I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell

I keep getting emails about this, and even though I was kinda hoping it would stay under the radar and be a surprise, it’s too late for that, so I might as well announce it and make it “official”:
Yes, Traci Lords is in the movie. She only had two days of shooting, but she did a truly fantastic job, and was awesome to work with.
She was even involved in what may have been one of the more surreal moments of my life.
The first day she was there she only shot a little bit in the afternoon and I didn’t really meet her, but on the second day, I was on set the whole day. It was a stressful and busy day for me (for unrelated reasons) so I never actually went up and officially introduced myself to her. I wasn’t trying to be rude, it honestly just slipped my mind.
Anyway, right before she left, I saw her whispering conspiratorially on the set with Nils, and looking over at me. He walks her over to me, and the conversation went like this:
Nils “Tucker, Traci wants to meet you. Tucker Traci, Traci Tucker.”
Traci then hands me a copy of my book.
Traci Lords “I really liked your book and am a big fan. Could you sign this?”
Tucker “Really? You read my book? And liked it? Are you fucking around with me?”
Traci Lords “No, I’m serious, I really liked it, I read it long before I even knew you were making a movie.”
It took everything I had to not say “That’s funny, I was jacking off to you before I even wrote that thing!” but I thought that might be rude, and she was one of the nicest, if not the nicest, actress we had on set.
I have not seen Zack and Miri Make A Porno, but Traci was in it and says it’s really good, and Sean McKittrick and Richard Kelly are friends with Kevin Smith and have seen it and liked it. It opens today and I’m going, if for no other reason than because Traci Lords is a fan…of me.
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Because we live in a world of always-on, hyper-commercialism, never-admit-a-mistake, EVERYTHING IS GREAT ALL THE TIME marketing, people have come to expect blind optimism in most advertising.
I can’t do that. I am just not the type of person who pretends everything is great when it’s not. It’s dishonest, and at the end of the day, I have to look myself in the mirror, and if I am feeling something, I am going to just be honest about it. That sort of rawness can be both good and bad, and I am still learning that how you say something is at least as important as what you say, ESPECIALLY when you are promoting something.
That being said, I think some of you misinterpreted my post yesterday. What I was trying to say was that I had been so emerged in the movie that I had trouble looking at it objectively, and as a result, I wasn’t sure if was what I thought it was. Some people interpreted this to mean I thought the movie sucked. That just couldn’t be further from the truth.
I’m going to be honest: I am not completely thrilled with where the movie is right now. But no one is, and that doesn’t mean the final product won’t be the amazing movie that all of us have thought it could be all along. It just means we have more work to do than I was expecting going in. But this is my fault for having improper expectations. I didn’t like a lot of aspects of this cut, but no one liked every aspect of this cut–that’s what makes it a rough cut and not a final cut.
Some guy posted this on the comments thread that I think summarizes this much better than I did yesterday:

“Don’t let this shit bother you.
When you’re writing a story, you write something, then you look at it and go ‘yeah that blows’ or ‘yeah that’s awesome’ and go from there. There is only one stage of creation. You write, and that’s it.
A movie has multiple stages, and each one should be viewed individually, you’re fucking that up now and you should stop it. Here:
You’ve perfected the script. You probably wrote something and deleted some shit, wrote some more and went on and on till it was perfect. But the first lines probably blew ass.
Then you went on to shoot it, and again the first few shots were probably horrible and you kept doing it till it was perfect.
The thing is that all those stages are clearly still the act producing something. You KNOW you’re making something, so you don’t care if the first line sucks, or the first shot didn’t come out right.
Now you’re seeing this as ‘the product of your hard work’, and it’s falling short, because this isn’t the product of your hard work yet, it’s just the next stage of creating. What you saw is nothing more than those first words you wrote down. Just in a different way.
So you should view it as such. You’ll cut some shit, add some shit and then it will get better and better, just like in all the other stages. They ended up right didn’t they? This will too.”

