Leif Bristow | Crafting Stories that Resonate - Mick Unplugged

Episode Transcription

• Episode 13 Transcription

  Intro: Are you ready to change your habits, sculpt your destiny, and light up your path to greatness? Welcome to the epicenter of transformation. This is Mick Unplugged. We'll help you identify your because so you can create a routine that's not just productive, but powerful. You'll embrace the art of evolution, adapt strategies to stay ahead of the game, and take a a step toward the extraordinary.

  So let's unleash your potential. Now here's Mick.

  Mick Unplugged: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Mick Unplugged where we dive deep into the stories behind the stories, going deeper into our because, challenging our why. And today, we're exploring the journey of a visionary who shaped the landscape of film and television, creating narratives that touch our hearts across the globe. A master storyteller whose work with Hallmark has captured our imagination and whose dedication to cinematic excellence has garnered international acclaim. Stay tuned as we unveil the life, the creativity, and the unparalleled dedication of the incredible Leaf Bistro. Leaf, welcome to Make Unplugged, sir.

  Leif Bistrow: Oh, thank you, Nick. I mean, that's that's a pretty tough opening to live up to.

  Mick Unplugged: But only you can do that. Only you can do that, the master's

  Leif Bistrow: degree. We can all try and we can all strive to achieve excellence every chance we get.

  Mick Unplugged: So Absolutely. Absolutely. So, Leif, your career spans over 50 movies and television series significant achievements along the way. What ignited your passion for filmmaking?

  Leif Bistrow: I started as a child performer. I was a singer. And, I had the good opportunity to perform a lot, and then I went to university in opera, then had a chance to sing throughout Europe with Up With People and get to know a lot of people and and meet people from so many incredible backgrounds. And then because I traveled a lot growing up as well, we I was born in Toronto, but by the time I was 3, we moved to Alaska, then we moved to Denver, then we moved to Dallas, then we moved back then we moved to Chicago, then we moved back to Denver. I went to Europe and SANG, and then went to Pasadena and lived for 6 years and got my degree in theater.

  Leif Bistrow: And I think, you know, the combination of all of that, while in the beginning when I was at university, I thought maybe I'd be an adolescent child psychiatrist. Somewhere along the way, I realized that if you could tell stories and whether it's in the theater, live theater, or in the movie theater, and bring a level of catharsis and life journey and touch people at their core and uplift them, especially with aspirational stories, then I might be providing a far greater service than counseling. After, theater school, I came back to Canada and I worked for a number of years as a performer, did a lot of musical theater, a lot of comedy, which I loved. But then when our youngest daughter was born in particular, I didn't want my family to be stage widows. You know, at a certain point in, and I think every actor has to find that for themselves.

  Leif Bistrow: You have to determine is is my life about me and everybody should cater to what I need, or is my life about other people, and how do I make sure that they're part of my life? So I knew that the latter was the more important for me. So I I moved over in about 1990 3 to exclusively directing and producing. Every once in a while, I'll perform, but very seldom anymore. It's it I don't have the driver.

  Leif Bistrow: Well, it's not the driver. I I don't have the need. Let's put it that way. I don't have to be in front of the camera. So the joy for me is when I'm directing, executive producing, and really trying to bring just wherever possible positive joy to an audience.

  Mick Unplugged: I love it. And speaking of that, you know, you've been instrumental in creating some of Hallmark's, like, most popular and instrumental films. Right? Love on Safari. One of my favorites, and I know I don't look like a Hallmark person, but every time I go visit my mom, it's only on the Hallmark channel, and that's all I can watch.

  Mick Unplugged: So one of my favorites, love, romance, and chocolate, which I thought was gonna be about me. Leaf when I saw it, I was like, love, romance, chocolate? That's that's me. But when I watched it, it wasn't me. I'm not upset, but, you know, we'll we'll talk about that later.

  Leif Bistrow: Okay.

  Mick Unplugged: Can you give some insights into your creative process? Like, what goes into making that happen? Right? Because you see something on paper, and then you have to make it something that people are gonna enjoy visually. What's your creative process?

  Leif Bistrow: I think for most of the films that my wife and I produce, because Ag and I produce together, we're certainly probably one of only a small handful of very blessed filmmakers that we produce everything together. We have for quite a number of years now. So when when we go on on location, we we're able to spend time together and and and do it together. And because we see things from kind of a singular vision, doesn't matter which one of us you talk to on set, you're gonna get the same basic response. Or sometimes it'll be go ask Leap or it'll be go ask Aggie.

