Son of a Blitch
George Bowe Blitch has been a Wildlife Manager, 5th generation Texas Rancher, Professional Writer, Videographer, Photographer, Editor, Speaker, Brand Developer & Designer, Cartographer, Touring Musician, Teacher, Coach, Serial Entrepreneur, Finance Manager, and the owner of numerous businesses.
George has met some wildly interesting people in his lifetime, and this "Son of a Blitch” is sure to share some impactful stories, interviews, and messages that will be informative, educational, and highly entertaining!
Guests often include: #1 New York Times Best Selling Authors, Television Show Hosts, Leaders in the Outdoor Industry, International Touring Musicians, James Beard Award-Winning Chefs, Photographers, Filmmakers, Navy SEALS, Green Berets, Veterans and related Veteran Organizations, a Master BladeSmith, a Federal Judge, Professional Athletes, Business Leaders, Inventors, Survival & Wilderness Experts, Gunsmiths, Long Range Shooting Instructors, Actors, Publishers, Inventors, Cartel Fighting Game Wardens, other podcasters, and more!
"I've met some incredible people in my life, and I want to share their stories!" ~GB
Son of a Blitch
Ep. 107 - Unleashing Creativity: The Making of the Hit Movie, "Sketch" with Producer, Steve Taylor
"SKETCH" is a remarkable family film that defies conventional categorization, weaving together elements of heartfelt drama, monster adventure, and psychological insight. Producer Steve Taylor recently shared the extraordinary eight-year journey that brought this unique story to theaters, revealing both the creative vision and perseverance required to bring original content to life in today's sequel-dominated cinema landscape.
The film centers on ten-year-old Amber, who is processing grief after losing her mother six months prior. When her therapist suggests drawing her feelings into a sketchbook, Amber creates a menagerie of monsters that unexpectedly come to life, terrorizing her family and forcing them to confront their emotional struggles head-on. Taylor aptly describes the film as "a cross between Inside Out and Jurassic Park," a characterization that perfectly captures its blend of emotional depth and thrilling adventure. What makes the film particularly special is how each monster is rendered differently based on the medium Amber used to draw them – from Sharpies to crayons to chalk – with each requiring different strategies to defeat based on their artistic properties.
Behind the scenes, the film faced numerous challenges that almost prevented it from reaching audiences. Writer-director Seth Worley initially shopped the script around Hollywood with different producers, but despite attaching "Arrested Development" and "Veep" star Tony Hale to the project, studios repeatedly passed. It wasn't until Taylor stepped in and proposed making the film independently that "Sketch" finally moved forward. The production leveraged Worley's expertise as a VFX artist to create the film's elaborate monster sequences, though this process proved more challenging than expected, stretching from an anticipated three months to over a year and a half to perfect. The result, however, speaks for itself – "Sketch" currently holds a rare 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
What truly distinguishes "Sketch" is its authentic approach to grief and emotional processing. Throughout the film, we see each family member coping differently with their loss, with Amber's creative outlet ultimately proving the most constructive. The film explores the central philosophy that while "you can't control your inbox, you can control your outbox" – a powerful message about managing emotions rather than suppressing them. Tony Hale delivers a surprisingly nuanced dramatic performance as Amber's father, bringing depth and vulnerability to a character navigating single parenthood without his wife's guidance. Hale reportedly advocated for emotional authenticity in his portrayal, rejecting easy comedic moments in favor of genuine reactions that ground the film despite its fantastical elements.
"Sketch" represents something increasingly rare in today's cinema landscape – an original, live-action family film not based on existing intellectual property. Taylor notes that we haven't seen such a successful original family film "since maybe Home Alone," highlighting both the creative achievement and the commercial risk the film represents. As audiences claim to want original content while box office numbers typically favor familiar franchises, "Sketch" stands as a test case for whether genuinely new stories can still break through in the theatrical marketplace. For families seeking entertainment that balances thrills with emotional substance, "Sketch" offers a unique cinematic experience that entertains while fostering important conversations about grief, creativity, and healing.
