Spike Lee‘s Kickstarter for The Newest Hottest Spike Lee Joint (here’s hoping he announces a real title soon and I can stop typing out all that word salad) ended just a few hours ago, more than $150,00 over its $1.25m goal. But even before the Kickstarter ended, Lee was hard at work assembling a cast for his crowd-funded feature. First came Stephen Tyrone Williams, a stage actor with a handful of film credits to his name (Children of God, Restless City), but a few hours later came a far more famous Williams. Michael K. Williams of The Wire and Boardwalk Empire has joined the film too. This casting alone guarantees that hordes of obsessive Wire fans will turn up to see Lee’s latest joint, which will be a love story about “human beings who are addicted to blood.” Williams (Michael K., that is) will not be playing the lead- that role will go to the other Williams (Stephen Tyrone), with Zaraah Abrahams as the female lead. But lead role or not, any mention of The Wire‘s Williams is enough to put plenty of butts (mine included) in seats.

Bret Easton Ellis‘s novels have had an interesting path to the big screen: the only novel that fully captured his writing is The Rules of Attraction, a movie that divided audiences; American Psycho is a cult favorite that Ellis isn’t entirely pleased with; Less Than Zero, although featuring a great performance from Robert Downey Jr., is a terrible adaptation; and the less said about The Informers, well, the better. However, The Canyons is a film Ellis had a very different relationship with. The LA noir is one of many original scripts he’s written, but it’s the only one that has made it to the screen with the help of Kickstarter, producer Braxton Pope, and director Paul Schrader. The movie is as much a statement about filmmaking as it is anything else, and Ellis had his own statements to make about modern cinema culture and adapting the unadaptable.

In The Canyons Schrader has the camera zero in on abandoned movie theaters while Bret Easton Ellis’s script has its characters discussing whether they actually “like movies” anymore. What all that has to do with the plot is up for interpretation, but it doesn’t take a genius to see Schrader and Ellis are talking about the emergence of VOD and new media amidst the piles of old curtains and velvet-backed chairs. Schrader won’t let his camera show hopping movie theaters and audiences eating up popcorn, because that’s not the world Ellis’s characters see. They’re cold, monotone 20-somethings who could care less about today’s movies or movies in general (even as they make one). Maybe Schrader also feels that way about today’s major theatrical releases, but, one thing is for sure: The Canyons is a movie that wasn’t made for 2,000 screens. It’s true low-budget, crowdsourced  indie filmmaking, and because of that (and some other obvious reasons), it didn’t have the smoothest production. That chaotic frenzy was all fuel for the media, and Schrader was holding the match.

From the start of his career to the height of it, Spike Lee has never had an easy time getting projects off the ground. In some cases it’s because he was ahead of the curve — like when he had hopes to make a Jackie Robinson biopic, but the financing never came together because studios didn’t feel there was an audience  for a black baseball film. This year, 42 would beg to disagree. Of course even though it appears like an order form for free money, the Kickstarter funding route isn’t easy either. For established filmmakers it takes a combination of thick skin for backlash and vulnerability to ask fans for money that studios and financiers won’t give. Within a few months time, Lee will have taken the trust fall of asking the public to fund a movie for which he’s given very few details and then debuted a high-profile (yet non-mainstream) reinterpretation about proper hammer usage. Facing the contradictions head-on, we spoke to the filmmaker about this new, same-as-the-old chapter in his career:

Riding high off the publicity for his Oldboy remake, Spike Lee is now the latest celebrity to hit Kickstarter with an impassioned plea for why you should give him lots of money. On his official Kickstarter page, Lee speaks about the current climate for independent film; what could pass as a budget when he was first breaking into the business is now just a drop in a very, very large bucket. He offers up his entire filmography as a body of work as proof that this Kickstarter is a legitimate filmmaking venture, and offers a handful of details about the film’s plot. Lee’s hypothetical latest film will chronicle people who are addicted to blood the way others are addicted to drugs or sex (although he promises the film will still have plenty of sex). The $1.25m goal may seem drastically steep, but keep in mind that stranger things have happened. This spring saw the Veronica Mars movie bank over $5m, while Zach Braff’s Garden State follow-up pulled in just over $3m. And a scant few hours into the Kickstarter has already netted Lee close to $12,000 – presumably that number will rise dramatically as the news starts to spread.

