xtcian

1/28/03 Day XXXVIII of the

1/28/03

Day XXXVIII of the Such Huge Projects Hanging By the Thinnest of Threads Road Trip of Rant Preparation

Houston, TX

I know you're supposed to keep a game face in this business of filmmaking, your cup must runneth over with untethered optimism and you're never supposed to believe for a second that it isn't all going to turn out great in the long run. I even hesitate to put such feelings here on the blog, because there may be repercussions down the road if somebody gets an itchy google finger and wants a little dirt. But we've been on this road trip for almost a month and half now, and the money attitude in this country is really beginning to piss me off.

We've done so well, you know? We shot a movie for $256,000 or thereabouts and the film itself turned out to be a funny, soulful, intelligent, raucous, fantastic joyride. We have a legitimately hot young cast, a murderously good soundtrack, and a demographic most producers would kill for. The sheer magnitude of talent we gathered together for this thing is basically the Manhattan Project for indie film; this group of people is only half of our arsenal:

Early glimpses of the film have been met with more success than we imagined; not only did we get into the IFP Market in September, but we heard second-hand that the only film to watch from that event "was this film called 'The Pink House'." The footage we took into Technicolor has been called by those in the business as "the best digital footage they'd ever seen."

Tessa and I both have track records that aren't too shabby either hell, she was on the short list for the documentary Oscar™, for chrissakes. And even after wrapping, our principal cast has done extremely well for themselves. Fred Weller is a legitimate Broadway star, and Heather Matarazzo's last two movies combined for $128 million.

Whatever. There's only so much you can say, right?

We set out on this road trip to try and raise the rest of the $175,000 we need to give The Pink House a good sound mix, finish the animation, and transfer it all to a 35mm blowup so you can see it in theaters. $175K is an alarmingly small amount for a movie, as I'm sure y'all know. But in this harsh economic climate, we would have been thrilled to raise only $30,000 on this trip. That would enable to finish the creative part of the movie (editing, animation, score, and a few tweaks) and submit it to Toronto, Telluride, or another A-list festival.

$30K. That's all we need to raise. That amount stands between success and failure.

And how have we done so far on this trip? Five thousand dollars from one of my dearest friends Salem Suber. That's it. We have been to 24 states. We have seen, pleaded with, held hands with and broken bread with 20 or so people who could have found that much change stuffed in the backseat cushions of their Jaguars, and the only person who has come forward is a humble restaurant manager who is a father of three, living in Jasper, Georgia.

I'm not trying to be thankless, really. I know $5000 is the kind of money most people will never see all in one place, and trying to raise $30K let alone $175K – may strike some people as presumptuous at best. But that's the way independent movies are made! There is no government help here, not like Canada or Australia. The only way artists can thrive is by a certain amount of patronage on the part of those who are more fortunate and believe in giving a voice to some other artists besides those housed by Miramax and Paramount. Not to mention that our film in particular is a really good bet, as far as indie films go: it's a comedy, it was made inexpensively, and could be bought by a distributor at a festival for $1 million or more – that's not even wishful thinking, that's fairly realistic.

And so I find myself, sitting in this parking lot at 1am, suckling wireless broadband internet off of some unsuspecting guy in the apartment across the street, wondering what is going to happen to our project. Could I handle just saying "oh well"? I spent two years lugging scripts back and forth across the country, I spent a month with my stomach in my throat as we directed this thing in the August heat of North Carolina, and now we have spent a year-and-a-half in post-production. Can I just say "well, we gave it the ol' college try" to myself, or to all those people in the picture above? Four years of neverending optimism, of struggles and late-night fights with my beloved, 10,000 miles on the car, making our case with everyone on earth. I know you're never supposed to admit this in public, but I am really scared.

So tonight, this blog goes out to Salem Suber. We have been fast friends since we met in 1989, been on countless insane adventures, and his unflagging good mood has been an infectious, delightful presence in my life for fourteen years. His belief in us, and his faith in the process, makes all this talk of war, the economy, and the pecuniary habits of gazillionaires quiet, and for a few seconds, allows me to believe in the magic of making movies again.