Another amazing movie brought to you by ANGEL STUDIOS
Hit theaters worldwide 8/6/25
To learn more about the host, George Blitch, visit:
SonofaBlitch.com
Hey, Steve, welcome to the podcast. How you doing today? Thank you, George. I'm good man. I'm excited to talk about Sketch. You're the producer behind this film. What an incredible film. I love it, man. I want to dive into kind of the synopsis of this, but before that I wanted to kind of give a little bit of background for my listeners and viewers here. Will you tell us a little bit about kind of how you got involved making movies and kind of being in the industry, and then we'll kind of jump into Sketch there a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yes, I grew up in Denver and went to Colorado University at Boulder and I was a music major. But they had a fledgling film program and so I signed up for classes because I wanted to learn how to make movies. I didn't realize at the time that it was all avant-garde filmmaking, like you actually weren't allowed to tell stories in this project in this school, and in fact the South Park guys went to that same program a couple of years later. They dropped out after a year and a half. But Stan their character is named after the guru of our program, stan Brakhage. So I thought it'd be better to be a musician in my 20s than a filmmaker in my 50s. Then the reverse, you know, always thinking ahead. Filmmaker in my 50s, then the reverse, you know, always thinking ahead. But I kept one foot in filmmaking and ended up making music videos for my own albums and then music videos for other projects and then did some documentaries and some short form pieces and then switched over to filmmaking in the early part of this millennium and directed a couple movies and produced a couple others. But the very first movie that I made we needed a location and I needed a megachurch location. I'm in Nashville now.
Speaker 2:I've lived here for 35 years and the Christian singing star, michael W Smith, was the lead. He played an associate pastor at a big megachurch and he gets sent down to work with the black pastor of their kind of sister church in the inner city who doesn't want him there. And it all starts because they invite the black pastor to speak to the megachurch audience and the black pastor is making an appeal and he just realized nobody's listening to what he's saying and so, in kind of disgust, he takes the pledge card and toss it into the audience and says you know what, just keep your damn money. And because we needed him to say a mild swear word, it was not going to be easy to find a megachurch. But the music pastor at that church said hey, I love Michael W Smith, I'll make this happen. And he worked it out. And at the end he said my son is a filmmaker, um, would you mind taking a look at his DVD? And his son was 19 years old and I had very low expectations and sure enough it was fantastic. And his son's name is Seth Worley.
Speaker 2:That began a collaboration that we did over the next 20 years where he did second unit on my movies and he would have me act in some of the short films and did a music video for my band and did some promos. So about eight years ago he sent me the first act of the first draft of a script that he was working on. I wanted to know what I thought. I thought it was fantastic. I gave him a minimum, a few notes, and then he went to work on it and ended up moving his family to la to try to get this movie made and he met tony hale, who's uh, you know, the beloved star of arrested development and veep, and uh forky and toy story 4 and uh. They got on really well and tony kind of helped him with some of the uh, the the nature of who this dad character would be in the movie, and they took it out to Hollywood Studios. They got a big time producer involved who was into it and they took it out to try to get funding and it was expensive at that point and no studio was interested. So they retooled it and they got a different producer and they took it out again and no studio was interested. So Seth got discouraged. Understandably.
Speaker 2:He decided to move back to Tennessee with his family and I was working on another project that was going to be shot in Taiwan and before I left I got with Seth just to see what was up and I asked him what was going on with Sketch and he said it's dead.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, no, no, no, this movie is too good, he said. I said, well, give me the script. So I read the new script and when I got back, I said we can make this movie, but we got to be scrappy. We can't wait for permission, we just got to figure out a way to make it. And using the tools that we have and Seth is a world-class VFX artist as well as being a great writer and director. So he was like, okay, if you can find the money, sure, and I'm terrible at raising money. And then in two weeks I had two different people who were ready to put up the money, and one of them, john Irwin, is also a filmmaker based out of Nashville and he said I want to do this. So he gave us the money. Seth got final cut, which is really hard to get for a first time director.
Speaker 1:And and here we are, wow, eight years in the works since you first saw the first sketch of Sketch. I mean, that's right. It's an amazing movie. I was going to ask about the special effects, because there are a lot, but I think, before we kind of dive into those things too, why don't we go ahead and just give a little synopsis? Why don't you tell the audience a little bit about the movie? They haven't seen a trailer yet?
Speaker 2:Yes, so it's a family movie and we're really proud of that and it's it's, it's really made for everybody. It might be a little bit scary for little kids, but you know, you saw it. But it's really fun and funny and just also a really great theme. But it opens with this little girl, 10-year-old Amber, and we can tell that she's troubled and her dad takes her to a counselor and we find out why it's because her mom died six months earlier and she's having a hard time with it. And so the counselor finds out that Amber likes to draw. So the counselor gives her a sketchbook and says I want you to put all your feelings inside this sketchbook. And Amber goes to town and starts putting her two feelings into the sketchbook by drawing a bunch of comically horrific monsters. And then, of course, the monsters end up coming alive and terrorizing everybody, and we kind of call it it's kind of a cross between Inside Out and Jurassic Park and that's a pretty good description.