Very smart, and very right, and exactly what I needed to hear.
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I don’t know. I really don’t know. This thing could be an amazing, genre-defying comedy that is even better than I think, or it could just totally miss the mark. I don’t know.
At first, I thought it was a problem of it being a rough cut. The music is laughably off (it’s only temporary placeholder music), the sound is all wonked up, and most of the scenes are just cut wrong. Timing, pacing, jokes–there is just a ton more work ahead of us. I was expecting this, but still, seeing a rough cut is tough on your emotions.
But I got past that, I adjusted the scenes and sound and music in my mind, made them what I want to be, and I thought after I did that…I still don’t know. I thought I would be able to separate myself from the movie, and see it objectively, but I can’t. I am too deep into it.
I not only lived the story, I wrote the website, then the book, then the screenplay, then made the movie. I have lived, breathed, ate and slept this fucking movie and material for so long, I just can’t do it. There is just no way for me to see this in anything resembling an objective light. Right now I am no obsessed with the micro issues, that I can’t step back and see the movie as a whole. Even though I know this material and movie better than anyone, I think in the aggregate, I might be the worst on earth to evaluate it. I truly can’t see the forest for the trees.
There is some good news. Pretty much every part of this movie, I had seen so many times in so many different ways I was sick of it, but there was one scene, one of the major, climactic scenes, that because of the way we shot it, I didn’t really understand how it would fit together until I saw it on screen. I laughed out loud at it. I didn’t think that was possible, for me to laugh anymore at jokes I’ve dealt with hundreds of time, but I did. The only part of the movie that felt fresh to me, made me laugh. So that’s good.
There is only one other thing I know:
This movie just isn’t like any other movie. I made a list of other movies I thought it would compare to, and none of them apply. Nothing. I don’t want to call it revolutionary, but…it just isn’t like anything else out there. I think because of this, the movie is either going to succeed wildly, or fail miserably. There won’t be any average about this. It’s not like any movie I have ever seen, and either I was right and it will hit a cultural vein, or I was wrong, and it’ll be consigned to ignominy. As usual with me, there is no middle ground.
I think what we need to do now is make all the scene fixes, and then I want to show it to people I know and trust, and see how they react. Because right now, I need some honest outside perspective.
This is so weird. It’s not like this with writing at all. With that, I know almost immediately if it’s right or wrong, and why. Movies are just a whole different beast.
I don’t know how else to explain it, I’m sorry, it’s been a tiring day and I haven’t had time to sort out my thoughts. You know what it’s like? You know when you listen to your favorite song so many times, you stop being able to even hear it anymore, it just becomes a sort of faint background buzz? That’s kinda where I am with this movie. I can’t see it fresh anymore.
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Since the day we wrapped shooting until yesterday, I have tried my very best to completely check out of the movie, emotionally, cognitively, physically–every possible way. Not only was there nothing for me to do until the director and editor put a rough cut together, but more importantly, I really needed the break.
I have been working non-stop on my entertainment projects for going on five or six years. Ever since I put the site up in 2002, my entire existence has been a non-stop sprint towards achieving my goals. I have been constantly writing, fighting, struggling, marketing, maneuvering, strategizing–it has been a rare hour in my life where I am not pondering or executing some aspect of my larger plan. Even when I am taking a break, I’m not, because the program is always on in the background, churning up resources and coloring everything else I do. I don’t compartmentalize very well. My life is one huge pile, and the good, bad, and indifferent are all mixed together.
This sort of single-minded obsession is great for getting something done, but it takes a toll, and is ultimately unsustainable. As great as the movie was in some ways, in other ways it brought out the worst in me, demons in me I thought I had beaten, so the past two months I have tried my best to not only not think about the movie at all, I’ve tried to, as much as possible put everything out of my mind other than my old dog, my new girlfriend, my relaxation, and some self-reflection. Not strategy or business reflection, but personal reflection. We all need times in our life when we stop and look at what and who we are and examine whether or not it’s where we want to be, and I tried to do that these past two months.
I haven’t been perfect about that, but I have de-obsessed pretty well (for me), and in many ways it’s helped. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay in this relaxed dream world for long, simply because I am just too driven of a person, but I wanted to do it for as long as I could, so maybe once I came back to ObsessionDriveSuccess Land I could bring some perspective back with me. I guess we’ll see how it plays out.
Yesterday I wrote this sentence, “The rough cut is enough along that I am seeing it Wednesday night. I am nervous and excited at the same time.” Talk about the fucking understatement of the century. That sentence I tacked on, while still kinda in shock. I was almost finished with that entry about BDS II, when Sean McKittrick called and said, “So we’re down to within ten minutes or so of where the final cut will be, we’re doing screenings all this week for everyone, when do you want to do yours?”
It hit me all at once. This is it. This 100 minutes of celluloid is the culmination of my last six years of toil, and ultimately what I am going to be judged on as an artist, and I can to see it as soon as I want to.
If this movie is as great as I hope it can be, then I am set. It’s all up from here. Me and everyone involved in making this movie will be stars, we’ll have boundless opportunities that weren’t available to us before, the world will truly be our oyster. Everything I sacrificed, all the pain and the suffering and the work, it’ll all be worth it. I will have won.
If it’s not though, if it falls short in some major way…I don’t know what then. I really don’t know. I haven’t planned for failure. I haven’t even planned for mild success. All my assumptions and plans start with the movie being a success. If it’s not, I just don’t know what will happen or what I’ll do. But regardless, the dice are in the air and all of my chips are on the table, and tomorrow I get to see them land
Don’t get me wrong; I have seen the dailies, and I know in my heart we nailed it, but…until you see it, you don’t know. And I see it tomorrow night. I am watching it alone–no one in the room but me–and as soon as possible after seeing it, I will post and let you know not only what I think, but how it’s affecting me emotionally, good or bad. Obviously I won’t post anything specific about the movie, just what I am thinking and feeling, my rawest, most honest emotions, good and bad.
I honestly have no idea what it’s going to be like, watching this play out on screen, seeing all my efforts reflected in one single film. I have no precedent in my life for this moment.
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I am totally just kidding about that, but take a look at the YouTube Channel he is doing for Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day.
Instead of doing a production blog, he is doing a video diary, but it’s still a good idea. It’s got a ton of content so far, and if you care about the movie, it’s pretty interesting…for more than one reason, especially if you’ve seen my favorite documentary ever, Overnight. Plus, this should do the same thing my production blog is doing: Get free attention far out from the release and generate interest in fans. Good idea Troy. I can’t think of any movie that has done such an extensive behind the scenes look while they were actually shooting.
Except maybe one…
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BTW–The rough cut is enough along that I am seeing it Wednesday night. I am nervous and excited at the same time.

