Hunting Humans Remastered on TUBI Streaming Now!

Yeah, I have too many blogs and forget to mention when important things happen. Weirdly, without ever telling me about it, Amazon put Hunting Humans Remastered up. You can get it here--and my other movies, totally free!
bit.ly/kkftubi

If you want to see what I mean when I say "without ever telling me", then check out my other blog here which details my experiences with Createspace.
http://indyfilmmakeradvs.blogspot.com/

And also of note to HH fans--I actually got a note from the serial killer Adam Leroy Lane, who was caught with HH in his truck's dvd player. Maybe I'll go into it later.

"Hunting Humans" Returns To Us

After twelve long years we have the license back to our film. (well, technically they still have six months from July for sell-off) But for all intents and purposes it's ours again.

The question arises...what are we going to do with it?

I haven't taken a look at the film is many years. The crew wanted to watch it one night on the set of "Garden of Hedon", and I was there but I'll tell you now that my brain wasn't and I was exhausted so didn't pay much attention.

I took a look at the original master files I handed in to the distributor and the first thing I thought is, "Man, does that need some color correction". Back when I finished the film(1999) I had no idea what color correction was, and even if I did the software didn't really have any tools of value.

Would color correction really improve the picture enough to merit me going through and scene by scene fixing?



If you take a look at the sample I think you'll agree the answer is yes. The right side is the original way it was, the left is corrected.

The image is never going to look amazing because we shot on 16mm film and only got the one-light transfer. But clearly I can improve the picture quite a bit.


Here's a second quick piece. This is how it originally looks:


This is how it looks with some simple color correction:


And this is how it would look with some color correction plus denoising, though too much.

So I'm definitely going to go through and color correct the whole film for my own release to Amazon streaming, and also a dvd. If a Blu Ray seems warranted then I'll do that too.

But you know what's great about looking at a movie you made around fifteen years ago? You get to see just how little you knew about making movies.

We jumped the line a TON of times, resulting in eyeline mismatches. You may be like "What the hell are you talking about?", so let me show you.

See how these two are supposed to be facing off? The problem is that Rick on the left is aiming his gun frame left. But Bubby is frame right, so it doesn't look like they're facing each other. It looks like they're both looking in the same direction.

I can fix it this way:

See how they appear to be looking at each other now? The cut works now. Granted, now Rick is using his left hand to fire but as long as it's not a continuity error you can do it like this using the horizontal flip.

Oh, and if you wanted to see what it looked like before I corrected it.

Here's another scene where we screwed up. You can't quite tell but Joe is frame right looking in the same direction as Rick(frame left). When this cuts together it doesn't feel like they're looking in the same direction.

So a simple flip of Joe, and it's okay. Sure, the part in his hair flips, but most audiences won't even notice. (trust me)

Finally this one, which isn't correctable but is acceptable as is. See, on the left half he's driving frame right. But on the cut he's driving frame left.

It's pretty bizarre, but clearly we did it because we couldn't get a great shot through the passenger side(we were driving parallel to it in a minivan), so we drove on the other side.

It's little things like this that make you cringe as a filmmaker.

Finally I've decided to go ahead and redo the end credits because they're hard to read, and if I do a Blu Ray at some point I'm going to have to redo them as they're super blurry when blown up.

Here's the original creds followed by what they may look like in the future. Unfortunately I didn't have the original After Effects file I used, so I had to do it manually. Luckily I'm a really fast typist.

Anyway, keep your eye out here for more updates!

Little Snippet of Goodness

A couple people had asked me whether I had done any more on HH2, the script.

The answer is, not really. I had about 35 pages--only about 25 sequential, then 10 with various conversations, notes, and then the ending.

But here it is with a few more than I last posted. So if you're interested, check it out. It's still early-draft stuff, but you might like it.

http://www.kangaskahnfilms.com/hh2-txt.htm

And Aric gets SOOOOO badass in this script, it's really hard to tell who I'm rooting for, the good guy or Aric...

July 24th, 2008: Blast From The Past

Funny afternote: The actor I met at this screening was Richard Cutting. I tried to cast him in Bounty, but it didn't work out, but we reconnected later on and he's starring in my new flick "Garden of Hedon".

The theater is closed again though...