Speaker 1:It is. No, I like that. I mean there's a lot of things here that are family themes that run throughout. It's entertaining, educational and it really talks about this journey of trying to find healing. There's a lot of different big things y'all are tackling as far as topics and emotions and the transition of going through a loss. There's a lot of that therapy of doing the sketch, but of course, man, once they come alive, it's a whole other type of movie. I mean it turns. It's like kind of a little children's horror movie in a sense, but it is. I think it is family, you know, friendly in that uh as well. I mean, our kiddo loved it. We're just, we're glued to the tv. I know it's about to drop and it's gonna be in theaters. Uh, you know, are you guys doing anything for the opening? Are you all uh gonna be going out anywhere and kind of dropping that? Is that going to be in Nashville?
Speaker 2:So in Nashville we did a kind of soft premiere for the cast and crew and even the mayor came out for it, because I think it's the biggest movie to come out of Nashville since Robert Altman's Nashville 50 years ago, and so that was a lot of fun. But the big premiere was in LA last week and man Angel Studios they just did it up like no studio would have done it. There were two of the monsters. They created one of the monsters you remember, the blind one is like a 20-foot tall blind monster and they created that in an inflatable. So you got a 20-foot tall blind one there. You've got the tattler, which is the one that you know squeaks and makes all the noise to tell the blind one where to come, and that was there.
Speaker 2:They had, of course, red carpets. They had a menu themed with the movie. They had nine. They bought out all nine theaters so that there was like 1,300 people coming. And of course Tony has so many celebrity friends. So Julia Louis-Dreyfus was there, elaine from, you know, seinfeld and Veep and a number of other celebrities, terry Crews, and they all just had a great time and the movie just got a great response. And you know I can say it's a good movie because it's actually, uh, one of the rarest of all films it actually has has a hundred percent press rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which doesn't happen very often.
Speaker 1:No, that is rare. I mean, this movie's got it all for everyone. I think it is phenomenal. I can't wait for people to go check it out. Um, what are you hoping that people leave, as they're walking out the experience of this movie? I'm not, you know, giving any spoilers there, but, as far as you know, what do you hope that people connect to within this film?
Speaker 2:Yes, you know, one of the things that Amber says early on that she tells the counselor is she says my dad says you can't control your inbox, but you can control your outbox, and so that's a theme that runs through the movie. And then we see both her dad and her brother and herself all trying to deal with their grief in different ways, and we realize that Amber's is the most healthy because she's trying to put it somewhere where it can't hurt anybody, right? And so the ending scene, of course, is very emotional and beautiful, and it's just one of those movies that kind of has it all, no.
Speaker 1:I wanted to speak to that but again, I don't want to do any spoilers. But no, that it is man. It's a heartwarming movie. But I think that transition too, of you know what it's like to be a father and have that difficulty of raising children without your wife, and there's a lot of things there too. A lot of people stuff down those emotions and feelings and you see everyone deal with that in a different way and you know, you see people kind of come throughout the other side at the end and such a beautiful way as far as um, you know your, you know connection there as far as being a dad, and then you know putting this together and that being a centralized theme of you know with Tony's character. How did you connect with that? And what were some things that you know maybe kind of drew you into the movie that made you want to be a part of it, aside from just, you know, the amazing job Seth did of writing this?
Speaker 2:Well, seth's got three kids and Tony's got a daughter and I've got a daughter.
Speaker 2:So we all share the sense of what it's like being a dad, and particularly what it's like being a dad to a girl, and so, and and all of us, I think, as dads we have boys figure out better than we do girls, and so for it's particularly poignant because, you know, when Tony's character lost his wife, he is kind of navigating blind, especially when it comes to his daughter, and he's trying to figure out the stuff that you know, what would his wife do in these situations?
Speaker 2:He's just trying to do the best he can, but he just doesn't have all the tools. And one of the things I loved about what Tony brought to the role is, you know, we're used to seeing him in kind of goofy roles, but this is a really heartfelt, deep role, and he was very adamant that sometimes, you know, in a scene, would have what we call a button where it ends with a joke, and he was like no, I wouldn't say a joke when I was in this situation. I want this to be grounded in reality and the movie's better because of it.