So this has nothing at all to do with the movie, but being a narcissist and all, I am still going to link where I write all about my ACL surgery.
Back to posting about the movie later this week, probably.

Surgery went fine, and I am all kinds of doped up. Not going to write much, but here is are some pics from the party Darko had on Wednesday night.
Jesse Bradford, Keri Lynn Pratt, and Erin Ludwig:

Me, Erin Ludwig and Matt Czuchry:

Nils Parker, Keith Meeney, and Me (Nils and I are laughing so hard b/c Keith is a guido from Perth Amboy, New Jersey and there is nothing not funny about that):


The rest are here.
Sorry there aren’t many, but I posted the pics off my camera–if anyone who was there took others, send them to me, I’ll put them on the Flickr account.

The bad news is that I go in for ACL surgery in about eight hours. The good news is that I only have a torn ACL, and won’t require a microfracture procedure, which is nice. I will probably be out of writing commission for over a week, so I am going to leave you guys with this for next week:
What novel/short story/interesting non-fiction book/article that hasn’t been adapted into a movie, should be?
My six are below. In each case, the rights are already owned by some studio or production company that is sitting on them or fucking them up in some way or other:

Hatchet: This is the first book I ever read by myself–I think I was like 4 or 5–and it has held a special place in my heart since. I re-read it a few years ago, and thought, “This would be a really cool movie.”
Confederacy of Dunces: My favorite book ever. I have no idea if it would work as a movie, but I would love to see it done well.

My Losing Season: One of my favorite books ever. Conroy’s relationship with his father and his coach are heart-breaking, and I think explore a side of masculinity that movies rarely examine. Plus, it’s basketball, which is my favorite sport.

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World: I know the movie “Mongol” just came out, but it not only SUCKED, it was wildly inaccurate in ways that didn’t even make the story better. The true story of Genghis Khan is incredibly compelling and I recommend this book to everyone who is either a fan of history or thinks Genghis Khan was some bloodthirsty cretin. The truth is far from that, and will change your entire view of history.
Gates of Fire: Yeah, yeah, I know 300 was just done, but it butchered the true story of the Spartan stand at Thermopylae, and aside from the really cool cinematography, the movie sucked. No character development, confused and inaccurate history and fucked up story. This book tells the same story in a very realistic and compelling manner, one that I think would be perfect for a long form film adaptation, though probably a mini-series instead of a single movie.
The Virtues of War: Also by Steven Pressfield, this is an awesome recount of the rise and eventual fall of Alexander the Great, from his perspective. It would be a bitch to pull this story off, but if you could, it would be epic in the truest sense (i.e., don’t do anything that Oliver Stone did in “Alexander”).
There are two others I would have picked, but are already in production, The Alchemist and Blood Meridian. Both are amazing books, and I hope the movie lives up to them.
Here are some other lists that have some crossover with mine and thus are pretty good.
Put your suggestions here (registration required), and if its not widely known, link the novel/short story/interesting non-fiction book/article.
See you guys in about a week.

