things that year wasn’t it?

Sam Firstenberg (16:13.441)
Hahaha

Cal MacDonald (16:21.658)
So, just for the, probably for most of our listeners, can you give a brief, how you go from this, like I feel, as a director, does someone come to you with the idea or do you get the idea and then you try and make it happen? What is this process? Because I think a lot of people really aren’t so wise about how it goes from the idea on the screen and what the director’s role in all of this is.

Sam Firstenberg (16:53.017)
So yes, like in in many other fields of life, there are different type of directors director is the is the man Who is at the top of the pyramid of creating a movie? On the creative sense there is the producer producer is more in charge of the logistics the money the financing So the director is the one who create the storytelling the creative part of the movie But of course, there are different type of director. So in one hand

You have Quentin Tarantino. He writes the script. He produces the movie. He’s in charge of editing. for him, he’s a filmmaker in sense of global filmmaker. He is his creation from A to Z, let’s say. And in the other hand, in the traditional Hollywood way, directors are hired to direct a script that they did not write.

So usually the producer somehow develops a script together with the writer. Somebody will have an idea. It might be the idea of the director, but it will be developed written by a writer, by the script writer. And then the director gets the script. At this point, director might be involved one way or another, a little bit helping or shaping the script, but it’s not his script.

And this is the traditional Hollywood way from the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s. Even the biggest names directors, they always got scripts from, they did not write scripts. So I don’t write, I’m not a writer. The only one script that I wrote was the one I mentioned to you, one more chance that I made it to school. And later on, the rest of my entire career, I was given scripts by producer and hired

Cal MacDonald (18:31.408)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Firstenberg (18:48.081)
to direct it. So I’m not even part, as a director, I’m not even part of the production. By the time I finish my directing, which includes a lot of work from working on the script until the end of editing, including music, et cetera, and then I’m being paid my salary, my full salary, and at this point it’s goodbye and the movie belongs to the producer. I don’t have any ownership on a movie.

Cal MacDonald (19:08.674)
you

Sam Firstenberg (19:15.803)
So that’s how I work in this classic Hollywood style, which I was given script, direct them for the producer. And that’s what happened to me in my next movie after One More Chance. I was already in the Canon offices. We were editing this One More Chance in the Canon offices. The movie went to a few festivals. It was not a commercial success in any way. It was actually…

Cal MacDonald (19:24.079)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (19:35.908)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Firstenberg (19:45.347)
Attempt on a social drama type of a movie and at that point Canon which by then produced a movie that was called enter the ninja which was successful or the successful movie They came to me. I finished this one So they approached me and they said would you direct a sequel which is called revenge of the ninja? So they already had the name There was already a script and the star was already cast choukasugi

So really I took it as a craftsman. I got the script and now of course I shaped it. I worked with the writer. I worked with the stunt people, with the creators, with the fight choreographer, et cetera. But I was a director, higher director. And that’s how it work. Now it so happened that the way I work and the way my relationship with this company can on, that it was really except the script.

Cal MacDonald (20:20.101)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Cal MacDonald (20:38.403)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (20:42.647)
and choreographing the fight. was my creation. It was my supervision. I worked with the writer to change wherever I believed the story is going to be a little bit better or more compelling or more interesting. So was the fight. Let’s say the fight choreographer, in this case was Shokushugi, he will show me a fight and I might have a fight choreography.

Cal MacDonald (20:56.068)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (21:09.925)
And I might add some remarks and say, well, this is not for our movie. Why don’t you boost it up here a little bit? Whatever my judgment is, is it the ultimate storyteller of this story? And so was the correct for the action sequences, which were choreographed by my, by the stunt coordinator, Steve Lambert. Same thing. They will show me a sequence, explain me a sequence. They show it to me on rehearsal. And then I might have.

either veto power or suggestions to see to it that the action will be more exciting, more compelling, more interesting, more in line with the story because the director is the one that has to make sure that everything which we are making fall into the same story. So it’s not a bunch of scenes that are not connected to each other and so on and so forth. And yeah.

Cal MacDonald (21:50.692)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (22:06.541)
So and I was lucky because they gave me this latitude. They gave me this freedom to do whatever I wanted to do

Cal MacDonald (22:16.304)
Yeah and so how do you, like you’re a guy, at that point had you ever even heard of a ninja when they gave you this? Like where you just, what’s a, I think like from, there was like kind of more traditional action films and now you’re into martial arts which is quite different to like traditional American action isn’t it?

