Special Report: Sell Your House (2026)

0:05 Hold your ears, folks.

0:07 It's showtime.

0:08 People pay good money to see this movie.

0:10 When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the projection booth. Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.

0:20 Turn it off.

0:22 Turn it off!

0:50 Today is going to get crazy because there's a lot of actors in that diner.

0:54 We have nine characters in that diner. There's 12 on the call sheet.

1:06 I really have no idea what the fuck is going on.

1:10 They're buddies.

1:12 This is why you don't hire your friends.

1:14 I think it was one of the first things I said to him. I was like, hey, let's make a movie.

1:19 I don't have a script.

1:20 I need to sit down and write a goddamn script.

1:24 I ended up writing like a truck explosion and there's like 15 fucking characters.

1:30 There's no way we can do it.

1:31 I'll just sell my house and just fund the whole thing.

1:33 Don't do that, dude. You know, because that is so much pressure. What the fuck?

1:39 He sold your house?

1:40 Welcome home!

1:43 Oh, fuck. He sold his home. Financially, it makes no sense.

1:47 How are you feeling, James? Is it too late for a refund?

1:51 Three, two, one, action! Screw it up, man!

1:55 I'm very excited.

1:56 Very, very, very, very excited.

2:01 The dream team right.

2:05 Here.

2:05 I have a fucking baby coming next month.

2:07 What the fuck am I gonna do?

2:09 Is that crazy?

2:09 I wanna go again.

2:13 This is just the beginning of the fight for James.

2:16 It just fucking hurts, man.

2:18 He's just a friend.

2:18 You sold his house. You don't sell your house and put up every dollar you have to make a movie.

2:27 How did this happen?

2:28 How stupid are you?

2:29 Will games be, like, bankrupt and homeless? I don't know.

2:39 Ultimately, this doc is gonna.

2:41 There's gonna be people watching it because they want to do what we just did.

2:44 They're fucking dead at doing it.

2:47 That's it.

2:49 They're looking for advice, you know.

2:51 Why aren't you selling your house?

2:57 I don't have a house.

2:58 What are you talking about?

2:59 Where are we sitting right now?

3:01 I'm fucking rent, dude.

3:05 Hey folks, welcome to The Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White. Today I'm talking with co-directors Eric Foss and Brandon Pickering all about the film Sell Your House. What started as behind-the-scenes footage from the set of Francis Gallupi's The Last Stop in Yuma County grew into its own feature documentary following Gallupi and James, who sold his actual house to get this film made. Through years of friendship, stress, and the long, strange odyssey of independent distribution, Sell Your House premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and has since played festivals including Sitges and DocsMX, with a theatrical roadshow planned for December 2026. One thing I didn't bring up when I was talking with these gentlemen is

3:48 that I've always been curious about the film Last Stop in Yuma County. because it is very, very similar to another film that we talked about years ago called The Frontier. And I was curious if there's any sort of connection between the two films, because it's almost a carbon copy. But I might leave that for a video discussion at another time. Visit www.sellyourhousefilm.com for more information and to find out where the movie is playing near you. Thanks so much for listening.

4:20 Enjoy.

4:21 How the heck did this project start? I have to know the dirty details because you talk a little bit about it in the film, but I kind of want to know more of the backstory of this one.

4:33 Yeah.

4:34 Short answer is beer. A long answer is me and Francis were drinking beers together. He asked me what I wanted to do on his movie. And I was drawing a blank because we were both filmmakers and I was happy to help him grip or whatever, but you can get a better grip than me.

4:57 So I.

5:00 Had just finished a short doc. He liked it and he asked, hey, maybe you can shoot some BTS stuff. I agreed, happy to help out a friend. And that blossomed into what you see today over many years. A lot of apprehension to do a project so big.

5:20 I could imagine. And then Brandon, how do you get roped into this?

5:24 Me and Eric had worked for a few years together on some questionable reality TV shows. The most notable of which is called Naked and Afraid, which I'm sure you can imagine what that looks like. And so we've been working and I'd been a fan of James, the guy that sold his house. He has a brand called Local Boogeyman.

5:47 And I saw a post on Instagram of him and Foss together. And it was like, ready to work on this behind the scenes documentary.

5:55 And what?

5:56 And I immediately texted Foss, what's going on?

5:59 What are you doing?

5:59 And he was like, yeah, I'm doing this behind the scenes thing. You want to help? And I was like, yeah. And he was like, if you do, you'll lose a bunch of money. And I said, yeah. And then I lost a bunch of money for three and a half years, four years now, actually. So yeah, here we are.

6:18 And I have to tell you, I've seen Stolen Kingdom. I absolutely loved that.