The last post was about getting a distribution deal, but that begs the question:
What exactly does a distributor do and why do you need a distribution deal?
Again, I have to put up the DISCLAIMER: I have never gotten distribution for a movie (because this is my first movie), and so everything I “know” about the subject is what I have been told by people like Sean McKittrick and Aaron Ray, or what I have read. Take everything I say as coming from someone inexperienced in the subject who is currently going through the process. Some percentage of what I tell you is wrong in some way, which parts and by how much, I have no idea.
Wikipedia actually gives a pretty good one paragraph explanation of what a film distributor does:

A film distributor…acts as the final agent between a film production company…and a film exhibitor, to the end of securing placement of the producer’s film on the exhibitor’s screen. In the film business, the term “distribution” refers to the marketing and circulation of movies in theaters, and for home viewing

Once you get past this very basic understanding of what a distributor does, it gets very complicated, because like I said in the last post, the responsibilities of the distributor very much depend on how the deal is constructed. If you sell the movie outright to the distributor, then they handle everything from top to bottom and they are very invested in creating a franchise because they own everything that comes after it. If you go the complete opposite extreme and do the distribution yourself using a “rent a system” model, then a distributor does nothing more than make prints and send them out to movie theaters. The being said, I can try to explain what most distributors do in an average distributor deal (even though there really is no such thing as an average deal):
First, a distributor’s job is to book theaters, negotiate and collect rents. Yes, this entails booking a certain number of screens in various cities for specified periods, negotiating what cut of the box office the theater gets to keep and making sure they pay. Seems simple enough, but it’s not, for many reasons. You don’t just call up a Loews or a Regal and reserve a screen, there is no standard rent price, and pretty much everyone in the chain will fuck you every chance they get. Thus a distributor has to have the relationships with the theaters owners, has to be able to drive good deals, and has to have the leverage to collect the rents they are owed. This means that who the distributor is greatly affects how these deals come off. A large distributor like Warner Brothers has a lot of leverage, and can force a theater chain to accept very poor terms and get a large number of theaters on a slate of films in order for them to get a huge movie like Dark Knight.
Second, a distributor is responsible for making the actual prints that are made, and shipping them to the actual theaters. This is not a small cost–it generally costs about 2k per print, and another 1k for shipping there and back. A movie with a 2000 theater release and one screen per theater–considered wide but not major (Dark Knight had over 4000 theaters and over 9000 screens)–costs 6 million JUST in prints. Expensive and a time consuming logistical mess.
Third, a distributor’s job is to market the movie. This means everything from creating and buying TV commercials, to creating and buying the newspaper ads, and everything in between. A distributor should not only have detailed demographic knowledge of the marketplace, they should have relationships with all kinds of the places that sell ads. (And part of the negotiation is who controls the creative content of the ads, which is a whole other mess that is influenced greatly by what the deal is.)
This is just for domestic theatrical distribution, and doesn’t include foreign (which is a mess to explain) or DVD (which is where most of the money is made on movies now). Distributors also are usually responsible for things like premieres, tours, PR, etc, etc, though those duties are often split with the production company, again, depending on the deal. They can also help you cut cable, airplane and other media deals, or they can be part of a larger corporation that has all those distribution outlets (Warner or Fox, for example).
That’s just the beginning, and that’s just for a normal indie distributor. So why not do it yourself?
Well, because of all the parts of the process that can be outsourced, distribution is the easiest to “buy” in a one off deal, and the hardest to replicate. A distributor has so many relationships (with theaters and advertisers) that are so hard to replicate, and an ability to collect rents and drive deals that is very difficult for a small production company to compete with. I am all about going around the system, but even I think using a large distributor for this movie makes the most sense, especially considering we have a commercially viable property that should be very marketable and attractive to viewers, and thus to theaters and distributors also.
You can do a DIY distribution, it’s just really, really hard and almost never works.
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Got this question on the “Ask About The Movie” thread:

Now that shooting is complete (congratulations, by the way) when do you find a distributor? Are you currently looking for a distribution company, or are you waiting to shop a finished product, after the editing process?

