LOW BUDGET DOESN’T MEAN STUPID, THE RISE OF THE LOCAL POTENTATE PRODUCER AND HIS TAX INCENTIVE FIEFDOM, THE CANNED CREW, GETTING YOUR CREW TO SEE WHAT YOU SEE, IDEAS and DENGUE FEVER.

Dear Reader,

I don’t write this column to make friends; although that’s fine if I do.  And I certainly don’t make any money with it.  Yet.  I write it because it’s mine, it's global, I get to say whatever I want to say, I get to tell the truth (in the sense of revealing reality, or exposing stupid, which I intend to do in this post - as a public service of course, in this case to other independent filmmakers), and because it’s the best way I know to start my writing for the day.  By writing.  Like Ray Bradbury, my favorite writer of all time said to his biographer:

“Work is the only answer,” he told Weller a few years ago. “I have three rules to live by: Get your work done. If that doesn't work, shut up and drink your gin, and when all else fails, run like hell.” 

Amen. Goodbye Ray. (I have a post coming about Ray Bradbury, check back in a few days for that).

This post, which is a companion piece to my post “Raising Money for Independent Film, Opening a Vein and Productive Insanity.”  Here it is if you want to refresh your memory:

http://davidmickeyevansblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/raising-money-for-independent-film.html

So, yeah, “Low budget doesn’t mean stupid!”   I said that on a low budget picture I directed.  Actually, I screamed it really, REALLY loudly.  Got everyone’s attention that day too.  Movie turned out great. ;)  More on this, and the actual story of that day on-set later.

In an overall sense, this post is about the highs and lows of low budget indie filmmaking.  What’s low budget?  Depends on what the actual resource needs of the film are.

Every time -- every single time -- I finish a script and a potential investor, studio, executive, producer what-have-you reads it (and presumably likes it) the very first question I get is, “What’s the budget?”  And the first thing I think is, “How the hell should I know?” 


One dollar?  A hundred thousand dollars? $1,037,000 - which is SAG Modified Low Budget (plus the diversity add-on).  $2.5ish million -- so we can get under the DGA low budget tier at which all the rates are negotiable?  The point here is, that the answer to the question “What’s the budget?” is “Movies cost what they cost.”  I’m not trying to be flip, movies do cost what they cost, AND (and this is the  important part) there’s always a number (a budget number) at which spending a dollar more won’t impact the quality of the film in a positive way, but at the same time spending a dollar less will impact it in a negative way.

So, “What’s the budget?”  There’s three ways to look at it - but only two ways mean anything in the lower budget indie world.  But Way #1 is the right way, the way it should be done, and that is this:

The script is finished.  The Director, his AD and perhaps the Producer breakdown the script into ALL of its essential and needed elements according to the vision the Director has for the film (talent, locations, wardrobe, special effects, construction etc).  Based on that extremely detailed breakdown in which we try to anticipate everything (that’s impossible, but we try), the Producer (or Line Producer, with the help of the UPM) generates a budget wherein all of the resource needs for putting that vision on the screen are accounted for.  This is the most responsible, most judicious way to budget a film.  This is the way the big boys do it.  But even then, even in the studio world you’re gonna run into -- let’s call it “The Lone Ranger” consternation.

I mean the film Disney’s making, or made.  Or re-making.  Er, or re-imagining.  That Director (whose films have made billions of dollars), presumably with the help of his staff, generated a budget for that film that came in around $250 million.  This, presumably, was the budget number that befit the film he intended to make -- and I assume at that level the whole movie had been pre-visualized (which is a way of trying to anticipate everything that can possibly be anticipated) and as many surprises, budgetary or otherwise, as could be were squashed before they reared their costly heads; maybe not, but let’s pretend.

So they’re just about to go into production and the studio (so say the articles I’ve read about it) stepped in and threw out the spike-strip and tossed up a brick wall.  Why?  Because the budget was too high.  Okay.  If that’s so, then what was the budget number the studio would’ve felt comfortable with from the beginning?  And why?  And why, furthermore, didn’t they just lay it on the table up front, and avoid a shit-load of wasted time and (yeah...) money?  I’m making assumptions here (they may very well have done this, I don't know), I know that, I have nothing whatsoever to do with this movie (sure wish I did though) but let’s pretend.

The answer is that, to the studio, the budget of the movie to be made has almost nothing to do with ensuring the creative team the necessary resources to bring to the screen the director’s vision of the film.  The budget -- to the studio, the total amount of money itself, and not necessarily the document which details how it will be spent -- is defined, really decided upon, by formulas.  Formulas that are supposed to predict income and profit based on all of the complex (and sometimes indefinable) elements that “are” the film they end up with.  Things like, who’s in it?  And what’s their foreign value?  What’s their domestic theatrical value and how much can we reasonably expect this film with that actor in it to generate?  What’s that actor’s value as an action figure?  On a grade school backpack?   What’s the potential monetary value of the old series, comic book, theme park ride (whatever) that the movie is based upon?  What are we, the studio liable to reasonably expect to make on DVD sales? Cable?  How much is it going to cost to market and advertise this film?  If we release it during a time when the theaters are full of other BIG movies, how will that affect our take?  And on, and on... It's a ridiculously complex process that, I suspect, involves some alchemy as well as accounting skills - they're very good at this BTW.

So bearing all this in mind, how’s the studio suppose to come up with a number they’re comfortable with as a budget without first receiving a budget that declares what the creative team claims they need to make the picture?  Well, they can’t.  Ok, they could, but it would all just be a gigantic gross assumption.

So essentially, the best, most responsible and judicious way to budget a film still isn’t the best most responsible and judicious way to budget a film.  Because that number, and the ways in which that money is going to be spent is going to be re-thought downward to a number that the studio can fit into their equivalent of a “PlayDough Pumper #9.”  The least amount of money the studio can possibly justify (or simply order) goes into the little squeezer machine, much force in the form of marketing and advertisement is applied, and all the little squiggly Playdough spaghetti-noodles you remember so fondly from your childhood are the studio’s revenue streams.  (I'm not trying to be snarky here, I just think that analogy is funny).  Make sense?  Seriously though, Pumper No. 9 was cool.

So then, what’s the point of making a budget in the most responsible, judicious manner you can employing Way #1?  I have no idea.  Because essentially Way #1 is pretty much equivalent to Ways #2 & #3.  Which are: you either back the film into the number, or the number into the film.

WAY #2,  BACKING THE FILM INTO THE NUMBER:

In the lower budget filmmaking world, the independent filmmaking world, this is, by a light-year, the most often necessitated way to go about finding your budget.  Sounds weird because this way means you already know how much money you have to spend.  So there’s your budget, right?  Nope.  That’s just a number.  That’s how much money you have to spend.  That’s not a budget.  A budget is a detailed, department by department spreadsheet of HOW you are going to spend that money.  That’s your budget.  And that’s where the “Low Budget Doesn’t Mean Stupid” part starts to comes in.


It isn't how much money you have to spend, it's how you spend how much money you have.


Now, if you've got a Producer (like most of the Producer's I've worked with) who cares about the film, and more to the point how you (the Director) intends to realize it, and whose attitude is "Here's how we can," not "Here's why we can't" then your life and your film are gonna be the better for it.


But sometimes...

... you are gonna run up against, or into, this guy: The Local Potentate Producer (it has to do with tax incentives, it'll make sense in a minute, I promise).

