ENCORE: James McAvoy on California Schemin'

James McAvoy (0:00)

Guys, this is kind of weird. I listen to you guys a lot.

Lizzie Bassett (0:06)

Stop.

Chris (0:07)

Here's what's weird for me. When I was in college, a girl I dated, we saw Atonement together. And I think we both realized we weren't for each other because I fell in love with Karen Knightley, and she fell in love with you.

And we drew like drawings for each other. We were weird artsy kids. And I drew a drawing of you from Atonement for her. It's a very weird time in my life. It's very weird to be talking to you right now.

James McAvoy (0:30)

My natural curiosity just means I want to see the picture.

Chris (0:33)

It's like a full shot of you in your like Dunkirk Army gear. Maybe she still has it. I don't know.

James McAvoy (0:39)

I hope so.

Chris (0:40)

We don't stay in touch. But anyway, Lizzie, please speak.

Lizzie Bassett (0:46)

Gladly. Hi. Welcome.

James McAvoy (0:48)

Hello. And action.

Chris (1:00)

Hello, dear listeners and welcome back to a special bonus episode of-

James McAvoy (1:06)

This is crazy.

Chris (1:07)

Your favorite podcast full stop, What Went Wrong? A podcast that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone your first movie, let alone the first movie you've made as a listener of What Went Wrong. That's right. We are talking to-

Lizzie Bassett (1:23)

Yeah, because that's the most important crossfire.

Chris (1:26)

It's the most important decision our guest has ever made.

We are talking to the incredible actor, director, producer, James McAvoy. James, thank you so much for listening to the show, and thank you for being here today to talk about your incredible directorial debut, California Schemin, a movie that I watched and loved and then also was like, come on, he's good looking, he's a great director, he's a great actor, like this kind of, in Hollywood's contracting, there are not a lot of directing jobs around, and here comes this new guy taking my directing jobs. It's an incredible accomplishment. We're so excited to have you on the show. Thank you for joining us.

James McAvoy (2:04)

Thank you so much for having me, guys. I am a massive fan of the pod, as people sometimes call it. I always feel it's slightly reductive. So I'm going to call it the podcast.

Yeah, I've been listening to you guys for ever since I started editing California Schemin and I just needed something to get me out of the movie and out of my head about movies. And my editor, Joe Sawyer, was like, you need to listen to more movie stuff. And he put me on to you guys and I like railed through you guys cycling to and from work every day. I just went through everything that you had. I love it. I think you guys are great.

Lizzie Bassett (2:43)

I'm thrilled to hear that. I'm also terrified because I'm always like, do the people that we're talking about listen to this podcast? Obviously, we haven't covered you at all yet or anything you've done, but it is an honor and I'm going to out you, James, as one of our full stop supporters. I am. I was compelled.

James McAvoy (3:04)

Yeah.

I just love what you guys did so much. I was like, I'm going to support. I'm going to support. That's it. That's it. I'm doing it. And a fit of economic flourish. I decided to become a full stop supporter.

Lizzie Bassett (3:17)

Well, you're the best.

We really appreciate it. But we are very excited to talk about California Schemin. We got to watch it. We both really loved it. We immediately texted each other afterwards and we're like, it's so good.

James McAvoy (3:29)

Oh, thank you. Awkward, right? If you don't like it and I'm like coming on the show.

Chris (3:33)

Well, the first thing we texted was, thank God it's good because it would have been like, so the lighting is great. Let's talk about that. No.

James McAvoy (3:45)

Dude, we got a distributor that I had worked with in the past on a movie like 10 years ago, who really wanted to do California Schemin.

A year before we started shooting, wanted to put in money up front and be the UK distributor. Real good, like got the story, was well into it. Anyway, we didn't end up going with them because we got more, we got offered a bigger fee from Studio Canal UK, who've been incredible and great collaborators.

But I was doing my, I was going through the edit and we were, I screened it an incredible amount of times to colleagues and people in the industry.