alt.sex
By Dick Dahl
FRIDAY, JANUARY 14
Today, a guy named Eric Bickernicks granted me permission to
follow him and his film crew around for the next few months
as they shoot a movie called "alt.sex." No, it's not
porn. It's indie. Very, very indie, as a matter of fact. You
hear those stories about people shooting indie movies on shoestrings,
like Robert Rodriguez and how he made the critically acclaimed
"El Mariachi" a few years ago for $7,000, and this
is one of those.
Motivated more by a desire to find respite from winter doldrums
than anything else, I'd gone to the Massachusetts Film Office
website a few days ago looking for any indie projects that might
be ready to start shooting. That's where I learned about "alt.sex."
Bickernicks was looking for actors willing to work for nothing
which, I'd learned after scanning a variety of postings, is
not at all unusual on a project that was ready to start shooting
in a few weeks. The timing was right. He'd listed a URL for
the movie's website, altsexmovie.com, which I checked out. It's
mostly an audition tool, listing the movie's roles, most of
which have already been filled. It looked legit, so I e-mailed
him. I told him I wasn't an actor, but that I was interested
in following an indie film crew around and perhaps writing about
the experience. In his e-mail response, Bickernicks said he'd
be happy to let me follow the making of "alt.sex."
He told me that he makes corporate videos for a living and that
he's decided that now is the time to step back and pursue his
dream of making an independent feature film. He said he's paying
for the project out of his own pockets and that he hopes to
get it done for $10,000. He told me that he'd bought a super-16
mm movie camera for $4,800, about one fourth the price of a
new one, from someone who'd posted it for sale on eBay. He said
he'd bought a $700 digital photo camera to record the making
of "alt.sex." He wants to put photos on the website
along with a director's journal. If the movie is never seen,
he at least wants a complete record of the experience. "Either
it will end up a compendium of useless information on one man's
egotistical plight to turn approximately 10 grand into a pile
of worthless 'art,' or a fascinating study on how to create
a movie with nothing more than a bunch of enthusiasm,"
he wrote. Tonight we spoke on the phone. He told me that he
was completing the casting in the next week or so. Shooting,
he said, would begin in mid-February. The shoots would only
occur on weekends because everyone, including himself, has day
jobs.
BREAK
It's difficult to get a good handle on just how extensive the
Massachusetts "independent-film industry," is if there
really is such a thing. Even though the Massachusetts Film Office
seems to be very supportive of independent filmmaking, I don't
have the sense that they keep close tabs on it. The office's
director, Robin Dawson, says that the MFO supports indie filmmaking
in a variety of ways. But if you visit their office, with its
huge posters of "A Perfect Storm" and "Good Will
Hunting" greeting your entrance, it's clear where their
priorities lie. The MFO, after all, is an arm of the state's
Department of Economic Development. Their goal, their job, is
to get big-budget movies made in Massachusetts, not to hold
the hands of budding cinematic artistes.
Still, the MFO does have a handle on the indies that are a step
up from self-financed shoestring projects, at least once they
enter production. Last spring, I asked Dawson how many indie
movies got made in Massachusetts in the previous year. She told
me 11 and handed me a card, headed by the title, "Massachusetts
has always been a 'State of Independents,'" which listed
them and the companies that are producing them. On any given
day, the MFO's own web site will list several self-described
independent film and video projects that are looking for acting
and technical help, which leads me to believe that scores of
indie projects get shot every year in Massachusetts. The fact,
however, as Dawson and other experts on regional film activity
told me, is that many projects simply die along the way, usually
for lack of enough money. And even if a movie gets shot, most
will fail to attract the necessary completion financing to transform
it, like the 11 movies on the MFO's indie card, into products
that people might actually see someday.
