Digital Social Hour
How Failure Fueled My First Scripted Film Success | Rory Karpf DSH #1205
Wed, 26 Feb 2025
🎬 How does failure fuel success? Tune in now as Rory Karpf shares how setbacks shaped his journey to directing his first scripted film, "GracePoint." From navigating Hollywood's ups and downs to rewriting a dream script during COVID, Rory dives into the power of resilience and embracing discomfort. 💡 This episode of the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly is packed with valuable insights on filmmaking, personal growth, and the lessons behind chasing your passion. Discover how Rory transitioned from sports documentaries like ESPN’s 30 for 30 to creating an emotional thriller with a twist. Plus, hear untold stories about working with stars, overcoming challenges, and finding inspiration in the unlikeliest places. 🎥 Love thrillers and coming-of-age stories? "GracePoint" is a must-watch! 🎟️ Don’t miss Rory’s advice on pushing past fear and rejection to make your creative dreams a reality. 🌟 Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets! 📺 Hit that subscribe button and join the conversation for more inspiring stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀 CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 01:09 - Making GracePointe Film Production 03:02 - Embracing Failure in Life 08:25 - Treating Everyone Equally 11:26 - Getting Started in Acting 12:41 - Emotionally Opening Up to Others 16:38 - Directing Techniques and Insights 18:18 - The Last Dance Documentary Analysis 20:24 - 30 for 30: Tim Richmond's Story 22:01 - 30 for 30: Dale Earnhardt Legacy 22:42 - 30 for 30: Christian Laettner Highlights 28:10 - Teenage Years and Growth 30:19 - COVID-19 Impact on the Industry 34:04 - How You Met Your Wife Story 36:16 - Success and Humility Challenges 37:47 - Battling Your Ego in Success 40:50 - Watch GracePointe Film APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [email protected] GUEST: Rory Karpf https://x.com/RoryKarpf http://www.rorykarpf.com/rorydirector/index.html https://www.linkedin.com/in/rory-karpf-a248384/ LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ #fearoffailure #conquerfailure #myfilmmakingjourney #motivationalspeech #motivation
Chapter 1: How did Rory Karpf get started in filmmaking?
Yeah. Well, originally, so I got a manager in 2013 for the first time. I did a film called The Book of Manning. It was about the Manning football family. And this manager said, well, what's your dream? What do you want to do? And I said, I want to do scripted. I had done primarily documentaries and sports up until that point, but scripted was my dream.
Chapter 2: What inspired Rory Karpf to create GracePoint?
Hmm.
So there was a script called Mercy Falls, which was the bones of Grace Point, but much, much bigger as far as budget. There were explosions and horses and mudslides, crazy things happening. And they attached some decent name actors to it. But like most things in Hollywood, it just kind of languishes for a while, and then it just goes away. So... I just thought it wasn't gonna happen.
Well, fast forward to COVID and I'm filming in this town in North Carolina called Laurenburg. And my DP, director of photography says, man, we should film a movie here. This town has so much character. And I'm like, yeah, you're right. And he's like, you know what? You should take that film Mercy Falls and rewrite it so it happens in this town. And it was like a light bulb moment for me.
Maybe like you had one of these with when you decided to do a podcast, but I went home, I rewrote the script from scratch, rewrote it in a week. And that was January, 2021. And we were filming by June. That's how quickly it came together. So, I mean, once you have that spark and you follow it, just things start to steamroll after that.
Yeah. Similar story with me. I started a podcast when I was much younger, maybe 21, completely failed. You know what I mean? And put it on the back burner, but I knew I always wanted to do it. I was a huge Rogan fan growing up. And yeah, when I started this one five years later, I learned a lot more, had the right connections. It made it work.
Why do you think people are so afraid to fail? I've never been afraid to fail.
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Chapter 3: How does Rory Karpf view failure and success?
Really?
Well, I don't... I think... I'd rather try and fail. I had a amateur fight. I do a lot of things with the UFC. And I always had this dream of wanting to be a fighter. I'm like, I'm photographing these guys, doing shows with them. I wanted to know what it was like to take that walk. So at 44 years old, without a speck of athletic ability, You might not be able to tell.
You're looking at me like, Rory, you? But yeah, no athletic ability. I decided to step in the cage. I got training from one of our actors in the film, Sean Carrigan. Actually, two of our actors and Dean Thomas trained me. But Dana White was making fun of me leading up to it. He's a huge ball buster. he was actually yelling, throw in the towel when I was walking out.
And the week before he and some of his buddies were kind of saying, oh, Rory's gonna get killed. So I was facing this failure, but you know what? I don't give a fuck. I was like, this is something I wanna do. I wanna show I've got balls. And I got my ass kicked in the first round, like a full on beating. In fact, at the end of the round, I thought they stopped the fight. Wow.
Because I heard the bell ring and I might've been a little concussed. And I went back and sat down. I thought they're going to start taking my gloves off. And then they're giving me a pep talk in the corner. They're like, you're doing great. And I'm like, what? And And they said, lead with your right. You're doing great. And I was like, oh, maybe I'm doing good. And I don't even realize it.
And then I came back in the second and third and won. What? I actually won the fight. Yeah. And I think it's a metaphor for life. It's why Rocky is such a popular movie. You know, life's going to kick your ass sometimes. But it's like, if you could just stand there and just keep taking the punches, that's what it is. In fact-
bringing it back to making a movie, I've been doing screenings of the film and there's some filmmakers or young filmmakers and then they'll ask me questions about like getting in and I'll hear, well, I mean, how do you get past the rejection and this and that? And I'll say, look, to me, it's like romantic love. Have you ever been in love, Sean? Yeah. Yeah. If somebody told you as a kid,
You're like, if you want to fall in love, they'll say, well, Sean, at some point you're going to get your heart broken. You're going to face rejection. You're going to like someone. They're not going to like you back. It's going to hurt. It's going to sting. But that moment when you find somebody and you fall in love and there's those butterflies, there's nothing like it.
It's the same with filmmaking. you're gonna face rejection. People are gonna laugh at you. They're not gonna want you. They're not gonna like your ideas. You're gonna try and fail. Like you might try to pick up a girl somewhere and you don't have any game, but how do you get better game? Like you said with your podcast, how'd you get better from doing it? Repetitions, repetitions.
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Chapter 4: How did Rory Karpf's experiences in sports documentaries influence his film career?
Or they just want you to like leave them the fuck alone. Don't talk to me for 10 minutes. I'm getting into character. So each person's different. I loved dealing with that on Grace Point. These different actors like Sean Carrigan. He was kind of like, tell me what to do, coach. I'll do it. He was an athlete. Jim Parrick, he's more of the Daniel Day-Lewis actor in character and whatnot.
Johnny, our star, this was his first movie. So my biggest goal was to try to make him feel comfortable and loose on set. So everybody was different in this filmmaking process.
Yeah, I got offered a role when I was maybe two, three years ago and I turned it down, but I definitely want to get into acting one day, you know?
Was this in a adult film or?
No. It was in a, well, part of the reason was it was a Christian, I'm not even Christian. It was like a Christian film about basketball.
Got you. Yeah. I think it's important to, you can't fake it, I think. I've been, hey, you should do this because I think you can make a lot of money. But if you're only chasing the money and that's the only thing you're doing it for, like, oh, like I'm gonna do this and I'll get famous versus like, I really wanna do this. I have a passion to do this, to tell this story.
So for Grace Point, because this was my first scripted film, I was looking at, well, should I do a faith-based film because they're really popular or horror, just straight horror because that sells. It doesn't matter if it's straight garbage. People will just go see a horror movie.
Netflix will eat those up.
Yeah, but for me, I love thriller and coming of age. Those are my two favorite genres of film. So I wanted to do something that combined both of them and also had heart. Every documentary I've done, everything with sports, I try to make it relatable for the audience. That's what I tried to do with Grace Point.