July 24th, 2008:

So there's a local movie playing a couple of nights at a theater near me. It's a Western. I'm still looking for decent actors for my flick, and one of the actors already IN my flick says he's going, so I decide to go.

I hear it's at Westview Theatres and my first thought is--"Hey, I shot HH at a theater in Westview, but they tore that theater down."

I drive up there. Turns out it's the EXACT theater. Apparently it wasn't torn down, it was just bought my an indy theater chain.

I park around back where Aric stalked the projectionist(I took this picture today), and the memory of it all is VERY overwhelming. I haven't been up there in about 10 years.

I meet up with Neil, an actor I wrote the part for, and we go inside and watch the flick. IN THE EXACT AUDITORIUM Aric kills all those movie-goers. It was weird to say the least.

Good news--one actor in the film is particularly strong, and it turns out Neil knows him, and he was sitting right in front of us during the screening. He said hi to Neil after the showing, and I was startled to find out he's nothing like the character he played in the movie--which was a big sign of how good an actor he was, that I actually expected him to be somewhat like his character.

I think he could play one of the main roles I've been having a hard time casting. I'm gonna set up a time to audition him.

May 28th, 2008: Mail...and MURDER!

I got a letter yesterday in my company's PO box. In the interest of preserving it rather than retyping it, I've uploaded it so you can read it for yourselves. (I blacked out info to preserve some semblance of anonymity)

You should be able to zoom in on it.

LETTER

Anyway, yeah, the guy's in prison. His name looks familiar to me so I googled it. And here's a little tidbit about him:

"His statement begins with details of how Milner, then 19, lured 17-year-old Frankie Garcia to a rural Carson County barn with a promise of beer.

Once inside the barn, Milner said he hit Garcia and told him to get down on his knees. Milner then took a rifle he'd hidden in the barn and told Garcia to put the barrel of the gun in his mouth.

"He grabbed hold of the barrel and I said now put it in your mouth," Milner told the Ranger. "And we just sat and I just kind of made him beg a little bit and then I just shot him."

Mull asked Milner whether Garcia said anything before he died.

Milner's reply: "He said, 'Please, please don't do this."'

When Mull asked how many times Garcia was shot, Milner said:

"Once, I made sure it was quick. The only time he suffered was when he was scared."

After killing Garcia, Milner said he went to Lake McClellan where he knew a large birthday celebration was being held.

"My intention was to I guess rack up a body count," Milner said in his confession.

Anyway, he was to serve three life prison sentences(he wounded but didn't kill any of the people at the party) but some technicality knocked his sentence down. He'll be eligible for parole somewhere in 2012 or something.

Cool, eh? My murderer-fan club seems to grow by the day!

But then today I got a package in my company PO Box with the new Jack Reacher novel that doesn't come out for a couple of weeks. Some fans knew I love those books and sent me the hardcover! And just a little note with their names, but no email or anything so I can thank them.

Not sure how they got it early, but it's super cool.

February 26, 2008: SK Update

This story just continues. They just ran this on 48 hours mystery last week:
CBS NEWS 48 HOURS

------------------------------------------------------------------
Feb 26, 2008
For those of you who don't know(and I can't remember if I mentioned it in this blog), an alleged serial killer(confirmed kill of 1, and they're linking him to more now) was caught and they found a copy of my first movie in his truck.

Yeah, my first flick which is basically a how-to-be-a-serial-killer movie.

Yay me.

If you're interested, you can read a ton of articles at THIS LINK.

There's tons of them, and CNN even had a little video spot showing a clip from my flick.

Well, this month's People has a little three-page article featuring the story of the last family he attacked(where he got caught), and they even mention my flick in there.

The best thing, though, will be if he turns out to be an actual serial killer. See, I stole the name of my flick from a book--it's an encyclopedia of serial killers. They update it every ten years or so.

So if he turns out to be a serial killer, they'll mention my movie in his listing in the very book that helped inspire the film in the first place. Man, talk about the circle of life(or death, as it is).

September 16th, 2007: The serial killer entry

Here's the actual note in my log where I first started hearing about the killer who was caught with HH in his truck.

Okay, if you haven't seen this yet, check it out:

CHECK VIDEO BELOW

Pretty weird. I'm torn about how I feel about it. Obviously it's pretty horrendous, but if you've seen the film you know I have a pretty twisted sense of the world. I've read about every serial killer who ever lived, and there's always some interesting footnote about each.