Most people interested in film in Massachusetts are aware of
the local indie-film buzzes of the moment like "The Blue
Diner," "Massholes," "Bluff" and "Lift,"
currently but clearly there are many movies, like "alt.sex,"
that are getting made below the radar. Nobody really knows how
many are being made because, as Boston Vilm and Video Foundation
director Anne Marie Stein told me, "There's no real public
source of support. It takes incredible resourcefulness to make
a movie, and people do the fund raising in any number of ways."
They use their own money, run up credit cards, borrow from friends
and family. Even though filmmaking is expensive and the chances
of success are extremely long, Stein says that "there are
TONS more (indie projects) than there used to be." In large
part, she says, the growth of indie filmmaking is attributable
to the advent of new, higher-quality digital video technology,
which is much cheaper than film.
"It's getting to the point now," says Charles Merzbacher,
a professor in the Boston University Film Department, "where
anyone who wants to make a movie can do it."
Well, not quite anyone. But if you've got $10,000, Merzbacher
estimates, you'll be able to finance your own feature-length
digital-video movie. But if you do, he says, you should not
entertain any notions that you'll sell it for commercial distribution.
Even though everyone says that commercial movies will turn to
video in the future, that day is not yet here, Merzbacher says.
He says that any project shot on film still holds a huge advantage
in potential distributors' minds. That is, while digital video
is an improvement on video, he says, there's still nothing like
the look and feel of 35mm film. It is still essential for any
indie filmmaker serious about success to end up with a 35mm
product. The problem in shooting 35mm is that it is exorbitantly
expensive. One option is to shoot in 16 mm or the wider Super
16, which can be blown up to 35 mm for around $30,000.
Even then, the chances of success are daunting. Typically, one
of the top priorities of indie filmmakers is to have their movies
accepted by film-festival committees, in hopes that they will
create a buzz at the festival and bought by a distributor. Getting
their film ready
"There are TONS more (indie projects) than there used to
be," says Anne Marie Stein, director of the Boston Film
and Video Foundation, a center of indie activity. "It's
a lot cheaper to make things and edit things." Stein says
that Boston has long held a reputation for its strong documentary-film
community, which includes such stars as Frederick Wiseman and
Ross McElwee. But she says that narrative filmmaking is catching
up, in large part because of the growing influence of Boston
University's film department.
Charles Merzbacher, a professor in the BU film department, agrees
that Boston has had plenty of lively indie filmmaking going
on, but he senses that in general, indie filmmaking is entering
"a fallow, strange time where no one knows what's going
to happen next."
"A thumbnail sketch of the last 10 years is that a few
independent films appeared out of the blue 'sex, lies, and videotape,'
'El Mariachi,' 'Laws of Gravity,' 'Clerks,' 'Go Fish' and spawned
literally thousands of other independent films," he says.
"And very, very few of those films have ever gotten distributed.
With 'Blair Witch Project' there was a minor surge, but there's
been a dampening of enthusiasm because lately there haven't
been many break-out successes."
If enthusiasm for feature films is declining, however, the new
digital-video technology is drawing budding moviemakers in a
new direction, Merzbacher says. "It's getting to the point
now," he says, "where anyone who wants to make a movie
can do it."
Which only exacerbates the problem. "The people in charge
of what goes out to the theaters cannot watch 8,000 films a
year," he says. "So they set up benchmarks like 'are
there any stars?'"
To Merzbacher, the real future for independent cinema could
be the Internet. "There's a lot of good work that's not
getting its day in the theater," he says. "The big
question is whether or not the Internet will be the way around
the distribution bottleneck. I hold out hope that the Internet
will be a more democratic distribution system than we've had
up to this point. But I'm skeptical."
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13
First day of shooting.
I really didn't know what to expect, having never been to a
film shoot before. The one image I did have in my mind's eye
was this: A chaotic swirl of people, and in the midst of the
disorder, the Director, imperious and detached, seated in a
tall, folding, wood-and-canvass chair. Perhaps a sycophantic
assistant director yelling for order. The actors nowhere to
be seen, off in the wings or in their trailers, awaiting word
from lackeys that their presences on the set are respectfully
requested.