And this Producer has a number in his head at which he believes he can bring in the film to completion.  He probably already has a preliminary budget worked up, but maybe not.  His number is the money he managed to get from whatever the source (see my last Blog on raising money for independent film production)

http://davidmickeyevansblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/raising-money-for-independent-film.html ,

and regardless of whether that number is enough money to make the film at a level it deserves -- the level at which the Director’s vision is fulfilled -- or not, is meaningless to this person.  The film is gonna get made.  At the number in this person’s head.  The end.  That’s it.  If the film turns out badly, the Producer moves on to the next picture and blames (usually) the Director, and if the film turns out good, believe me I’ve seen this a hundred times, that Producer will be the first to take as much credit for it as they possibly can.  Not every Producer I’ve ever worked with in the lower budget arena (not even the Local Potentate Producers) is like this, but there are enough of them out there to make it mine-field.

You'll know an LPP when you meet one because they're fond of saying things like this:

“There just isn’t any money for that.”  Yes, there is, you just have it allocated in the wrong place.

“That’s not in the budget.” That’s your mistake, genius.  Produce a solution.

“This is the (insert number here) movie I’ve done!”  Really?  Name one.

“It’s raining.  What’s your cover set?”  Well, we don’t have one because you removed those back-up elements from the schedule my AD created because you said we didn’t need any cover sets, that the weather would be great everyday we were on an exterior location, and it added time we couldn’t afford to the schedule.  So Produce a solution.

“You have to make your days on this picture.” I don’t make days.  I make locations.

“We’ll just use the crew as extras because we can’t afford paid exrtas.” Really?  Then who is going to do the crews’  jobs when they’re all walking around in the background of my shot not doing their jobs?

“We need to move on.  You really don’t need a second take.” Tell that to the star actor you hired.  Lemme know how that works out for you.

Local Potentate Producers work in Tax Incentive Fiefdoms of their own making.  Again, the great majority of these people are good at what they do, a pleasure to work with -- it's the pufferfishy Napoleonettes I'm advising you to watch out for here.










With the rise of state tax incentives (programs wherein a production gets back a percentage of its qualified spend at the end of production - ranging between 5% and 42%) there arose a need for qualified local crew in these places. It sort of defeats the purpose to shoot your movie in a tax incentivized state only to have to fly in and house your entire crew, right?  That’s not savings, that’s extra cost.  So savvy local Producers consolidated anyone and everyone in their little areas in those states, and sometimes statewide, that could function as a crew member and opened with welcome arms all the gypsy types that migrated to those areas for work -- because with the tax incentive the productions were lining up to get in and shoot their film.

Productions began to depend on the Local Potentate Producers because they knew all the local crew, the film offices, could expedite permits, fill out tax incentive paperwork and squeeze every dime out of the program.  This was terrific news for the visiting production’s Producer.  And if things went well (read: the film came in on or under budget) then they were certainly inclined to bring another and another and another production to that Local Potentate Producer.  See where this is going?  The Local Potentate Producer had just created his own little Tax Incentive Fiefdom.  And how do the bad ones keep their costs low?  By paying those people like shit.  And since they all live and work in the potentate’s fiefdom there’s not much they can do about it.

I'd guess that no one sets out to make a bad film.  But with the bad type LPP, it's worse than if they did  -- they just don’t give a shit one way or the other.  Good movie.  Bad movie.  Makes no difference.  The point is that they need “a” movie, “any” movie shooting in their fiefdom as frequently as possible.  That’s it.  Like making widgets.  And they hold all the power because they control the budget.  I’ve actually had to turn the DGA loose on a few of these types to get my copy of the budget on a few films.  A director has a right to a copy, but it’s such a valuable document, few of these types ever want anyone to actually see it.  And why would that possibly be?  Two reasons: power and money.  The power part is self-explanatory.  The money part... well, ever heard of dual-contracts in the car dealership world?  Yeah.  That.  I’m not saying anything, I’m just saying...   Bitter, Dave?  Chip on your shoulder, Dave?  Not at all.  Because...

... one of the great advantages of backing the film into the number is there’s actually a way to solve a lot of problems right up front -- re-write the script per location, on location, once you get there.  This is called compromise.  Still, despite the advantage, it sucks because after all the pain, effort, sweat and blood you spilled writing the script and getting the story and all of its elements just the way you wanted them, just exactly the way they need to be to tell the story the best it can be told (remember, you work for the audience - not anyone or anything else), now you gotta tear it up, or at least re-mold it and re-conceive it to fit a number.

Although, I have to admit, that sometimes being forced to do this results in ideas and ways to get a particular story point across in a way you had never thought of before.  And sometimes it’s better.  More concise.  More efficient.  Those are great filmmaking moments.  Consider it a challenge and not the headache it is and your film will be much better off.

Your bad Local Potentate Producer (or any for that matter who make "budgets" not "movies") can also be labelled -- perhaps more accurately -- the “No-Stop-Light-Here-Until-Someone-Dies” Producers.  You know what I’m referring too, that all too frighteningly similar ass-backward reasoning used by local city councils and county transportation departments that states that it is a bad idea to anticipate a death at a dangerous intersection, and therefore we must wait till someone dies crossing it in order to then make it safe by installing a traffic light.  More on this later -- plus a perfect example.

WAY #3, BACKING THE NUMBER INTO THE FILM:

While Way #2 is by and large the way you’ll probably have to do it, Way #3 generally results in a better film.  But you ain’t gonna make any friends this way.  Because it’s the flip side of the coin to Way #2.  If Way #2 is compromise, Way #3 is don’t compromise.

"I've made 15 low budget films!"

I have a friend working on a low budget film as a Location Manager as I write this post.  The Producer is not good, fond of spouting  little Blowfishy Napoleonisms, things like, “I know what I’m doing! I’ve made 15 low budget movies!”  Really?  Name one.  But I digress.


The picture is budgeted at about $400,000, stars a very well known actor from a ridiculously successful TV show and has 30 (yep, 30) locations and a 24 day schedule.  Very tight.  Very, very tight.  My friend works closely with the Director and from what I hear, regardless of how many times the Producer says, “That’s not in the budget.”  Or  “We don’t have the money for that.”  This Director won’t budge.  Won’t compromise.  He sees the film the way he sees the film and that’s the film he’s gonna make.  God love him.  Like I said, he ain’t gonna make many friends this way, but his movie is gonna be as good as he can possibly make it.  I don’t know this guy, but I like him already.  BTW, I read the script.  It's really, really good.  I'm rooting for him.

Quick example of bad Local Potentate Producing:  The budget’s about $400,000.  If it was me, and I was producing this picture I would allocate about $30-$40,000 for locations (and obviously try and get everything as inexpensively as we could).  Why?  Because in lower budget movies (all movies really, but much more so in lower budget ones) you see two things on the screen: your actors, and wherever it is that your actors are acting what they’re acting -- the locations.  

So locations (since you sure as shit aren’t gonna be building any sets on a picture with a budget that low, nor dressing many of the practical location sets - you’ll probably be using the existing furniture) are second in importance only to your actors.  The locations are characters in the story.  Know what this Producer allocated for the Locations Department?  $10,000.  That is stupid.  And while I'm at it, where's the rest of the money in that budget anyway?

So, Way #3, backing the number into the film can be distilled to read: “Don’t compromise.”  You’ll probably have to resort to a lot of autocratic nastiness and a lot of begging (been there, done that) but I think it’s worth it.  So will your audience.

Moving on.  Back to the title of this post:

LOW BUDGET DOESN’T MEAN STUPID, THE RISE OF THE LOCAL POTENTATE PRODUCER AND HIS TAX INCENTIVE FIEFDOM, THE CANNED CREW, GETTING YOUR CREW TO SEE WHAT YOU SEE, IDEAS and DENGUE FEVER.

We’ve dealt with the second one, now let’s look at the other five, and the best way for me to describe them is with some true stories.  And I swear I am trying to be kind here.  Really:

LOW BUDGET DOESN’T MEAN STUPID:

So I’m making a picture in a mid-western state, a state I’ve thankfully made a picture in before (where there is a local producer I've worked with, who is, thankfully, great).  But this one is a much lower budget and comes with three other producers, two of which are constantly on set.  Neither of whom has a clue.  Don’t believe me? 

Okay, during pre-production Producer #1 asks my AD and myself which day a particular actor is working.  We show this person the new scheduling strip board we’ve put up on the production office wall.  Producer #1 examines it and says, “Oh, I see.  Thursday.”  We counter, “No, that actor is working Friday.”  Producer #1 counters, “No, it says here that actor is working on Thursday.”  We politely correct,  “No, really, that person works Friday.”  Now this is a Producer who claimed to me to have produced 30 (yes, 30) motion pictures.  Producer #1 calls me and my AD over to the strip board dead set on winning the debate, pointing to the character name saying, “See, right here.  It indicates this person works Thursday.”  My AD and I look at each other.  Is Producer #1 serious?  Yep.  But the problem is, this person doesn’t know how to read a scheduling strip board -- assuming the day/date strip above that day's scene work, is the day/date those scene strips shoot.  It’s not.  You don’t read a strip board top-down, you read one (and you should know this if you’ve produced 30 films) bottom-up.

This same Producer, Producer #1 also says we cannot rent air conditioning units for the interior of a practical location which has no air conditioning.  And it’s hot.  Hot as hell.  Dead of summer, mid-west state, do the math.  Oh wait, there’s more... I’ve got to shoot all day in the interior of this sweat box with motion picture lights jacking the heat up even higher (note: I picked this place for the only reason you should ever choose any location - it looked perfect).  Oh wait, there’s more... two of the actors in the scene are older people.  One is in ill health.  But still, "No air conditioning."  Even after I explain all of those factors to Producer #1.  Oh-kay.


On the day, I block the scene, light it up with my DP and call in the actors.  Five minutes later the older actor in ill health is sweating so bad that we cannot photograph him, and he almost collapses from heat stroke.  Guess what?  30 minutes later... air conditioning.  Low budget doesn't mean stupid.

Same picture, Producer #2.  From the beginning of pre-production, and certainly in the all-crew production meeting, I raise a concern about rain.  Not that I’ll get rained out, but making rain.  There’s a certain scene at the end of the film that needs to take place in the rain.  It’s at night too, and at this time of the year (in this mid-western state) it doesn’t get dark (at least shootable “night dark”) until about 10 PM.  Oh, there’s a kid in the scene, so I can’t shoot past midnight.  Get it?  That means I’m going to have exactly two hours to shoot the big scene at the end of the movie, in the rain. 

So I need rain pipes, an on set F/X crew of two guys to operate the pipes and several thousand gallons of water in a tank.  Producer #2 tells me, “No way, there’s no money for that.  You’ll have to use the water that’s available from the garden hoses at the house we're shooting at.  And a sprinkler.”  So I inform Producer #2 of what that’s gonna look like (it’s gonna look exactly like a guy standing off screen squirting water from a garden hose.  Not rain.).  Producer #2 doesn’t care.  Or isn't listening.  Or both.

So a month goes by.  The night arrives to shoot the rain scene.  Producer #2 acquiesces to the rain pipes (which I get at a discount - by calling the F/X crew I used on the last movie I shot in this mid-western state.  Nice, capable guys), but not on the water supply.  So the rain guys build their rig and hook it up to their 700 gallon tank.  And Producer #2 says, “See you have a water supply.”  I tell him, "No, actually that’s just the small tank to test the rig.  We need a main source for the scene with enough water so we don’t run out in the two short hours we have to shoot the scene."  


Producer #2 tells me 700 gallons is more than enough.  I turn to the rain guys and ask (and I already know the answer), “Guys, how long do we need to test the rig?”  They answer, “About a minute or so.”  I continue, “And how much water are you gonna burn through when we test?”  They answer, “About 700 gallons.”  I turn to Producer #2 and say, “Produce a solution.”  Producer #2 gets ruffled, and then has a stroke of genius idea,  “That’s easy.  Just refill the tank!”  Right.  I ask the rain guys out loud, “Guys how long to refill the tank?”  They answer, “With a garden hose?”  I say, “Yes, that’s all we have.”  They answer, “About 45 minutes.”  I turn to Producer #2 and say, “That will give us one hour and fifteen minutes to shoot the scene.  Produce a solution.” 

Producer #2 of course, can’t.  Well, “can” but won’t.  Won’t spend another dime.  So I let Producer #2 sweat it out all the way till the sun is almost down and it’s almost dark.  As the last drops of sunshine are fading fast I walk over and ask, “So, what’re we gonna do boss?”  No answer.  We can’t shoot the scene in 1 1/2 hours.  We can’t come back to do it another day -- this is low budget --  there are no re-shoots, so, what to do? 

Producer #2 is literally shaking, he’s screwed, he’s screwed the show and he knows it.  Just then (as if on cue - alright it was on cue because I set it up that way. HA!)  the local Fire Department shows up with two tankers.  The Producer from the previous show I’d done in this mid-western state is a dear friend and a smart, well connected guy in the community.  And it’s HIS HOUSE we’re using for the last scene!  FOR FREE NO LESS!  I had him call the local FD and have them send over the trucks.  For free.  This is the moment I screamed “Low budget doesn’t mean stupid!”  Was that a little harsh? Yes.  Was I rubbing it in?  You bet.

But see, the point was made -- low budget does not have to mean stupid.

In these examples the Local Producer came to the rescue.  But it's what the two other's have in common with the bad Local Potentate Producers that you have to watch out for:

It’s this: the “No-You-Can’t-Have-A-Water-Tank,” incident, and the “Air-Conditioning-Is-Not-In-The-Budget” reasoning defines them, more accurately (remember above where I mentioned this?) the “No-Stop-Light-Here-Until-Someone-Dies” Producers. 

And it’s a budgetary conundrum really -- it doesn’t make any sense -- because why would a pinch-penny Producer have an attitude upfront about not spending money on things that are necessary, only to then have to spend the money on them later when they’re more expensive?   That's just stupid.

Here's an example of what Producer #2 regarded as very important, while he should've been securing a water truck: Producer #2 had some manner of anxiety with the way the craft service person was laying out the snack table.  Yes,  about the actual places on the table itself that crafty was setting the various food stuffs.   So Producer #2 sits this poor (very capable) crew member down and proceeds to lecture on how to set up a craft service table.  And then...

... he draws the craft service person a topographical map of the table -- a satellite view -- of where every item on the table should be placed.  I. Swear.  Don’t believe me?  Well, here it is:

Now about:

THE CANNED CREW, GETTING YOUR CREW TO SEE WHAT YOU SEE, IDEAS and DENGUE FEVER.

A Canned Crew is a crew comprised of all local people in a particular location.  Local Potentate Producers almost always insist on canned crews -- their crew people, the ones they consistently pay like shit -- because of the tax incentive advantages of writing off their salaries.  


It’s also the worst sort of crew-relationship to encumber a director with.  Because he doesn’t know any of them, and certainly has never worked with any of them, and more importantly having never worked with the particular Director the Canned Crew has no idea how this Director thinks, creates, or anything. 

I'm not saying the Canned Crew is bad, on the contrary, almost all of the Canned Crews I have ever worked with have been outstanding.  


The issue is that it is immeasurably more time consuming because the Director has to get this Canned Crew to “see what he/she sees, how he/she sees it.”  And in order to do that you've got to get them to understand how you see the film.


How do you do that?  Any way you can.  At the risk of sounding slightly behind the times or a little retro-analytic it has to do with ideas.  

Or rather, the meme.  To wit:

“A meme is any idea, behavior, or skill that can be transferred from one person to another by imitation: stories, fashions, inventions, recipes, songs, ways of plowing a field or throwing a baseball or making a sculpture (or methods and needs specific to a particular director on a movie set - my add and italics).”


 (This is cadged from the google books page of Susan Blackmore’s book The Meme Machine.  Here’s the link: http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Meme_Machine.html?id=dtkeLWVMlcsC)

So I’ve got to get my idea for the movie (in all the necessary ways that entails) across to the Canned Crew (yes, the Producer as well - even my regular crew for that matter) and especially the actors in any way I can -- get them on the same page, so we’re all making the same movie at the same time -- and hopefully with passion.  How?  One of the great things about being a news junkie (and I am) is that I’m always somehow (synchronicity anyone?) coming across articles that have much to do with whatever the current subject of my column is.  So...



...about that Dengue Fever: 

Apparently this persistent genius researcher in Australia has spent the last twenty years trying to figure out a way to rid the world of Dengue fever.  And he figured it out.  


Seems there’s a bacteria Wolbachia (let’s call this the idea - the meme) which when inserted into a mosquito (in essence infecting it) prevents the mosquito from ever being able to transmit dengue fever (let's say prevents anyone from making a movie different than the one the Director is making).  Infect enough mosquitos (let’s say my Canned Crew - and the Producer, actors etc...), turn them loose into the wild (onto the movie set), they mate with wild mosquitos, those babies carry the bacteria (everyone’s thinking about the “same” film as I am), pretty soon no more dengue fever (nobody on my crew is making a movie different than the one I am making).  Genius.  Movie done.  Everyone’s on the same page.  The movie turns out the way I meant it, the way I intended it, the way I saw it.  

The infection metaphor, I admit, is a little sketchy, but I mean it in the the sense of "infectious" -- relating to getting others to share my passion, vision and enthusiasm for the film I am making --  not "infection."

If you want to read the whole article here it is.  Trust me, it’s good:

Scott O'Neill wants to rid the world of dengue fever by infecting mosquitoes with bacteria so they can't carry the virus that causes the disease.

A Scientist's 20-Year Quest To Defeat Dengue Fever

by Joe Palca

http://www.npr.org/2012/06/07/154322744/a-scientists-20-year-quest-to-defeat-dengue-fever?sc=17&f=1001

I love independent filmmaking.  I even love lower budget independent filmmaking -- a lot -- the challenge and the control.  Don’t get me wrong I would love to be writing and directing The Lone Ranger with $200 million at my budgetary disposal (alright, maybe not making The Lone Ranger, but definitely have a $200 million budget at my disposal).  I really would.  But I seriously doubt there would be a Producer on a show of that magnitude who would dare take the time to sit the craft service person down and draw them a satellite map of the placement of the snacks on the crafty table.

I mean, really, how great is that?

What was it Forrest Gump was fond of saying?

Thanks for reading and SIGN UP TO FOLLOW - there’s three way to do that on the right side of the Blog page.

Best,

DME

A RECENT ARTICLE FROM "THE CITIZEN'S VOICE," IN WILKES BARRE, PENNSYLVANIA, MY HOME TOWN.

Dera Reader,

Here's a link to an interview I recently did with a newspaper in my home town of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania.

http://citizensvoice.com/arts-living/sandlot-inspired-by-true-story-1.1325928

Thanks for reading and check back soon.

And sign up TO FOLLOW this Blog - check the right side of the page.

Best,

DME

Raising Money for Independent Film Production, Opening a Vein and Productive Insanity

Dear Reader,

Remember this: “Everything is people.”

So I get an email from an successful executive at a respected production company with whom I am attached to direct a family oriented fantasy film.  I ask, “So how’s it going with our project?”  His answer: “Film financing sucks right now!”

Yep. It sure does.  Why?  And why, furthermore, if the well is as dry as it seems to be, do so many godawful pictures continue to get made?  Even at a studio level; hey for every The Avengers there’s a Battleship -- 1,400 S/FX shots signifying nothing.  That’s just my opinion (Lord knows I wish I had a budget and resources like that to make a film; yes I have production resource envy) -- but really how in the hell did no one notice the script, yes the words in the script that were supposed to amount to a coherent story, involved Aliens who can’t stand sunlight riding around in ships with a bunch of windows in them that’s the good guys can blast to shards?  Good lord.

And thinking it through, if the well is that dry how does any movie get made?  At all?  Ever?  In today’s “sucky financing market.”  Good question.

Leaving aside the obvious studio route: studio buys comic book, studio hires five consecutive writer teams to subsequently “fix” the last team’s “terrific effort”, studio hires  one of the ten usual directing subjects, studio pays said usual directing subject a boat-load of money, studio hires big name actors and pays them an even bigger boat-load of money, studio finances whole production, studio turns marketing department loose on finished film, studio (hopefully) makes a cargo ship-load of money and monetizes every single thing they possibly can regarding merchandise.  They better because at $200 million heads will roll if it flops.  John Carter anyone?  The head of Disney production got the guillotine for that one -- which if you think about it on a cost-over-colossal screw-up analysis is hardly as bad as JP Morgan flushing $2 billion down the drain.  But hey, this is Hollywood and like Mike Medavoy once said (I think it was him) “You are only as good as you next picture.”  Make a stupendous blunder like John Carter and there won’t be a next picture.  But hey, I heard a tasty gig just opened up at JP Morgan.

But really, heads are gonna roll even if a film at that budget level does “Okay.”  I call this “The Home Run Syndrome.”  Studios used to operate on “The Get A Lot of Base Hits Syndrome” (the 80’s and 90’s), but those days are long gone.  And yes, I know what you’re thinking, “Well, Dave, studios make a lot more sorts of films at substantially lower budget levels than that.”  No.  They don’t.  Studios acquire those films.  They buy them.  They don’t make them.  Not anymore.  Don’t believe me?  

Here’s a quick story:

So I’m sitting in the office of the head of Worldwide Film and Television Acquisition at a major studio about 6 months ago.  I’m talking to this person, who also happens to be a friend and someone with whom I have worked (very successfully) in the not so distant past.  He’s read a screenplay of mine to which I have attached a major star -- wrote it as a vehicle for him to star in as a matter of fact.  My executive friend is also a big fan of this actor.  Actually had done a movie with him and really likes him both personally and professionally.  So, great, I’m “in” right?  I mean, clearly he’s gonna recommend to production that the studio fund my film and away we go, right?  And considering my answer to his next question, “What do you see as the budget, Dave?” this should be a slam dunk.  Because I answer, “In the $10 million range. All in.”  Seems workable, right?  I mean at $10 million how can the studio really lose?  Here’s what he said, “It will never happen here.  We won’t make that movie.”  Wait.  What?  Here’s why, “Because the first people I’ll have to run it by are not the production guys, Dave, it’s marketing.  And they will never be able to justify spending upwards of $30 million to market a movie that only cost $10 million.”

“Wait. What?” I say.

“I know, seems bass akwards doesn’t it?”  I agree with him that it does.  Then he goes on and says, “But if you make this film and it comes out as good as I know you can make it, then chances are we’d probably buy it.  If you get it into a few festivals and people like it, we’d definitely buy it and distribute it.”  Wanna know why?  Because they could acquire the film at a price that would then come close to justifying the expenditure of the sort of marketing money they need to part with to get it out there in front of a large audience.

Christ, I’m exhausted from just writing that.

Here’s another little story if I haven’t beat this horse dead yet:

So I’m in a meeting with a major Production Company on the lot at a different major studio.  I’m talking with the Head of Production who is a big fan of my writing.  He just read an epic western based on a true story (written with writing partner Paul Jaconi-Biery) and said, I kid you not, “It’s literally one of the best scripts I’ve ever read.”  I know, I know, we’ve all heard that before.  But see, here’s the deal, he really means it.  And yes, the script really is that good (G’boy Dave, pat-pat). 

He continues, “But the studio will never let us make this.”  Wait.  What?  This company has made not millions, not hundreds of millions, but their movies have made the studio literally billions of dollars.  So they should get to make any damn movie they want, right?  Wrong.  The HOP tells me, “The studio looks to us for tentpole movies.”  Tentpole movies.  Uh huh.  Then he asks, “Do you have anything like that?”  

Now we all know what a tentpole movie is, right?  It’s a big budget, popcorn movie - usually an action movie -- almost always based upon (these days anyway) a comic book, a piece of existing material in the studio’s library or on a ride at once of the studio’s theme parks.  I tell the HOP that I unfortunately do not have the rights to any comic books (all the major comic book publishers have deals with studios), nor do I have the rights to any of the studios catalog of material in their library and I sadly do not have any vested majority stock ownership in the studios theme park.  Still he persists, because he’s actually a very nice guy, and says, “Well, still, do you have anything ya know, BIG?”

“Sure,” I tell him, “But when was the last time, or what was the last tentpole movie that the studio made that WAS NOT based on any of those three things I mentioned?”

Ringing silence.  But I did get a re-write out of the mix.  So there’s that.

One last little story, here’s a redacted note a high ranking acquisitions exec (a good friend) at a different studio sent me about the same script:

“David, I read this and really liked it.  Nice story and strong writing.  But as you note, you need the theatrical component and I can't provide that.  This would need to go into either (Big Studio’s smaller label) as an acquisition or into the studio via one of our creative execs.  Frankly, (Big Studio) isn't making films like this so (Big Studio’s smaller label) is your best bet.  I will say that they tend not to get involved in a lot of stuff at the production level, rather they come in when the film is either finished and screenable or in production with attractive elements.  So I think it's a long shot they'll get involved at this stage.  Sorry, wish I had better news but I know the thinking around here now.  I think you'll need to try and figure out the financing without distribution just knowing the market today.  Very difficult to get studios to finance or commit to distribution on projects like this.”

So there ya go.  That’s the studio route.  Good luck.  It’s great work if you can get it.

So what about independent film production?  Where’s that money come from?  If you think the studio route is daunting, now your head is gonna spin.  There are, in my current experience, 6 ways to get money to make an independent film.  Here’s what I call them:

1. The Rich Guy Method.
2. The Scavenger Hunt Method.
3. The Foreign Pre Sales Cobbling Method.
4. The Completely Useless Big Slick Business Plan Method.
5. The (Insert Big Retailer Here) Will Acquire the DVD Rights and Guarantee Your Investors 50% - 70% of Their Money Back Up Front Provided The Film Has The Right Cast (preferably Country Music Stars Who Want To Cross Over and They Appeal To The Faith Based Market) and No Foul Language Method.

And then there’s the one thing that is common to all of these methods, and I call it:

6. The Ice Cream Man & The Matching Funds Investor Conundrum.

1. THE RICH GUY METHOD, this is pretty much exactly what it says, you find a wealthy person and they simply give you the money to make you film.  I’ve had a few of these types of benefactors over the years, and most recently on a film I shot in Iowa in 2010.  The entire film was bank rolled, literally in the form of a check, by a single person.  How did I find this person?  I didn’t, someone else did.  Why did this person write the check to fund the movie?  A couple reasons; I wrote the script, I was signed to direct, it was a family film, and that gave this investor a satisfactory level of confidence that the whole endeavor was not akin to flushing cash down the toilet -- or making John Carter.  How do you find these investors?  Remember what I told you to remember at the start of this column?  “Everything is People.”  So never stop meeting people because, one way or another, one thing always leads to another - or in this case one person always leads to another, and one of them, one day, is going to have money they wish to invest in a film.  Oh, and one more thing, the first question you are likely to get is, “So, who’s in your film?”

1. THE SCAVENGER HUNT METHOD, is just what it says, you scavenge around anywhere you can to find pieces (however small or large) of the budget until you have enough pieces and they add up to what you need to make the film.  The pieces can come from anywhere, there are no hard and fast rules to this method; a rich investor, monetizing tax incentives, MG’s (Minimum Guarantees) direct bank loans, your credit cards, gap financing, bridge loans, mortgage your house, a production company that might come in with some equity in order to run the production through their production/post production facility (essentially creating themselves a job), foreign pre sales, and the list goes on.  The problem with this method is the daunting nature of the possible conflicts between all the disparate parties involved.  For instance, whoever is “first in” is likely to demand to be “first out,” meaning they want a guarantee that they will get their money back before anyone else.  But what if after the film is finished, and it’s REALLY GOOD, a P&A Fund comes in and wants to give you $12 million to take it out into the domestic theatrical market?  Great right?  What if they demand to be “last in - first out”?  If you make that deal, your original “first in” investor will sue the shit out of you.  And he’ll win.  Film funds today (yes, there are some) usually have a “need sheet” that amounts to a Scavenger Hunt (the problem with these is that they ask you to come in with everything except the actual liquid equity - and in most cases you have to bring some of that to their table as well, which, of course, is impossible).  Here’s one I received recently:

“We are looking for projects with the following attributes:

- Theatrical distribution in place.

- Foreign sales agent hired 

• In pre-production (cast, foreign sales, some capital behind them)
• All tax incentives monetized 
• At least 3 foreign territories pre-sold
• Fund will bring 25-35% equity”

And for this they do you the beneficent favor of coming in at 25%-35% liquid equity of the actual budget, meaning that if all of those other criteria that they demanded you satisfy do not add up to (together with their paltry 25%-35%) the whole budget, then you STILL have to go out and Scavenge some more!  Oh, and these types of funds demand 5% of the all-in budget as a fee.  I hate the Scavenger Method.  Oh, and one more thing, the first question you are likely to get is, “So, who’s in your film?”

1. THE FOREIGN PRE SALES COBBLING METHOD, is a close cousin to the Scavenger Method.  Essentially it’s this, you pre sell the foreign distribution rights to your film, and you better have all the necessary ducks in a row for your foreign buyer, the most important of which is “Who’s in it?”  Your actor had better fit into one of these categories, 1. stars that have been in big hits in the relevant territories; 2. stars that have been in popular television shows in those territories, or 3. stars that can be expected to generate a great deal of publicity everywhere.  Now just because you’ve pre sold your foreign territories doesn’t mean you’ve got all the money to make the film.  In fact, these days you’ve got a whole lot less than you used to be able to get.  I could spend 20 pages on this, but just click this link and it will take you to Edward Jay Epstein’s Blog -- his article is everything you need to know about the reality of this method in today’s film financing world:

http://thehollywoodeconomist.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-indie-movies-are-endangered-species.html

Oh, and one more thing, the first question you are likely to get is, “So, who’s in your film?”

1. THE COMPLETELY USELESS BIG SLICK BUSINESS PLAN METHOD, this is usually employed by companies (they call themselves production companies but they’re not) that somehow acquire the rights to a slate of scripts they think have potential.  They usually group them into genres and then proceed to produce these big, slick, eye-catching “business plans” that attempt to convince an investor or a group of investors that there’s “no way they can lose” investing in this slate of films.  These companies could be trying to raise $5 million or $100 million.  Doesn’t matter, the “business plans” are all the same - filled with these utterly, ridiculously positive projections of revenue streams, startlingly great looking charts and graphs signifying nothing, and (this I hate most of all) completely valueless comparisons to films of the same genre that have been spectacular successes.  I’ve seen a bunch of these.  The best ones have nothing to do with whether any of the projects being hocked therein is ever going to make a freaking dime, the best ones are the ones that were assembled by the guy who’s got the best “desk top publishing” chops.  Ugh. Oh, and one more thing, the first question you are likely to get is, “So, who’s in your film?”  But this method has an advantage over the others in that you’ve already thought of this, and included in your CUBSBP a whole section of the most famous movie stars (pix and bios and attendant grosses their biggest movies have generated) -- none of whom you will ever have a chance in hell of getting in your film.

1. The (Insert Big Retailer Here) Will Acquire the DVD Rights and Guarantee Your Investors 50% - 70% of Their Money Back, Up Front Provided The Film Has The Right Cast (preferably Country Music Stars Who Want To Cross Over and They Appeal To The Faith Based Market) and No Foul Language Method.  A mouthful isn’t it?  But this method actually works pretty good.  Provided you can satisfy their requirements up front they’ll make a deal, not with you of course, but with the production company you take your project to and with whom Big Retailer has an output deal, which is based on that production company having put a series of successful direct-to-DVD films on their shelves in the past.  The biggest of these is of course Wally World (did you know they have their own film division now? Yep.) and since they control 60% of the worldwide DVD sales market, they make the rules.  Oh, and one more thing, the first question you are likely to get is, “So, who’s in your film?”  But just look in the title for the answer to that question for this method.  

1. THE ICE CREAM MAN & THE MATCHING FUNDS INVESTOR CONUNDRUM, is very much like, no wait, it’s EXACTLY LIKE, when you were a kid (for those of you old enough to remember this) and you and your friend (let’s call him Johnny) Johnny were playing in your front yards one summer day and you both at the same time heard the Ice Cream Man coming down the street.  You and Johnny both really want an ice cream (financing for your movie).  So you both go to your respective houses, and ask your respective mom’s, “Mom!  The ice cream man’s coming down the street, can I have a nickel for 50/50 bar?! (insert your favorite ice cream bar here).  And your mom tells you, “Sure, if Johnny’s mother gives him a nickel, I’ll give you a nickel.”  Problem is Johnny’s mom told him the same thing about your mother!  This goes on until the last possible moment when the ice cream man is already passed your houses and is about to turn onto another street (go finance a different movie).  But in the nick of time your mom gives you a nickel and Johnny’s mom gives him a nickel and you both run like hell to catch the ice cream man (financier).

Here’s a little story from an independent writer/director friend to illustrate the point:

“Dave, quick story, basically I've still been working on getting (insert name of lower budget indie script my friend wrote here) into production, I got a wealthy friend to commit 100K to it and when I took that to (insert manager/producer name here) he seemed to be re-energized to find money for the project. He signed this young director who seems talented and who I actually quite liked, and he adored the script, and (producer/manager) wanted him to direct the project. I was fine with that, as long as (producer/manager) could find the money.

So, I was in (certain state) at my brother's wedding, I got a text from (producer/manager)  saying it was "DONE".  He had a wealthy business partner who wanted to finance the project. They loved the script, loved me, the director, etc. They were going to do like 750K, which would be enough to do the film but it would be tight...whatever, I was ecstatic because I just wanted to get the thing into production!!!

Well, six months later, the money still had not come through. It was literally a nightmare for me, waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting...I felt bad for the director because he really wanted to get started but couldn't, and he was having a lot of financial problems, which I actually ended up helping him out with. I also felt a little bad for (manager/producer) because I could tell that his people wanted to finance, but they just had other projects in line before this one. It just sucked, because every time I talked to (manager/producer), he was saying, "Dude, we're there...the money is there...we don't need to worry about it". But then a week would go by with no word and I was like...dude...what the f**k!

Anyway, at the end of April, I called (manager/producer) and said buddy, I don't care if the f**king money is going to drop tomorrow and I'm making a huge mistake, but you need to give these financiers an ultimatum or I'm walking. He did so, they didn't respond, and I walked. I'd had another producer pursuing the project pretty hard, but I'd always sort of pushed him off because he wanted to go the route of trying to make offers and get some cast on board and then pursuing the budget through MG's, etc...a longer process, whereas (manager/producer’s) deal was straight equity.

Well, f**k that! I signed an exclusive agreement with this other producer a month ago, and didn't look back. The producer put 250K into escrow, which is usable to make offers, and we're going to send out our first two offers after Cannes. He's procured an MG for 500K from a Canadian company contingent on a list of talent, hopefully one of whom we can get. He also wants to do the project right, looking for more like 1.5M, and he wants to shoot local, which I think is the right thing to do.

And most of all, he actually communicates with me and tells me exactly what's going on, and he keeps me involved. And...funnily enough...he wants me to direct! Obviously a frightening proposition because I've not done that before, but the vision I have of this project is strong enough that I think I'll be able to do it.”

I reprint this here as an example of one of the two things all these raising-money-for-your-movie-methods have in common.  The conundrum of the “first in.”  Most of the time (no, scratch that, ALL of the time) you need that first investor to commit before the rest of the investors (pieces of the financing puzzle) will open their wallets.  How do you do that?  There’s really only a single way, a single piece of the financing puzzle that will almost always make it happen.  What’s that?  It’s that question I kept repeating at the end of every paragraph, Oh, and one more thing, the first question you are likely to get is, “So, who’s in your film?” 

You get Brad Pitt to commit to star in your movie, not only will you have every private investor on earth throwing money at you, you won’t need them, because the studios will all knock your door down to get at you.  But wait, how do you get Brad Pitt to commit (on paper no less!) to star in your movie if you cannot make a cash reading offer to his agent?  Ha!  Good luck.  You can’t.  Well, you can, and the answer to that is in the three little words I started this column off with.  They are the three most important words in the movie business (all business really) but nowhere more so important than in the entertainment business:

“Everything is people.”  I’ll leave it at that hoping you get the point.

So wrapping this all up are the other two parts of my title for this post, Opening a Vein, and Productive Insanity. 

Opening a view has to do with this, and I think it was Alfred Hitchcock that said this (could be wrong on that, and I’m paraphrasing here), “In the beginning is the word.  But what Hollywood seems never able to remember is that, also in the middle and the end is the word.”  “Writing is easy,” said another genius, “you just sit down and open a vein”  

That’s what I (we) do when we write.  When we create.  We bleed.  We bleed emotion, and soul, and self when we write.  It hurts.  A lot.  But if it hurts that much (it does for me anyway - and please, I am not complaining in the least here) and the odds are so enormously stacked against ever getting your story from the page to the screen, then why do we do it?  

The nearest I can come to answering that question is that I have something to say.  When, one day, I have nothing more to say, then I suppose I’ll stop.  I doubt it, but maybe.  And because, as another yet genius once said, “Writing is the only thing which while I am doing it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.” 

And finally, the Productive Insanity part is this, ya know what they say about defining insanity, right?  It’s repeating a behavior which leads to negative consequences, but keeping right on with the behavior.  

Like banging your head against the wall fulling expecting one day to knock the wall down.  

But the satisfaction of finally seeing the movie up on a screen, and people watching it, enthralled and feeling what I intended the story to make them feel, is too great a pull, to wonderful a goal to stop.  

So I’ll keep banging my head against the wall, thank you very much.

And even though “It is the waiting the kills.  Always.”  I’ll be productive in my insanity if you don’t mind. 

Because good things happen to he who hustles while he waits.

Thanks for reading and check back soon.

And PLEASE sign up to follow.

Best as always,

DME

I UPDATED MY PROJECTS PAGE

Scouting the Norway, Iowa Baseball Field, The Final Season, 2006

Dear Reader,

I updated my PROJECTS page - take a look to see what I am currently working on.

I'll have a new column posted in a few days.  Here's the title:

Independent Film Production, Raising Money for Movies, Opening a vein and Productive Insanity.

If your a writer, work in the movie business and/or are trying to raise money to shoot your picture, you are gonna definitely want to read this post.

Thanks for reading and sign up to follow.

Best,

DME

Patience and poisons.

This is the post I promised the other day on:

Surf Fishing, German Shepherd Dog competition, Saunas VS. Steam Rooms and Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy.

Dear Reader,

How in the hell is he going to connect all that?  With patience and poison.

Who is the greatest writer that ever lived?  What’s the greatest book ever written?  What’s the greatest novel ever written?  These questions are, of course, impossibly general in nature.  Can you really compare fiction to non-fiction?  A great History and to a great Novel?  Of course not.  And it’s not just the absurd nature of trying to universally label one work over all others, but the virtual impossibility of coming to grips with what exactly we mean by “greatest.”  Do we mean “best?”  Ok.  What do we mean by best?  Biggest?  Most pages?  Most words?  Most moving emotionally?  Wait though, what moves you emotionally might not move me emotionally, unless of course the writer has managed to tap into that Jungian universal subconscious stuff -- then we all love it.  Right?  Wrong.  What was the language in which the writer wrote the book, Russian?  Ok, what if the translator botched it?  How would you know?  You wouldn’t, you would just think the book sucks and that all those fawning Russian fans (who’s first language is of course Russian) are a bunch of uppity snots getting their furry-hatted didactic on.

So you see where I’m going here, it’s a can of worms.  And you know what you do with worms, right?  Use them as bait when fishing.  Not Surf Fishing but close enough.   Have some patience and I swear to God the title will make sense by the end of this post.  I hope so.

There are however a few things we can say with a fair degree of certainty, one is that we can agree that most people agree that William Shakespeare was the greatest writer that ever lived.  Certainly the greatest writer in the English language.  And two, is that Tolstoy hated Shakespeare.  Thought he was a hack.  A bad dramatist and not a true artist at all.  Here’s what Leo had to say about Bill in a 1903 essay:

“I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful aesthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, MacBeth, not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium...

"Several times I read the dramas and the comedies and historical plays, and I invariably underwent the same feelings: repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment...  Being desirous once more to test myself, I have, as an old man of seventy-five, again read the whole of Shakespeare, including the historical plays, the "Henrys," "Troilus and Cressida," the "Tempest," "Cymbeline," and I have felt, with even greater force, the same feelings, this time, however, not of bewilderment, but of firm, indubitable conviction that the unquestionable glory of a great genius which Shakespeare enjoys, and which compels writers of our time to imitate him and readers and spectators to discover in him non-existent merits,—thereby distorting their aesthetic and ethical understanding,—is a great evil, as is every untruth.”

Yikes.  So arguably the greatest novelist of all time thought arguably the greatest writer of all time sucked.  Where does that leave mere old “us?”  I mean, really, I’m not gonna argue with Lev are you?  Ah, but here’s the thing of it, Tolstoy didn’t consider himself a novelist, nor did he think War And Peace (arguably the greatest novel ever written) was a novel.  He considered it an epic in prose.

War and Peace and Anna Karenina are  certainly two of the greatest novels of all time, but the guy who wrote them considered one a novel and one not a novel.  I’ve read both.  Trust me they’re novels.  They’re the pinnacle of “realist fiction.”  But they are most definitely novels.

Tolstoy had a tendency toward the complicated and the paradoxical, he had extreme moralistic and ascetic views.  I mean this is a man whom at the age of 82, in 1910, after decades of agonizing over it, gathered the nerve to abandon his family and his wealth (and I mean chucked it all!) and embark upon the life of a wandering ascetic.

 Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount had a transformational effect on Tolstoy - leading to his becoming a Christian-anarchist (so much for The Vatican, The Middle Ages and all those Crusades, right?) and an anarcho-pacifist.   Try to imagine yourself at 82 years-old, decades into a comfortable retirement and then walking out the door one day to wander around and essentially seek inner truth by attempting to utterly rid yourself of “self.”  Wait.  What?

Complicated.  Yes. Sir.  Paradoxical?  Yep.  You see, Tolstoy was also a pacifist.  And an Anarchist.  Wait.  What again?  He was both a pacifist (non-violent no matter what) and an Anarchist (seeking to overthrow all government - he said undermine, but that’s Lev splitting his definitives again and playing silly little syntax games).  So, then, a passionate believer in complete non-violence between human beings in any form who nonetheless espoused the complete overthrowing of all government.  By non-violent means.  Which of course is impossible, because even if the pacifists remain non-violent the government will not, they will engage in violence.  See where this is going?  In order to remain non-violent and overthrown the government you have to incite violence (ok maybe not incite it, but be a part of it)  even though you claim you are neither inciting it nor participating in it, you, of course, are. Yep. Tolstoy.  Paradoxical.  Copy that.

Tolstoy died in 1910 (of pneumonia, jacked up on morphine and camphor) just days after having finally made the decision to go off-grid, give everything up and seek transcendence through utter personal, physical, material and financial deprivation.  Decades it gnawed at him to do this, and imagine that; he makes the decision and then dies.  That, my friends, is called cosmic irony.  Only slightly less ironic than the death of the famous monk Thomas Merton (The Seven Story Mountain), who after having taken a vow of silence and not uttering a word for many many years, took a week vacation outside the monastery and said something, then was promptly electrocuted in his hotel bathtub.  I think a fan dropped into the tub.

But the point of all of this is what do patience and poison have to do with anything.  Tolstoy was nothing if not a patient man. Patient as a writer (War and Peace has 580 separate and distinctly three dimensional characters playing across a sweepingly epic story landscape - spinning those plates is patience like Job had), patient as father and grandfather, and patient as a social reformer - he was a devout pacifist and what do pacifists do when the government sends in the military to force you back to work from a country wide general strike?  They wait.  Patiently.  And then a very large number of them die.  But still, it tends to work.  Ghandi?  Martin Luther King Jr.?  They loved Tolstoy.

And the poison part?  Tolstoy saw government and the wealthy as the poisons of mankind.  I agree a little on the former but not regarding the latter.  Still he went after the poison with patience.  I think he succeeded.  Remember the 1960‘s?  American Civil Rights legislation?  Thank Leo Tolstoy.

Being patient

Ok, here’s the Surf Fishing part.  It takes a lot of patience as well.  The fish are out there, yes they are.  Whiting, Pompano, Sheepshead, Redfish (all delicious eating - Tolstoy was a vegetarian, I am too, except for the fish part ;) all hang out just off shore, maybe a little beyond the first set of breaking waves, where I live that’s about 150 to 350 yards depending on the prevailing conditions and how the fish are feeling that day.  What can I control?  Only my gear: pole, reel, line, rigging (I recommend Mutard Pompano Pro Rigs) and where and how far I cast my bait.  After that it’s a waiting game.  Patience.  The poison?  That’s whatever stress, pressure or worry I’m carrying around.  And you know what worry is, right?  That’s a bunch of stuff that you have no control over, that you walk around obsessing about as if you have some control of it.  When I rig up and cast out while I’m standing waist deep in the ocean, with the hope (patient hope) that I’ll catch something, that makes the poisons go away.  Meditation.  I highly recommend it.

Maverick Vom Evans

German Shepherd Dog competition is an exercise in total patience and understanding.  All wrapped up in actually communicating with another species.  I’ve been training my dog, Maverick (pure bred GSD) for about 4 months now.  The GSD is an enormously athletic dog, has very high “drive” and as such is a high maintenance responsibility.  I don’t mean I have to buy him jewelry and current fashions to keep him happy either, I mean if you do not have the time to devote to the exercise of both the mind and body of an animal as eager to learn and please and protect, and needful of being in direct personal communication with you -- and if you don’t run him two to three times a day - then you’re abusing that German Shepherd Dog.  You are denying him the life he was purposed to live.  I’m very lucky because I do have the time, energy, desire and wherewithal to devote to him.  And the rewards are incredibly gratifying.

Maverick is exceptionally willful, highly intelligent, incredibly agile and he actually reasons.  Our relationship is built on a firm foundation of respect.  He lives in our world, not the other way around, so of course it’s me training him.  But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t rip my throat out.  He could, but he’s smart and he knows if he did that then he’d have nobody to throw the tennis ball for him.  


So we’re good.  Me and him.

Maverick at the beach!

The patience part of this piece of the post puzzle is obvious I think.  He’s eager to learn, eager to please, and I have to be patient with him because of course he doesn’t speak English.  So far though, things have gone better than my wildest expectations.  His vocabulary (words or phrases which either indicate something I want him to do, or not to do) is around 20 now.  Each one of these is also accompanied by a hand signal, about 2/3 of the commands I do not have to speak now.  I just give him a hand signal and he and I understand each other.  In the same way he will behave in a very particular manner to communicate to me that he either needs or wants something.  I’m patient with him and he’s patient with me.  I respect him, his intelligence and his potential, and he respects me as the alpha dog who’s not going to let anything harmful happen to him.

How great is that?

And the poison part of this piece of the puzzle?  Well, working my GSD, exercising him and communicating with him, learning with him (it’s a two way street) is a very focused endeavor.  When he and I are at it, it’s a pure sort of communication devoid of envy, frustration, anger, worry etc...  none of that nasty human-to-human stuff we all fall prey to from time to time.  Just a pure exchange of respect and learning.  I love that.  It purges the mind of those unfortunate human psychological negativities.  He and I are working toward honing our communication to the point where we can compete in  working dog and obedience competitions.  Well, that’s what they call them, but Maverick and me will just pretend they’re “communication competitions.”

Now, wrapping this all up, saunas and steam rooms.  This one should be so freaking obvious I should hardly have to write it down.  Sauna, hot and dry.  Steam room, hot and humid.  Human go in full of toxins and poisons (bad air, bad food, bad attitude), human come out poison free and sweating like the proverbial pig.  So go in, sit, sweat, be patient and get the poisons out.  Physical and mental.  I do this at least once a day.  But, if you need some history, here ya go:




“In Finland, Estonia and Latvia as well in Russia, the sauna is an ancient custom. It used to be a holy place, a place where women gave birth, and where the bodies of the dead were washed. There were also many beliefs and charms that were connected to sauna. It was, among other things, a place for worshipping the dead – it was thought of as such a wonderful place that even the dead would surely like to return to it. Curing diseases and casting love spells could also happen in the sauna. As in many other cultures, fire was seen as a gift from heaven in Finland, and the hearth and 
the sauna oven were its altars.”

Latvian sauna

Ancient stone sauna door

After all, one of the greatest things Tolstoy ever said, and I’m paraphrasing here was, “Everyone wants to change the world, but no one wants to change themselves.”

So be patient, get the poisons out and change yourself for the better on a daily basis.  The world, your world, will be the better place for it.

Thanks for reading and check back soon.

And sign up to follow so I don’t have to keep sending out those mile long recipient-list emails!

Best as always,


DME

Surf Fishing, German Shepherd Dog competition, Sauna VS. Steam Room and Leo Tolstoy.

Leo Tolstoy at his writing desk. Dude, where's the WiFi??
 Dostoyevsky told Tolstoy he was, "A God of the Art!"

And just how in the hell is he going to connect all that?  I have no idea... let’s find out.

Dear Reader,

I’ve had a big increase in visits to my Blog, and for that I thank you very much.  I added a gadget to the right side of the page called FeedJit, which tracks real time traffic and where the visits are coming from.  Very cool.  I love seeing that people from all over the United States and Canada, and even some from Japan, Australia and Europe are logging on and reading my posts.  I’ll try hard to continue to make it worth your time.

Leo Tolstoy's bedroom. What, no flat screen,
cable and streaming news feeds? Nope.

My book is finally done.  It’s currently being read by a select group of writer-friends whom I trust to tell me the truth, the excruciatingly blunt truth.  As soon as I get this feedback the book file goes out to the eBook formatter and then uploaded to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, SmashWords, CreateSpace and elsewhere in all the currently available digital formats.  The soft cover and hard cover will be print-on-demand at CreateSpace.  And as soon as I can manage it, the audio book version (Mp3, CD, etc...) will be available as well -- all of these formats will also be available for download from the Flying Wagon Books eBook Website that I’m having built out now.  There will be a link on my blog to that site and Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Ok, enough about my book.

I’m really, REALLY happy  to announce that starting the second half of this year, and continuing through all of 2013, I’m going on “The 20th Anniversary Sandlot Tour.” More to follow on this...

That is all for now... I will connect the dots regarding the titile of this column tomorrow.  Stand by...

Thanks for checking in...

AND SIGN UP TO FOLLOW!

Best as always,

DME