And now my flick will be one of the interesting footnotes to this guy's description. I know it's a bad thing, but part of me is a little thrilled.

Not so coincidentally, I've been watching the imdbpro moviemeter on HH go up. Three weeks ago it was 52,000 and some change. (FOC hovers around 18,000) Two weeks ago when the story broke it moved up to 22,000.

This week it's 15,928.

And to answer your question: No, I don't get any piece of increased rentals.

FYE Banner

November 12, 2007

A buddy of mine that works at FYE brought me a present yesterday. It's a 6 FOOT by 6 FOOT cardstock posterboard that all FYE's had hanging up for Halloween. It says FAN FRIGHT FEST across it, and features like 100 movie box covers on it.

There's Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Scream, The Ring. A lot of big movies.

Why did he bring this to me? Smack dab in the middle of them is my first flick, HH.

No, I can't explain it. There are no other microbudget movies on there. If they were gonna put one of my flicks on there, I'd have bet it would be FOC, since FOC had LGF as a distributor.

HH has a nobody distributor(it's now with a company called Trinity). So I can't explain why they'd put it on there--but it's very cool to be featured on there with some distinguished company.

But I'll be the first to admit that it shouldn't be there amongst those giants...

Some of the lower ones...

The Serial Killer Who Loved Hunting Humans

I'll have more about this as we get to its entry into the HH log, but I'm not sure how long the Tube will leave it up there, since technically I don't own the footage. (to which I say, THEY didn't own MY footage, but they put it in their video anyway...)

But if you wanna see the CNN clip they played for a while, you can catch it below. Note, they get into the actual DVD details at about the 2 minute mark.

Foreign Distribution

So as I said, we licensed foreign rights to IFM World Releasing, a company run by Tony Ginnane. I knew nothing about the guy. Talked to him on the phone a couple of times. Seemed pretty gruff and no-nonsense.

It was funny that years later you can see him in the excellent documentary on Australian horror films called "Not Quite Hollywood". I highly recommend the documentary. Anyway, turns out he used to be a producer of a lot of the "Ozploitation" flicks.

Anyway, you might be surprised to find out that HH has been licensed to about 30 foreign countries. These are some:
India
French-speaking Africa
France
Benelux(had never heard of this country before we licensed it)
Czech Republic
Thailand
Spain and Andora
Indonesia
Slovakia
United Kingdom

I try to get dvd copies of each foreign copy, but it's pretty hard. Also, some of those rights went to free television or the like, so there is no physical copy to buy.

But it is a lot of fun to watch Rick talk and hear some foreign dude's voice come out. Here's some of the foreign covers I own.

 That's right, that's not even Rick ON the cover. 

(kinda looks like Screech with a five-o'clock shadow...)

So that was the final entry into the HH log

But I continued to blog about it in private, anything that happened to do with HH. So, in the continuing effort to amuse you faceless masses, I will post those too...

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

So there was this contest...

I can't remember how it came up. I think someone mentioned that I ought to do a "Hunting Humans" comic book, and I said I didn't have the time, and this writer buddy chimed in that he could write it.

I guess I probably looked at him funny. He then got a little insulted and said, "What, you don't think I can do it?" And I said that really, no one can get Aric Blue's voice to really sound like it should(and by voice I mean the way they talk, their personality).

So--and you'd think he was drunk, but he doesn't drink--he says "I bet I can write Aric better than you can." And I remember laughing.

He devised a contest--we would both write one issue of a "Hunting Humans" comic and get three objective people to take a look.

About six weeks later we both had our comics. I really just translated the beginning of my "Hunting Humans 3" script into comic form(I didn't have the time to write any new stuff, and please don't ask me about HH2).

We only found 2 judges(one was the other writer's wife) and we turned them over with no author's names on them anywhere. We asked 3 questions: Which was a better comic, which did they like better, and which one was closer to the Aric from the movie.

The first judge(our very own Stewie) emailed me his results--all three in my favor. He thought the other Aric was far too angry to be the Aric from HH.

Then the other judge chimed in(after informing me that she thought she could tell the difference in the scripts just by looking at the formatting, and she was right)--she liked the other writer's script as a comic better, but she agreed my Aric was closer to the movie. (Personally, I think she just said she liked his better out of pity)

So we don't need a third judge, because I've already won two out of three.

