October 27th, 2002: Making Deals, Joe Bob review

I have no picture for my post. So here's a hot chick I took a picture of at a comic convention where I stalked Kevin Smith. You'll read about it in the next blog post.

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Funny afterword about this:
I'm not sure if we actually played the Chicago fest or not--one of our foreign dvd covers to HH says we played in it, so I'm confused...where'd they get that info? I don't know.

Also, Tony at IFM turns out to be Anthony Ginnane, who you can see in the very entertaining documentary Not Quite Hollywood, about Australian exploitation movies. He produced a bunch of movies before forming his own distribution label.

OCTOBER 27th

    Really ought to update this more often. So much has happened that it’s hard to believe.

    Okay, first and foremost, after a long talk with not only Paul(works at Tulchin’s) and Tony at IFM, we signed the deal with them for foreign. We’ll see how it works out.

    Second, I had sent the movie off to a couple of festivals to see if we could get in. Chicago Independent and Hollywood Film Festival both blew us off, not even telling us we didn’t get in. I mean, how hard is it to email someone? If you’ve got a small indy movie, DON’T send it to them. Chicago claims it’s independent but doesn’t seem to be.

    Anyway, the B-movie Film festival didn’t tell us that we got in, but they emailed me to tell us we were nominated for seven awards, so I’ll forgive them. Best Writing, Best Editing, Best Action Sequences, Best Villain, Best Actor, Best Score and Best Movie. Not bad! (Footnote: We ended up winning two, Best Editing and Best Action Sequences)

    And then there’s the sniper…

    If I had a dime for every person who jokingly asked me if I was the sniper, I’d have enough money to shoot my next movie.

    Then I get word from Mary Koon, assistant to Joe Bob Briggs.

A quick word about Joe Bob, in case you don’t know who he is.  You might remember him from his long run as the host of TNT’s Monstervision. He writes several syndicated columns throughout the country as well as putting out books with his compiled “Joe Bob’s Drive In” movie reviews.

 I had sent a screener to Joe Bob like eight months ago and figured it went into the trash(where the one I gave Kevin Smith probably is—see “Stalking Kevin Smith”(NOTE: WILL BE THE NEXT BLOG POST). 

Anyway, his assistant emails me to tell me Joe Bob’s review goes up on 10/23 and she thought I’d like it. She included the review with her email.

I was elated. At least he didn’t hate it! And hey, Joe Bob actually watched MY movie! This is a guy I used to watch on the freakin’ TV! I’ve got two of his books!

Then I read the review.

Holy shit. I was like…HOLY SHIT. He RAVED about the movie. I couldn’t have written a nicer review if I tried. He wrote:“The story twists and spirals several times in the very accomplished script of Kangas, and this might be one of those movies that's actually helped by the low production values. It looks so grainy and gray it's the kind of home movie a serial killer would make about himself.” Wow.

A few of the other words he used are: “It doesn’t disappoint.” “A well-directed movie”. “…eerily prescient”(go look it up). And then he gives it four out of four stars.

Quite literally, it’s the biggest high I’ve gotten since I finished the movie, including the public screening at United Artists. I mean…HOLY SHIT.

Another thing, Joe Bob GOT it. He actually understood the movie and some of the underlying themes. Few people have commented on the irony about Aric Blue, that he prides himself on how self-aware he is, and yet he’s caught in the same trap that he uses to kill his victims.(his pattern is that he stalks and kills people)

Believe me, I’m coasting on a high right now.

So anyway, we’re in the midst of negotiating the details of the domestic deal. What happened was that I couldn’t find any info about the company who wanted the movie. I thought it was Spartan—turns out it wasn’t.

I have to sign a non-disclosure agreement before I can find out who it is. I can’t say, but they’re small. I talk to the guy in charge who says he’s 95% sure they can get HH into Hollywood Video. They can’t make any promises about Blockbuster, but they have gotten movies in there before.

Out of the thirty grand, I’m gonna have to pay for an MPAA rating which will run about two grand. Then I have to pay Harris $1500 to go through HH looking for any copyright violations and other stuff, as it’s a pre-requisite for getting E&O insurance(which the distributor will pay for).

So the piece of the pie is getting smaller. Harris gets 10% of the thirty grand. In essence, we’ll be making our budget back from the domestic. If all goes well with the foreign, we could make up to 150 grand on that.
Biding my time to see if we get any other responses about the Joe Bob thing.