Here's what I saw today: Actors and director alike schlepping
equipment into a North Shore office building where the movie's
workplace scenes are to be shot. John McLeod, the male lead,
assisting Bickernicks in setting up lights, taping up windows,
sliding partitions into place. Bickernicks giving a crash course
in boom-mike holding and audio-tape-deck operation to his rookie
sound crew, twin teenage boys Brendan and Emory Bond, friends
of McLeod, who have never done it before.
There was no director's assistant. No make-up department. No
wardrobe people.
Today's initial shoot was a modest undertaking. Bickernicks
planned to shoot five scenes involving only two actors, McLeod
and Geoff Bridges. In the movie, the men's characters, also
named John and Geoff, are workmates and pals. In the movie,
John gets dumped by his girlfriend at story's start, and Geoff
and a couple of other pals try to get him back into the swing
of things in an effort to help him find true love. Or at least
a date. That, in a nutshell, is pretty much the whole movie.
Bickernicks told me that he'd written the script based largely
on his own experiences in the hellish world of middle-age dating.
The title refers to several computer-related subthemes dealing
with Internet matchmaking services and chat rooms as well as
a running bit about porn sites popping up at embarrassing times
on characters' workplace computer screens.
"My movie ain't necessarily art," Eric told me today.
"But it's my movie. I don't have a committee telling me
what to do. If it's a turd, at least it's my own turd."
(NOTE RE ABOVE QUOTE: IF the last sentence is OK (which I doubt),
I think the preceding sentence "I don't have a committee
telling me what to do,".. should be pulled because then
the whole thing scans much better. However, if you yank the
last sentence, then "I don't have a committee'" etc.
should be included for obvious reasons. I hope that's clear.)
Bickernicks has told me that he's making "alt.sex"
because he wants to have something truly of his own creation
to show people when he's old and retired. He's 38 years old.
Maybe he's having his first whiffs, his first realizations,
of mortality.
In casting his movie, Bickernicks turned first to several friends
with acting experience to occupy some of the primary roles.
His friendship with the male lead, McLeod, goes way back. When
they were in middle school in Natick, Bickernicks had told me,
the two boys had jointly engaged in their first film experience.
They made an 8mm animated short titled "Revenge of the
Roll." They stole dozens of rolls of toilet paper from
public restrooms and animated them into great roiling waves
that attacked people and mummified them. Today, the two men
are housemates. They share a house and a mortgage with their
two girlfriends in Marlborough.
Bridges, today's second actor, is also a close friend. It was
his Watertown business place, Productive Media, Inc., where
the cast met last week for the first time for a script read-through.
The energy level that day was high. Lots of laughs. Which is
to be expected, I suppose, for a movie like this. It's a funny
movie, so Bickernicks sought out funny actors, including a couple
of standup comics, Sparky Schneider and Lauren Verge. There
was an NYU Tisch School of the Arts graduate, Juliet Bowler;
a guy who 'd worked as an actor in LA, Darby Duffin. Everyone
had experience of one kind or another, but for most this is
their first film of any kind.
Today was my first exposure to the fact that films are deceptions
and by that I mean real, technological deceptions that stand
quite apart from actors' abilities to impart believability.
I'd never realized, for instance, that a conversation between
two actors in a movie isn't necessarily an accurate chronology
of the sequence in which it was filmed. Today scenes were shot
repeatedly, but not so much because Eric spotted flaws as because
he needed different camera angles. In the end, he will edit
the shots to create the illusion of a natural conversation when
in fact McLeod's filmed and recorded response to Briggs may
have occurred a half hour prior to, or subsequent to, Briggs'
initial line. Just as scenes are temporal mindbenders, so are
shooting schedules. The very first "alt.sex" scenes
that were shot today, for instance, will appear a ways into
the movie. In a few weeks, they'll shoot more scenes from this
"day" of the story line. The absence of a continuity
person means that each actor has the responsibility to keep
track of what he and she wore that day which is another reason
for the digital camera.