The point is...I don't think anyone can write Aric better than I can. I created him. He lives in me, since a huge part of me is him. I've written two and half scripts with him, as well as a ten page bio sheet before I started HH.

The other writer had my wife and I over for dinner the other day where he tried to lose graciously, and failed. Better luck next time!

May 25th, 2003

HH never made us any real money. It slightly more than broke even, but got us a nice profile. We got some very good reviews and MTI got it into every Blockbuster and Hollywood Video out there.

IFM still has the foreign rights and I never did audit them. Frankly, if I had the money I would, but I think by the end of it I'd end up spending so much on an accountant that we'd owe even more money...

We had an expense cap at which point they couldn't take expenses any more, and it's funny how they seem to stop selling your title when the expenses reach that cap.

MAY 25th

Final entry in my HH diary. I’ve started the Fear Of Clowns diary, so this will just sort of move into that.
HH comes out on July 22nd. It’s been given an R rating by the MPAA.

So far I’ve only gotten one check from Tulchin but I’m expecting two more for the domestic distribution, then some for the foreign. We'll basically break even on the deal for domestic, but my main objective was to get our movie distributed so we can aim a little higher on the next flick.

On the foreign front, we got a statement from IFM--the foreign guys--that says they’ve sold $31,000 worth of territories. They’ve collected like $14,000 of that, and they’re billing us like $18,000 in expenses.

Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Clearly I’m going to have to audit the company. More money out of my pocket.

Anyway, feels strange to end this diary, but since I’m really just continuing on in the other one, I guess it’s not so bad.

One movie down. Infinity to go. One movie at a time.

 HH article in Fangoria

We Interrupt This Blog

To bring you this--we're trying to raise the last 25% of our budget on the new flick through crowd-sourcing via Indiegogo. So we're asking everybody's help!

But don't worry--there's some cool incentives to be had with your donation! Check out the link below to see the teaser and more info!

http://www.indiegogo.com/GOH

March 16th, 2003

March 16, 2003

Okay. Was the Joe Bob thing back in October? For real?

Damn. The quick summary then.

We’ve signed both foreign and domestic deals for Hunting Humans. The foreign with IFM was done first. They recently sent me magazines from AFM and MIFED with ads for Hunting Humans including the poster.
AFM and MIFED are two of the biggest marketplaces for selling movie rights. IFM attends both.

One of the magazines has a small article where they credit Lisa Michele with being in Enemy of the State.
See, when I was making the press kit I couldn’t get Lisa’s bio. I called her, I emailed her. Nothing. So I made it up. I said she’d had parts in Enemy of the State, The Replacements, and a few other movies shot locally.

Apparently they liked that and used it in the article.

Pretty funny.

Anyway, part of the whole distribution process is “delivery”. That’s where you have to get them the master and it needs to pass “quality control”. We had TONS of problems. Cost a bit of money to fix it. That will, of course, be coming out of our end.


It took a lot of time, but now we’re just waiting to hear when and where the movie will come out. The contract has a tentative date of May 15th, so we’ll see. The day I walk into Blockbuster Video and see it on their shelf will be the last big high for Hunting Humans.
 
Meantime, we’re prepping for Fear Of Clowns.

November 1st, 2002: Email to Rick from Joe Bob Briggs

Rick got this reply from Joe Bob, in which he's referring to the rash of snipings in the D.C. area in regards to HH's subject material:

Email from Joe Bob to Rick:

Dear Rick,
>
>         Oh my God! You made that movie and you live
> in Maryland? Has Chief
> Moose been to your house yet? You guys have either
> the best or the worst
> timing of any filmmakers in history!
>
>         GREAT job, man. You convinced me.
>
> Hang in there,
>
> Joe Bob

Special Excerpt: Stalking Kevin Smith at Phillycon 2002

This hot chick really has nothing to do with this story...

I mean, first off, how many people have stalked Kevin Smith? It must drive him crazy...Also, it's funny to read that I was trying to give him a tape. Yes, a VCR tape...man, times change fast.

Anyway, I'm at the Philadelphia Wizard Convention in 2002 on Friday and I miss an early chance to get into a line to get him to sign shit. That is where the story begins...