Speaker 1:No, I think that's true. You know, we obviously see him as these other characters. That is kind of a funny goofy guy and you know especially Resident Evil and I think it's when people first got a good glimpse of him. But this is a serious role and I think it shows his kind of, you know, breadth of talent and emotional ability. No, it's phenomenal. Is there anything that you want to say to viewers who are about to go out this weekend and see it for the first time viewers who are about to go out this weekend and see it for the first time? Is there anything that you'd like to give to those who have been supporting this movie and this cast?
Speaker 2:for you know, yes, Well, one of the things I love about what Angel's done is they've taken the movie, taken it seriously and have taken out to a really wide audience and they're actually putting it out internationally, around the world. It's going to be in theaters but if this succeeds, it would be the first live action family movie that's not based on existing IP, that's not a sequel or a remake or something like that, man, I think, since like Home Alone. So the odds are not in our favor because it's an original movie and we all say we want to see original movies instead of sequels and remakes, but box office results typically do not bear that out. So we're hoping that people go out and support this original movie from a really original writer. Director.
Speaker 1:That's so true. And you know, I do want to ask with the filming aspect of this man, you've got live animation. There is again, don't want to give too much away, but there are some scenes where there's a lot of action and live action roles, but then you also have all these animation stuff. Was there any challenges that you guys faced while making this movie, or was that difficult for some of these actors? Obviously you got a lot of young actors there too who may not have had a ton of experience in that realm, so I was kind of curious about that and what that was like for them.
Speaker 2:Yes, our young actors were fantastic and you know, when you cast young actors, you're not only casting them, you're also casting their parents, because they're around all the time and we had great parents as well. But the filming couldn't have gone smoother. Seth actually edited the movie, which is unusual, and he finished it on time and under budget. And then we got to the VFX, and one of the reasons that I felt we could do it for as low a price as we did is because Seth is a VFX wizard right, he hosts a VFX podcast. He's done all this for 20 years and, for whatever reason, when we got to the VFX he just started second guessing a lot of things that he was doing and it took a really long time. So the VFX I thought were going to be done in about three months.
Speaker 2:It took about a year and a half to get it right and we ended up finally getting it right and nailing all the monsters. But it was hard because each monster is built based on her drawings and she draws them with different tools. So some monsters are drawn with Sharpies, some are drawn with crayons, some are drawn with chalk, and so each monster has to get taken care of based on what they're made of. So if it's made of watercolor markers, you know you got to get it in water. If it's based on chalk, if you step on it it's going to dissipate into a cloud of dust, and so that was part of the challenge, too, is each monster had to be different.
Speaker 1:Oh, I think it's an amazing job. The effects are just second to none there. Y'all really did a bang out job on this movie. You know, for those who may want to follow, you know what you've got going on. I mean you, filmmaker in residence over at Lipscomb University. There's all sorts of different things. You've got involved in your music, your past projects. Do you have a site or a place that we can go ahead and follow you online, where I can kind of direct some folks there?
Speaker 2:too. Yes, I'm on Facebook and Instagram at Steve Taylor and the Perfect Foil is the name of my band. And then Lipscomb University is where I'm a filmmaker in residence and it's here in Nashville and it's got a really great film program and, in fact, a lot of our. We had a lot of film students work on this as production assistants and they also made it possible for me to produce another animated series from the co-creator of Veggie Tales, mike Narocki. It's called the Dead Sea Squirrels. It's called the Dead Sea Squirrels. It's streaming on Minnow right now and it's out, and Seth Worley, our writer-director, actually wrote a number of those episodes as well, so you'll see the same kind of humor in the Dead Sea Squirrels.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Is there any other projects coming up? You'd like to go ahead and plug you know we've always got new projects working on.
Speaker 2:We're already working on season two of the Dead Sea Squirrels, and then I've got another political comedy that I wrote with Seth that I'm hoping to get made. It was looking really close and then a pandemic hit and then I haven't had any time to get to it. So I'm hoping that that'll be the next one out. But we'll see.
Speaker 1:I know that put a big pause on a lot of different productions. Well, listen, I can't wait. Next, a lot of different productions. Well listen, I can't wait. Next thing you have that you're going to bring into the world, let me know. I'll have you back on and discuss it. And thank you so much, steve. Wonderful job on this film. Everyone go check it out. It is in theaters August 6th everywhere, all internationally. So go see this movie and leave some comments below with your thoughts on it. Once again, steve, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you.
