DIY

A quote from WGA west president Patric Verrone ran in Friday's Wall Street Journal, saying that the current strike is creating new "entrepreneurial possibilities for the talent community to go directly into production and distribution.... The ability to explore this business without media conglomerates is becoming a real possibility.”

He was speaking specifically about internet TV, but his statement has broader reach than that. As any number of small, truly independent filmmakers have demonstrated in the last few years, it's entirely possible to get a film into theaters and then do a DVD release largely over the internet, without ever becoming beholden to a studio or a distributor. Marc Rosenbush and I have done exactly that with Zen Noir, and our success is by no means the most dramatic. Peter Broderick is probably the most recognized authority in town on these issues, and there is an excellent article on his website dealing with all of this.

More and more, I've come to be a believer in the whole Do It Yourself model, across the board. Incorporation for Artists is, I have no doubt, good enough to secure a modest deal at least with a niche publisher like Silman-James, which focuses on film-related books. But if I went that route, I would get a small advance, and then I would get small royalties spread out over a few years, and then at some point the book would be moved off the shelves for something newer and that would be the end of it. But I can sell it online, keep all the profits (after very modest expenses because there's so little overhead), and keep doing that year after year.

And the above-mentioned Marc Rosenbush recently launched an online course called Internet Marketing for Filmmakers, in which he teaches exactly how we put together the Zen Noir DVD launch. It is, so far, the farthest step we've taken in our growing conviction on the value of Doing It Yourself: a statement of what we believe, why we believe it, and how it might help others, as well.

Think of the possibilities: do a simple, small film (I just saw Miranda July's Me, You and Everyone We Know, which is a great movie and perfect example of a film that would fit this paradigm) (here's her blog); release it in theaters or don't, you'll probably make more money, actually, if you don't; then do your homework, identify your audience really well, put up a website and start selling. Thousands of people will see your work, they'll buy it for their friends, the story you want to tell will get told to a much wider audience than ever saw anything I did in the theatre, and all the profits belong to you and your partners. All of the profits.

The strike demonstrates the dangers of being owned by the media conglomerates. Because it's not just the writers risking their livelihoods: there are also uncounted thousands of jobs that are, simply, collateral damage. Some of the production company executives we pitched to just before the strike, for example, have already been fired. And if they're gone, so are their assistants. Hollywood's famous mailroom jobs have probably been whittled down, as well. A friend of mine who runs a temp agency tells me that even normal lawfirm staffing jobs have dried up, at Christmastime when people are going on vacation, almost certainly because everyone in town is simply buckling down and trying to get through this whole thing. There's pain out there, and it's spreading, and it has everything to do with a few big, big companies owning almost everything there is to own in this business.

Now imagine if enough frustrated indie film guys decided to start taking matters into their own hands. Internet TV, self-distributed DVDs, books online, all of it. Then it wouldn't matter what the Sumner Redstones or the Rupert Murdochs of the world, the media conglomerates who own almost all of everything, have to say about our work. Our work is ours, that's how it always should have been and now, just maybe, we can make this oughta-be into a really-truly-is.

There are dangers, to be sure, and some real challenges--not only do you have to be a good artist who makes good work, but you have to become a real businessman, and believe me, I know exactly how much that idea reduces most artists to a pile of jelly. But the alternative is becoming a slave to Rupert Murdoch, and come on, when you think about it for even a second, isn't it worth anything to avoid that particular trap?

Catching Up

Some random stuff...

The guitar playing is going along reasonably well. There was a point about a month ago when the very thing I'd predicted happened: my usual learning curve curved when it should, and suddenly the things I'd been doing badly just kinda got better. It was definitely sudden: one day I was as bad as I'd always been, and the next day I picked up the guitar and started playing as if I'd been doing it for years. The trick is, the stuff I was good at was only the stuff I'd been practicing--so now I've added a couple more chords to learn, and I still haven't got any single song all the way down, so there are still miles and miles to go before I begin to feel any sort of real competence. Still--when I pick up the guitar, something resembling music does actually happen. This is the first great step. Now comes the trick of keeping up my enthusiasm over the long haul...

Sales of Incorporation for Artists are going along reasonably well--I'd made back the expenses of putting it together in just a couple hours on the first day--but it hasn't quite taken off yet. It's just a question of figuring out the advertising--I was at the big Screenwriters' Expo for the last few days, and when I mentioned the book to some people they got very enthusiastic, so I'm pretty sure it's just a question of getting it in front of the right people. The very definition of advertising.

The skies are slowly turning blue again. And I can pretty well breathe again. The fires aren't out, not by a long shot, but the Malibu fire is contained and the bad ones down south, by San Diego, are slowly being brought under control. Even a couple days ago, the skies were still yellow, and the air quality was decidedly awful. But it's getting better, each day a little better than the one before. This is a decidedly good thing.

Plus the Red Sox won the World Series again, and that's just great all over. Maybe next time I'll tell my version of the Bill Buckner story...

Not Launching

Twenty minutes, that's all. The email ad for the incorporation book was about to go out, and twenty minutes before it was supposed to happen, our server crashed. The site became inaccessible. Since you really don't want any of your customers to find a dead site, particularly not your first and perhaps largest wave of customers, the motivated ones who see the ad and say to themselves "Hey, that's exactly what I've been wanting!," a dead site for even a brief time is no good at all.

So we pushed it to tomorrow morning. The site is back up, the email happens in the morning, and then we see how things go.

Good thing I'm not a believer in omens.

Launching

Launching tomorrow: www.incorporationforartists.com

It's really truly amazing how long it takes to put up a simple website. Or at least, how long it takes to put up a simple commercial website. Because as much time as we spent creating the site itself, we spent more time doing the invisible behind-the-scenes stuff that will allow us to actually sell a product online.

A lot of that time, for example, was spent putting together bonuses, like an email series that will be sent on the first day of each month to everyone who buys the book, reminding them of what documents are due that month. Had to compile the information, write twelve emails, set up an auto-responder, and schedule each "broadcast" individually. An enormous amount of very tedious, repetitive work--but the goal of it is to have everything automated. So I spent a lot of time up front, but now I shouldn't need to spend too much time at all. Once a year I'll have to update the emails, looking for changed due dates and new documents and so forth, but that should be it--otherwise, everything now just kinda happens by itself. (In fact my October email just arrived this morning, and for a moment I looked at it, thinking "Incorporation for Artists? Who are they and why are they sending me email? Oh, wait--yeah, it's me. Well whattaya know.")

The harder part was getting testimonials from people. I'm lousy at asking for something for nothing--I have no trouble asking for things when I've got something to offer in return, but here I really could offer nothing except my enormous gratitude and an unspecifiable "huge favor" back, someday. And yet a lot of people took the time to read the whole book, and some even were able to offer really useful comments that have helped the book a lot. (A friend of mine from college, Melissa Klein, who I haven't actually seen in something like twenty years--we say howdy on MySpace from time to time--lives in New York and was really helpful on the sections that deal with the requirements in that state. How nice is that?)

So it's all ready now, finally. We'll take just a little time today to test all the links and processes, then we'll swap out the "Coming Soon!" page with the real thing and see what happens. Upon which we immediately turn our attention to doing exactly the same stuff with Marc's internet-marketing online course, which we hope will move along a little faster since we've now been through the process so recently.

Next--actual progress is made on the guitar.

Coming Soon...

I looked around a couple months ago and realized that over the past few years I've started three companies. (Really, I looked around and there they were, strung in a line behind me, staring back and blinking.) There was the not-for-profit NOWtheatre back in Chicago, which alas does not exist anymore (this one seemed the most forlorn, and blinked only in memory), and then there are the quite-alive-and-still-blinking Zenmovie (an LLC) and Lightwheel Entertainment (a C corp.)

And I realized that every time I started one of those companies, I kept wishing that I could find, somewhere somehow, a list that would tell me the stuff I needed to know in one place: what documents are due to the various government agencies, federally and locally; how much money to pay; and on what dates said documents and payments are due. I scoured the internet blah blah blah, and never found such a document. So finally it occurred to me: I should make one.

So that's one of the things I've been doing. Finished the first draft about a month ago, whereupon my friend Buffie did an extraordinary annotation that led me through the second draft, which I finished last night. Now friend Marc will help me set up a website and, probably early next month, we'll launch the book on the web and see if others find it as useful as I believe it to be.

The book bears the beautiful and mellifluous title Incorporation for Artists, Writers, Musicians and Filmmakers. It ain't literature, it's information, which was an interesting challenge in itself, turning off all my let's call them Thereby-esque writing instincts, my automatic tendency toward the prolix, in order to just convey information. But that's one of the things Buffie is extraordinarily good at, so all praise to her, and I can't wait till we can get this little devil out into the world.