Stalking of Kevin Smith:

I find out that Kevin Smith is signing stuff right then. I grab my movie and high-tail it over to him. They've capped off the line though. No more people until the signing the next morning.

Yes, that's right, morning. As in, A.M.

I try to put it from my mind. I buy some stuff for the store, try to get the lay of the land, and in general do nothing of consequence.

The next morning I get up at the ungodly time of 9:45am. I take my patented three-minute shower and am in the show within five minutes of it opening. Target: Kevin Smith.

I'm informed that they're already out of tickets for the signing. I'm like, What The Fuck? This guy's the Special Guest and they're giving out like 100 tickets?

My new plan involves bum-rushing Smith when they escort him in for the signing. The line has formed and he's supposed to show up at 11:00 A.M.

I figure I'll catch him on his way in, force the tape into his hands, and run off like a lunatic.

So I bide my time. I look at all the freakos and the Playboy chicks. I pretend I'm not going to assault the Special Guest.

One such Playboy chick

The time comes. 11:00 A.M. No Kevin Smith. 11:15 A.M. No Kevin Smith. I go back to the booth to make sure the guys don't need anything. As I'm coming back, Kevin Smith shows up. No way could I get to him before he was behind the line.

Thwarted! Lost the battle, but not the war...

Yes, I see him now...

I go up to the line. Instead of Smith sitting at a table signing, he's going to walk through the line chatting and signing. How cool would it be to get in that line?

I approach a decent-looking fellow. Not one of those raving Kevin Smith fans who can tell you how many minutes each of his films are. A regular joe. I ask him if he wants to make $50.

"Doing what?" he wants to know. I tell him. Give this tape to Smith. If Smith doesn't want it, fine, the guy can keep the fifty and give me back the tape. I'll be watching.

The guy says Nah.

I'm pissed. He asks me what's on the tape. I tell him. He says Nah again.

So I try to bribe a Wizard security guy. I tell him "I'm a retailer and I got in here too late to get a ticket. Any way I can get in?" He says no, Smith was late and has to get done so he can get to the question and answer panel.

"Fifty bucks?" I prod him. Clearly he'd like to, but there are too many other Wizard staffers there who'd see. He can't.

Now I'm getting steamed. All this effin work to get a tape to the guy. I decide to bum rush him on the way out then.

I spend the next two hours patiently watching and waiting. Some might say stalking. Those people are very intelligent and scare me.

Same picture, because I'm focused on my prey. He's in my sights.

The line dwindles. Smith gets closer to the exit side of the line.

I close in. I try not to make eye contact. Don't want to spook him.

The HULK!

I marvel at how Lou Ferrigno(signing right next to Smith) is still in awesome shape. Isn't he like sixty years old now?

Then, miracle of miracles, Smith is done. Other onlookers start to press against the rope trying to get him to sign stuff. He does!

I make a frozen rope right to him. Calm, cool, collected. "Hey," I say, "Just wanted to give you a copy of my movie."

He tells me he can't take it right now, but he'll be going by the Oni booth immediately after that and he'll pick it up there. Give it to Brian Johnson.

I thank him, but inside I'm crestfallen. Is this the way he blows off people? Hey, what's that chick got to do with anything?

At the Oni booth, I tell the guy that Kevin asked me to give this to Brian Johnson. He's nice, says he'll give it to him. He goes through the hut in the middle of the booth to the other side.

I take off my hat(incognito now, baby!) and walk around the other side. Brian Johnson is one of the guys from Kevin Smith's movies(I think he plays Steve-Dave). He takes out the insert of the movie poster from Hunting Humans(my movie) and looks at it, shows it to one of the other actors from the Smith movies.

After a moment he tucks it under the table. Will Kevin get it? Only one way to find out.

I go back to where Smith is finishing signing. He's being mobbed and the Wizard guys are trying to get him out of there. Finally, they escort him away. Like his shadow, I follow.

Sure enough, he goes right to the Oni booth. A mob follows him. As soon as he's on the other side, Brian Johnson(may his camels be forever flea-less) hands him my tape. Some words pass, but I can't make them out. Smith takes my tape into the little hut where he disappears for a half an hour to sign things.