Sam Firstenberg (22:36.817)
So you are absolutely right. At this point of time, 1970s, prior to 1970s, there were a lot of martial art movies coming from Hong Kong. We used to call them karate movie or Hong Kong movie. There are a few names for us, for people in the West, in the Western cinema.

Cal MacDonald (22:49.104)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (23:04.773)
But in over there in Hong Kong and China and Japan, those movies were very popular. And there were television shows even in Japan. I must admit I’ve never seen a Hong Kong movie in my life before my encounter with the Revenge of the Ninja. Never karate movie or kung fu movie, never, never. And what I, no, but what I did see

Cal MacDonald (23:19.876)
Right?

Cal MacDonald (23:28.048)
No, even a Bruce Lee film.

Alright.

Sam Firstenberg (23:34.201)
what my my only exposure to this world of Eastern fighting was Japanese movies, samurai movies. I love samurai movies from mainly Akira Kurosawa, Seven Samurai, Yajimbo and many others. So I was exposed already to samurai movies, but I never heard about martial art movies. And so I was I was

Cal MacDonald (23:46.874)
Okay.

Sam Firstenberg (24:03.363)
As I mentioned before, I was given the script here. Can you go and do this movie Revenge of the Ninja and the star is Shou Kasugi. Shou Kasugi is a ma- I don’t have any training or background martial art and I never seen a martial art movie, never. Not even Western because there are few Western movies. Octagon, Chuck Norris, there are few Western Hollywood kind of independent martial art movie, very few. One of them is Octagon.

Bruce Lee Chuck Norris, this was the extent of it more or less They’re mentioned here and there on television show there were mentions of martial art So so Shokasugi He was a master of martial art and He came to Hollywood from Japan In order to get involved in moviemaking to become a movie star and I was introduced to him

Cal MacDonald (24:52.592)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Firstenberg (25:02.893)
and he ushered me in into the world of martial art movies or martial art in general, specifically ninjitsu because even if we say that martial art was familiar in the western world because there were dual joes and young people went to training and they saw here and there there was a television show

With david karadin so they knew a little bit but ninja ninjitsu was hardly ever mentioned In the in the world of martial art in in this world of martial art now in japan It’s part of the mythology. You have the good the good guy fighters the knights which are the samurais You have the bad guys fighters, which are the ninjas. So usually it’s in a negative connotation

Cal MacDonald (25:52.88)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (25:59.725)
So it was never introduced not yet introduced to the western world canon film introduced it with the movie re Entered the ninja and shou kasugi was an expert on the field so he also part of his The education that I got from him on martial art was specifically in ninjitsu ninja and he showed me hong kong style movies, which I never seen before and

The funny part is that when he showed it to me, were all in Chinese, no translation. But it didn’t matter because I had to concentrate on the action, on the fight, not on the Japanese-type storytelling because I immediately I saw that that’s not what I’m interested to do. And this was my encounter where I met martial art. It was 1980.

I met Shoukasugi and other people in the field because of him, because of Shoukasugi. And I was, and then I introduced it and this was my introduction to martial art. What, to elaborate on your question a little bit, what I decided right away when I was exposed to this, I decided that I really want to make James Bond movies. I don’t want to make Hong Kong martial art movies.

Cal MacDonald (27:24.922)
Right. Okay.

Sam Firstenberg (27:26.947)
I want to make action movie, which is Hollywood big action movies. Let’s call them James Bond for, for, and when I spoke with Joe, I realized that he wants to do the same thing. So I was lucky. We both of us, we had the same goal. He didn’t want to make a pure martial art movie. He also wanted to make martial art James Bond kind of movie. And I wanted to do the same thing. So we mesh, we hi, we kind of did a hybrid.

in the movie, in this Revenge of the Ninja, I worked with him on another movie later, Ninja 3 The Domination, we kind of mesh it together into a hybrid Western action with Eastern action all together. And this was my encounter with Martial Arts.

Cal MacDonald (28:11.928)
And that’s how you got to American Ninja. Was that the realization of your James Bond’s martial arts dream, at that point?

Sam Firstenberg (28:22.351)
would say that American Ninja takes it one level farther also not only James Bond but it’s also Western. I was as I told you as a kid I was fascinated by Westerns and this was the main type of movies that I saw. I always loved Westerns so if you take this the mixture of gangster movies you know like crime movies American crime movies

together with Western, together with fantasy, James Bond fantasy, if you mesh them together, eventually you get American Ninja. It’s a mixture of all of those elements together. And the way it happened, we made the movie Revenge of the Ninja for this company. I directed another movie for them, Ninja III The Domination. Shokasugi was in it, was a different type of also in the world of Ninja.