Another tool Bickernicks has invested in is a video "tap,"
a second lens, for his camera. This device allows him to videotape
scenes, which appear on an attached monitor in precisely the
same dimensions as film, for purposes of ironing out visual
kinks before running the actual film. The video test runs are
valuable because once the film rolls, it costs almost $30 a
minute and comes directly out of his own pocket. When you've
set up a budget of a mere $10,000, frugality is more than desirable;
it is essential.
Strapped eyeglasses dangling at his chest, Bickernicks closed
his left eye and peered through the camera lens with his right
one. They've done a few video run-throughs of this scene, a
simple one in which the two men talk while Geoff's attention
remains fixed on a computer screen while his fingers tap repeatedly
on the keyboard. Bickernicks' girlfriend, Therese Chase, was
there today as a stagehand. She grabbed the slate and held it
before the camera as Eric read numbers into the record: "Scene
10, roll one, take one." He didn't say, "Action."
Instead, Therese listens for the sound of moving film, chugging
along the sprockets of Eric's camera. Hearing it, she clicks
the slate arm down, the cue for McLeod to plop down into a chair
next to Briggs.
"I just got totally spammed!," he says. "My e-mail
account's frozen. Can you check it out?"
"alt.sex" is off and running.
BREAK
In 1995, Roxbury filmmaker Rob Patton-Spruill directed an indie
movie called "Squeeze," which received some critical
acclaim on its limited distribution. It was a tale about his
home turf in Roxbury, about gang life and the pressure it exerts
on young men who don't want to be part of it. His success with
that movie earned him a call to Hollywood, where he directed
a movie called "Body Count," a formulaic shoot-em-up
that never made it to the screen, although it's available in
video. Patton-Spruill cringes at the experience he says he was
a mere "director for hire" and hated being involved
in a movie he cared nothing about. But he calls his Hollywood
experience worthwhile, if for no other reason than it taught
him that fact about himself. He also calls it worthwhile because
one day he and his wife, Patricia Moreno, drove out to Venice
Beach to look at Roger Corman's production facility. Corman
is a famous producer, and yet here was an operation, Patton-Spruill
says, that was little more than a tiny lumberyard.
He decided that he could do the same thing, but back in Boston.
They returned to their hometown, and one day, while driving
around in Roxbury, they spotted an ideal vacant building, which
once housed an ambulance company, for their dream venture. "My
wife said, 'That would be perfect,'" he recalls. "And
as fate would have it, that very weekend it went on the market."
The building, in Roxbury's Fort Hill neighborhood, is now the
home of The Film Shack, which opened its doors in the spring
of 2000 as a production facility expressly for small-budget
indie movies. "I could have stayed in Hollywood and made
a good living," he says, "but this is where my heart
is."
As we spoke in his office, a man and woman were editing a movie
called "Hu-Kwa," shot in New Hampshire, in the editing
suite adjoining it. Filmmakers can rent the use of his editing
equipment, recording equipment, cameras. They can also learn
about filmmaking at FilmShack from a group called City Scape,
which rents space from Patton-Spruill and offers a variety of
classes on how to make movies.
Patton-Spruill says he wants to "blaze a trail" in
Boston for small, independent filmmakers who face great odds
in getting their work distributed. He thinks that his good reputation,
if attached to a project, makes it more attractive to investors.
"I've always made 30 to 40 percent for my investors,"
he says.
Patton-Spruill has missionary zeal about indie filmmaking, but
he's far from the only independent film producer in town. Mitchell
Robbins (with whom Patton-Spruill had a falling out over his
involvement with "Squeeze") is well-known, as is Sarah
Greene, who produced last year's Sundance hit, "Girl Fight."
