Matt Cohen is one of my favorite people in the whole world. I got to know him after he guest starred on Supernatural, then had the pleasure of sitting down with him at fan conventions to talk about his role on that show, and eventually about everything from pop culture to health to happiness. Matt wrote a personal and powerful chapter about his own journey in Family Don’t End With Blood and we’ve stayed in touch ever since, through his stint on Entertainment Weekly to his fabulous short film Mama Bear and
now his MC On The Mic podcast with his brother and his positive health posts on Instagram.
And through lots of different hairstyles…
We sat down a week ago to chat about the latter (not the hairstyles, the health and wellness posts) for an article I’m working on for Psychology Today, and before we ended our zoom chat I asked about new projects. I was not expecting something as totally effing exciting as what Matt disclosed, so I’m sharing that here first.
Lynn: You said you have something new brewing, what is it?
Matt: I’m launching a crowdfunding campaign, and I’m also – simultaneously, because when it rains it pours, and we can’t wait for Hollywood or we’ll have no careers left – financing, directing and starring in a movie with my cowriter Lee, who wrote Mama Bear. He’s financing and I’m financing, for pennies because we have no money so we took out loans against our houses to make a movie.
Lynn: Tell me more!
Matt: The film will star Briana Buckmaster in a role that you’ve never seen her in yet, but you could never imagine anyone else playing. She’s an anti-hero. You hate her, but you love her.
Lynn: Well, I love Briana, I love anti-heroes, I mean I love The Boys, so…
Matt: I’ll be playing her ex, who’s very straight edge, kind of like Jason Bateman. And it’s an hour and half long car chase movie, details to come.
Lynn: That sounds amazing, I can’t wait to hear more. And the other project?
Matt: The crowdfunding project is very exciting – I think I’ll go live with it at the next convention in Chicago (this weekend). We’re trying to raise 50 to 100K to make an adult animated series called ‘Public Domain’.
Lynn: That’s a good title…
Matt: I’m gonna send you the pitch, it’s really fun! We have a lot of interest in making this cartoon, which consists of every character that has ever fallen into the public domain.
Lynn: Oh I get it, I get it!
Matt: I based the idea off the sitcom ‘Cheers’, remember that show?
Lynn: Of course.
Matt: So Public Domain is the bar where all these fallen-from-grace-remade-over-and-over actors that are now in their forties and fifties gather. They’re in the same style as a Disney character, but with wrinkles and maybe smoking a cigarette, and I have some characters with disabilities and like everybody is included in this, it’s representation, it’s inclusion, it’s everything. And here’s the kicker – it’s the entire Supernatural cast as voice cast. I have nobody outside of Supernatural voicing a character.
Me (a gigantic Supernatural fan): YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS, Supernatural reunion!!!!
Matt: We’ll release like two characters a week, and the original sketches of the characters that they may or may not be voicing. Like there’s gonna be a lot of hinty hinty stuff.
Lynn: Oh so like, this week we’ll find out who a certain Supernatural actor might be playing…like does this character mysteriously have bowlegs….
Matt: It’s a project with my producing partner, Sean, who’s a really great writer, really funny. Like the stories just write themselves, it’s just outrageous. And there are so many characters in the public domain and every few years there will be like fifty more added – X Men, MCU, all of it.
Lynn: OMG this is great!
Matt: It’s a fucking golden idea, but nobody wants to finance anything right now in Hollywood, so you just gotta go out and do it with the Indiegogo thing. We’re gonna crowdfund this beautiful animated pilot, and we have some unbelievable swag that I’m designing with the Public Domain logo, but on all bar-themed material. So like green bar napkins with – it looks like ‘Cheers’ – but it says ‘Public Domain’. And matching glass beer mugs with the gold, with Public Domain on the side, and greeting cards written from each character’s perspective, with the art on the front and a message from our cynical version of the character on the back. I mean, we have Santa, because he’s public domain, so we’re doing a whole series of shitty Santa Christmas cards as a perk on Indiegogo.
Lynn: So who’s playing Santa?
Matt: (laughing) It’s a secret!