DISCLAIMER: Before I answer any questions about distribution, let me first say that I have never gotten distribution for a movie (because this is my first movie), and so everything I “know” about the subject is what I have been told by people like Sean McKittrick and Aaron Ray, or what I have read in various books or articles on the subject by experts. In a year, I will know a lot more, but right now, take everything I say as coming from someone inexperienced in the subject who is currently going through the process. Some percentage of what I tell you is wrong in some way, which parts and by how much, I have no idea.
Now, to answer the question. Here is basically how getting a film distribution deal works for an independently financed movie (what my movie is; the system is completely different for a studio movie, because distribution is essentially secured once the movie is greenlit):
The vast majority of independent films started with scripts that were rejected by all or most of the major studios, sometimes because they suck (most indies), other times because the material is just so new or unique or outside of the norm that a studio doesn’t know what to do with it (Big Fat Greek Wedding or Passion of the Christ, for example). So the producers have to go out and get money and make the film themselves with the hope of then selling it to a distributor later. If the movie is good, then they usually sell to a distributor. If it sucks…then they are stuck holding a print no one cares about.
Once a film is finished, you don’t (normally) shop it directly to theaters, you first shop it to distributors, who then represent it to theaters. Even though it may seem like there are lots of different distributors, don’t be fooled. They are almost all owned by the same few companies. There are very few true independent distributors left. What this means in effect is that for any given independent movie, there are often only 2 or 3 buyers, and rarely more than that (there can be more depending in certain factors, maybe up to 10 or even 15 for a hot movie).
Making an independent movie is risky because in Hollywood, a studio will pay a lot of money for an unknown property (a book or script) if it is hot and has a lot of buzz. But once you actually make the movie, it is then a known quantity, and Hollywood has a perverse history of punishing known quantities over unknown quantities. The upside is that if you make something that is great, you can drive a much better deal with a distributor than you would get with just a script. Once the film is made, the inherent risk in the filmmaking process is vastly reduced, so the studio can and will generally give you a better deal…but only IF the movie is really good. We decided to roll the dice, and bet not only on our material, but on the ability of the creative team we put together to execute a great movie (which I think we have done in spades).
We also chose this strategy because we have something that most indies don’t: A commercially viable movie based on a very popular existing property. Most indie movies have to worry about even getting distribution at all because of their subject matter. We don’t. This movie is a broad, commercial comedy that is right in the wheelhouse of almost all the major studios. I was offered a lot of money from several production companies and studios for the movie rights to the book. I turned them all down because I wanted to do the material my way. Nils and I wrote the script together, and were offered seven figure sums for the script from several studios, and turned them down because we didn’t trust a studio to do the movie right. We found an independent financier who was willing to give us creative control, did the deal, and made the movie. Darko was actually offered distribution deals from those same studios literally hours after we closed financing, and have been in constant talks with pretty much every major distributor since, so finding one now probably won’t be too hard.
From here, we have several options:
1. Get a rough cut done, put a bunch of distributors in a screening room, show it to all of them at once, and make a deal.
2. Show it to distributors one by one, and see if we can generate escalating deals that way.
3. Show it at AFM or Sundance or some other festival or film market, and sell it there.
4. Go directly to theater chains and try to make our own deal, essentially acting as our own distributor.
Each of these strategies have advantages and disadvantages (outlined in detail here by an entertainment lawyer), and to be honest, I am not sure what we are going to do. The point of strategy is to keep as many paths open as possible for as long as possible to give yourself the most options, and that is what we are doing (and to be perfectly honest, the final call on this decision is not with Nils and I. Darko put up the money for the movie, and even though what Nils and I want to do is important, they have the right to make the final call on distribution).
It’s not getting distribution that will be hard for this movie–it will be getting the deal we want. That’s always the hardest part. There are so many aspects to a distributor deal, it’s like playing three dimensional chess, every move affects all the other positions in ways that are often difficult to visualize. For instance, you have to consider all these aspects of a standard distributor deal, and changing each one materially changes all the rest:
-How much does the distributor pay upfront?
-What percentage cut of domestic box office does the distributor take?
-What kind of deal can the distributor negotiate with the theaters?
-When does backend kick in, and at what definition?
-Does the domestic distributor rep foreign, and if so, at what percentage?
-What intellectual property rights are they getting to the material?
-What sequel distribution rights are they getting?
-Are they doing the DVD distribution also?
-Are they doing TV, cable, airplane, and other distribution deals?
-What kind of P&A (prints and advertising) money are they putting towards the movie?
-How wide of a release are they willing to commit to?
-How quickly do they pay out profits?
And that’s just for a basic distribution deal. It can get much, much more complicated.
So, right now, while Bob Gosse and Jeff Kushner (the editor) are spending 16 hours a day putting the movie together, Sean McKittrick and Aaron Ray and the rest of The Collective (our sales agency) are playing the three dimensional chess game, talking to distributors, film festivals, and other people, weighing options and determining under what conditions which avenue makes the most sense. I am doing my best to learn the process and give input where I can, but this part of the deal is not really where I add value. In fact, I am not sure if this post even does a good job explaining how to get a deal. But as I learn things, I will pass them along, just like I did in the early stages of this blog.
My next post will be about what exactly distributors do, and why you need one, or in what situations it makes sense to just do it yourself.
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