6:22 Oh, thank you very much. I'm glad you liked that one.

6:25 Which was harder or easier to do, breaking the law by going to Disney's islands that are forbidden or making this documentary?

6:33 Well, thankfully, I never had to go to Discovery Island. We did sneak into a few places at Disney, which I probably shouldn't talk about for legal reasons. There were difficulties with both of them.

6:47 That's all I'll say.

6:49 Whatever.

6:49 The Disney Corporation shouldn't be involved in this conversation.

6:56 Eric, did you have any idea how long this project was going to go when you signed on for it?

7:01 No, not at all.

7:02 Originally, I was just going to film most of the days on set with the Last Stop crew. And along the way, a few people were like, well... Originally it was called Hire Your Friends. It wasn't even Sell Your House. My girlfriend at the time said, this story is Sell Your House. And then Richard Brake at lunch one day told me, you should make this a feature film. Both suggestions I resisted until about two or three weeks after filming Last Stop and the dust had settled and I started to realize they were right. Then after, okay, we're making a feature documentary. We thought that it was just going to like, they were going to go to Fantastic Fest.

7:57 They were going to sell a million tickets and then there is going to be a buyer and they would sell the film and then we would be done filming. Happy ending, the end. But that was because I had no idea how distribution worked. So then we started this journey of trying to understand distribution because The story of Sell Your House doesn't end until we find out if James got his house back.

8:21 Right.

8:21 And no spoilers on that.

8:23 Right.

8:24 Never.

8:24 Not once.

8:26 Just don't look at his Instagram.

8:28 Right.

8:31 And as co-directors, how do you kind of divvy this stuff up? And who finds doing what to be the better thing?

8:39 We both kind of split. We split editing kind of 50-50, although I.

8:45 Am a little bit more big picture like I'm looking at the correct me if I'm wrong Brandon but I look at it a little bit more from a zoomed out perspective and Brandon's all of the really cool cuts in the movie are Brandon because he he's like he gets these idea these cool ideas that no one will ever have because he's really good really amazing editor and and then he'll just like show up with these crazy transitions or cuts or whatever, I'm like, thank God you're here because there would be so much less style if I was cutting this whole thing.

9:22 Yeah.

9:23 We weren't able to hire editors because we had no money, so we had to do it ourselves. Foss is right. I would kind of... He had to be a bit more big picture because he had to go and... From the most part, he was filming with Francis and James by himself, right? So he was like, well, what do I go and shoot with them? He was thinking about the next thing and the next day that he would have to go and figure out what to do. So yeah, I would just kind of go ahead and start paving a path and sort of, this is what we have so far and this is where I think we can go.

9:57 And then we would have a conversation about it and it'd be okay and then Foss would go off and ask Francis and James questions and figure out you know where they were going to go and where the movie Last Stop was going and figure it out from there and there were a few days where we shot together and you know we had conversations before of what we were looking for But yeah, I don't know. It worked pretty well. And me and Foss, like I said, had worked together previously for quite a few years. So we know how each other operates. And yeah, I just started talking to him more than I was talking to my own family. And here we are.

10:36 As you're making, as you're making a documentary about two friends who are trying to work together and things that go on, any parallels between them and you guys?

10:47 Yeah, I, I don't talk to Brandon outside of work. I hate the guy.

10:52 Yeah, there's a reason we live on two different coasts. Yeah, the restraining order's pretty tight. Yeah, you can't.

11:03 Legal matter.

11:05 I'm sure it's very uncomfortable to talk about. And I'm sure it's uncomfortable even talking about this movie now, just because you get into some really touchy areas in this.

11:16 To be fully honest, every time I watch it, it, it, it's hard. And I was pretty with them and like, yeah, it's a, it's just, because I, I, we both watched it.

11:29 I was a little closer to, to James and Francis.

11:32 I was talking to them on the phone most days, at least once a week.

11:36 It was pretty hard.

11:37 I was, to be totally honest, I was like having pretty consistent panic attacks last year because of this.

11:45 And, It was tough.

11:48 It's like a little family and it's, it's hard to watch a family go through a hard time and you're kind of feel like you're part of it.

11:56 You think, I don't know.

11:57 You're also, I'm literally watching these people on a screen every day. So I feel like I see them every day. That's how it feels, you know, even if I only am talking to them weekly. So no, it was, it was really, it was really tough. Honestly, it was, It was hard.

12:17 Right.

12:17 When you talked about how the title changed and how you're told this should be a feature, was there one particular moment where you're just like, yeah, yeah, I really do need to make this a feature?