Lynn: Damn.
Matt: Everyone I’ve told about this, they’re like, how can I be involved? It’s unbelievable. Everybody. Even people I haven’t talked to yet, they’re like, why aren’t you using my name in the pitch deck? And we have so many interesting voices, like Adam Fergus and Julie McNiven and Lisa Berry, just wonderful sounding voices with resonance. So I’m like, I can come to your house to record dialogue. They want to do the project, we’re just trying to finance the animation team. Nobody’s financing, those places want their own IP, and I’m like go ahead, get your own IP, I’m gonna make the most popular animated show in the world because it’s characters we already know!
Lynn: Which is why fanfic is so popular, like people love that, stories about beloved characters. Of course people want to be involved, it’s a fabulous idea!
Matt: You wouldn’t believe the characters that are public domain, from Phantom of the Opera to the Disney princesses, so many. I’m finding a way to represent everybody in a cartoon world, and it’s the most fulfilling adventure you’ve ever been on. The big story arc is everybody at the bar is either waiting or hoping to be rediscovered, or have a sequel or a reinvention of their past character. And then, in between, they’re dealing with the nonsense, the relationships, the life at home, and it’s very inside Hollywood, as if all the cartoon characters that we know so well were real people.
Lynn: As a psychologist who studies fandom and the parasocial relationships between fans and celebrities or fictional characters, this is great too because you’re using a lot of fictional characters that have been really important to people across their lives. We have bonds with our favorite characters, and this is a chance to reconnect with them in a totally new incarnation. It sounds hilarious, but it also sounds like underneath there’s some commentary on celebrity, aging, things like that. These universal themes are also there.
Matt: It’s very honest. There’s an antagonist, a producer named Sidney Salmon, who’s a PG version of like a Harvey Weinstein type character. He’s trying to get all these people to come do like this local shoot in the valley, that’s kind of like, is that a porn thing, like what are you doing? So we kinda shed some light on all that shit, even the derogatory talk that happens on a set between people, just everything is covered.
Lynn: But it’s cartoons, so you can lampoon and make fun of and skewer everything, because it’s cartoons and it’s beloved characters. And you’ve got an insider perspective on the industry that you can incorporate too.
Matt: I love when you can just say it because it’s, you know, a dog or a cat or a cartoon or whatever. Exactly.
Lynn: This is so exciting!
Matt: Between these two things, I couldn’t be more excited! I’m an advocate of putting the people that I find talented and deserving on camera and giving them their shot. When I got to do that with my wife and my friends on Mama Bear, I was so proud of what that did. To roll into the end of the year and go, I’m gonna star in a film but Briana is gonna carry it. She’s gonna be the number one. And there are a couple of cameos from some other faces that you’ll love, but I can’t talk about that yet.
Lynn: And you already mentioned Jensen…
Matt: We have a bunch of things in development that we’re trying to get to go, but unfortunately he got very busy or we might have been filming a movie in January with him and with me directing. At this point, I’m gonna do this other film with Briana, and it might line up for us later in the year. I wrote a movie for me and then when I read it, I could only see Jensen Ackles in it. So I sent it to him over the pandemic, and he was like, this is for me, I want to make this. Immediately we were like, this is your John Wick franchise, we’ve got to figure out how to do this. And then he booked like every TV show under the moon and said look, Cohen, there’s no way I could shoot in January.
Lynn: Literally true. Busiest man on screen right now!
Matt: So the other two things are clicking, and I said I’ll just hold this bounty hunter project and see what happens – at this point, I don’t even care if I get to direct it, I think I could knock it out of the park with J, but even if he can take it as a vessel to make him the movie star that we all know he is.
Lynn: He would love to be a John Wick character, that’s for sure. And he could so do it!
Matt: Lynn, it’s John Wick with the comedy of Deadpool. It’s a dream, it is. Like fifteen degrees hotter than Soldier Boy.