  Leif Bistrow: My process, first of all, you know, it's about understanding who your target audience is in your market. And then what I always try to do is I try to find elements of truth in the creation of each concept because I would say probably 95% of all the movies we've made, we were the ones that originated the concept. And I look to things that have inspired me in life and most often look to the truth because almost anything you wanna research or anything you can think of in today's world, you can research that subject and find some element of truth in society. One movie I I still wanna make that I'm I'm kind of working on is about a blind ballerina. Well, one of the greatest ballerinas in history, turns out happens happens to have been blind.

  Leif Bistrow: Her name was Alicia Alonso, and she was the prima ballerina in Cuba. And in 85, she I believe in 85, she was still the choreographer of the Cuban National Ballet. And she lost principally lost most of her eyesight when she was 12 years old. She suffered from retinitis at a time when there was no eye surgery that they could do and she was in Cuba. So she laid on her back for a year and by the time she finished, she could see halo light or dark around the periphery, but couldn't see anything through the center.

  Leif Bistrow: And she learned Swan Lake by braille when she was laying in hospital. And she was the 1st non Russian, I believe, to dance with the Bolshoi Ballet. I mean, it what an incredible life. So if I do a modern story about a blind ballerina for Hallmark or for Amazon or for MGM, Well, I can draw on reality, and I think when you can draw on truth to infuse these stories, even like a love romance in chocolate, When you do that, it elevates the experience, and then it gives your writers that much more to lean into as they begin to write the characters. Like, in Love, Romance and Chocolate, which again, yeah, I mean, it's one of my favorite movies that we've done in the Hallmark world.

  Leif Bistrow: And and yes, and and Love, Romance and Chocolate, Love on Safari are 2 of the most ever watched Hallmark movies, and they just play you know, I mean, they play literally all of the time. In that one, because of a lot of work I and singing that I had done in Belgium years before, there were people that I knew. And by the way, a funny note about that is it was the first ever English language romance movie about the chocolate industry because you can't say Chocolat was a romance movie, but you know, that was a Hallmark movie. It's not a Hallmark movie in that regard. So there had never been one done.

  Leif Bistrow: So, you know, after I did Love Blossoms the year before, which was about the perfume industry, so then when I went to Hallmark and I said, look, nobody's ever made it a movie about the chocolate industry. What if I go make it and brew where the greatest chocolates in the world come from? Let's go there. And I also happen to know the Palace Chocolatier So that's what we used, which, you know, it made it really joyful. And the same thing, like, when we did love, you know, love on safari, pretty much every character in love on safari was based on somebody that we knew in real life in our in because we also do a nature series in search of where we go in search of baby animals that Britney is the host of.

  Leif Bistrow: And all so all of the characters that we put into Love on Safari were people that we had met in our journeys doing nature a nature series.

  Mick Unplugged: That's awesome. So did I just hear when Love, Romance, and Chocolate 2 come out, I've got a role?

  Leif Bistrow: Absolutely. I still gotta convince somebody that we're doing Love, Romance, and Chocolate too. I am getting ready to do another movie that does have chocolate inspiration, but I need to make sure that it's, like, completely the opposite to Love Romaine's and Chocolate. But

  Mick Unplugged: There we can go.

  Leif Bistrow: We're gonna be doing a Christmas movie about the chalk with the chocolate industry this year, and it'll be based in Vienna.

  Mick Unplugged: Very nice. So, Leif, let's go deep. Dancing Through the Shadow. I'm ready for this one.

  Leif Bistrow: Dancing Through the Shadow is such an incredible and remarkable story, And we were just so fortunate to have it premiered at Sedona this past weekend that premiered in Bangladesh a couple weeks before that. Dancing through the shadow is a is a true story of a woman, Tia Jiang, who came of age during the cultural revolution under Mao. She danced at the very first dance academy, western style ballet in Beijing. Her father was a very high official with the Kuomintang when Mao came to power and was part of the group that surrendered Beijing to Mao. Wasn't much of a surrender because they didn't have a choice.

  Leif Bistrow: But their family tried to get out when when all of the former Kuomintang government was given basically a day to get out of China. And so that's what became the current government of Taiwan. That's the former Kuomintang government of China. And Tia's family got to the ship or to where the ship was to leave from. But when they went to leave, soldiers started randomly shooting machine gun fire into the air, and a bullet hit her brother's leg, her little brother.

  Leif Bistrow: So they ran back to shore, and so unfortunately they got stranded in China. And they went from a very privileged life to the same life of everybody else. And her statue is currently is still at Workers Stadium. She and her husband met. He was with the athletic team.

  Leif Bistrow: They met and, they had to pose for a statue to as for the most beautiful faces of the new China. They were told they weren't they couldn't speak, they just had to pose. They stood next to each other for 8 hours and she fell in love with them. Her mother said she couldn't marry him because he was too tall and didn't have a proper education. So that put a lot of strain on the family because there was no way Tia was gonna not continue to see him.

  Leif Bistrow: And they went through a period where they were just at total odds. So Tia went back to the ballet school and didn't return home. And finally, mother said, okay. Bring Jason with you. And she said, okay.

  Leif Bistrow: I'll accept him on the condition that he goes to university. Well, he had already enrolled at the university to take traditional Chinese medicine because he was injured. And he while he was there, he asked a question on behalf of the soldiers he represented in his group that was deemed inappropriate. So when he graduated, he was immediately sent to a labor camp near the Russian border that very few people ever made it back from. Because he was trained as a doctor, he got a little bit better privileges being up there, but he still worked the rock quarry like everybody else and then attended to injuries and medical things as required.

  Leif Bistrow: Tia was given permission to go see him. It was an 18 hour train ride. So she went there, and when she came home, she discovered she was pregnant at a time when madame Mao, who was the head of culture, determined that she was going to shut down all the dance schools. And that ballerinas, you know, because there was no dance school, well, they needed to work like everybody else. So she was to go to a labor camp.

  Leif Bistrow: So when her son was 56 days old, she had to give him over to her mother and her nai nai, her grandmother, to take care of, and she saw him, I think, once in 3 years. Eventually, she defected. She was given an opportunity to go to London on a cultural exchange when they opened travel. Someone from Louise Turner from the UK set up for a cultural tour to come back to to the UK. And when she got there, you know, being raised in China, she believed that and what she was taught was that as a Chinese person, if she ever left China, she would be killed.

  Leif Bistrow: And so she got to London and they were driving her through Chinatown and she saw women wearing beautiful dresses and walking on the street and nobody was killing anybody. And she realized that her whole life was a lie. When she got back, she convinced Jason that they should get out, and eventually they defected. They went to New York into Houston for a brief period of time where an aunt was and then ended up coming to Toronto. And she taught at Canada's National Ballet until her retirement.

  Leif Bistrow: We got to know her because in her final year, she was one of our daughter's ballet instructors because our daughter Britney, who stars in a lot of Hallmark movies, graduated from Canada's National Ballet School. So with that, Aggie wrote the book on her life, which is on Amazon. And we're just getting ready to launch a massive book campaign for that for 12 months. Yeah. And then you wrote the screenplay and then we filmed it through COVID.

  Leif Bistrow: We got shut down in the middle of production and then had to resume 4 months later. And generally when a production shuts down, they never come back. We were fortunate we were able to get it finished. So it's a wonderful film. A lot of people that saw it in Sedona said, we really need to see this and every American needs to see it because we just don't know anything about China.

  Leif Bistrow: We learned so much just watching the movie just in an appreciation for the culture. And, you know, this is where you know, this is part of what Aggie and I really do in our films because we really believe the only way you create acceptance by the way, I don't like the word tolerance. I think it's a it's a very ill advised term when you're asking people to accept each other. You tolerate somebody you didn't really wanna spend time with. Acceptance is very different.

  Leif Bistrow: If we're gonna accept each other for our cultural differences, for religious differences, we have to at least attempt, where possible, to step inside and try to gain some knowledge. You know? So if all we know of Chinese culture in North America is Chinese food, sitcoms, and the comic relief. Similar, you know, not dissimilar to what so many black actors were relegated to since the beginning of cinema. Just by stepping in and and getting a glimpse, it can open a dialogue.

  Leif Bistrow: It's a reason to be able to say to say to somebody we know and and or a friend that's Chinese and say, wow. You know? What about this? I I never knew that. I didn't understand that.

  Leif Bistrow: I didn't know that about China. And, of course, to China, the cultural revolution didn't exist. That was a great time of enlightenment where Mao unified a nation. He also allowed 35 to 70,000,000 people to starve to death in the western provinces in peacetime. That period in, you know, things were fine at first, and then he made a deal with the Russians to supply food in exchange for him providing iron ore.

  Leif Bistrow: So during the great leap forward, every person was required. You had to sell you had to send your wok. Any metal that you had had to go to community furnaces to be burned down to try to create iron ore. Kids would have to come to school every day with something that they found on the road or what, something. It was insanity.

  Leif Bistrow: They never really produced anything, so they had nothing to deliver to Russia. So Russia refused to deliver food. And then the rains came, and all the farmers, all the men were in the factories. So all that was left in the western provinces after all these massive rainstorms were the elderly and children and the tractors stuck in the mud. So starvation was massive.

  Leif Bistrow: That's crazy. Yeah.

  Mick Unplugged: That is absolutely crazy.

  Leif Bistrow: So that's the story we've told and, you know, it may not be it's not an easy story to get made. And even within Chinese community, like somebody will say, well, you're, you know, you're a white guy. What are you doing making a movie about Chinese? When we went to the film festival, Russell Yuen, who plays the father in the movie, came, and he said, you know, said you have to understand in our culture, the the Chinese filmmakers that would have made this movie all have family in China, and so they're afraid to make it. We were specifically asked by the Chinese community.

  Leif Bistrow: You know, they came to me very specifically and said, would you make this movie? Because we need this story to be told. So I'm a director. You know, directing human emotion and family interaction, that's what I do. So what we did is a collaboration is I have entire cast of some of the most phenomenal Chinese talent you could ever hope to see on a screen.

  Leif Bistrow: You know, and they were from Norway and from England and a whole bunch of other places. What I did is I asked them to let me know what was correct. When we would do a scene about a a family dinner where Tia is being told by her mother that she has to end the relationship with Jason, that she will choose a man for him. And if he and if she elects to choose Jason, she'll be dead to the family and no longer be your daughter. And every one of my actors in that scene besides falling because it was so emotional, every actor at the table said, I have sat through this exact dinner conversation in my own home growing up.

  Leif Bistrow: They brought the power of their culture to the screen. I just helped them make sure the performances were honest.

  Mick Unplugged: That's amazing. Leif, I know you're busy, so I'm gonna get you out of here with 2 quick questions. Challenges and triumphs. So producing critically acclaimed films, TV shows is no small feat. Right?

  Mick Unplugged: Yeah. What are what's one of the most significant challenges that you had to overcome, and how did you do that?

  Leif Bistrow: I specialize in family friendly content primarily. You know, I've done a couple of suspense movies, but I mostly do a lot of, you know, in your with Blizzard and Virginia's run of movies, I did like that. Blizzard, which was featured at the 75th Oscars, you know, and had Christopher Plummer and Whoopi Goldberg and Brenda Bleth and Kevin Pollock. My daughter was the mean kid. Part of it is when you specialize in anything in life, it takes a lot longer for the world to recognize you.

  Leif Bistrow: It's easy to be a generalist, but I think the challenge was because I was so dedicated, I've always made it very clear to anybody that wants to work with me in in print, in articles, wherever. I do films primarily about women rising above adversity. My goal is to create positive and powerful female role models for young women in film and television. Because when when I watched programming on behalf with my daughters, I didn't feel they were there. And they need to be honest and and real.

  Leif Bistrow: Not not everybody can't look like a Barbie doll. So that's always been at the core of what we do. And and doing films that will help unite families. You know, sure. You know, doing a movie about Tia is a true story, and we have to ask tough societal questions if we're gonna be honest with ourselves.

  Leif Bistrow: And sometimes that's really important. So I would say the big challenge was, I guess in some ways, being recognized as someone who knows how to repeat the process with creative integrity because we're so hands on that finally then the Hallmark comes to you and goes, well how come you haven't made any movies for us? Well, you didn't ask me. They said, okay. Well, would you?

  Leif Bistrow: Well, sure. But you have to understand, you know, my goal is to make the Audrey Hepburn, It becomes a huge character and gives the audience that extra incredible joy when they watch the movie. And that's my formula. So, you know, if if if we're all on the same page, then, yeah, I'm I'm happy to do it, and and we'd enjoy doing it. And we did the first one, and ever since, we've just never stopped.

  Leif Bistrow: And, you know, now we're doing a new series called Beyond Black Beauty for, Amazon as well that which over the whole 1st season. It's a completely, basically, it's a complete black family and primarily targeted to a black and Hispanic audience, and it's about the original black beauty. So it's it's very exciting. It'll be coming out on freebie in September. Starts in Canada here in about a few weeks.

  Mick Unplugged: You know, I didn't get a call to to be in that one either. So we have Love, Romax, and Chocolate.

  Leif Bistrow: Hey. We're hey. There's gonna be season 2.

  Mick Unplugged: I feel like

  Leif Bistrow: There'll be season 2.

  Mick Unplugged: Okay. Season 2.

  Leif Bistrow: Season 2.

  Mick Unplugged: I'll get a call.

  Leif Bistrow: I'll get a call.

  Mick Unplugged: Alright. So so last question, Leaf. For aspiring filmmakers, what's two pieces of advice you'd give them today?