12:29 Honestly, Richard Brake told me it needed to be a feature. He's the Night King. Were you going to say, no, the Night King?

12:41 I know that a lot of documentaries get shaped differently in the editing, and I'm curious, how did this, obviously this starts as almost like an EPK, right? Like a behind-the-scenes documentary, and then eventually changes into what we're seeing now. How else is it being shaped in that editing process?

12:59 Eric did not want to be in this movie at all. It was only through my consistent putting him in every cut that I would come out with, and him going, please don't do that, until he finally went, okay, sure.

13:14 Brandon likes to, I think we both have this in common. We have a comedic style that no one's safe in ourselves. So we make fun of everybody and, and that's really funny to us. And so Brandon just started pulling clips out and laughing at my in-betweens and he started to include some of them.

13:36 And I, I got a little upset actually. No dude.

13:41 And that, The most vulnerable, the one, there's a scene where James walks out of the interview and that's the one that convinced me. I had a lump in my throat watching it. And I was like, cause I just hated like everything about me being in that scene because I was just, it's embarrassing. Like I, that was a, that's a documentarian failure right there. Having a person walk out of an interview and Brandon's like, that's going in.

14:08 I'm like, fuck, I think you're right, dude.

14:13 The reason that I really started putting... I was watching all... Because Foss was here. I had some strands and stuff. And he'd cut his voice out of all of it. And I was really just curious to hear what was actually going on set because I wasn't able to be there. And I think Foss is very funny. I think Francis and James are both very funny. And to see all the little in-between parts is that's the reality of what was actually going on there, right? And I think that is...

14:39 To me, watching this stuff, what is really important and interesting is showing what was actually going on.

14:48 Brandon always would say, I want to be there with you guys. Put me there with you guys. Bring me there.

14:56 I become the surrogate for that.

14:58 Yeah.

14:59 I hate a documentary where it's too high of a view down. I want to be getting... dusty and dirty with everyone on set you know so to me that is like FOSS brings us into that whether I want to or not.

15:16 Well I have to say I appreciate it I like the way that you because basically Brandon you're you're saying what I want to say as an audience member so you're being my surrogate as you're fighting for this kind of access so I really appreciated this kind of warts and all portrayal and just to see the struggle of making a movie is hard enough but then what it does afterwards is just it's very eye-opening and there's not enough documentaries that really talk about that part so that was very fascinating for me and I'm curious in that period of time because what that showed Last Stop in Yuma County showed Fantastic Fest 2023 I want to say so and get the release and Limited Theatrical comes out on DVD or Blu-ray, I want to say, in June

16:05 of 2024. What's going on past that? And how often are you working on this project? Because obviously, I don't think this is a full-time job for you after the shooting starts, or is it?

16:17 It was often on full-time.

16:19 The way we shoot Naked and Afraid or any of the shows we work on, that monopolizes 100% of our time.

16:25 So while we're doing that, that's it.

16:28 Well, yeah, I was editing a little too much of this movie while working on it, probably.

16:34 But at the same time, the trade-off is that you get a pretty decent paycheck for those shows in a short amount of time. So you go two months at a time, fill your bank account, work for two or three months on the movie, drain all of that money, and then start the cycle over again. And somehow we figured that out for three years.

17:00 Yeah.

17:01 We were doing some switching off. I think that was a big benefit of having two of us. One of us would disappear and be like, I'm broke. And then it'd be like, okay, bye. I'll just do this by myself for a little bit.

17:13 Okay.

17:15 And when do you say, okay, this is done? This is the point where we have to cut bait and say this movie is complete?

17:23 When our producer Deborah tells us, That's.

17:27 Probably a good rule of thumb right there.

17:30 But also, you can still cut in secret. Just don't tell her about it. Yeah, you just don't let Debra know.

17:37 Just make little cuts. It's okay. But just don't tell her. And just get the festival's.

17:42 Email and then quietly send them a different DCP.

17:47 Okay, good to know all these things. I appreciate it. And when do you show this documentary to the subjects of the documentary?

17:56 Pretty much immediately. I was showing them cuts from day one. I was given two pieces of advice in the past. One, don't show people things before they're done, which I immediately broke that rule. And two, don't give your subjects veto power. And that was what I told them day one, you have veto power. So my whole thing was, I don't want to... hurt people, and I don't want people to feel like I'm hurting them. But that said, I'm an argumentative bitch, and I will argue to the death. So if they had opinions about something that I felt strongly about, we would argue sometimes for months about things, for better or worse. And that sometimes was part of the difficulties of making this film was the friendships we had balancing

18:57 that between the film we were making, that's all really tricky and really, at the end of the day, you have to remember that the friendships are what's important.

