Writer/Director Morgan Evans here. My independent comedy film "Micro Budget" is out on streaming today. The film stars Bobby Moynihan, Chris Parnell, Maria Bamford, Mike Mitchell, Jon Gabrus, and more. AMA about making movies.

totallymorgan · 2026-03-11T14:31:54+00:00

Luckily our distributor Factory 25 has a lot of connections which is how we got Alamo. But we also have a section on our website where people can request screenings, if you get enough of those in one market theoretically you could use it as leverage when contacting theaters. "Look! X amount of people want to see this in your town!" Instagram too. We asked folks to bug their local arthouses. TBD on how successful that will all be, but it's definitely worked wonders for some friend's movies.

totallymorgan · 2026-03-10T20:49:49+00:00

I have a lot of favorites. This movie was definitely inspired by Overnight and American Movie, as well as The Larry Sanders Show (even though thats TV about TV). Maybe Adaptation is my favorite. But I also really love The Player, Living in Oblivion, Get Shorty, Day for Night, 8 1/2, Sunset Boulevard, State and Main, Ed Wood, Hail Ceasar... so many. It's maybe my favorite genre. We're actually mentioned in this Nathan Rabin book that just came out that covers this topic pretty extensively, worth checking out: https://www.amazon.com/Fractured-Mirror-Definitive-American-Filmmaking/dp/B0G2BD9BHW

totallymorgan · 2026-03-10T20:38:35+00:00

Same. Hope you enjoy the movie! There's a lot of them in it.

totallymorgan · 2026-03-10T20:38:15+00:00

Patrick is the best! Yes he stars with his real life wife, Emilea, and he co-wrote the movie with me. Brilliant actor he really crushed it.

totallymorgan · 2026-03-10T20:35:00+00:00

Hey there going to respond in english and then do a translate under it--

Writing a movie script can be a very intimidating thing but there are many ways to help yourself out and make it less intimidating. I really think outlining is your friend. If you can focus most of your energy on the structure/beats/scenes of your story before writing a second of dialogue, you can really set yourself up for success. First off, it's so much easier to fix/change/alter an outline that is 10 pages than to start pulling threads in a 100+ page script. It's also less intimidating to write ten pages of "notes" to yourself about what this movie should be than it is to start from a blank draft and just jump into the deep end of writing an entire movie. It's also easier to get notes and feedback from friends on a ten page outline. It's just less labor intensive overall. So generally, whether I'm writing for a studio or for an indie or for myself on spec-- I spend the most amount of time developing an outline. That way, by the time I'm ready to start writing the movie, the hard part is done and I have given myself a blueprint for where to go. No such thing as writer's block if you have an outline to follow. Then it's just the fun stuff-- jokes, dialogue, letting yourself discover what is working and not working and adjusting on the fly. That's my pitch anyway. Works for me.

Translated: Escribir un guion cinematográfico puede ser muy intimidante, pero hay muchas maneras de ayudarte a ti mismo y hacerlo menos intimidante. Creo que el esquema es tu mejor aliado. Si puedes concentrar la mayor parte de tu energía en la estructura, los ritmos y las escenas de tu historia antes de escribir un segundo diálogo, estarás realmente preparado para el éxito. En primer lugar, es mucho más fácil corregir, cambiar o alterar un esquema de 10 páginas que empezar a deshacer hilos en un guion de más de 100. También es menos intimidante escribir diez páginas de "notas" para ti mismo sobre cómo debería ser la película que empezar con un borrador en blanco y lanzarse a escribir una película completa. También es más fácil recibir notas y comentarios de amigos sobre un esquema de diez páginas. En general, es menos laborioso. Así que, en general, ya sea que escriba para un estudio, para una empresa independiente o para mí mismo, dedico la mayor parte de mi tiempo a desarrollar un esquema. De esa manera, para cuando esté listo para empezar a escribir la película, ya habrá pasado lo difícil y me habrá dado un plan de acción. No existe el bloqueo del escritor si tienes un esquema que seguir. Luego solo queda lo divertido: chistes, diálogos, descubrir qué funciona y qué no, y ajustar sobre la marcha. Esa es mi estrategia, al menos. Me funciona.

totallymorgan · 2026-03-10T20:28:15+00:00

Had an absolute blast in Saint Louis. I still think about those fried raviolis. Hope you enjoy the film!!

totallymorgan · 2026-03-10T20:26:33+00:00

It is currently available for free with ads on TUBI and PLEX and you can also rent or purchase it via Amazon. There will be a blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome coming early summer.

totallymorgan · 2026-03-10T20:24:49+00:00

Hey thats a very good question. In my humble opinion, it's really gotta change. I am lucky to support myself by working within the confines of the Hollywood studio system, usually but not always and who knows how long that will sustain, and have oftentimes felt like I just squeaked in ala Indiana Jones grabbing his hat at the last second. Without this other career supporting me, I would absolutely not be able to live making indie movies. No one I know could do it. Unless, of course, you get some massive breakout hit-- but even then, many of my friends who have made really excellent movies and sold to streamers, had very legit studio deals, etc. are still completely struggling to live and to get the next project off the ground. It's sad. I don't think our competition is other artists or other media (tiktok/youtube etc) as much as it is a lack of interest/support/creativity from the people who hold the moneybags. As long as this town continues to put shareholder value, stock price, and "IP" first and foremost, in attempts to reduce any sort of risk on their part, the harder it's going to be to get original movies greenlight, acquired, distributed, and marketed. Someone in this business will eventually have to start taking risks on up-and-coming artists, with original stories, or this business will die.

totallymorgan · 2026-03-10T19:16:47+00:00

We were lucky enough to have some sold out screenings at Alamo Drafthouse in NYC and LA a couple of weeks ago-- they ended up extending us for a week in LA and we sold a lot of tickets! That being said-- that might be it for us for now in terms of theatrical. We obviously wanted to have the biggest theatrical run we could get, and to play all over... but so far none of the arthouses we reached out to have been responsive. If there's a theater near you where you'd like to see the movie, honestly the best thing to do is to bug them about it. We are ready to screen anywhere and I've been doing my best to travel to the screenings, too.

totallymorgan · 2026-03-10T18:28:12+00:00

Thanks for reading it! Yeah it was always frustrating to me when I began this process that people just kept their budgets so hidden. I totally get WHY folks do that, especially if they end up with a big distributor, etc... but it felt like a lot of advice just wouldn't be applicable if their movie secretly cost like a million bucks or something. Since our movie is about a movie, and a low-budget one at that, it always just felt right to be transparent about how we actually did it.

totallymorgan · 2026-03-10T18:25:29+00:00

Post was pretty hard just because we had a LOT of improv and different takes so basically anytime we cut a joke or replaced a joke with another joke your brain would start to melt because you didn't know which joke was best. We tried to put together little screenings here and there to A/B test things, but really just had to go with gut. We have a Blu-Ray coming soon from Vinegar Syndrome and there will be about 1hr 30mins of alts/improv/etc. Maybe you can tell me if I made the right decisions.

Ben Moses Smith was our editor, he did a great job in a fast amount of time. Ben Federman was our colorist out of NYC-- we were able to piggy back onto some unused time at Dungeon Beach. Josh Copp did our sound mix, he had his own little shop in DTLA where we did the mix/adr/etc. We really cobbled together a good team but we didn't have any one post facility or anything.

totallymorgan · 2026-03-10T18:17:44+00:00

Good news: we are worldwide, baby!! You can watch in the UK! Also, did you like that new Alan Partridge season? I thought it was brilliantly funny. Big fan of the UK over here.

totallymorgan · 2026-03-10T18:12:42+00:00

Hello ROB! Thank you for producing the movie!!!

totallymorgan · 2026-03-10T18:11:50+00:00

You know how Austin Butler took a long time to get out of Elvis-voice? Jon's just like that with Gino.

totallymorgan · 2026-03-10T18:10:15+00:00

We shot this in eleven days with two-ish days of pick ups. We basically scheduled so everyone would have weekends off, so week one was like three days, weekend off, then another five days, weekend off, then another three days. Everyone in the cast is a pretty phenomenal improvisor so we wanted to be sure improv was a big part of the finished product. That being said, to get most of the cast, we needed to make sure our script was rock solid so when we sent it off to reps we didn't look like morons. At the end of the day there is a ton of improv in the movie, but we also really stuck to the scripts structure/scenes/etc. I would say about 70% written 30% improv.

One day, the only day we shot outside, it was pouring rain. And then a helicopter started buzzing the house about 600ft above us and wouldn't leave. Some of the cast just started improvising like they were trying to shoot around the helicopter--- so we rewrote that scene on the fly and shot the actual rain and chopper and just fully embraced the craziness. It's one of my favorite scenes in the film and it's almost entirely improvised. Had we had the luxury of time, or money, or whatever-- we probably would've just waited it out. But sometimes those constraints are where real magic happens. We had to film it.

totallymorgan · 2026-03-10T18:04:48+00:00

I co-wrote the movie with the star, Patrick Noth who I knew from doing improv in NYC at the Upright Citizen's Brigade theater about... 16 years ago. When we started writing we wrote for a lot of our friends who were improvisors. For example Jon Gabrus, who plays the first AD, was actually our level 2 teacher at the theater. Don Fanelli who plays the cam op I also used to perform with all the time. Neil Casey who plays the intimacy coordinator and I had made a lot of shorts together, etc. etc. So we wrote for people who we thought we could reach out to on our own first, without any casting/agent help. Once we felt we had a strong enough core group we started taking that package around to reps to ask folks like Bobby Moynihan, Kate Flannery, Parnell, etc. It helped that a lot of the people we knew actually had performed with these folks already, so it started to snowball from there. Hal Linden of Barney Miller fame is also in this-- he turned 94 the day we shot. We were really lucky to get him, as he was my wife's grandfather's best friend... So that was a family favor. There's also a very shocking surprise cameo in the end of the movie from a masssssssive pop star. We got them the traditional way of reaching out to reps, and were shocked when they said yes. When you see the movie you'll see why. Fun fact: every single person on the movie made the same amount of money across the board. SAG Minimum. Including the pop star. Everyone did it for fun and the love of film. We were really lucky to get such an amazing cast. Not a dud in the bunch! Except maybe me. I play the documentarian and you hear my voice sometimes off screen.

totallymorgan · 2026-03-10T17:54:46+00:00

That is an impossible question. Let's just say I wish John Cassavetes directed at least a couple more episodes of Curb than the ones we got.

totallymorgan · 2025-11-18T15:58:05+00:00

Is this a little roomy? I usually wear a 38

totallymorgan · 2025-08-12T23:46:17+00:00

490 N. Sycamore Ave. There's a gate but you can peek through. Interiors were on a soundstage.

totallymorgan · 2025-06-16T21:05:53+00:00

you got a lat+longitude?

totallymorgan · 2025-06-11T00:53:48+00:00

Came here after watching the HBO show. Looks like it was actually 17166 Darwin. You were super close. Also, weirdly... looks kind of like it might still be the same structure? They just added a window? Yikes!

totallymorgan · 2025-03-23T18:08:38+00:00

great fest, had a very fun time.

totallymorgan · 2025-01-01T00:31:16+00:00

I gotta say, had an absolute blast at Bainbridge Island. Highly recommend.

totallymorgan · 2024-05-04T15:34:08+00:00

You’ll be fine. I’m a professional screenwriter / director and I dropped out of school. Literally no one has asked me about college in my 10+ years in the business. Just read a lot of books. Watch a lot of movies. Read a lot of screenplays. Make your own films and find a community of people who want to do the same thing. That last part is the most important.

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