All Around the World

It's pretty amazing, the thought that people around the world will soon be watching Zen Noir. The DVD went on sale Tuesday (you can order it right here, with a host of free special gifts, for a limited time) and there was a lovely stretch of the day when we were selling something like 100 copies per hour. But even more remarkable was the thought of where those DVDs are going: all across the United States, of course, particularly to those places where the theatrical release could never reach; and it's not such a surprise to find them going to Canada and the U.K. and (particularly) to Australia, where sales have been particularly strong; but there are also sales to Israel and Jordan, to Malaysia, to Brazil and Sweden and South Africa, and that's just from a haphazard look at today's sales.

This is where film has it all over theatre, frankly. The reason to make art, in any form, is to have it seen and appreciated by an audience. In theatre, unless you have a mega-blockbuster like Phantom of the Opera that can set up a dozen road companies while also playing for years in London and New York so that tourists from across the world can come see it, even the best play will only be seen by people within, probably, no more than 100 miles of the theatre. (And the people who would travel that far are rare--we had a few who traveled when we did Signal to Noise, but that was really to see Neil Gaiman when he came to our special preview.) Then of course there's the time limit--a play is doing very well if it lasts longer than six weeks, but people can watch Zen Noir six decades from now. On six continents, no less.

This is really blowing my mind right now; it also leaves me seriously humble. And all I did was work on the film--it's Marc who's really responsible for it, whose story and ideas are right now being shipped across the world.

For the time being, the DVD is only available on our site, at the link above. It'll probably end up on Amazon and Netflix someday, although really truly I have no idea when that might happen; but for now, since there are still plenty of production expenses, etc. to recoup before we can start sharing the wealth with the actors and producers (who worked and have seen no rewards yet), we're understandably eager to rack up as many sales as we can--and not at Amazon's discounted rate. And so far it's working out just fine, as those little boxes make their way around the globe.

(One woman bought twelve copies, and in her "Comments" space she wrote "Well that's Christmas taken care of." Not that I'm trying to plant ideas in your head or anything...)