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Welcome to SyncCast, presented by CinemaSense.

Hi everybody, welcome to The Synccast. This is Chris Atkinson from CinemaSense, joined by Jonathan Watkins.

Hello, hello, and today we are speaking with a very special guest. It's director Josh Rubin, his movie Where Wolves Within, comes out in theaters June 25th and on demand July 2nd.

Josh, welcome. How are you? How are you guys?

How are you indeed? If we're going to do puns and stuff, we might as well go right up the bat, like how the hell is the writer of this movie called Mission of Wolfe?

Anyway, I'm sure she's already gotten that a whole bunch, but she's taken it. She's taken each punch so elegantly on each challenge to cheek.

Yeah, I know. It's a miracle. You know, it's his will. I don't know. And how do they get a guy with the last name that is a sandwich to direct it? No idea.

That's what I was sitting there thinking the whole time. Okay, so let's go right into your cast. I think we need to talk about your cast first on this because you've populated it with a whole ton of recognizable character actors.

If you've watched any comic television show of any sort or anything like that, you recognize these people. Of course, you recognize Sam Richardson from VEEP and stuff like that.

You also recognize Molana Vine Trub, of course, AT&T commercials. There's so many people in this. So tell me what your process was in getting this incredible cast for this movie.

Oh man, there are so many different routes. You know, with all these all these films, studio films alike, you have a big board. You make your kind of wish list. You're sort of dream list.

I always knew that, you know, that I wanted to work with friends. I wanted to, I tasked the casting director, Dale Keller, to enact a no assholes policy. So everyone that kind of came there was like, that one's a bully. I put that one carries and falls very very strongly on one end of the political spectrum. Maybe we shouldn't have that part.

But I did know I wanted buddies. I wanted friends because we're in the middle of nowhere. I did my first film was, you know, a little bit closer to civilization, but still in the Hudson Valley, you know, near Woodstock, New York. This is in flashments. This is another 40 minutes out, kind of towards, you know, not desolation, but sort of, you know, we're going to be like summer camp, but in the winter. So winter camp, bring a buddy.

I knew from the get go. I wanted a George Basil, George who plays Marcus in the film, who has been on, yes, you know, like crashing and flaked and wrecked. He's done all these kind of awesome TV shows and like, I've known him for years, and he's very disarming and charming and magnetic and just like bitingly funny and is like a good time. So I said, right away, I want George to come aboard.

I made my dream list. I always wanted to work with Michael Churnas. I've always wanted to work with Sam Richardson, Melana and I've known each other for a while over a decade. So I basically took these big swings with folks who I'd either met in the comedy community or tasked to my actors once they were cast.

Hey, who do you want to come play your spouse? Who do you want to come play your husband, your partner? And specifically with George, he said, well, you know, I think Sarah Burns would be great. And so then he would have a buddy to bring your camp and then Harvey Geon. I said, who do you want to play your husband? He said Cheyenne Jackson and Cheyenne. I was like, holy shit.

I had thought of Cheyenne, but he's wonderful. He just done a watchman, you know, and I had known him since the Broadway days. And so it was just, it was kind of a, it was a holistic venture, you know.

And I love that you cast Michaela Watkins too. I've loved her for years ever since I saw her on SNL, which, and I believe she was the one that got, when she got let go from SNL, she said Lord Michaels told her it was because she was too funny, which I thought was interesting.

I, I'd buy it. Yeah, I would totally buy it. Yeah, she, she's also one of those like just incredible human beings who's kind of down for whatever, you know, I mean this whole cast really, you know, yeah.

But yeah, just just just a wonderful human being who's just like down to clown, you know, and yeah.

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