Cal MacDonald (28:50.938)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (29:14.051)
I happened in between to do a dance movie, Breaking Two Electric Boogaloo. And then the head of the company Menachem Golan, we mentioned him earlier, he called me into the office. He said, the world wants more ninja because they were selling movies all over the world. We need more ninja movies. But this time we’re going to make a movie which is called American Ninja and the hero will be an American. So this is his idea. It’s not my idea.

It’s his idea to, to not only that we, we stole the ninja ideas from Japan and, we in Hollywood were making movies because there were television shows about ninjas in Japan before. Now we are taking it one step further. We are Americanizing this ninja character. He’s not even Japanese anymore. We take it far away, but it was a good idea.

From a commercial point of view he was right. It was a good idea and there was no script There was nothing only this idea American Ninja and the other idea request was that we go to the Philippines to shoot to film it in the Philippines We didn’t in the Philippines because they had some money over there. I don’t know what so I started to work with producers with two producers and a writer Paul de milke and in order to

Cal MacDonald (30:24.133)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (30:37.307)
to kind of mesh the idea that we are in the Philippines suddenly, we came up with the idea that the American ninja Joe Armstrong, he’s a soldier, which is staged in the some Philippines kind of a country. Because at the time there were many American bases in the Philippines. Subic Bay was a huge, huge American base. It was like a city, was almost like a city. And that’s how we came up with this idea.

Cal MacDonald (30:55.257)
Yes.

Sam Firstenberg (31:05.497)
Now within this idea, are many elements. For instance, Western, there is the element of Hainun. Hainun was this cowboy that nobody, he gets involved in some trouble. Nobody wants to help him. He’s the reluctant hero. He doesn’t want to be involved in the action of this little town, the trouble that the little town has. But because of his moral value, he has no choice, but he’s drawn into the action to protect the city.

and nobody wants to help him. So the same thing is our hero, Joe Armstrong. He’s a soldier. He’s just a mechanic, you know, he’s a driver. And he doesn’t want to get involved in any problems, but the circumstances and his moral values are drawing him into the action. And there is element of mystery that he finds out what he is and the powers that he had that he didn’t know and why they have this.

those powers and and and and then we come to the action which became James Bond because there is a lot of action which is not not martial art action a lot of action in this movie which is regular martial art and we have enough of a war movie elements because it’s a military and we have the character of Steve James which is the soldier in it and

Cal MacDonald (32:22.16)
Ha

Sam Firstenberg (32:30.907)
We have the gangsters, have the bad guys which are stealing weapons from us. Everything, all those elements that were bubbling within me, within my brain came together in American Ninja.

Cal MacDonald (32:42.202)
Yeah

Cal MacDonald (32:45.872)
I was just going to jump back to Ninja III The Domination. There were some really strange elements that all came together in that. I think I saw an interview with Lucinda Dickie and she said it was, as far as she could tell, was the exorcist meets flash dance meets ninjas. Like where did that all come from?

Sam Firstenberg (33:08.497)
So you are correct and she is correct. And the reason it happened was, I would say almost by accident, not so much by accident. When we finished, I directed and put it together this movie, Revenge of the Ninja with Shou Kasugi. I was with it all the way to the ending. MGM, Canon was a small independent company at the time. They became much bigger later.

But Canon was a small independent film company in Hollywood at the time. They were not a distribution company in Hollywood. They sold the movie internationally outside America, outside the Northern America. In North America, if anybody who wants a success, they need a studio to distribute the movie. One of the seven studios, let’s say Universal, Warner rather, they know how to distribute movie in North America.

also worldwide, obviously. So Canon was shopping around the movies that they produce and the company MGM liked the movie Revenge of the Ninja. They liked it enough to purchase it from Canon and to take it into distribution. So the movie Revenge of the Ninja got a decent distribution because it was exhibited and distributed by MGM.

MGM created this iconic poster of the ninja flying in the sky with the red the red sky This was created by mgm and a good campaign. They opened the movie in A few hundred theaters. It was a nice. It was a good it was not like a major major movie, right? It was not a tom cruise movie but And a nice good distribution and it was successful The movie made money people like it. So this was a revelation especially for

young male age let’s say 11 to 16 to 17 this was the main audience but was success so canon wanted immediately to make a sequel they wanted to a sequel so but for some reason which i don’t know until today they did not want shou kasugi to be the hero again of the movie because in revenge of the ninja he is the hero

Cal MacDonald (35:08.633)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (35:27.92)
right?