With tons of movie and TV appearances under his belt, chances are you’ve seen Jesse Heiman before. You may not know it, though, because he’s just an extra (in The Social Network, Spider-Man, Old School and more). However, you probably do remember him by face from the Go Daddy commercial that ran during the Super Bowl this year. Heiman was the chubby nerd who got to make out with supermodel Bar Refaeli (shocking millions of viewers, although it’s rather tame compared to his threesome as “lucky party goer” in The Rules of Attraction, if you ask me). Ever since that ad, he’s been more recognized and more confident. The latter result recently got him in trouble when he went a little too far trying to kiss married Twilight actress Nikki Reed, but otherwise this is a guy who could now be on the rise as a bit player. And the documentary Jesse Heiman: World’s Greatest Extra will be tracking him whether his fame truly grows or not. This feature film is currently in production, following a year in the life of the guy, and the filmmakers are looking for financial help via Kickstarter. It could be an interesting look at Hollywood and a little-seen side of the industry. Sure, there’s been Ricky Gervais’s Extras series and the documentary Strictly Background, which follows a number of professional film extras, but Heiman is a different breed. He’s one of the most distinct-looking individuals doing work that’s usually supposed to be for nondescript (not […]

Documentaries on specific circles of fandom are nothing new. Ever since the 1997 film Trekkies hit big at art house cinemas (and maybe before that in the UK with Dalekmania), we’ve been treated to similar looks at followers of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, My Little Pony, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Alien, Firefly/Serenity, The Big Lebowski, John Hughes and the horror, sci-fi and fantasy genres in general. And that’s just the movie and TV obsessions (we can go back further for, say, heavy metal fans interviewed in parking lots). The fandom doc subgenre will only be growing now thanks to crowdfunding, because there’s seemingly no easier kind of project to appeal to a large niche crowd than something about a subject that appeals to a large niche crowd. It’s the same reason two of the most successful campaigns we’ve highlighted here are those involving Superman and Batman. Next in line for such a documentary is the fanbase for Back to the Future. While not as well known or unified a devotion as those to Star Trek and some of the other properties that have gotten the treatment in the past, BTTF fandom is still quite big. There have been conventions and obsessive websites and demand for replicas of props like the self-lacing sneakers and hoverboards and flux capacitors. The biggest collector’s item for any BTTF fan, though, is a DeLorean, whether one actually used in the movie or just simply one of the rare originals from the short-lived […]

Now that we’re past the point of established Hollywood talents going to fans for funding projects, is it only a matter of time before Kevin Smith reaches out to his cult following via Kickstarter? Not quite yet, and maybe he never will. Talking to Kim Masters on the KRCW radio program The Business, Smith admitted, “I love the idea and I want to do it so desperately, but I think I’ve missed the window based on the fact that I do have access to materials, I do have access to money.” Let’s not forget that Smith was almost a pioneer of feature film crowdfunding three years ago when he looked into the idea of fan-based financing for Red State, a creative departure for the director and one that even his friends at The Weinstein Co. weren’t interested in. Of course, the idea of him crowdfunding was blown out of proportion and the possibility was met with great disapproval on the web, not unlike what occurred more recently with Zach Braff’s campaign. One website in particular called Smith a “beggar,” which hit the filmmaker deep. He commented on that to Masters: The moment I saw that I froze. That high school part of me, the last vestiges of high school that said, “Oh, I care what other people think about me,” seized me… And, I can’t even remember the name of the website or the person that wrote it, but I do remember that it was the last moment of my life […]

Recently, the act of donating to or promoting a Kickstarter campaign has become a highly politicized and moralized one for movie fans, an act brimming with questions, crises, and conundrums about systemic economic disadvantages normalized by dominant industries of filmmaking. Suspicion has been directed in droves toward legitimate-seeming yet vastly-supported projects like the studio-release Veronica Mars movie or Zach Braff’s directorial follow-up to Garden State, whose constellation of multiple funding sources perhaps says more than we’d like to admit about the complex process of realizing even the most distinctly above-the-line indie projects. While frustration directed at a feature adaptation of a canceled UPN show or Braff’s seemingly boundless ability to produce haterade may appear legitimate when accounting for Kickstarter’s role as the possible final refuge for American alternative filmmaking, fingers should instead be pointed to the reasons that a resource like Kickstarter has become necessary in the first place.