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Rory Karpf face while directing GracePoint?
100%.
That victim mentality is dangerous, man.
It can be for sure. I mean, I think it's important sometimes to have empathy for people that you went through something and maybe you were a victim, but you're right in that mentality of woe is me or life's not fair because life's not fair. It's not. I mean, it'd be great if it was, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes great things happen to people that don't necessarily deserve it.
And people that do deserve great things, bad things happen to you. So- I think it's just grappling with that. But in my work as a director, I love dealing with people. And you must love talking to people, or at least maybe you do now more as you do it for a living. But on social media, you would think we're so divided that we have nothing in common. You either feel this way or this way.
But the more you're out with people, touching grass, talking to people, I find that... you really have much more in common with most people. And yeah, maybe you disagree about this or that, but if you find those commonalities, childhood or parents or, love of your kids or things like that, then you can find a connection. That's what I try to do on my unscripted work.
100%.
Yeah. You're like the architect, right?
You're like a coach, I would say. But yeah, architect is another term you could use. And it's just trying to get that motivation. I just did a film where the, it was a documentary on ESPN and Roger Goodell of the NFL was interviewed in it. And he was friends with this person who had passed away, Buddy Teevens. He died in a bicycling accident. And Roger was just friends with him.
They were just friends. But you think Roger Goodell, in fact, Roger Goodell, you know who he is? He's the commissioner of the NFL. So when I started my career at the NFL right out of college, so he's like on this pedestal. But at the end of the day, I'm interviewing someone who just lost their friend. I'm not interviewing the commissioner of the NFL.
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Chapter 6: What are some untold stories from Rory Karpf's career?
Yeah, so... And yeah, Dale Earnhardt, for those that don't know, he died... at the Daytona 500, which is like the Super Bowl. It'd be like dying at the Super Bowl on camera. He did it on the last lap, trying to block for his teammate to win the race. What? Yeah, so it'd be like at the Super Bowl, like a member of the Chiefs dying on camera, protecting somebody. So...
he became sort of a mythical figure, almost like Kurt Cobain or Tupac. And I did a film, it was in theaters on him. And I got to do it when I was really young and Paul Newman narrated it. So that kind of got me on my way to do docs.
Yeah. And you did the Christian Laettner one. I still remember that commercial. That's how viral that one was.
Yeah, I hate Christian Laettner. That was a fun one. When you talk about failing, I remember this vividly. I got a call from the executive at ESPN. It was on New Year's Day. And he said to me, I would like to say I'm starting the new year with good news. He had just watched the first rough cut. And he really disliked it. Really? Really disliked the first cut. And this was... So it's January 1st.
The film's airing March 15th. Wow. So at ESPN, they wanted to delay the film, I later found out, and take me off the film. They didn't think I was capable of doing it. There were some haters there, believe it or not. So... I said, I can do this. And what turns out was he thought I was playing it way too safe. He wanted me to take way more risks.
He wanted me to do something way bigger than just Christian Laettner, do it about hate in sports. He said, that was the original concept. What happened to that? And I was like, you're right. I did play it too safe. And I decided to like almost start over from scratch. I wrote out the script first. that Rob Lowe, it's how I met Rob Lowe and his sons in my film, Grace Point.
I wrote the script out and I tried to make it like very pop culturey and humor and just have fun for me writing it. Like put the karate kid in there and Arsenio or different things. And it started with that. And I remember it took me six weeks and my wife at the time was in the hospital. So I was taking care of both my kids while working on this movie.
getting like three hours of sleep a night and gave them a completely different cut of the film six weeks later. Incredible. Yeah. So that's one I'll always be proud of just because of that process, being stared down the barrel, total failure. This was like supposed to be a huge coming out party for me, airing March 15th, going into the final four, giant documentary.
And this dude saying, hey, you did it and it sucks.
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Chapter 7: How does Rory Karpf approach vulnerability and emotional storytelling?