Sam Firstenberg (35:31.329)
Shoka Sugie is the hero and the Silver Mask Ninja is the villain, but they didn’t want they wanted different So they called me into the office and they told me we want to make a sequel But we want something else not Shoka Sugie and at the time The movie I think the movie Alien was pretty successful with Sigourney Oliver and Flesh Dance was successful at the time

Cal MacDonald (35:53.008)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (35:58.061)
And he decided the head of the company, why don’t we make it with a woman with the actress this side? Because, know, aliens, who knows? So it was fine with me. Again, as I told you, I’m a higher director. I don’t write the script and I was fine with it. said, OK, let’s go with it. But we still need Choko Sougi. So we got the same writer, Jim Silk, who wrote Revenge of the Ninja. And I started to work with him and we and I.

By then I already knew Shoka Sugie, I was friendly with him and I introduced, I exposed him or introduced him to the idea that he’s not going to be the main hero of the movie and he’s going to be a woman. He was very much against it. Naturally, because he was not the main hero. He’s a hero, a secondary hero in the movie. And he didn’t like the idea that it’s a woman. And he told me he was against it. He a woman doesn’t have the power, it’s not believable.

It’s not realistic. A woman doesn’t have the power to be the ninja powerful. And he was against it. He didn’t even want to participate in this kind of a story. So Jim Silk, the writer and myself, we say, how do we resolve it? We have to resolve this tense situation that we are in here. And somehow we came up with this idea that she is not a ninja. She’s possessed by a spirit of a dead ninja.

Of course, probably I was influenced by the movie Poltergeist. And The Exorcist was, by the way, the first horror movie I ever saw in my life. I’ve never seen a horror movie before Exorcist. And it really influenced me. It’s such a strong movie, you know. So this whole idea of possession, same thing Poltergeist. Poltergeist deals with possession with a little girl. So, okay.

Cal MacDonald (37:30.586)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (37:40.143)
All right.

Sam Firstenberg (37:51.791)
So, and this was acceptable by Shoka Sugi, the idea that there is a bad ninja, there is another bad ninja and he takes over her body. And he eventually, the character of Shoka Sugi, Yamada, will have to battle and overcome the bad, the bad ninja. Now, once we started to deal with the script, we were influenced as exactly what Lucinda said, poltergeist, exorcist, flesh dance.

because we needed a woman, she’s very athletic, she’s a dancer. So those elements of exorcism, athletic, dancing, athletics, and possession came into this script. There is a scene of exorcism, there is a medicine. So that’s how it came about. And it was a hybrid, a strange, strange combination of putting elements from different genres of movies together. By the way,

Cal MacDonald (38:45.188)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (38:50.777)
Shokasugi was right. The movie was not as successful as Revenge of the Ninja. From a commercial point of view, from the amount of viewers, Revenge of the Ninja was much more popular than Ninja III The Domination. So he was probably right about it. But with the years, as the years went by, it became a cult movie. And now it’s, I mean, for many obvious reasons, maybe it’s so ridiculous that…

People adopted it. They took it to heart. And there are so many loyal fans to this movie, know, enthusiastic followers with websites and Facebook pages and screenings, and I’m invited to screenings. So it became a cult, real cult movie.

Cal MacDonald (39:41.168)
That’s great. And I take it from there with Lucinda you then went on to Breaking Two, was it? So that’s another change of the genre, it’s all completely you’re doing like a musical now. And not only a musical, it’s a modern kind of breakdancing one as well.

Sam Firstenberg (39:47.664)
So yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (39:54.193)
You

Sam Firstenberg (39:59.355)
So you’re absolutely correct. The event, the chronicle of event that happened was that when we made the Ninja 3 The Domination, we needed a woman that would be a ninja. So we were looking for an actress which would be either very athletic or a martial artist or a dancer. So I don’t know if there are many, there are martial artists, Cynthia Rotrock.

made her own movies. She was a martial artist, but I don’t know, didn’t use her. And we were looking, so we found Lucinda, she was a dancer. She was athletic with a good build. You know, she had a good build like, because to do all this, the ninja stuff, we needed somebody that’s not too frail, too small. So Lucinda looks good, build well, and she was a dancer. She picked up the move very fast.