Another is Scout Productions, the creation of three Hollywood
veterans who moved to Boston in 1995 and set up shop. Scout
occupies an enormous space in a former factory building in Allston
and lays claim to a variety of well-known indie ventures that
it's produced, including "Last Stop Wonderland" director
Brad Anderson's upcoming "Session 9."
The three Scout Productions principals, Dorothy Aufiero, David
Collins, and Michael Williams, estimate that they've worked
on nearly 150 Hollywood films. Aufiero and Williams are originally
from Boston.
The trio described film production as a complex task involving
many skills, but as Aufiero put it, "It all boils down
to business. You've got to be able to tell a distributor how
they'll make money."
As producers, they arrange the project, which usually starts
with a script, but sometimes it's an idea waiting for a script.
For example, Williams said, they'd been awaiting a script for
a movie that could be shot at the abandoned Danvers State Hospital,
reportedly a gem of prospective cinematic gloom. Then they got
the "Session 9" script from Anderson, who had written
it expressly for a movie he wanted to film at Danvers State.
With his success with "Next Stop, Wonderland," of
course, Anderson's name lends considerable clout to any project.
They conducted the arrangements to secure the facility for shooting.
There were talks with the Independent Film Channel and finally
with USA Films, which agreed to be the distributor.
The budget for this indie movie, they said, will be around $8
million.
AUGUST 6
Contrary to my initial expectations about actors' egos, the
"alt.sex" cast had quickly gelled into a happy family.
At the North Shore office shoots, midweek rehearsals at Briggs'
Watertown office, over lunch, everyone was having a blast. They're
performers and they enjoy performing for each other, improvising
jokes and bits and songs to wile away the enormous dead times
that are part of filmmaking.
But then there was a break in the action, which has extended
to nearly two months, caused by (a) technical difficulties and
(b) Bickernicks' need to take on more corporate work to finance
his movie. Bickernicks had gotten a great deal on his camera,
but it seems that the camera had a problem with its zoom lens.
Part of the time, depending on the depth of a scene's focal
points, the resulting footage would be slightly out of focus.
He sent the camera out for repairs, and now, he says, the problem
is solved, although Bickernicks told me he'll have to reshoot
some of the office scenes. Meanwhile, judging from the group
e-mail actors were sending back and forth, it was clear that
they all missed each other greatly. So much for my expectations.
So the energy level at this weekend's shoots, the first since
the hiatus are higher than ever. The venue is an Allston jazz
club called the Wonder Bar, whose owners have graciously lent
their facility to the project because "alt.sex" actress
Cara O'Shea is a friend. O'Shea is a New York actress who' s
been in a couple of indie films that never went far and she
came up on the train Friday night for her first scenes in the
movie.
Her entrance into the movie causes friction. If the offstage
clowning is a measure of an unusually happy acting family, O'Shea
lets it be known that she finds it distracting and unprofessional.
Which doesn't endear her to the other actors. She's in two scenes,
both of which were shot today. One, which will occur halfway
through the movie, is a scene in which she is approached by
John, who bumbles and flubs his effort at initiating a conversation.
The second is the movie's final scene, where our hero gets the
girl, her.
The Wonder Bar has huge windows fronting on a busy street, so
little knots of curious spectators, lured by the bright lights
and the movie camera kept forming throughout the day. Yesterday's
shoot there drew bigger crowds because that was the day when
Deirdre Williams, in real life the afternoon traffic reporter
on Boston radio station Mix 98.5, donned a "money dress"
that Bickernicks and Chase constructed at home. Williams plays
the character called The Computer Date, whom John has paid hundreds
of dollars, via a dating service, to meet. They built an outfit
of fake money to cover her head to toe, a visual gag about how
overwhelmed John is by the cost of meeting her.