It’s unknown whether the 38,377 people pledging to Zach Braff‘s Kickstarter campaign will now get their money back, but The Hollywood Reporter has announced from Cannes that the actor/filmmaker’s controversially crowdfunded film, Wish I Was Here, will receive funding from Worldview Entertainment (Killer Joe).* This is a very big deal, although it’s not clear what it means for the $2.6 million raised from fans on the Kickstarter site. According to THR, “Worldview will provide most of the financing for the drama” and “the budget is less than $10 million.” A couple weeks ago, Braff told the Los Angeles Times that the budget was about $5 million and that the money not funded through the drive would come from his own pocket and foreign distribution pre-sales. In the same interview, Braff was asked whether he’d take money from “industry types” that now see the film as a hot commodity and want on board. “I think that would be in bad taste for all the people who are backing this” he replied. “It wouldn’t be in the spirit of the thing.”

After all the hand-wringing and pearl clutching and doomsdaying about celebrities utilizing Kickstarter, the crowdfunding site is reporting that both the Veronica Mars movie and Zach Braff’s Wish I Was Here helped raise $400,000 for 2,200 other projects. How did they do it? By attracting more people to the site — 63% of their backers had never backed a project before, and many went on to find other worthwhile projects to give money to. The rising tide lifted all boats. Obviously this doesn’t dismiss other concerns about famous people and corporations mitigating their risk by asking their potential audience to pay what amount to inflated upfront ticket prices. However, this set of numbers is a powerful one that blasts any gut-notion that “blockbuster” projects take away money from the “true indies.” In fact, it’s exactly the opposite. As a for-profit company, these large projects are in Kickstarter’s best interest, but there’s also something amazing going on at that site. Great work is being done, people are finding new art to support and creators are getting the funding they need. If larger-profile appeals like these help everyone, then more power to them.

The next step in our post-Veronica Mars world has just been mounted by Zach Braff. The Scrubs actor and Garden State writer/director/musicologist has turned to crowdfunding to attempt to secure $2m for a follow-up called Wish I Was Here, citing an inability to score financing that would offer him final cut and a number of other authorial freedoms. The movie itself will focus on a 30-something man (played by Braff) who is struggling with a non-starter acting career and ends up having to home school his children, leading him to craft a different kind of curriculum for them. Now, there are some notable differences between this and what Rob Thomas did with Veronica Mars last month:

Remember your first 900 number? Anyone who grew up in the 80s and early 90s called at least one hotline, probably without a parent’s permission. If you got in trouble for padding the phone bill with each additional minute of listening to pre-recorded messages from the New Kids on the Block, Santa Claus, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Coreys or whoever else your TV told you to dial up, then Hotline is something to spark your nostalgia. And if you ever actually paid to talk to a real person to get your fortune, love advice, sexual pleasure or simply some conversation in lonely times, Hotline should be of interest to you now. Just pledge your support for this film. $1 for the first incentive, $5,000 for each additional executive producer credit. Operators are standing by… Okay, not live operators. Really, it’s the robots or whatever handles transactions on Kickstarter, which is where you’ll find the crowdfunding campaign for this nearly finished documentary on premium-rate phone numbers. It’s a fascinating subject, and the film looks to capture both the familiar and the unknown sides of the industry by following stories of people on either end of the line. Yes, these services still exist, and in addition to finding a number of experts in the field and about the phenomenon, the doc is being made by a filmmaker (Student Academy Award nominee Tony Shaff) who once was employed as a psychic for none other than Miss Cleo‘s famous hotline. And speaking […]

“Yeah, yeah, a Veronica Mars movie is getting made. That’s nice and all, but what about a Pushing Daisies movie?” is hopefully what some of you thought after Mars creator Rob Thomas reached his Kickstarter quota. Thomas’s campaign has almost raised over double its $2m required, and it’ll make even more money before its 30 days are up. You know what Rob Thomas should do with some of that spare change? Give it to Bryan Fuller to make a Pushing Daisies movie. Who wouldn’t want to do that? Based on what a Pushing Daisies movie would need to come to fruition, that million or so would come in handy. We recently spoke with the show’s creator, Bryan Fuller, about what it would take to make this film happen via crowdfunding. It’s still only a possibility, but Fuller has the makings of a plan that comes complete with some serious challenges and a directorial ally.