19:06 In some ways, it made it better, I would say. They had a few notes that the truth of this thing is the most important thing to me in FOSS, making sure these people came across the way they wanted to come across. And there were a few moments where we went back and reshot some stuff because they didn't feel like they're opinions were coming across in the way that they wanted them to. And they're some of the best scenes in the movie. So maybe it all worked out in the end.

19:34 Yeah.

19:35 When do you get to see this with an audience for the first time? And do you do like test screenings beforehand to say, is this playing right? Do we need to make adjustments that way too?

19:44 We've been doing festivals. We did Santa Barbara. That was our premiere.

19:49 And we've done five or six since then. And then we're going to be going to Sigis in Spain, Docs MX in Mexico City, and then we'll be releasing hopefully in December for a theatrical roadshow. So yeah, so we've in front of a few audiences seems like younger people seem to like it a little better than older people it might be.

20:19 The 130 f-bombs.

20:20 I forget how many i think it's 130 too many of the puritan values yeah i prefer if people were always just much more uh fucking censored uh it would be my.

20:36 Opinion Oh, it makes sense, yeah. Well, yeah, I was going to ask how people are reacting to it, and do you guys feel that you necessarily need to see Last Stop in Yuma County before you see this film, and are there plans to do any sort of double features?

20:52 There are plans to do double features.

20:55 We very likely are doing one at the Yucca Valley Film Festival.

21:00 I used to live in Joshua Tree, so that'll be in November. Very excited about that.

21:08 We've had a few other conversations to maybe do a double feature. And in all those conversations, people ask us, which one do you put first? And everyone has a different opinion. And I don't know. I don't think you have to watch Last Stop to watch this movie. I don't think you do.

21:25 I honestly don't think that you do need to. I liked Last Stop in Yuma County quite a bit. It's not like Overnight and Boondock Saints, where it's just like, I would much rather just watch Overnight than Boondock Saints. This one, I like both of the films very much. I feel that there is a real synergy between these two.

21:46 I'd be very curious to see these as a double feature. It's kind of like when you watch an American movie and then you watch Coven.

21:53 Sure.

21:54 Maybe you could do it like the... The one way that you watch Star Wars, where you watch episodes one, or you watch four, and then you watch the prequels, and then you watch six. So maybe you watch the making of Yuma County until the Fantastic Fest screening, and then you watch Yuma County. You want to sell your house until the Fantastic Fest screening, then you watch Yuma County, and then you finish Sell Your House. That probably made no sense.

22:28 We're going to have to do some editing.

22:30 Yeah, whatever.

22:31 Yeah, more editing.

22:32 Debra's going to be thrilled. So what is next for both of you guys? And where can people find out about this film and keep up with that?

22:40 It's on Sell Your House Film Everywhere. So that's our website. It's sellyourhousefilm.com. It's on Instagram, sellyourhousefilm. Substack, sellyourhousefilm. TikTok, sellyourhousefilm. Those are the places we're most active.

22:55 And then.

22:57 What's next for you, Brandon?

22:59 I have a film school screening of a movie called Sell Your House. We're seventh at NYU. I'm also just trying to bring the Disney Corporation back into this. Like I said, I wouldn't... And get distributed. Yeah, we need to get this distributed by Wellgo in the meantime. Yeah, Stolen Kingdom is... out on TVOD right now on Apple and Amazon. So I've been dealing with a bunch of that stuff. And yeah, hopefully make up a jillion dollars making documentaries and then I get to make another documentary or I'll go back to making reality TV, which is probably more likely.

23:43 And how about you?

23:44 So we're doing a, as Brandon mentioned, we're doing a film school, an educational film school tour.

23:53 Of this movie for free.

23:56 So if any of your listeners want us to screen at your school and do a distribution seminar, that is available for you, to you, for free. And we are hopefully releasing in December for a theatrical roadshow. And so most of my time is devoted to that stuff. But yeah, we're always developing new ideas and annoying people with our jokes and, you know, the thing that annoying documentarians do.

24:34 According to Brandon at the beginning of the, before we started recording, apparently I'm recording right now out the window with that camera.

24:41 Yeah, what's that camera doing pointing out the window? That's weird, right?

24:46 That's what I'm saying.

24:47 I'm actually filming you, Mike.

24:50 Yes, yeah, I believe it. Well, Eric and Brandon, thank you so much for your time, guys. This was a real pleasure talking with you.

24:56 Thanks, Mike. I appreciate it.

24:58 Appreciate it.

24:59 Cool. Enjoy the rest of your day.

25:01 Thanks, you too, buddy.

25:02 All right, cheers. Thank you. Thank you. music music