Today Williams came back, even though she's not scheduled for
any more shoots. She said she came back because yesterday was
so much fun. But because Eric needs extras for the restaurant
scene, and because the money outfit obscured her appearance
yesterday, she was pressed into action to sit at a table in
the background. So, God help me, was I.
DATE
Today was the day a lot of us were looking forward to: the nightclub
shots at Sophia's nightclub. Sophia's has a cool downstairs
space, complete with dance floor, a mirror ball, and faux stone
wall, which is great for shooting a nightclub scene because
it's always dark. It was imperative that the scenes be shot
now because much of this shoot revolves around actor Darby Duffin,
who is leaving Boston shortly to resume his acting career in
LA.
Bickernicks has put out the call through his actors for extras,
preferably young and good-looking nightclub types. He'd hoped
for at least 15, but gotten only 10. But true to the indie spirit,
two principal "alt.sex" actors, O'Shea and Juliet
Bowler, have shown up to lend some head-turned-away help. O'Shea
has added to her own identity obfuscation by donning a pink
wig.
etc.
BREAK
In order to gain a bit of perspective on the moviemaking process
I'd been following for months, I talked to three other indie
filmmakers who recently wrapped projects. Two of them, veteran
Boston moviemakers Jan Egleson and Natatcha Estebanez, are real-life
partners as well as the director-and-producer team that made
"The Blue Diner," The third is a young MIT grad, Alice
Cox, who quit her job as a biotech software engineer and cashed
in her stock options to make a movie called "Metal."
Egleson and Estebanez unveiled "The Blue Diner" at
a private screening in early December and are awaiting word
from the Sundance Festival Committee on whether or not they've
made the increasingly difficult cut there. Acceptance by Sundance
or other prestigious festivals like Toronto and New York is,
of course, a major step toward commercial success. When Anderson's
"Next Stop Wonderland" was named XXXXXXXXXX, in 1998,
XXXXXXX gave him $7 million for distribution rights.
A few years ago, when Egleson submitted XXXXXXXXX to the Sundance
committee, it competed against some 300 other entries, he says.
This year, he says, Sundance received 3,000 entries.
Not that their movie depends on Sundance for distribution. WGBH-TV,
where both of them once worked, has provided financing in exchange
for showing the movie, which explores intergenerational conflicts
in an immigrant Boston Latino family, nationally on public TV.
Like everyone, or so it seems, Egleson and Estebanez look at
digital video and the Internet as potentially powerful forces
on independent filmmaking. "If there's ever been a time
to be an independent filmmaker, it's now," Estebanez says.
Which should come as hopeful news to the young Ms. Cox, who
has forsaken the income could she be earning as an engineer
for the penury of indie moviemaking. She shot the film over
the course of three weeks in the spring for just under $60,000
and unveiled it at the Boston Film and Video Foundation in November.
It's a strange movie that's blends a quasi-sci-fi alien-clothing
story with a paean to Allston. It's atmospheric, moody, weird.
It's very indie.
The problem Cox currently faces is that the liquidated stock
options have only brought her to this point. In order to get
the movie accepted by any festival committees, she has to spend
about $35,000 to turn her 16mm negative into a 35mm print. (The
showing at the Boston Film and Video Foundation was a Betamax
projection of the movie's video image.) She doesn't know where
the money will come from. At the moment, she told me, her primary
focus was on her next script, "Contrary Souls," which
is apparently based at least partially on her career as a software
engineer. "It's like Dilbert," she says. "But
disturbing."
DATE
The shooting is almost done. After today, there will only be
a couple of more scheduled shoots, not counting whatever little
retakes Eric will have to do.
Today's shoot was on a beach in Quincy and it was a race against
time. The sun was already losing candlepower as it sank toward
a dense bank of dark clouds that were building to the west,
and Eric still had a couple of scenes to shoot.
