Distances
Traveling to Europe this weekend for no other reason than to quell our partners there. You see, this comedy we’ve been working on now for months and months came into being because a European group stepped it up and made us a firm offer to finance up to 30% of the film’s budget. That was August. We had the impression that that would be the hard part of the deal. Our American Co-Producers were the ones supposed to have all the connections and deals in place including their “deep” relationships with big names (and distributors and financiers) that lured us into the project in the first place. So we go out, seek a European deal that they didn’t have and then we come back to them saying “We got it!” “Let’s go make a movie!” We were the happiest producers in town when we signed the deal with our American partners. Turns out, they overplayed their connections and on top of that, are SLOW AS SHIT. If things had moved forward in the way we thought they would initially, then we would probably be shooting already or at least in pre-production. But in 2009, Hollywood went crazy and our partners went specifically bi-polar. It’s now December, and just as an example, it took our partners 4 months to actually approve a document we should’ve approved in September. I haven’t spoken to some of them in months and yet we are still in business and yet, even worse, now we are going to Europe to talk to our Partners there to tell them everything’s a-OK. Before they freak out at least, because we’re bringing no real new news except for what they already know. That is, casting is heading in X direction, financing heading in Y direction and things are still moving forward. At this rate, we’ve been “moving forward” for so long that we will pass the goal line and not notice it; something that actually, in this business can actually, totally happen.
But that’s why we have backup projects and work on many projects at the same time. Even knowing that some of them might potentially be a big waste of time. As I mentioned earlier on another posting, one of the projects we weren’t paying much attention to (based on the book we optioned) actually seems to have generate some REAL interest from a BIG, very BIG player in the media world worldwide. It’s still early so I won’t jinx it, but if the person we have moving the project is not bullshitting (still an unfortunate possibility) then we’re onto something that can carry us easily into 2011 and make our little new production company take shape firmly.
An then our Asian-Latin project is now getting a new lease of life as well with a strong Cannes proven writer, so things are actually strutting at their pace and as I’ve written here before, patience is 50% of the game but sometimes you just want to tear some people’s head apart. Again, welcome to Hollywood!
On the even weirder front, I will be speaking on a panel somewhere in Europe during this trip. So on one hand I will be trying to get my partners over there to chill and on the other I will be telling people and the media how to properly do something that in 2009 has proven very difficult. The weirdness of everything sometimes is overwhelming.
Can you relate?