He's got it! Sweet! Mission accomplished. I pat myself on the back and go snap some pictures. Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee are signing in preparation for the twelve-issue run of Batman that they'll be doing. Jeph even smiles for me.

Postnote: I don't know whether he ever watched it. Never heard. Ah, well. It's a fun story now though...

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.

----------------

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.

July 27th, 2002: Offers

Hey, look! Really bad pre-photoshop(I used Corel Photopaint) poster mock-up.  

Last week we got an offer from IFM Film Associates. It boils down to a percentage deal on all sales, but they’re kind of like a middle-man. I check another filmmaker who used them, and he tells me they have yet to make a dime after the advance.

    Which is weird, because IFM claims they’ve done about $150,000 in sales, so I don’t know what kind of expenses they’re claiming.

    And oh, IFM claims they’re “marginally less enthusiastic about this title, as opposed to [another movie they name] because it has a much grittier look and is less clearly generic.” That’s right, our movie is too original.

    Gonna turn that one down.

    Then tonight Paul at Tulchin’s emails me that we have a new offer from Spartan Video, a buyout offer. They want the US rights for $30,000. We’ll still be able to sell cable/TV rights and foreign. It’s a low offer, but it’s money up front, which is what I’m looking for. That back-end money is for shit when you can’t trust any of these companies.

    So now I have to figure if it’s a good idea. It’s more than the entire budget of our movie, but not as high as we wanted. If I’m confident that Spartan can get the movie into Blockbuster and Hollywood Video though, I may go with them anyway. Time to get some money and move on.

MAY-JUNE 2002

Man, it's like foreshadowing! I name Lion's Gate as a possible distributor, and they end up picking up my next movie(which is also mentioned in this same entry).

Ransom is still a script I like a lot. But it's really not that marketable without a real cast.

MAY – JUNE

    Did the press kits. They turned out pretty nice, but cost about $450. I send twenty-five of the fifty I’ve made, plus screeners to Tulchin. Two weeks later he emailed me a list of the distributors he sent them out to. Some of the names are Universal, Warner Bros, HBO, Showtime.

    I wonder if Harris has even seen the movie. Ain’t no way this is a big-studio movie. I’m thinking more like Fine Line(who is also on the list) and Lion’s Gate.

    Harris lets me know he needs more screeners. I email him and say I’ll send him another fifteen, but that these things aren’t M&M’s and these are the last ones I can send to him for a while.

    In retrospect, I wish I’d had the press kits when I sent out screeners to the festivals we applied to. Would have made a better impression on the judges.

    Anyway, I can now sit back and hopefully wait for the offers to pour in. I’ve finished Ransom For A Psychopath, one of the scripts I was thinking about shooting, but it would cost too much money. Still aiming at Fear Of Clowns. Got about 90 pages done, still working out some kinks.

April 30th, 2002 - Back East Pt2

I get up about one p.m and don’t feel so hot. My wife shows up. I get them to go get me something to eat, and then I throw up some and sleep some more.

After they bring me a sub, I feel a little better. None of us make any move to go into town and watch any movies. Fuck that.

After a while, my wife and I get ready for the awards show. No way am I thinking we’re going to win an award.

You see, the actor Frank Vincent is being honored at the awards gala. He’s also got a movie running in the competition. Now ask me what movie I think is going to win.

It does. Then Best Feature in another category goes to some movie whose producer also helped put on the festival. Conflict of interest, anyone?

The director of that feature also gets Best Screenplay and Best Director. Everyone in the joint seems to know him. I’m feeling like more of a stooge by the minute. I can see this whole thing was planned out before they even started the show.

Well, the dinner took place at the Liberty House, so that was neat. New York City skyline in the background, Statue Of Liberty off to the right. Everyone in suits and tuxes.

My wife and I go back to the room. We’re going to try to go into New York City, but by the time we get ready, it’s pouring rain.

We go back to the room and say fuck it. The whole weekend has pretty much sucked. I spent roughly seven hundred dollars of money I don’t have.

So now I’m sitting here a couple of nights later and the whole thing is like this mini-nightmare. I just never expected a first-year festival to be this political. Christ, it’s who you know even at these little festivals.

I’ve got to jam on these press kits. Hunting Humans has to get out there. I’m working on the screenplay to Fear Of Clowns right now. It’s more of a straight romantic horror mystery. You know.