Standing there and watching, the thought struck me that had
I just stumbled upon this scene, I'd guess that these people
are making an Art Film. Here's why: In the middle of the beach
there was a plywood fireplace with a front of fake cardboard
bricks. In front of the fireplace sat a blanket, and on top
of the blanket there were two place settings, a vase of flowers,
and a bottle of wine in a small tub. Beyond it, down next to
the water, five people a youngish middle-aged couple, twin teenage
boys, and a suit-clad man with a trumpet were listening carefully
to a fully painted, fully regaled clown. Had I just stumbled
upon this spectacle, I'd have guess that these people are Fellini
devotees, intent on resurrecting the Master's surrealistic,
1960s style.
In fact, the clown was Bickernicks. He wore the outfit because
today was the day he got himself into his movie as a balloon
delivery man in a clown suit. In this scene, John is trying
to win back the heart of his estranged girlfriend Irene, played
icily by Lauren Verge. The reason for the fireplace, the flowers,
the horn player and the balloon-bearing clown is that John has
heard two women talk about the things they find most romantic.
He thinks if he assembles them into one clump, Irene will be
impressed.
The strangest part of the scene, though, was that the clown
was giving directions and shooting a film camera. That was because
Bickernicks got himself made up first along with all the other
pre-shoot activities so that nothing would slow down the shooting
once it started. It's entirely possible that he didn't anticipate
the additional little problem that his plan would create. It
didn't take long for the word to spread like wildfire among
neighborhood children: Clown on the beach. Soon, small heads
were popping up here and there above the sea wall. Soon, Bickernicks'
girlfriend, Therese, who was there today to help apply Eric's
clown makeup, took on a new task: crowd control. The children
wanted to meet the clown. But the clown was very, very busy.
Eric's scene came last, and by then, it was getting dark. In
his scene, he ran up to John and Irene, breathless from a supposedly
long run. To increasingly exasperated Irene, this was the last
straw and she walks off. Then John departs, frustrated, in the
other direction, and the clown is standing there with the balloons
still in his hand. The script calls for him to shrug and release
the helium-filled balloons. Because he has no backup balloon
set, this is, of course a scene that must be shot right. A group
of boys that Therese is holding back had plans of their own,
though. When Eric released the balloons, they raced into the
scene trying without luck to snatch the balloons out of the
air. Actor Dan Bridges, who was operating the camera, said he
thinks the shot is salvageable, that enough of it got filmed
before the intrusion.
DATE
I went to Bickernicks' house today to learn how he edits film.
He showed me, sitting at his editing console, a large-screen
Macintosh computer amidst a tangle of other machines. He sends
out the film from each shoot to a finishing lab and they return
videotape copies of the film. He edits the video, and when it's
all completed, the edited video will be the guide for the physical
construction of the final film.
He talked about the future and his strategies for getting someone
to buy and distribute his movie. His fondest hope, of course,
is to secure an agent with connections at, say, Miramax. In
his dream scenario, the studio will fall in love with "alt.sex"
and they'll give him a couple of million dollars for it.
Option two, he said, is to spend about $5,000 to make a negative
of the movie so that he can make multiple prints and send them
around to film-festival committees. If he's accepted by a film
festival, who knows? It is an unusual comedy, after all. It's
a bit like the low-brow Farrelly Brothers ("The Trouble
With Mary"), but it's actually kind of cerebral in its
approach. There's one scene, for instance, where men and women
in the office analyze at great length the following question:
What comes first in a relationship, the "I love you,"
or the unconstrained passing of wind.
There are other options. There's the Independent Film Channel,
which buys little movies. There's the straight-to-video market.
And then there's the Internet. Sites and formats already exist,
he said, that allow compression of entire movies into about
600 MEG of downloadable file space.
By now, the final budget for "alt.sex" is looking
more like $20,000, and he knows it will be hard for him to get
his money back. But he says that was never really the main point.
He knows that when he's 85 years old, he'll have more than a
bunch of corporate videos to show for his life's work. He also
knows that he'll have a good story to tell.
END
From:
"dahl"