So we were making the movie with her and we finished the filming. Now we are in the editing. Editing usually takes time, double the time, triple the time of filming. And meantime, the company is now embarking on a new adventure. They are making a movie which is called Breakdance because Breakdance was hot at the moment. It was the beginning of hip hop culture in America and around the world. It was the beginning of rapping and…

They had the two stars of the movie, Shabadoo and Shrimp, and they were looking for a woman, an actress, a dancer who would join them. And they liked her. They liked her in the movie. She was a dancer, so she was cast. They made the movie break dance very fast, filming and editing, so fast that it came out to theater before Ninja 3 The Domination. So…

Her second part was out before this one. So break dance comes out then Ninja 3 The Domination was exhibited. But breaking was a huge success, tremendous success in terms of viewership and money and also MGM distributed. So it was huge, huge. So of course the company wanted to make immediately another movie and I was free.

Cal MacDonald (42:13.114)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Firstenberg (42:25.157)
for some reason, that I really don’t know, again, I don’t know what behind the office intrigues behind. So they did not hire the original director. And they approached me and said, would you direct a musical? I loved it. You know, of course, as I told you, I grew up with the Hollywood musicals. This is a dance movie, you know, we grew up Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, we saw those kind of movies.

Cal MacDonald (42:35.044)
Yeah

Sam Firstenberg (42:54.221)
And I loved it. And I love music in general. So I was very happy. The same thing happened to me like in Ninja. I was not familiar with the hip hop culture, you know, that was brewing, that was coming up. But luckily I met good people. I met Shabedoo and our choreographer Billy Goodman. And they ushered me in. And we were in the right environment.

Los Angeles was the birthplace of the West Coast hip hop culture. There is New York, there is Chicago, but East Los Angeles was the birthplace of the West style of hip hop. And we filmed the movie in East LA, in East Los Angeles. So they introduced me to this culture, they introduced me to the break dance, to break in, to rapping.

You know in the movie we have Ice T, the rapper, it was the beginning of his career. It was the beginning of rapping. So that’s why now the reason I was so confident taking a dance movie is number one because I love it. I love music. Secondly, I realized immediately in my mind that there is not much, there is not a big difference between action and dance movie, action movie and dance movie. Because of course you have the

Dramatic scenes, dialogue, people talking with each other. It’s no difference. It’s the same thing in every movie. But then the fight sequences, the action sequences, I don’t choreograph the fight sequences. I don’t choreograph, I don’t put together the action sequences. There are professional people who put it together for me. They show it to me as a director. I can make few decisions. And now my job is to interpret it into the screen.

Cal MacDonald (44:23.13)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Firstenberg (44:49.723)
So I can take a good fight scene, a good action scene and decide how to film it, how to edit it, how to put it together that it’s going to be exciting, the most effective when it is on the big screen for the audience. How involved the audience will be in it, how captivating the scene will be. So this is my job, to translate it, to interpret it. Same thing with dance. I don’t put the dances together. There is a choreographer.

And the choreographer will put the dance numbers together. They show it to me. I made, I can make few suggestion not about the dance moves because I don’t understand dance move. I’m not a dancer, but about the structure of the dance. Because in my, in my belief, every little action sequences, sequence, every fight sequence, every little dance must have a little story within it. It’s a, it’s a mini story within the big story. So I may make.

Cal MacDonald (45:33.157)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (45:48.923)
few suggestions, veto elements or whatever. And that’s why I was confident about it. And when I went right into directing it, I felt very comfortable right at home because as I told you, was not much a difference between really from a technical point of view between dance and action, not much different.

Cal MacDonald (46:09.893)
I think the question everyone asks, just the title he let it boogaloo. Where did that come from, do you know?

Sam Firstenberg (46:18.339)
Okay, I was not involved in this in the title when they asked me when they hired me when they asked me to direct the movie The name was already there break in two or break dance to electric bugalo and and And half of the script was already there now because this electric bugalo phrase became so synonymous with the 80s and so and even today in a a negative way, but

Cal MacDonald (46:41.178)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (46:48.561)
but because it became so Popular and big people started to ask not me, but you know researcher even researchers and and and the essays have been written about it Shabbat was introduced now and and michael shrimp And and there are many many theories when it came from but there was a style as I understanding there was a style of dancing a bugler

which goes back to the 50s, 60s, Michael Shrimp, his name is Bugalo Shrimp, I don’t know, and it was before the movie, you know. There is a historical element to this name, Bugalo, or Bugalo dancing, or electric Bugalo. So somehow the most

Cal MacDonald (47:28.815)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (47:45.425)
From what I understand, the most possible story is that Shabbat do suggested to Menachem Golan to add it to the breaking to add Electric Bougalot. But it was a phrase that existed before the movie. After the movie, it became what it is. And today in the general English language, it means sequel. So Electric Bougalot, mean a sequel.

