The first project my brother and I worked on together was an
unusual little documentary called "Couples Arguing". This was 1985, and back then it cost $75,000 to buy a
professional camera, and it cost $65,000 to buy an editing system. We didn't have much money to work with,
so we said fuck it and we bought a good consumer camera for $3,000. We never had taken a film class and I
had never shot anything on a video camera at that point. But for lack of other options, I
decided to shoot one camera and my brother Harry, who had never done anything like sound
before, became the sound mixer.
We advertised around the bay area for couples that argued a
lot, and we asked them to beep us whenever they found themselves in an
argument. The whole crew could be
sound asleep, we'd get beeped and jump out of bed, throw on our clothes and
rush over to film an argument in progress. (We asked the couples to go into separate rooms once they
beeped us so the argument wouldn't continue until we got there). It was simple, just five couples
flat out arguing and talking about their relationship. Then once we finished shooting the
film, we moved on to thinking about how to sell it. Not the usual order of doing things, but the best way to not
get bogged down in the idea that your project might not be possible to
accomplish.
In 1985, there were only three networks plus PBS, and none
of them were interested in something so raw and real. For several months there, as we sent our ten-minute trailer,
it felt like we were screwed. But
then, on a whim, we decided to take the trailer to England and see if anyone
was interested in our little film over there.
We somehow wound up at Channel 4 in England, and my brother
and I were floored when they said they'd love to help us produce our
documentary. So we rushed home and
edited it, and it showed in England.
It even made a big splash there, with complimentary reviews in several
newspapers. One had a big picture
of Harry dashing out of the van with all this equipment in his arms, and the
caption said that he was running to film an argument.
So with that under our belts we decided to take Couples
Arguing to a big television market in Cannes, France, called Mip Con. When we showed up at Mip Con, we didn't
know how one of these markets worked, but we quickly found out that it cost
$100 a day for one person to even go in.
That represented a huge part of our budget. So we paid for one of us to go in, and then took the badge
they gave us to the copy center nearby and made a color copy for the other
brother. Each day the market would
change the color of their badges, so we would just make a new trip to the copy
center and change the color on our badges to match, and we'd go back in.
Once we were inside the convention there were tons of
booths. We had cassettes of our
film, but we didn't have anywhere to show our film, if we were convincing enough
to get a buyer interested. Then,
while walking around trying to figure out what to do next, we saw the one person
who had seen "Couples Arguing" in the U.S., who had actually liked our
film. His name is Phil Kent and he
is now the head of CNN. At the
time he was distributing the show "Divorce Court". He's an extremely nice guy, and when we explained our
predicament, he offered to let us show people our film in his private viewing
booth on the expo floor. Because
of that lucky break we were able to bring people by all week, from countries
all over the world, and ended up selling "Couples Arguing" to France, Holland,
Switzerland, Germany, Japan and Israel.
It was crazy, and we were ecstatic. (Props to Phil Kent for letting two broke interlopers use
his private viewing room to show a little film about couples shouting at each
other.)
The point is, that back then most people didn't think that
they could make a film if they couldn't come up with the huge money it took to
buy professional equipment. And if
you were daring enough, or stupid enough, to shoot a film with your own money,
there were very few options of ways to get that film seen. Now one can buy everything you need to
make a professional looking film for $3,000 to $4,000, and there are many more
options for getting a film out there.
Way back when, in 1985, my brother and I made a film that
was simple, innovative and meaningful to us, and we were passionate about
finding an audience for it. We
made our money back and got our film seen all over the world, but most
importantly, we got the impression that we could make a film about any crazy
idea and then somehow find a way to get it seen. That didn't prove to be true in the long run, but it did
give us momentum for years to come in our quest to make our own brand of
unusual films.
And, we learned a little something that may have contributed
to our creating CrushedPlanet... that there is a big world out there. By going to England, we discovered that
our film was not dead in the water anymore. Instead of having to give up after our disastrous attempt to
sell our film in the U.S., we were rescued by Channel 4 and we charged onward
into the abyss. Now we are
charging onward into the world of the Internet.
CrushedPlanet is about presenting powerful, innovative
films. A filmmaker, or just a
person with a camera and an idea, can make something special and personal and
out-of-the-box, AND find an audience.
With CrushedPlanet, we're just trying to make this process a little less
excruciating and more accessible to all of the talented artists and
free-thinking filmmakers out there who deserve to get their work seen. CrushedPlanet is about breaking free
from the limitations of the traditional outlets of film and television, and
creating an unrestricted venue for unrestricted voices. So send us your films. Let's get this party started.
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