After all that has happened with Kickstarter this week, Fund This Film seems to be a more necessary regular feature than ever. Not all projects can be set up through a major studio and involve Hollywood stars and be based off a property with a built-in fanbase. Some are like this week’s selection, Momentum, an ambitious short with a much smaller goal and much bigger task in finding supporters. And yet there is some Hollywood talent involved, as the three creators of this film are professional concept artists in the biz: Robert Simons worked on Ender’s Game and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Peggy Chung worked on Pacific Rim and Mark Yang is an Imagineer for Disney. And visual effects supervisor Kyle Spiker worked on Avatar. Director Michael Chance previously made Project Arbiter, one of those hot sci-fi shorts called “the next District 9” a while back. If their resumes aren’t enough, some of their supporters might encourage you. Two of their initial backers are Neville Page, creature/character designer for Avatar, Cloverfield, Super 8, Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness and the upcoming Oblivion, and Tim Flattery, who worked on Back to the Future Part II, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Serenity and the upcoming After Earth. Their connections appears to be that they went to and/or worked at Art Center College of Design (also my father’s alma mater!), and so did this film’s co-creators. Additionally they have the support of others at the school, including space craft thermal engineer Joe Reiter, […]

Lovingly tucked inside this thoroughly insightful interview with Rob Thomas upon the successful funding of his Warners-distributed Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign was a note about Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller getting in touch with him to ask about it. “I did get an email from Bryan Fuller earlier today saying, ‘Hey, can you jump on the phone with me at some point? I know you’re busy, but I would love to talk to you about how this thing works,’” said Thomas.  ”And I know it was specifically for Pushing Daisies.” The show featuring Lee Pace as a pie-maker with the power to bring dead things back to life was, like Veronica Mars, a fan favorite that was cancelled because it brought an immense amount of joy to a medium amount of people instead of a medium amount of a joy to an immense amount of people. Obviously from the limited information in the statement, it’s unclear whether Fuller would explore bringing the show back as a series or as a film, but anything he did would need the blessing of Disney, who owns the copyright.

What happens when a legendary film critic brings is geriatric crankiness to an internet movie show? Film Jockeys follows the adventures of Carl Barker, his far-too-young production staff, the filmmakers and the movie characters that inhabit their world. Written and illustrated by Derek Bacon, it’s the perfect webcomic for passionate movie fans who also love love getting t-shirts when they Kickstart a movie. For your consideration, Episode #14:

Vimeo has launched a new distribution channel for creators, and a major studio is using Kickstarter. It’s been quite a week for the future of film financing.  In this episode, we’ll talk with Vimeo VP for Creative Development Blake Whitman about Vimeo On Demand, and then Operation Kino co-hosts Matt Patches and Da7e Gonzales join us for a four-way conversation about whether Warner Bros. getting into the crowdfunding game with Veronica Mars is good, bad or ugly. For more from us on a daily basis, follow the show (@brokenprojector), Geoff (@drgmlatulippe), Scott (@scottmbeggs), Patches (@misterpatches) and Da7e (@da7e) on the Twitter. And, as always, we welcome your feedback. Download Episode #10 Directly Or subscribe Through iTunes

Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell raised $2m through Kickstarter yesterday, and they did it in under 10 hours. As of this morning, their effort to score a budget for a Veronica Mars movie has secured their goal with about $500,000 and 29 days to spare. One guy, entrepreneur Steve Dengler, even gave $10,000 to the production to get a small speaking role in the film (and because he’s a big, big supporter of crowdfunding). What they did took a certain kind of courage. Maybe not greater courage than the more-standardized model of getting money from fans when they hand it over at the box office, but absolutely a different type of courage. After all, it’s one nerve-wracking thing to convince studio executives that your idea has an audience, but it’s another to prove it out on the limb without the amount of fan support you thought you had. Simply put, it’s likely we’d all be writing different pieces if Thomas and Bell’s Kickstarter campaign were still languishing at $6,000. Fortunately, fans have proven their overwhelming dedication to seeing Ms. Mars again by breaking records and ensuring that Thomas may actually get to include a big choreographed fight scene amid all the broody talking. With 29 more days to raise funds, who knows how high they might go. Now, all of this comes with a catch: Warners (because they’ve held onto the copyright) will be distributing and making money off a movie that fans are funding. Depending on the deal they have with […]

Haven’t heard of Down and Dangerous? You’re not alone. It features no big name stars (except Judd Nelson!), doesn’t come from an established director and hasn’t been anywhere near a studio, but the action thriller from Zak Forsman scored $38k through a slick KickStarter campaign (I hear they even auctioned off the C in the director’s first name). It was his pitch video that impressed then, and it’s the production’s trailer that impresses this time around. The plot focuses on an incredibly crafty cocaine smuggler (John T. Woods) stuck between the Feds, violent traffickers and a beautiful woman. No ground broken there, but the film comes directly from Forsman’s father’s experiences as a cocaine smuggler in the 1970s. Plus, the trailer is high quality in just about every regard, including its levels of Judd Nelson-ness: