Ian Miles Cheong
@ianmiles · Mar 28, 2024
I would love to hear that story!
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
The small part I played was advocating that we bet everything on Jason’s script, which was the only one I liked, rather than divide our ~$3M budget across 2 movies.
And I thought that he should direct it too, even though he’d never directed a movie before. Jason was obviously super talented. We couldn’t really afford a proven director anyway and that person probably wouldn’t allow us to have creative influence or fun on set.
We had to take a big risk in buying the book rights for a lot money from Warners, even though Mel Gibson owned the script. Gibson was basically only speaking Aramaic at the time and wouldn’t talk to us lol.
Once we had the book rights, Gibson agreed to sell the script and allow the movie to proceed.
David and Jason then made an awesome movie on a tiny budget.
I gave a little feedback along the way and played the pilot for Tobacco One (they used my airplane), opening the door for Robert Duvall.
06:46 AM · March 28, 2024 · 238.4K views
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