Lynn: I don’t know if I’ll survive that, maybe you want to rethink. This could be dangerous…
Matt: Here’s why it’s hotter, because he’s not a superhero. He’s a bounty hunter, so he doesn’t have a suit, he doesn’t have anything, it’s not easy for him, it’s fucking hard for him. And he’s busted up, and he’s our hero, and he knows it. I pitched him the same way. I said Jensen, I just read this amazing script that Lee and I wrote for me, we wanted to do an under one million dollar movie that I could star in and direct that takes place in one location. And when it was done, Lee and I said, this is Jensen.
Lynn: John Wick and Deadpool humor? Yep.
Matt: And he loved it. So we’re hoping to get that going with him, even if I have to hand it over to him and his company or whatever, he can have it. It screams Jensen Ackles in the ways we love Jensen Ackles the most.
Lynn: You have got a ton of really exciting things going on.
Matt: I have to get one done first! One of my favorite therapies is to write down the five things that are stressing you out, cross off the ones you can’t control, and ask what can we control? We can start this crowdfunding. And we have a little bit of financing to make this movie in January with Briana. We’re going to do those two things and hopefully be successful and roll that into a giant movie with Jensen. And the crazy thing is, we have Mama Bear too, which is still being talked about in several different ways. It’s still very much alive, it’s just that these other projects have kind of taken precedence because they’re cheaper and we can make them a bit quicker. But I want nothing more than to make Jensen a comedic Deadpool version of John Wick AND put the next biggest female led action franchise into the world. An amazing ensemble and supporting cast and room for a great cameo, Jeffrey Dean Morgan maybe…
Lynn: Oooh.
Matt: Jeffrey and Jensen have been two of my biggest supporters of everything I’ve sent their way. When Jeffrey saw Mama Bear, he was thrilled about it – this is years ago right when I finished it, but he was like dude, this is very Grind House, like he loved it, it was his style. And of course we have a role in mind for Jeffrey on Public Domain.
Lynn: Of course! Any other little hints you can give us about Public Domain?
Matt: The original pitch came off something we came up with ten years ago which was: Ten girls audition to be Ariel the Little Mermaid. This is the story of the other nine… That was the original line. Flash to nine other redheaded girls in various different workplaces in Hollywood. Like one girl’s selling bacon wrapped hot dogs on the corner. One girl’s a waitress at the bar, one girl’s an Uber driver, but they all are sharing their story documentary style to a camera. And it’s all animated. That evolved into ‘Public Domain’, with the thing I loved about ‘Cheers’. Like on ‘Supernatural’, we had the brothers, right? They had this relationship and then that relationship was responsible for all these other exterior satellite relationships with all these other people.
Lynn: They were the anchor.
Matt: Same thing with Cheers, right? You walk in, whoever from wherever for whatever, and now we’re having a conversation in a place where everybody, for some reason, feels like they can have a conversation, in the bar. It’s almost like a therapist’s office for a lot of people.
Lynn: That’s true, bars bring people together.
Matt: And it’s the stories of all these broken characters trying to make it again in Hollywood. And it’s not much different from me and my generation of actors that I’m with right now. A lot of us have had some really good success, and some ups and downs, and this and that, and we’re all kind of like hey, man, the clock’s ticking, is the phone still ringing? I’m going to express that through these characters and I think people are going to relate to it in all different ways.
Lynn: I think so too, definitely. Like I said, it also has these deeper themes, universal ones.
Matt: Of course I wanna pay my bills, but I’m excited about creating a universe that’s gonna lend itself to like a graphic novel, and also to toys and stuff, it’s pure fulfillment, creatively I could make like a little Hercules or something that resembles Jensen, and someone might want to have that.
Lynn: Can I just say, a lot of people?
Matt: We’ve written 55 episodes so far, and they’re 15 minutes, so it’s a 30 minute slot with two stories, much like the American Dad style.
Lynn: I can’t wait!!!!
Understatement.
Stay tuned for more from Matt. And if you’re as excited as I am about all of Matt’s projects, here’s the link for the crowdfunding for Public Domain – it’s a great way to be a part of something this exciting from the very start!
-Lynn
You can read the personal and powerful
chapters by Matt and the other Supernatural
actors in Family Don’t End With Blood. Info
and links at:
