Quotes

I'm a binge writer, which means I write as close to 24/7 as possible until I finish the first draft. Then I step away for a few weeks, to come back to discover my first-draft flaws.

If a tree falls in the forest, but nobody is there to hear it, does it make a noise?" I have no idea about the tree, but I wonder, "if an indie film gets made without names and nobody's there to see it, was it ever really made?

Trying to get noticed off a rough cut, would be like me back in my dating days, showing up on a blind date with my 5'4", rail thin and somewhat disabled body, telling my date "Hi, I wanted to meet you right away, but don't judge me for what you see. Give me a few months to make myself look better and I'll come back a foot taller, far more buff and able bodied."

My most recent epicenter of creativity was The Hard Days Night Hotel, which is an incredibly posh, beautifully conceived work of art that's more of a Beatles museum with comfortable rooms to sleep in, than it is a typical hotel. In fact, nothing is typical about the Hard Days Night. The rooms grace Beatles artwork, the lights above the registration desk in the lobby have Beatles sheet music dangling from them, and even the "do not disturb" signs feature Beatles song titles to describe your request (the "do not disturb" side of the sign reads, "Let it be," while the "please clean my room" side of the sign reads, "I Need You"). The Hard Days Night Hotel also happens to be the only Beatles themed hotel on the planet. Since I've been a Beatles fan since before I could ride a bike (I learned that at the age of five), The Hard Days Night Hotel felt like home.

When I was 22, I attended the most mind-blowing, memory tattooing concert in my life: The Knebworth Festival on Saturday, June 30, 1990 in Knebworth, England. The performers included Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Phil Collins, Genesis, a Robert Plant/Jimmy Page Led Zeppelin reunion, Elton John, Dire Straits, Tears For Fears, Status Quo, and Cliff Richard and the Shadows. Simply put, it was heaven.

The key to my experience at Knebworth wasn't the concert itself, but how I got there and what I learned while I was on the trip to London.

The Knebworth Festival was a charity event for the Nordhoff-Robbins Music Therapy Foundation. One year earlier, on Tuesday June 27, 1989, I attended another concert for the Nordhoff-Robbins Music Therapy Foundation: The Who performing their rock Opera Tommy at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

After seeing Tommy I went on-air on my college radio station (at Rider University in New Jersey), and announced that I would never see a greater concert. Minutes later, someone called in and told me about the concert in Knebworth. It suddenly became my mission to attend. Although tickets were sold-out, I was determined to find a way there, so I contacted the company that sells prize give-away trips to radio stations, and begged them to allow me to buy the trip to Knebworth that other people were winning on various radio stations across the country. After three weeks of begging 5x per day, they finally sold me the trip.

Since I went on the trip alone, once I got to London, I roomed with another person traveling alone - Gary, a 45 year old man from California. Meeting Gary changed my life forever. The first thing he told me is that he had AIDS, and that I could take another roommate if I felt the need to. Of course, I did not.

The second thing Gary told me is that when he found out he had AIDS, he truly began living his life. He took out a second mortgage on his home, bought himself a race car, and started taking as many vacations as humanly possible. His advice to me was to live my life to the fullest, because every day could be my last.

Since meeting Gary, it's become my mission to actively seek out tremendous life experiences, good and bad, because it's those experiences that make us the sum of who we are. My mission has allowed me to attend the last 18 straight Super Bowls, make 10 trips to the Canadian Yukon to see a three day concert under the midnight sun, and it's allowed me to try to inspire everyone I meet to live out their dreams to their fullest capabilities.

It reminds me of the quote from The Shawshank Redemption. "Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'." Given the choice, I'd rather "get busy livin'".

Getting an advance on an independent film these days has gone the way of the woolly mammoth and legwarmers. Even if you have a solid cast and a multi-million dollar budget, advances are hard to come by. If you demand an advance, just know it will probably be the last check you will ever see. This is because most distributors are afflicted with an inability to pay you a penny above the advance money they shelled out to you, because in their minds they already paid you for your film.

January, February, March, September and October are the very best times of year to release independent films, because there is very little studio-based competition the box office. Studios spend less on advertising on the films they do release during these months, which opens the door for independent films to get noticed.

Advances for indie films without stars are dinosaurs, i.e. historical relics that future generations will doubt. So, if you're waiting to find a distributor that will give you a healthy advance for your film, you may be waiting a long time.

This is from "Going Bionic #251 - The World is Your Oyster." It was originally published by Film Threat on January 27, 2015.

If there is one thing I've leaned by being involved in globally targeted business (including Lonely Seal Releasing, my international film distribution company), it's that the more you can look outside of your home country's boarders for creative collaborators, business partners and funding opportunities, the higher chance you have of realizing your cinematic dreams. They say it takes a village to raise a child, but, these days it make take a continent or two to finance an indie film.

The reason that most genres don't work overseas is because their content is specifically designed to work within the country they were made. For example, in comedies, what's funny in Los Angeles may not be funny in Zimbabwe and in romantic comedies, what's romantic in Nashville may be offensive in China. (Filmmaker beware! Romantic comedies are the kiss of death for international sales, as no other genre is harder to sell).