Cal MacDonald (48:10.724)
Yeah, because…

Sam Firstenberg (48:14.081)
And there are all kinds of jokes floating around in the internet, in social media. once I saw somebody put, we are writing now Bible to electric Google.

Cal MacDonald (48:26.48)
Because even I used it this year because for our convention we do like a quiz night, know, just general nerd quizzes, just general. And I even called it Quiz Night 2 Electric Boogaloo. It’s just, so it’s like, you know.

Sam Firstenberg (48:41.539)
and then yeah and there is a documentary electric bugalo and yeah it phrase which is associated with the 80s with the 1980s with the pop culture of the all over the world with it and and it now has a meaning which means a sequel so it’s interesting it’s something now there is a little bit a negative connotation because there are the bugalo boys a group white supremacy group which are trying to

Cal MacDonald (48:45.859)
yeah, that’s

Cal MacDonald (49:08.079)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (49:09.871)
reignite the civil war in America. They are called the Bougalovour and it comes from the same thing. It will be the second sequel to the civil war. Civil war number two, electric bullet.

Cal MacDonald (49:23.536)
But yeah, it’s just so great that this one phrase has just travelled the world, like I’m sitting here in Scotland and I use it in such an affectionate way.

Sam Firstenberg (49:30.35)
Absolutely.

Cal MacDonald (49:32.324)
So, with that, just some quick questions. We’ve got about 10 minutes left, so some quick ones. Who was your favourite actor to work with?

Sam Firstenberg (49:43.797)
You know, I worked with some I worked with many actors even with the Two British actors John P. Wright. I work with the John Ryan and I I work with the

Sam Firstenberg (50:00.437)
his name. He wrote the script for Avenging Force, Jim Booth, Jane Booth, a very good actor. Both of them are excellent actors. I had a very good time and good success with Michael Dudikov. We made the American Ninja and Steve James, which I worked four times. I made four movies with Steve James. So I won’t say I have a favorite actor that I made the tens of movies with.

Cal MacDonald (50:14.894)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (50:26.607)
But I had good time and good different experiences, a different actor, different style of acting, different personalities. But those are the main. I worked with Eric Roberts, which is a fantastic actor. I worked with Margaret Avery, know, fantastic actresses. And all of this together, you know, even came out, you know, somebody wrote a book which is called Stories from the Trenches.

Cal MacDonald (50:56.291)
Alright.

Sam Firstenberg (50:56.453)
the movies of same Furstenberg, it has to do with this era of canon and the low budget movies of the 80s and the 90s, because there was a group of movies and group of director, Sheldon Laddage, Steve Carver, Joe Zito, other directors who were in this group of making this kind of movies, the same kind of movies that we are talking about right now.

Cal MacDonald (51:02.032)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (51:13.488)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (51:22.862)
Yeah, because it’s, yeah. Yeah, because it is something that seems to have died now with streaming and that, that we don’t have this, these fun B-movies. Just this pure, just, you know, if I want to sit down with my friends here, have a few beers and have just a fun movie, it’s just, that doesn’t seem to exist anymore. It’s quite sad in a way. Because also it gave so many talents their start as well.

Sam Firstenberg (51:23.729)
And this was fun, those movies of the 80s.

Sam Firstenberg (51:51.537)
So you’re absolutely right. things. First of all, gave a chance to start to begin Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van Damme. They all started with us in this low budget movies, even the first Terminator low budget movie, et cetera. And the other thing is that because there was no money, those movies were independent low budget. We call them independent low budget of the eighties.

The action that you see, didn’t have money. Those group of directors, we didn’t have money for special effects. We didn’t have the money for optical effect. There was no optical computer effects at the time. There were optical effects, but not digital. And we didn’t have the money. So everything has to be performed. So when you sit today and you see one of those movies, a Van Damme movie, Lionheart or American Ninja, you know that the action was really performed.

Stalin had to perform his actions. Schwarzenegger had to really perform his action. So there was not too much doubling, blue screen, digital effect, wires floating the actors up on the air. We really, really performed it. We, I did not, thank God. So if you see a car going into a lake,

Cal MacDonald (52:54.671)
Yeah.

Sam Firstenberg (53:09.623)
in the movie Ninja 3 The Domination, we really had a car going into a lake. It was not the Fast and the Furious, know, which all many effects are digitally created. So that’s the nice thing. And that’s what is commemorized today. And this is the legacy of those movies, the independent low budget genre movies of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s.

Cal MacDonald (53:30.768)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (53:37.006)
Yeah, because I remember it so clearly when my parents first got the VHS for the house and just renting from the B-movie section all the time. So many happy memories of those Canon films. And like I said, even though I know some people talk them down, but it’s just fun. That’s what they brought. It’s just pure fun. That’s just, you know, I think people sometimes miss that now with films because you know how fandoms are and all that. They miss just

You’re actually meant to enjoy a lot of this.

Sam Firstenberg (54:10.779)
That’s what the company Canon film. That’s what they wanted. They they produce entertainment mainly they did some other movies here and there mainly entertainment and I as a director within this company I stayed On track I stayed with the line. I didn’t want I didn’t try to break The mold of this company, but rather stay Consciously stay within the mold of those company. They paid me money

salary to make movies, I made movies in the style of this company, stayed with the style of this company, which were usually aimed at the common dominator of young male audiences all around the world. So this was international language. It was not movies particularly for Italian, or particularly for any type of people.

Cal MacDonald (55:05.348)
Yeah, it’s almost like they could almost have no dialogue and just people would just get it. Like you say, Italy or China or you could go to Africa and someone would just, they would get, they would understand a canon film just like that.

Sam Firstenberg (55:11.227)
Pure cinema.

Sam Firstenberg (55:20.171)
Absolutely,

Cal MacDonald (55:23.664)
And just, am I right? It’s 22 films in 22 years you did. You were doing one film every year basically. So just, and it wasn’t literally just finish one, the next one was there for you.

Sam Firstenberg (55:32.293)
Yes.

Sam Firstenberg (55:37.789)
Correct within the studio film within the studio system the big major studios it take a Director works for studio. It takes like four years between movies at least might take more Sometimes they develop a script and they will never they will develop a project and then they never make it within the independent Low budget world, which is today. We know it was not social low budget. We had it’s called today medium budget. We had a decent budget

But in this world, decisions have been made, were made quicker. So I have, of course I would have loved to make a studio movie, which I never did, with a budget of $25 million. It didn’t happen for me. But on the other hand, within the low budget studio movies, the movies came one after the other. And the movies were…

relatively successful in domestically what we call domestically means North America and internationally internationally so that’s why I was hired again and again so either Ken on some other companies I made I made I directed movies for other companies as well but they just kept coming they called me okay do you want to make a movie we have an idea we have a script either help us to work on the script or the script is already it’s it’s ready and you go ahead and do it

And so I was lucky at this level that I would make one movie after the other with almost no break in between. I did have breaks in between, but with almost no break in between. And so it gave me volume in my legacy, my career. I can say, wow, yeah, he made 22 movies, one television series.

So I’m pleased with this idea that I made many movies instead of making a big movie in the studio.

Cal MacDonald (57:31.97)
Okay, and I guess, but I’m guessing like just with that, I’ve got feeling I know what the answer to this is, but what’s the one film you would have loved to make? I get a feeling I know what the answer is. You kind of mentioned a few times earlier.

Sam Firstenberg (57:49.105)
You mean a movie that I would have loved to make in my fantasy? Or among the movies that I made?

Cal MacDonald (57:53.737)
well, I get the feeling you would have loved to have made a James Bond film, would you?

Sam Firstenberg (58:01.305)
So among, you I was involved in action a lot, not because I aimed at it in the beginning. I thought that I would be a drama director of making dramatic movies. So yeah, I would love to make a movie like The Darkest Hour or something solid, a drama movie that you have some action element here and there, but it’s not about violence and blood.

Cal MacDonald (58:19.908)
Yeah, all right, okay.

Sam Firstenberg (58:31.895)
I would love to make, I would have loved to make a western going out on the open, the west with horses and carriages and so something big and open. More or less, the closest that I believe I came to it was in the movie Avenging Force, which is a solid script with a stronger social message. It’s about white supremacy.

Cal MacDonald (58:37.488)
Okay.

Sam Firstenberg (58:59.233)
And the action is really spectacular in this movie. There was a good budget. was written by James Booth, the actor James Booth. Strong, solid script with a good drama, spectacular action and social commentary at the same time. I also directed the movie which is called Riverbend, which is also very, it’s about the…

Cal MacDonald (59:18.382)
Yeah. All right.

Sam Firstenberg (59:26.383)
racial injustice in the South in America with Steve James, which is also strong on the social level. So maybe, I don’t know, one of those movies I would have loved to make with a huge budget.

Cal MacDonald (59:32.816)
All right.

Cal MacDonald (59:38.447)
Yeah

Cal MacDonald (59:43.652)
Yeah. And we’re just about coming to the end. And a question we always ask at the audience is for any youngsters out there listening to them that want to pursue film, what’s your advice for them?

Sam Firstenberg (59:44.785)
you

Sam Firstenberg (01:00:00.891)
So one thing from a technical point of view, it’s much, much easier to make a movie today than it was in the eighties. We needed big, bulky cameras, huge lights, and we had to buy film and the film had to go to the laboratory and developed and printed. And all of this is a lot of money and editing, you need special equipment for editing. Nowadays, any filmmaker or any inspired filmmaker

storyteller, if he wants to put together a story, a movie, all he needs is a few hundred dollar camera. Nowadays, 4K cameras don’t cost, they are less than $1,000. Lights are very cheap, small and cheap, editing on the computer at home. So the process, the technical process became very, very simple, much cheaper, much simpler.

If you are engaged as a young filmmaker, if you are engaged in a simple, simple story that involves human relationship, dramatic story, then it’s easy. You need actors and you need your crew, skeleton crew, few people, and you can film your movie. If you want to deal with something more involved, sci-fi, science fiction, action, it takes…

it will become expensive because of what’s in front of the camera, not because of the camera, because… But for people who are talented and they want to tell a story, my advice to them is go ahead and do it. Get your family, you know. Your family has a restaurant, so write a story that takes place in a restaurant. Or your uncle has a garage, write a story about what takes place in a garage, I don’t know.

As long as you have a story that is compelling, that takes the audience, your viewer from this world, this reality to another reality, escapism for a short while of time, 90 minutes, two hours, and back. And even if the other advice, can say, even if your first story doesn’t work so great, don’t give up. You’re already…

Sam Firstenberg (01:02:20.837)
You have to be busy with your second story, with your next story, with your next movie, your next one. So whatever you fancy, if you like science fiction, you like special effects, today you can do a lot of special effects on the computer. You know, if you like drama, go ahead with drama. If you like action, you can attempt to do a small, very modest action movie that might lead you to a bigger action movie later.

But today is much easier. You guys are lucky. The young people of today are very lucky in those.

Cal MacDonald (01:02:48.996)
Yeah, yeah they are. They really are. Well, I’m feeling an old man these days myself, so I’m with you there. But Sam, thank you so much for taking the time out. It’s been an absolute pleasure and as we always do on this podcast, we’d like to invite you to our little convention. I don’t know how that would happen. If you’re ever in Scotland and you want to come along to us or well, but we might figure out we could do it virtually or something like that. We would love to have you there.

Sam Firstenberg (01:03:20.005)
Carl, last weekend I was in Germany, in Düsseldorf, Germany. There was a screening, a group of local arranged screening of American Ninja and American Ninja number two. On a theater big screen was beautiful, 4K, high resolution, the screening was fantastic. Audience, Q &A, I stayed after the screening, I answered the question.

Cal MacDonald (01:03:23.513)
Yeah, alright.

Sam Firstenberg (01:03:48.397)
later people came out, know, they come up with the books, they come up with cassettes for me to autograph, take pictures, selfies. I enjoy it very much. So whenever, if you ever guys have some screenings or something, I really like, I come to places, I like it to be associated with a screening of a movie that I directed, not just, not to come just to be in a convention, but rather if it is in conjunction with a screening.

Cal MacDonald (01:03:52.077)
Hahaha

Sam Firstenberg (01:04:16.197)
then people can ask them, they can ask me question. can clarify point. can tell stories about the production and how we made it. So that’s more appropriate. So hopefully you’re right. Hopefully I’ll come to Scotland to one of those festivals. And I also I’m being invited to a lot of film festivals. you know, film festival usually they show new movies, but here and there.

Cal MacDonald (01:04:31.467)
we would really love to have you.

Cal MacDonald (01:04:38.471)
that’s great. So, it will never do.

Sam Firstenberg (01:04:44.121)
In festivals they have the nostalgic section.

Cal MacDonald (01:04:47.054)
Yeah. Well, we do run like a cult film club up here, so you never know. We’ll watch this space, hopefully, when something might happen. But again, thank you so much, Sam. It’s been an absolute pleasure, this.

Sam Firstenberg (01:05:02.681)
So thank you for having me on your show. I enjoyed very much and I hope your listeners and your viewers will enjoy our interview.

And if you want, you need any photos from the movies behind the scene, et cetera, let me know. I can send you a link to Dropbox where I have photos that you can use if you need to.

Cal MacDonald (01:05:25.772)
thank you very much. I’ll be in touch over the email for them. Okay, so thank you everyone. We’ll see you again soon.

Sam Firstenberg (01:05:28.049)
So we’ll do it through the email. We’ll do it through the email.