Ilse Will Say
Welcome to My Brain. I'm Ilse, and every Wednesday I sit down with actors, filmmakers, comedians, and storycreators to talk about the stuff that doesn't make the press kit. How they actually got here, the project that almost didn't happen, the festival story they can't believe they're telling me, and whatever weird detour we end up on. Haunted sets, folklore they secretly believe in, the best taco in town. It's part industry real talk, part group chat, and I promise I'm more curious than qualified.
Episodes
58 episodes
Sean Slimak: Don't get trigger happy with festival submissions
Sean's one-take horror short Intruder premieres on The Longest Take YouTube channel this Halloween!Filmmaker and fellow podcast host Sean Slimak joins me to talk about his love of one-take films, making six shorts while working ...
Tommy Martin: He's harmless, we talk to him all the time
Tommy Martin is a Chicago based actor, filmmaker, and musician who has basically worked every job on a set at some point, and honestly it kind of exhausted me just hearing about it. We start with an unreasonable amount of hair talk (his, not mi...
John David Wolfe: The Hansel and Gretel origin of Candy House
This week, Ilse sits down with John David Wolfe, a DGA member and Chicago based producer whose two decade career as a location scout and manager put him behind the scenes on Spider-Man 2, High Fidelity, Proof, and Rhythm + Flow before he made t...
Connar Brown Sprenger: I called them chicken nuggets
Connar Brown Sprenger is an actor, puppeteer, voice actor, and award winning filmmaker who somehow makes all four look easy. She joins Ilse to talk growing up between Tokyo, London, and Atlanta, playing all seven brothers in one production of G...
Veronica Miles: New Orleans has an internal council
Veronica Miles has spent over 25 years inside the business of film exhibition, running festivals, theaters, and now the American launch of a ticketing platform. On this episode of Ilse Will Say, she and Ilse get into film festival strategy, the...
Tony Scott-Green: Reformed chronically late person
Tony Scott-Green spent years as a corporate consultant with an entire soundtrack playing in his head before he finally let it out of the speakers. This episode is about what happens when you actually listen to the thing that makes you different...
Miguel Lepe Jr: Jon Seda punched a bee for me
Chicago based comedian, writer, actor, and filmmaker Miguel Lepe Jr joins Ilse for a conversation that starts with a defunct pandemic podcast and somehow ends up covering pick-me culture, immigrant parent one liners, a haunted house, and the co...
Juan Luis Garcia: I want to need an exorcism
Juan Luis Garcia has designed key art for Netflix, HBO, and A24, and was the art director and photographer behind Narcos: Mexico. He also built a sports media company that hit 300 million YouTube views before walking away to go back to making p...
Sofie Khan: Doritos and yogurt go together, fight me
Sofie Khan is an actor, writer, producer, and director born and raised in Chicago, with a chapter of her childhood spent in Brownsville, Texas. She's the creator of the sold out, award winning one woman show MexiStani: Growing Up Mexican an...
Kyle Leland Cullerton: I handed the evidence to a Catholic priest
Kyle walks us through his path from a rejected Catholic school film submission to editing two of his friend's short films at Tribeca, taking his own 48 Hour Film Project entry all the way to Cannes, and turning that same project into an award w...
Tim Corpus: Gravity is just weird
Before he was orchestrating for Andrea Bocelli and Renée Fleming, Tim Corpus was fixing Segways and running walking tours around downtown Chicago. On this episode, we get the full story, including the day one of his tour Segways rolled straight...
Vishaal Desai: Do not start a company right out of film school
Vishaal Desai is a writer, director, and editor with over fifteen years of experience and a career that has taken him from Mumbai to London to Chicago. He's been a producer on the Asian Academy Award-winning series Bhak, directed the a...
Marco Rosas: Green tea and a psychological thriller
Ever wonder what actually goes into editing a film? Like the real version, not the glamorous one? This week I sat down with Marco Rosas, a Mexican-American editor based in Los Angeles who has spent over a decade cutting everything from high-end...
Nick Cartwright: The cosmic egg made me do it
Nick Cartwright is a filmmaker, DP, Meisner acting teacher, and co-founder of two Chicago production companies: Cosmic Egg Productions and Film in a Bag. He started his filmmaking journey in 2023 when he and his wife turned their honeymoon into...
Derry Shillitto: There is something living in the caves
Derry Shillitto is a writer, director, and producer from Nottingham, England — the rebel city, as he'll tell you, birthplace of Robin Hood, D.H. Lawrence, Lord Byron, and the Luddite movement. He's the founder of Foyle River Films and the direc...
Sundance, SXSW and Cannes: Film festival strategy for independent filmmakers
This one's a little different.No guest this week - just me and my producer Jacob Cagle, flipping the mic and doing a proper debrief on the last six months. We're talking Sundance, South by Southwest, and Cannes. What worked, what didn't...
Lorena Lourenço: Showing up unapologetically on set, at festivals, and in life
Laurena Lourenço has been backed by Film Independent, Series Fest, and the Orchid Project. She's directed festival-winning shorts, an MTV music video for Anitta, and she's currently developing her first feature, Whatever Happened to Rosa El...
Jake Ferree: Life is too short to be one thing
This week on Ilse Will Say, Ilse sits down with actor, musician, wine guy, and casual full-calendar haver Jake Ferree. You’ve seen Jake on The Baxters, True Detective, and more, but this episode gets into the stuff th...
Sonya and Wendy Madrigal: Just say yes first
This week on Ilse Will Say, Ilse is joined by sisters Sonya and Wendy Madrigal, two Chicago artists who somehow make multi-hyphenating look genetic. Sonya is an actor, director, choreographer, and educator, while Wendy is a multidiscip...
Giselle De La Rosa: Always late but worth the wait
This week on Ilse Will Say, Ilse sits down with Giselle De La Rosa, associate director at Cine Las Americas and a
Alexander Gonzalez: Improv brain meets editor instinct
You know when a scene just hits and you can’t explain why? That’s editing.Ilse sits down with editor and assistant editor Alexander Gonzalez to talk about the invisible craft that shapes everything we feel on screen.From working o...
Teresa Martinez Moore & Adam Rebora: They said “let’s make something” and didn’t flake
When your friends don’t just talk about making something… they actually do it—and then keep going? Yeah, that’s the vibe.This week, Ilse sits down with Teresa Martinez Moore and Adam Rebora, the duo behind
Paige Galdieri: I came out the womb with jazz hands
When someone can make you laugh, hit a note, and quietly diagnose why your last post flopped… you listen.This week, Ilse sits down with multi-hyphenate menace (compliment) Paige Galdieri — a performer who moves between comedy, music, and...
Jerry S. Gonzalez: Ideas aren’t made. You catch them.
You know when a film title sounds absolutely ridiculous… and then somehow ends up hitting you right in the chest? Yeah. That’s this episode.Ilse sits down with director Jerry S. Gonzalez, the brain behind The Spaghetti Man, ...
Juan Francisco Villa: Tacos, Tom Hanks, and the power of presence
Juan Francisco Villa is one of those artists who makes you want to raise your standards a little. In this episode, Ilse and Juan get into what real leadership looks like on set and in life, from Tom Hanks introducing himself to crew members to ...