  Leif Bistrow: The greatest flaw that most filmmakers I find, because I just actually did a seminar on this. I think one of the big flaws that filmmakers make is when they go to ask for money, they don't understand that the person on the other side of the table that may wanna give the money is looking for a reason to give them the money because a dollar bill without a purpose is just a dollar bill. It's been the same since the beginning of time. People with capital look for a reason to invest it. What you need to understand is what is it the person on the other side of desk needs in order to give you that money?

  Leif Bistrow: And then that way, if you can understand that and understand how to talk to someone about how to give you money, then what you're doing is you're harnessing the same creativity that you would use to make the movie to bring financing to your movie that gives you far greater creative power. Capital and finance is not always the hindrance to create creativity. Creativity will help you source the financing. That's one. The other is don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone.

  Leif Bistrow: You know, we all go to the same grocery store. We go to the same coffee shop. We go to the you know, we frequent the same neighborhood all the time based on where we live. Where my world, you know, I would say of the 50 plus films, at least 45 of those films I think have all been filmed in international locations. I've done 7 films in Malta, a bunch in South Africa, 5 in Belgium, 4 in Budapest.

  Leif Bistrow: I've filmed in Ireland, Slovakia, a whole bunch of different countries. And the reason is, I looked at it and I went, wait a minute. How can I make what I do more universal and more exciting for the audience? And thing especially in the romance world, you know, the greatest movies of all time were Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobridge in the movies. They ignited this whole industry, and they did it by making those locations unique and different.

  Leif Bistrow: So I go, well, everybody's filming in in North America or, you know, Vancouver or Toronto or Georgia. Well, what if I go to the rest of the world and ask the rest of the world to help me? There's great filmmakers all over the world. If you're a young filmmaker and you're trying to make your 1,000,000,000 and a half dollar movie, and the story is universal, it can be told anywhere. So adjusting your script to say, okay, well, instead of me doing this one in Seattle, I'm gonna make the setting in Brittany, France, on the coast of France with a lighthouse in the background, which is how I did Mariah's lighthouse.

  Leif Bistrow: That was supposed to be filmed in an island that you're looked at and gone, did he film it in up upstate New York? Did he film it in Michigan? Did he film it in Montana? Where did he film it? Just a bunch of trees in the lake.

  Leif Bistrow: So I said, no. Let's go film it on the coast of France and then go to Rochefort, Ontario, the most beautiful village in France that Disney used to create Beauty and the Beast. So filmmakers, I would say if you want to expand your own knowledge, step out of your comfort zone, call somebody in a foreign country and say could you help me produce my movie if I could figure out how to place it there, could I come to Malta and make my movie? Now you can access capital from foreign government rebates together with your loan rebates. You can bring more resources.

  Leif Bistrow: And guess what? Some of the greatest DOPs on the planet, most of them come from Eastern Europe. They don't come from North America. For them that's the PhD in life in filmmaking. We have great wardrobe people.

  Leif Bistrow: Look look at the films that have come out of the UK, and Hungary, and Czechoslovakia and all these great filmmakers for decades decades. So go and and be willing to open that same door. And I guess that's what travel did for me, and it's the same as when I say, how do we become more accepting of each other? It's by being willing to be open enough, challenge yourself to step out of your comfort zone and go to somebody else and say, can you help me? To me, that's how you create the greatest opportunities for yourself.

  Mick Unplugged: That's amazing. And, Leif, what's what's crazy about that is you've you've hit on a lot of things today, but there's 2 things that are really important that I also teach and coach people. It doesn't matter what industry you're in. If you're a business leader, if you're a salesperson, if you're someone looking for that next step, don't be a generalist. You're gonna walk down rabbit holes.

  Mick Unplugged: You're gonna get low hanging fruit that's gonna be in your way, and you're never gonna get to where you're going, and get out of your comfort zone. Amazing things happen outside of your comfort comfort zone. And the last thing, I'm gonna be in the next movie around chocolate, whatever it is. It's it's

  Leif Bistrow: Okay.

  Mick Unplugged: I don't care if I have to be the go for on set, Leaf. I'm there.

  Leif Bistrow: Okay. I'm there.

  Mick Unplugged: I promise.

  Leif Bistrow: Okay.

  Mick Unplugged: Ladies and gentlemen, the great Leaf Bistro. Leaf, I appreciate you for being on the call with me today. And and for everyone listening, remember, your because is your superpower. Go unleash it.

  Thanks for listening to Mick Unplugged. We hope this episode helps you take the next step toward the extraordinary and stay inspired, and stay unplugged.