The Point Radio: PROSPECTORS Gets Us Rich – Quick!

  This weekend a new indy comedy open is several major U.S. cities. FAMILY WEEKEND stare Kristen Chenoweth, Matthew Modine plus producer/co-star Adam Russo who gives us an exclusive look at the new film. Plus there’s a lot more than gold in those hills! Meet Steve Brancato and Amanda Adkins from PROSPECTORS, a new series on The Weather Channel about digging for real riches – and DC’s Bad Guys get their own documentary. Take us ANYWHERE! The Point Radio App is now in the iTunes App store – and it’s FREE! Just search under “pop culture The Point”. The Point Radio – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or on any other mobile device with the Tune In Radio app – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Transcript

Hello, it's Mike Raub. Welcome to The Point, where all parts of pop culture come together. There's a lot more than gold in them there, Hills. We got prospectors, a new series from the Weather Channel about folks who dig in deep and come up rich.

And there's a new comedy opening over the weekend called Family Weekend. We've got an exclusive look at that. Plus the bad guys in D.C. get a new gig. Let's get to The Point right now. This is The Point, The Point radio, get The Point radio.

Family Weekend is a new independent comedy starring among others Kristin Chenoweth and Matthew Modine. And it's a film with kind of a unique premise as explained by producer and co-star Adam Russo. Family Weekend is a comedy about a 16-year-old girl who takes her parents hostage.

She's trying to teach her family to be normal. It's sort of a fantasy for anyone who ever wanted to fix their family and make them what you wanted them to be. And even though she's sort of misguided in her approach, I think ultimately it's a really important message about families, parents showing up for their kids and the importance

of family togetherness. You have to admit, kind of a radical concept. Just the concept of her drugging and tying up her parents, that itself is pretty extreme. It's a fictional drug that doesn't actually exist that allows her to sort of take them hostage and overpower her.

Matthew Modine is about a foot and a half taller than she is. But the conceit is such that her family never pays attention to her. She's a big jump roping champion and that's how the movie opens and her parents don't show up for the competition. And she's kind of out of ideas of how to get her family to get out of their own world and

start paying attention to her. And so she creates this elaborate plan and lists her brothers and sisters to help her. And yeah, it's very interesting what happens. Like the roles of both producer and co-star is unique in the movie business. How'd that come about?

Yeah, it's interesting. It is true. You know, it actually happened as organically as it could in that combination, which is that I started as an actor and I went to college with Ben, who's the director, and we've made tons of short films together and we started a theater company together.

Actually, one of the other producers had started the theater company with us. And so we had a long history of sort of creating our own work and Ben would direct and I would act in it. And then we came out, it's a Los Angeles and I'd gone to grad school for acting and heat for directing.

And we kind of thought, well, you know, this worked for us before. So it's that whole ignorance and confidence thing. All you need to be successful is ignorance and confidence. So we didn't really know what it meant to start a film company. We didn't know really what it meant to produce a film, but we just started asking lots of

questions and I went and got a job at Spyglass and then I took night school, producing school at UCLA and just started trying to surround ourselves with the smartest, most competent people we could find. And along the way, we had amazing people help us. You know, Oscar winner Edward Zwick came on board to help us.

And you know, once he came on board, he really helped us get cast. And then, you know, we were off and running. It was basically, I had a friend tell me, you know, if you want to be a producer, whatever needs to be done, you do that. And so we basically did that.

We created this opportunity so that Ben could direct and that I could act and that was always the impetus for it. And then along the way, you know, I really found that I really love producing too. As an aggressive new filmmaker, Adam talked about his take on the evolving landscape of all the places to present new material these days.

Well, you know, I think it's a really exciting time for it to be an independent filmmaker because of all of those reasons you just cited. I mean, what it's allowing it to do, first of all, with technology becoming so much less expensive, it's allowing people the ability to produce their own content. You know, 30 years ago, you had to have a studio deal to do anything.

You know, now you can make your own films. You can make high production value films or television, not less television, but more films on your own. And then like you're talking about with all these distribution outlets, and as the audience becomes more and more comfortable receiving content that way, you know, watching it on

their on their computers or, you know, as computers are, you know, synced almost seamlessly now as televisions, it really allows for the possibilities of independent filmmakers to be able to create content without having to go through so many middlemen to get to the end user. And I think it's really, really exciting.

And the more the more people get comfortable receiving, you know, films and television shows like that, I just think it's more powerful for the independent filmmaker. And after Family Weekend, Adam has more plans for the rest of the year. So coming in next, we're shooting a movie called Seven Years, Three Days, which Jesse Zwick is a writer for Parenthood.

He's writing and directing and Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskowitz are going to produce that with us. So, you know, they were with us on Family Weekend and they're staying with us for this, which is very exciting. It's kind of an updated big chill.

It's basically seven friends, seven years after college get together after one of their friends tries to kill themselves. It's really an amazing script. It's kind of amusing on how Facebook and Twitter have changed our friendships and health. And as we think we know each other, but we don't, it's a really beautiful script.

So we're doing that this summer. And then in January, we're doing a movie called When We First Met, which is basically 500 Days of Summer meets Groundhog Day. It has a guy tries to pick up a girl, fails miserably, and then figures out a way to go back in time and relive that pickup over and over and over again.

And that's also an incredible script. We're doing that with Mason Novick who produced 500 Days of Summer and produced Juno. So I think that that's also going to be a really awesome film, which I'm so excited to do. Family Weekend showing right now in select theaters in New York, LA, Detroit, Chicago,

and Dallas. Check your local listings. These are a lot of the latest in pop culture. Okay, well, it's not the biggest surprise, but it's good to finally make the official announcement.

At Valiant is bringing Quantum and Woody back as a new ongoing series. The new book will be written by James Asmuth. Tom Fowler will be doing the artwork. Ryan Suk is doing the covers as well. And it'll be the usual variants that Valiant produces.

The book will, of course, tie into the regular Valiant universe already established and will be in comic stores on the 10th of July. The folks at ICV2 have released a number of interesting charts about how things worked in the comic industry over the past year. Well, the more interesting, the top 10 superhero graphic novel properties for 2012.

These are the ones that have sold the most in stores and also have gotten the most buzz from retailers as well. At number 10, it's Watchmen at number nine. Daredevil Thor comes at a number eight. Marvel continues to sweep at number seven with X-Men at number six, Spider-Man.

And then it moves over to DC for the top five, Green Lantern at number five, Justice League at number four. Superman at number three, Avengers brings Marvel back one away from the top at number two. And the number one top superhero graphic novel property for 2012 is Batman from DC.

Where these charts are available, some really interesting pieces too as well. Check them out at icv2.com. It's the first anniversary already of Alicia Day's Geek and Sundry YouTube channel. And they've racked up just about 500,000 subscribers over the past year and about 44 million views. There have been some changes in the programming, including the addition of five new shows,

Alicia's Ark, Space Janitors, Fetch Quest, and the Player Ones, plus a renewal for season two of Tabletop, the Wil Wheaton board game show. See the full lineup and of course all the past shows as well at youtube.com slash Geek and Sundry. Winter 2013, just about behind us and a couple of success stories from the cable networks

Continuum will be coming back to the Sci-Fi channel for a new 13 episode second season. That will premiere not far from right now on the 7th of June. And TBS has renewed Kukertown for a fifth season. There will be 13 more episodes of that show headed to TBS in 2014. Warner Brothers Home Entertainment and DC Entertainment are beginning work on a new

documentary focusing on the villains of the DC universe. It's called Necessary Evil. It will be narrated by legendary actor Christopher Lee and filming has already begun in Wondercon this year and will continue throughout the summer as well. The promise is to have in-depth interviews with creators, storytellers, and anybody who

crafted the personality and profiles of the many villains in comic book history. Look for Necessary Evil to hit the DVD shows more than likely sometime early in 2014. This is The Point. Alright forget Yosemite Sam, it's more like Storage Wars than about 14,000 feet above the earth.

It's Prospectors, a new weather channel show about folks who make a living and a good one by RockHounding. Amanda Atkins along with veteran minor Steve Brancato are the principals here and Amanda Philbison on just what the show is about. Well this show showcases our lives as minors and prospectors up in the high elevation of

Colorado. We work in some of the most brutal environments in the country. As far as being up as high as we are, fighting altitude, crane jumpers, the weather, lightning, you know sideways hail up at 14,000 feet. That's no fun when you're trying to work.

So our daily lives are a struggle up there but we wouldn't have it any other way. So I asked Steve, how do you actually decide you want to be a minor? Well you know I woke up one day at the kid and decided I didn't want to have a boss or be the boss and I just wanted to run around and play in the mountains and I wanted a chance to at least be able to feed myself and I liked the idea of being able to make really big

money at it as well. I moved out to Colorado in 92 and it took me about 10 years to figure out what it was I was going to do. I was actually sort of dinking around on the weekends having fun RockHounding. A friend of mine said you know you can get paid for that.

There's some money in it and I started looking into doing it full time back in summer of 2002 by Independence Day of 2002 I had quit selling Neat which is what I had been doing before that and started just swinging a hammer full time for myself. It's paid off really well. I've been lucky you know when I first got into the business people said you know you

can't make a living at this. It's great fun on the weekends. But I've noticed since being in the business there are a few of us who have some sort of it's like a natural inclination toward finding new material. I mean we've got all of us seem to have an instinct for it.

I don't know how else to put it. I mean I don't have a formal education in geology yet I have better success in the field than many people who have graduated school of mines with geology degrees. You're either born to do it or you're not you know and for me it was something that was inside me it just hadn't quite taken form yet and once I found myself and my career

out in the woods I was locked in. I mean this is it I couldn't imagine doing anything at all. Amanda who's also a former model said well for her it was almost like a family legacy. I come from a long line of miners you know starting in West Virginia where me and my family are originally from and to where I am today I've really been handed down this

trade and I fell in love with it when I first got the opportunity to work at it and make income. I was selling the gemstone that was mining by the time I was 12 years old and I really can't see life any other way. I'm really good at it.

It's like Steve is saying you can't really teach or force yourself to be a good prospector. You're born with a knack for it and you can basically get in there and find enough material to make a great living off of or just be a weekend warrior and have fun with it as a hobby. You know I think everybody has the potential to make some money at it.

It's just how much depends on your experience and your instinct for it and how good you are at it. Another misnomer is that Steve and Amanda are out mining for gold and silver. There's a lot more valuable than that out there. Generally miners are chased after ore bodies like you're saying silver, gold, metal, things

like that. It really wasn't until after World War II when this country had a little bit more disposable income that people started to collect things and started taking more of an interest in mineral specimens and market development. What we're able to do is go back over a lot of that old ground and find what was considered

at the time to be just secondary minerals of no real ore value. We can actually go back into these old mines and produce more value today from mineral specimens than whatever came out in metals. So what kind of money does this bring in? If you do the math on an hourly, hour for hour it works out really well.

I can't imagine, without a formal education there's nothing else that I could do that would pay as well. But over the course of a year it's okay. I don't know. It's a good living.

I mean it's kept me above water since O2. How does that calculate in real world terms? An average day for us is two to three thousand dollars a day during mining season. Okay, now gosh, let's see. It doesn't happen for us all year.

But if we're doing two to three thousand dollars a day for an average. Now during this mining season we're going to have a lot of days that are extraordinary. And I'm talking you know twenty, thirty thousand dollars a day or more. You know cumulative it can be upwards of a million dollars a year. Now not every year is going to be a million dollar a year.

Not every year I can expect to make a lot more than I can make if I was perhaps an RN. You know those more lucrative jobs. Okay, before you get too excited there's a lot of danger involved as well. As Amanda explains.

The worst dangers I've had you know take this season for example. You know at the very end of May, beginning of June I'm digging in one of my great gemstone pockets that I had found. And I have a fella come up behind me and knock a pistol and say find another hole. You know that's a scary, angering, terrifying moment where you know everything I've done

gets put through the test. Everything I'm doing. And I face claim jumpers. And there's people out there they're so greedy they are willing to shoot you for your mental and gems.

And for me that has to be the scariest part of what I do. The elements are terrifying. The steepness, the grade, the slope, the height. You know we're up several thousand feet in the air hanging on the side of a mountain on loose callus.

And the worst thing I have to fear is men. Catch all the risks and all the rewards too with Amanda and Steve on Prospector's new episodes every Tuesday on The Weather Channel. And see more right now at weatherchannel.com. The full and waiting time.

That's a wrap for the podcast. If you switch on over though for more pop culture all it takes is a couple of clicks and you're at getthepointradio.com or you can catch up the latest 24-7 or do it on your mobile device, on your iPhone, your iPad, with our free app in the App Store right now. Search under pop culture at The Point or on your droid or blackberry with a free app called

TuneIn. The podcast here though is produced twice every week by Malcol dot com. It's in the iTunes podcast directory and of course we're on social media under The Point radio for Facebook and Twitter.

May all your Easter eggs be easy to find this weekend and come on back. We'll see you here in a few days. Thanks for watching.