He's like, he was mad because when the film was in Santa Barbara Film Festival, Grace Point, He, I didn't invite him to the Q&A. It was an oversight on my part. And I was wrong. And I was like, well, Sean, I'm glad you told me. That's my fault. And he was like, okay, good. And I was like, this guy's a good friend. He's a, he shoots straight with me. And that's what I like in life.
So going, bringing it back to Chris, I hate Christian Laettner. He shot straight and I had to kind of start over. I got a little story about that film.
Yeah, that was one of ESPN's top 30 for 30s, I believe, right?
Yeah, it did really well at the time. And Christian Laettner's mom called me up, really mad at me when the film was announced. It was announced. You said you saw the commercial. All the time. And she left me this vitriolic voicemail saying, how dare you say I hate Christian Laettner. This should be called, I love Christian Laettner. My son is really pissed off.
So I called her back and I was like, hey, can I just meet with you? Can we just meet up? And I brought my son with me at the time. I think he was like six or seven years old. Smart move.
Yeah, he looked like- To garner some empathy from you.
Oh yeah, I was like, she's not gonna yell at me in front of this. This kid was like the cutest kid you've ever seen at this age. Like little chipmunk cheeks and baby brown eyes. And you can, when I opened the door, she opened the door like this and she's like, oh, who's this? And he's like, huh?
So I just told her, I explained, like, I was like, look, a lot of people don't know who Christian Laettner is. I'm trying to reach a large audience. And this is the way in to say, I hate Christian Laettner. Get people interested. I said, what I'm going to do is I'm going to make people think about that, hopefully, about why they like hating someone more than loving someone.
And she was kind of, all right. And I was like, you're just going to have to trust me. I don't have bad intentions. I know you have no reason to trust me, but I'm telling you like from my heart, look during the eye, this is what I'm trying to do. I'm not going to make him look bad or look like a villain. And she later wrote me a letter after the film aired. I still have it on my desk.
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Chapter 8: What are Rory Karpf's insights on directing and working with actors?
Yeah. Yeah. And everyone goes through those, right? I've had a couple already.
Yeah. It's... I don't know if you saw this film, but they did a documentary on Christopher Reeve. It's gotten some good attention.
I haven't seen it.
Yeah. And they talked about his accident where he got paralyzed and totally paralyzed from the neck down. But his son- His oldest son said that's when he became the closest to him. Whoa. So you think about that, that this horrible acts is what brought them closer together. He said before that he wasn't close to his dad. He was 17. He said in those 10 years, they really bonded.
So even sometimes out of the worst of situations, something good can happen. Yeah. That's how I met my wife. Really? My current wife. Yeah, well, one of my close friends was the actor Luke Perry. And the film Grace Point is dedicated to Luke Perry. He was an actor. He was on Beverly Hills 90210. He was in Quentin Tarantino's last movie. He died very suddenly out of nowhere of a stroke.
Seemingly healthy. It was really shocking. When he passed away, he was on the cover of People magazine. And it really floored me because... A lot of times in this industry, everyone's, oh, he's my friend. He's my friend. I love it. This guy was like really my friend. We were really close. So when he passed away, it really hit me.
Well, a few years before that, when I was going through my divorce, he was trying to set me up with a friend of his. He's like, you got to meet this girl. She just moved to North Carolina. She's a friend of mine. I was like, oh, have her call me. And he'd be like, all right, I'm going to have her call you. Well, she never called. He'd be like, did Michelle call? I'm like, no, she never called.
He's like, what's up with her? I'm like, I don't know. So when he passed away, she reached out to me, uh, sent me a message and said, hey, Luke always wanted us to meet up and I'm here in North Carolina. I don't really have anyone to talk with about him. Would you wanna talk on the phone or something? So we wound up getting lunch together and then we went to his memorial together in LA.
I asked, she wasn't gonna go because she had to work. I kind of convinced her to go. And then we've been together ever since. Yeah, we're married now. And yeah, she works with me at my company. She's a production manager. So he really brought us together. So out of that tragedy, something positive.
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