Tag: Napoleon Dynamite

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Truly Free Film

You Will Never Make Any REAL Money With Hollywood

how do you expect to get your money from Hollywood?
how do you expect to get your money from Hollywood?

Why did Mike DeLuca leave an incredibly successful producing career to return to the executive suite at Sony? After leaving the reigns of New Line, he produced Moneyball, The Social Network, and Captain Phillips among others.  It’s hard to match his track record.  Yet he too has given up producing.  Why?

One can only assume the autonomy of producing is more pleasurable than the pressures of running a studio.  One can also assume the confines of Sony are a hell of a lot more secure.  Rarely does one gets paid their value for producing a film, and if it is a project you love and is even a wee bit challenging you are going to watch that diminished fee take another cut or five. If you want financial security or wealth, don’t be a producer.

But there’s always the back end, right?

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Truly Free Film

Towards A Sustainable Investor Class: Deliver Risk Appropriate Returns

The Film Industry has historically sought out “dumb money”, people willing to make the sucker bet.  This is akin to basing the global transportation system on fossil fuel — at a given time ,you run out the resource and have the joy of having destroyed your planet or culture in the process.  Why are we doing this? Isn’t it time this process stopped? Can we just find the photos of those responsible now, put them on the wall, and say “These people destroyed what we once loved?”

It is as if The Studios make sport of trying to make sure that the creators and their supporters don’t earn their fair share.  By now everyone knows both the tales of

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Truly Free Film

The Really Bad Things In The Indie Film Biz 2012

I can’t always be optimistic.  My apologies.

I did start this HopeForFilm / TrulyFreeFilm blog in the hopes that community action could improve things for us all.  My original lists of 75 problems of indie film remain relevant, alas; and with this latest addition we are almost at 100 such challenges.

But don’t be bummed, every problem is an opportunity, right?  To quote the great Walt Kelly of Pogo:  “We are surrounded by unsurmountable opportunities.”  We just need the will, the strength, the hope, and the power to change them.  12 Steps to progress?

I admit, even blessed by my last name, even I can’t be always be optimistic, at least not if I want to also speak the truth. Sometimes throwing a brick is an act of love; you know what I mean?  And granted I’ve thrown a lot of bricks at this indie film thing. What can I say?  There’s a great deal really wrong with our culture these days and a hell of a lot that can hurt our business.  We have to work together if we want to build it better.

Let’s get started and call these “opportunities” out (in no particular order); maybe they are not so unsurmountable after all:

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Truly Free Film

We Need To Make Indie Film Work For Investors!

It’s pretty simple.  When people make money doing something, more money enters that system.  And it is pretty simple in the reverse: when some people make a bucketload and those that invested in it make virtually nothing, less money flows into the system.

If distributors don’t pay creators their fair share of the profits, their won’t be movies made. Or maybe the investors will get wise and stop selling the distributors the film.  After all we are at a time that you can really do it yourself (by doing it with others).  And to be clear, “fair share” doesn’t mean paying them what contract swindles them out of — it means paying them an ethical cut.  And that sure in hell ain’t 12.8% of the profits — which is what happened on one of the most successful indie films of recent times.

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