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The Encore of Tony Duran
Nine Days & Two Hundred Thousand Dollars
By Shirley Craig
After talking with Elliott Gould, I discussed the film, The Encore of Tony Duran, in more depth with, director, Fred Sayeg, who shot the movie in only nine days with a budget of less than $200,000. If you missed it during it's Festival run, it has now just been released on DVD and VOD.
Like Elliott Gould, Fred is not new to this business. He comes from the advertising industry and is the owner of a successful production company with very diverse clientele from celebrities to Fortune 500 corporations. The movie has done very well on the film festival circuit winning multiple prizes including the top prize at the Las Vegas International Film Festival and Best Feature at the Sante Fe International Film Festival.
I loved your film The Encore of Tony Duran.
Thank you very much.
It brought tears to my eyes.
Did it really?
Yes, it's very sentimental. So, tell me, how did you get involved in the project?
Mitchell Cohen, the writer, brought it to me, and he didn’t even really bring it to me. He just mentioned that he was talking to these guys in the desert about a project that he was thinking of writing or he was writing a draft, and he said he’s doing it by design to be very economical in that it can be done very inexpensively. It can be done in the desert. We don’t need effects. We don’t need a lot of things. So he says it’s about a guy – he’s a vocalist. And I had met Gene Pietragallo, who stars in the film, once before. We crossed at another time, probably years earlier, but not in this capacity. It was more on a video project or something, but I didn’t know he did any singing or acting or really anything like that. Anyway, he talked to me about it and I said, “Oh, that seems like a nice project,” and that was it, and then he asked me if I’d take a look at it, and I read it and I thought, “Hmm, this could work out.”
Then he said, “Well, there’s a guy in the desert that was going to direct it. He can come up with a little money.” If we had a dime for every time in L.A. somebody said they had money to fund something … I don’t need to tell you about that. But anyway, that was probably falling through. I said, “I’ll tell you what, I’d be interested in doing it if I could, you know; I saw some things I’d like to add to it and take some things out and add some things.” I said, “but before that, let me go meet these guys in the desert,” and that was primarily Gene and Terry Frazier, who … came up with the basic storyline. So anyway, I went out there, and I met them and asked them what they wanted to do, and they told me and I said, “OK.” And I kind of left there knowing I can do this because I knew that we can get the money, and I knew that it was simple enough to do. And it wasn’t out of reality to conceive that you can do something like this in a small amount of time.
What was the budget?
I made this film for under $200,000.
Wow!
Probably actually shot it for 180, to be exact. I mean, shot it and edited it and done, less music rights and things like that, which cost almost as much as the film.
When I watched it, I did say to myself, "they must’ve had music budget?”
Yeah, close to 100 grand, after the fact, had to go to secure Mack the Knife, and that’s for nontheatrical, but I thought it was so important and that’s what it cost.
A 100 grand for Mack the Knife?
Yeah, it was $60,000 or $70,000, close to that. It’s actually one of the highest royalties you can pay. Figure we picked that one, right? But it kind of picked us. Anyway, so one thing led to another, and my ideas was we’ll use no names. That’s how it started: no-names … because that’s the only way you can do it. Then the more I looked at it, I said, “You know, let me get one guy. Let me get like one guy to be like Jerry.” Because I know that there are guys in that category: older, comedic, guys that would demand a lot of money that you can actually kind of approach now. So I called Ferne Cassel, who was our casting director–and she’s a friend of mine because we had been associated earlier–and I sent her the script and she loved it, and I said, “Look, I’m going to give you five people that I’d like to see,” and Elliott was at the top of the list. A lot of stuff happened between there and there, but eventually he got a hold of it. He liked it, he called me up. I’m riding my bicycle one day, and he calls me on my cellphone because my number was on the script, and he said he wanted to meet me. And that was the beginning.
Wow, that was very cool!
Yes, he was very supportive and great to work with.
So, what did you shoot it on?
The Red camera.
And you shot it in eight days?
Yes.
Was all the voiceover in the original script, or did you add that later to cut down on shooting days?
Yes, originally it was written and again, by design, we knew that a lot of the storytelling would have to be told via the voiceover and so, by design, it was laid in like that. Now, there were a lot of changes made in the interim, but we knew a lot of the storytelling was going to be done through the voiceover. And it was shot, I think, in seven to eight days with basically a day of pickup in Burbank because we did a couple of … flashback scenes … in Burbank. … if you combined it all, it was about eight and a half days.
That's moving fast?
Yeah, there was a day I shot 21 pages.
Oh, my lord!
Yeah, because you just can’t fall in love with the process - on this kind of budget and schedule - of, “Oh, that was great. Let’s do it again,” because you don’t need to. I was fortunate in that all the people that I had were very good, and they understood the feeling. And … by getting the emotion that you did, those are people who get it. So there wasn’t a lot. I always believe with direction, you have a good story and you have good people. You just basically need to know, through what eyes would you like to see this? Where do you put the camera? There’s very little about telling them how to do their craft, for God’s sake. They know how to do that. How much coverage do you need? Probably not that much, especially for something like this. You know where you kind of want to be. You know how close you want to get. They do it. “Do you want to do it again?” “No, actually not. Number one, we don’t have the time, and that one was just fine.” I don’t believe in overshooting. Especially in these things where you don’t have all these other, like with big-effect films and things, there’s no excuse. There’s no reason with professionals that you should have to do things. That was the only reason we finished it, because I made some decisions and stuck with them, hoping that it all cuts.
Because when you’re going that fast, it’s so easy to find that you get into the edit and you go, “Oh, my God. I didn’t cover that, and I have nowhere to go.” That can happen especially with simple dialogue … you drop a line, or he blinked funny there, but there’s nowhere else to go. We prayed a lot as well that we got what we did and, believe me, there were some problems. It wasn’t like we got there and it was all seamless. We got in the editing room, and there were some things where we’d go, “This is it. I think the train is coming head on.” But you avoid it because you have to. It’s not like you can give up and say, “Well, we gave it a shot.” You have to finish it, and you have to make it something that people will enjoy. Not just finish it, but finish it, and let people think that I’ll pay a dollar or 10 or whatever to see it, and I will feel like it was worth my time. That’s the goal. Many times it’s not just completing the film, which these days is hard enough, but completing it and doing something that you want to put your name on that people wouldn’t mind taking an hour and a half out of their lives to watch.
How much time did you spend editing?
It was longer only in that we didn’t have the luxury, again, when you work with talented people and you don’t have a lot of money, you have to work around schedules and things like that, and I was there 100% of the time. So it was me and Mitchell and Eric Weston got together. I think if you added it up, it was probably maybe a concentrated four weeks.
Did you cut it on Final Cut, Premiere or Avid?
It was Final Cut.
For the post, did you do the mix on a dubbing stage, or did you basically do it all in the computer?
We had a lot of ADR only because … for example, in the deli when Elliott is talking to Leah, all of a sudden it was lunchtime. We couldn’t buy the entire deli. We don’t have the money for that. So before you know it, there’s like 100 people within 10 feet of me talking about food and pouring clinking glasses. It was overbearing, like an ocean of noise. Nothing you can do about it–nothing. That was 100% ADR. It was 100%. Also, one of my favorite little stories and anecdotes is that scene where Tony sings in the senior center; this is where I fought not to ADR. There were some hisses, there were some pops, again, running so fast. The music was added later. The piano wasn’t live. It was done, Gene was able to listen to it in an earpiece, but no one else in the place heard it. But it had a lot of sonic or sound problems that when you put the headphones on in the edit bay, you hear hisses and pops, and it’s not pristine.
So virtually everyone around my close team said, “You must ADR this. It’s not good enough.” I always believed that people will forgive an imperfection if the performance is good. I said, “There is no way that that man is going to sit in a booth several weeks later and go to the place that he was there and make that sell. No way, not going to happen. I’ll fall on my sword on this one, but we’re not going to ADR it. We’ll clean it up the best we can.” The guy broke apart nicely. My DP was crying in a closet shortly after he shot it. He walked away and was crying on the scene. So no, we knew that worked. I was just going to leave it alone, and I think I made the right decision because I just don’t believe you can go back and redo that.
You made the right decision.
Thank you.
Did you try to get a theatrical distribution, because you did well on the Festival circuit?
Yeah, we did well on the festival circuit. And there are a lot of upside-down deals. We were offered several distribution deals … and, frankly, the ones that we received, while I could’ve told everyone and my executive producers and people who helped us, “Oh, we have distribution,” to me, that would be like telling somebody, “Oh I have a job, but it’s costing me $8.00 an hour to have it.” It didn’t make economic sense because we put too much into it, and it was done at such a low number that we don’t need this to make a billion dollars or even a million dollars or even $500,000 to be really good. I knew that the product was good enough, that I wasn’t going to just give it away simply to tell somebody I have the name of a distributor because they just wanted too much. And I just didn’t believe that it was worth that. I know we have a good product. I know that people react to it once they see it. My problem is, I don’t have a machine to push it. People like you, you’re the machine. I have people who believe in the cause. … We don’t have the arm to make it go, and it’s too small for the bigger distribution houses because they have to consider what the budget is, and I did it for such a ridiculous amount of money. You do a horror film for that, and people will try and get to you all day. I’m not interested in that, and that’s not what we did. And I believe there’s an audience that will appreciate that and there’s an audience for horror. They’re two different things.
I think there is. Your background is in commercials isn't it? And you own a production company, correct?
My company does several … I did commercials, and now it’s a lot of corporate film, corporate videos. I've actually tailed off on some of the commercial work because I’m doing more film stuff. I have another film in development right now. Although that company is still doing very well, it allows me to take the time to not only develop new projects but push Tony Duran along. This is still kind of where I want to go. I’d like to make a picture like this or something maybe every two years, but that company does very well with corporate clients that I met while I was in the ad business.
What did you do in the advertising industry?
I was a writer. I was a copywriter, and then I was a senior writer, and then I was a writer agency producer, and that’s when I left in about, I think it was the year 2001. I decided I’m going to – one of the things is I had clients who knew that, and I helped build some agencies, like the agency I was with, I helped it. We were billing $17 million when I was there, and when I left, we grew it to 200 people, and it was billing like $60 million. But part of the reason–it certainly wasn’t just because of me, obviously, it’s a team of people–but my clients who knew me when I’d sit around the table, they knew that I knew how to spend their money. In other words, I wasn’t spending their money to make myself look good, that I felt that if they were giving us a budget, that I had a responsibility to bring them income, and it wasn’t about doing something funny or pretty necessarily … and they understood that. Some of those people helped finance my film 15 years later because it’s credibility. … I scanned some of your questions, and I think one of your questions–since we’re talking about it now; it’s kind of appropriate–is the advice to filmmakers. The festival response was so great. People felt, as you did, we had people applaud–and it’s very rare in an independent film–you have people applauding during the credits. But I was lucky enough to be at all those screenings and just sit in there with everyone else. They didn’t know I was there or they didn’t care. They just reacted to the film, and that’s a nice thing. So I would go do Q&A afterward, and they would stay. Everyone stayed for an hour or two, and we’d finally say, “We have to quit,” but it was a nice feeling, and people would line up and ask me questions.
There was one young guy, and he was a filmmaker and he said, “Do you have any advice? I love the way you did this, and it’s a great story, how you put it together.” It’s a story about how I found a $20 bill on the ground, and that was my first deposit to make the movie. And that’s a true story, but there were several like that, that’s all about the making of Tony Duran and he said, “So what advice do you have to give me?” … and I’m sure he expected something like a telling you how to do it story, cinematography, or directing, but I said, “If you tell someone you’re going to be somewhere at 9:00, be there at 10 ‘til 9:00. If you owe somebody money, pay it back. These are things that if people can’t trust you with their money, they’re not going to trust you to run a film or production or lemonade stand or anything if you can’t be trusted to finish something, to get it done, to not go nuts. It’s really credibility. Build that and then the rest. If you have any talent, that will rise to the surface and people will see that. But if you’re simply an artist who has no credibility, no one’s going to trust you. No one’s going to hand you that kind of money, whether it’s $200,000 or $200,000,000, it’s still money and it’s still other people’s money, and they’re not going to trust you to run a production unless they think that you’re credible.”
That was really my thing, especially with younger people now, where it doesn’t seem to me, not to sound like my dad, but the younger people now, they don’t seem to have that. They don’t seem to know that if you say something, you kind of have to mean it in business. If you say you’re going to be there at 10:00, you don’t show up at 10:40 and say, “What’s up?” You can’t do that.
No, you’re absolutely correct. Credibility and integrity is really all you got.
It kind of is, and it sounds kind of hack, but at the end of it all, I think that’s what it is, because I know a lot of talented people that are broke. I know a lot of very brilliant people, with my limited education, thankfully I’m doing better than a lot of those people, and it’s not because I’m smarter. Maybe it’s because of credibility. Maybe it’s because I have ambition. I don’t know. It’s all those things, but I think that ambition and credibility trump a lot of other things in life.
I think that’s all very true. What do you think of the advertising industry in the Internet age? Where do you think advertising is going?
It used to be that wit and cleverness and the ability to write a headline, and things like that would sell products. And I think now, it’s how fast can you let people know that you’re out. Because the attention span isn’t the same, and people don’t appreciate the writing as much as they did then. It’s not necessarily about great campaigns. Yeah, there are some good campaigns out there, but I think now it’s much more immediate. It’s much more how fast. They call one person and within the speed of sound, the speed of light, they can get to another company. It’s not like they have to spend a lot of time, you know. It’s hard to sell people anymore. They just need to know what’s the fastest, what’s the fastest way to connect the dots. That’s why the word branding came back. Branding was back from when I was little; Campbell’s soup and Nestle chocolate and jingles, and people laughed at them in the ’70s and ’80s. … but guess what they’re doing now? I hear people all the time say, “Oh, you remember that great beer commercial with the horses?” “What beer was it?” “Oh, I don’t remember, but it had horses in it.”
Well, to me, that beer company just blew $100 million because they’ve got horses and they bought airtime, but nobody knows what the hell they’re selling. With a jingle and with branding, you’re always linked to that. So that’s kind of coming back because they realize it’s not that stupid. It actually works, because I can remember jingles from when I was 4. There must be a reason for that. So I think people are coming back to that, but a lot of it has to do now with, like I said, it’s the speed in which they get information, but also a lot of it is sometimes being funny just for being funny’s sake. And I’m not sure that what people do actually sells products. I don’t think there are enough people thinking about what sells something rather than, “How funny can I be?” or, “How great of a commercial can I art direct?” It’s more about, how can you sell? So while there may be great campaigns, to me, it’s always about who sells the most product. That’s the greatest campaign. Creative art, people like that, Tellys, CLIOs, they’ll tell you by industry professionals, “This was the cleverest. This was the funniest. This one looked the coolest.” Ask the client how many loaves of bread he sold. That’s really what it is.
I've been able to kind of walk the line. I can do both. I feel I can do both, but I think there’s a time and place that you can do both if you’re clever enough. But at the end of it all, if you spend a client’s money foolishly, you’re probably not going to get it again, and they will go to somebody else who will promise them the moon, and they probably won’t get it, and they’ll go to somebody else. And that’s why advertising … that’s why they desperately need to hold onto clients because although they can be sold a bill of goods, the proof is, what did my profits look like after we ran that? That’s what it comes down to.
I agree. So, tell me the $20-bill story.
So I’m walking down … some of us are walking down the street. We were ready to open an account to actually start production. We didn’t even have a bank account in Palm Desert. So we’re walking down the street. I’m waiting for some money to be wired. I had put a check in or I had the check that I was going to deposit, but I was waiting for money to be wired, but I physically didn’t have anything in my hand. It was running so close because we had just gotten Elliott, we just got confirmation through SAG, and everything was finally buttoned up because those things can get very complicated, especially when you don’t have any money or very little. So we were so against the wire because Elliott’s window was only so big, which means we had a date we had to get in on, and so all of a sudden it was, hurry up and get it done.
We’re walking down the street and I’m realizing, “We don’t have … ” and just as I’m thinking that, a $20 bill blows across the sidewalk in front of me. I stop and I look at Gene, Gene looked at me, and we didn’t need to say anything. I picked up the $20, we walked into the bank, I said “Hi, we’re going to start a production company. We’re going to shoot a film here with Elliott Gould in about a week and a half. I’d like to open this with this $20 bill I just found in the street,” and this woman looks at us like we’re completely from Mars, and I think she realized we weren’t joking. I told her what just happened and she said, “Well, I can’t normally do that, but if what you just told me is true, and I think it is, I’ll do it.” She was at the premiere in Palm Springs, and I announced her and she stood up and verified my story. [Laugh]
That’s a great story. So Elliott told us a story: Gene had difficulty doing the filming and wanted to pull out. What was all that about?
Gene, yeah, what happened was, as you saw, he lost an enormous amount of weight. He lost 40 plus pounds in a few months and everything was fine during the first five to seven days, but that last day when we shot the finale, which was the musical number at the end when he loses the weight, we shot that in a day. We left after principal and we said, “OK, Gene. Goodbye. The circus is leaving town. Go lose the weight. Bye” and I think the reality hit him that, all of a sudden, “I've got to climb Mount Everest, and I’m kind of by myself.” He had some difficulties. He had some demons he was fighting. He had some issues, and he kind of slid back into those things. And it looked like at one point we weren’t going to be able to finish the picture because –
How long did it take him to lose the weight?
Let’s see, about five and a half months.
So you shot the entire film, and then you came back and did the finale when he’d lost the weight?
Correct. And we knew that. We knew it would be dependent on that. But we just didn’t expect there to be a bump in the road as big as it was to where we thought we couldn’t finish it the way we wanted to finish it. Because we thought he was just going to check out, which meant that I had to come up with another ending. So imagine me going back, the guy that everybody trusted, making a phone call or sending an email saying, “Remember that ending? Go with me now. Now the guy gets killed,” because you can never just not finish it. My job was to then say, “OK. Let’s get together, and let’s rewrite another ending because we can’t force. We can’t have a guy at gunpoint to lose weight and show up. We can’t make that happen.” I never thought it would, but it looks like it did. One thing led to another, and Elliott spoke with him, and my DP, Ken, spoke with him, and I spoke with him. And it was a long story, but it came back in fairytale fashion, and he came in and hit it out of the park.
That’s terrific. Was this his life story?
It wasn’t. It’s kind of loosely based on Gene in that he was in - that footage that you see in the beginning of watching on the VCR - that’s him. That is him doing Bobby Darin 30 something years ago and he was a soap star and he was on Hill Street Blues and he did episodic TV, Magnum, P.I. and things like that. But then he did kind of go away and have some, you know, probably dealt with some dark things and thought it was gone, and then he kind of came back. I was a part of that just because of my timing and brought him to the forefront. And he does such a great job that I think people need to see him because he does such a great job.
He does. Well, this is great, Fred. Thank you for your time. I shall tell everyone to go rent this movie.
Thank you.
The Encore of Tony Duran is now available to rent or buy click iTunes, or Amazon.
Click to read my article with Elliot Gould, one of the stars of The Encore of Tony Duran.
Photo Credit from The Encore of Tony Duran - Mark Mecalis/Mecalis Photography
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The Sorrows of Satan By Marie Corelli
A Book Review
By Alexander Ostroff
London, 1895, and struggling writer Geoffrey Tempest is at the end of his rope. Things change with the arrival of three letters. The first contains a loan of 50 pounds from a buddy in Australia. The second letter is from a law firm informing Tempest that a distant relative left him five million pounds. The third is from Prince Lucio Rimanez, who claims to be a friend of a friend. Rimanez will soon be in London and wants to help Tempest get his book published. Before he can even catch his breath, someone knocks on the door.
Tempest opens the door and finds himself confronted by the towering, majestic figure of Prince Lucio Rimanez. Talk about good timing. He offers Tempest a noble hand and slight bow. Tempest naively invites him into his arctic flat, and so begins a rather unusual friendship.
Rimanez is something of a cross between Peter the Great, Carl Jung, and Jay Gatsby. Sometimes he’s a sarcastic, judgmental chatterbox prone to giving Tempest lengthy sermons on the depravity of mankind. Such cynical ruminations would be tiring were it not for their eerie foresight. It was as if author Marie Corelli was a soothsayer describing 21st-century society. Other times Rimanez is a shadowy, Hannibal Lecter-esqe sphinx.
After collecting his money, Tempest purchases a huge mansion. Rimanez introduces him to the most powerful families in London, and grooms him in the ways of the upper class. Naturally, publishing is no longer an issue. Same publishers who showed Tempest their nose hairs now have a change of heart; after Tempest pulls out his gilded checkbook.
Tempest meets the beautiful Lady Sibyl, daughter of a powerful aristocrat. She’s a total bitch and coma-inducing dullard, and all her friends are narrow-minded philistines. Despite such trivial inadequacies, Tempest falls in love, and they get married. Apparently Tempest cannot see that something is off. He comfortably settles into a life of 12-course meals, free-flowing booze, and endless parties.
Tempest discovers that life as an upper-class gentleman is ripe with bizarre melodrama. The petty power struggles, love triangles, and ubiquitous gossip would cause any intelligent man to commit Seppuku. Once full of vibrant inquisitiveness, Tempest accepts intellectual apathy as his default mode, and parties on. Days flow into nights, and his previously athletic physique grows bloated and slothful. Bookstores line their shelves with his novel. Glowing reviews proclaim Tempest a literary genius. None of this brings him any professional satisfaction. Tempest is more depressed now than when he was clawing the desk in his tiny apartment. He desperately tries to write again, but nothing of worth takes shape. It’s no help that Sibyl is the exact opposite of a muse—and there’s nothing Rimanez can do to help. Through gritted teeth, Rimanez reluctantly explains to Tempest that creativity and inspiration come from God.
Tempest finds out that one of his neighbors is Mavis Clare, a self-made best-selling author of Christian novels. She easily forgives Tempest for the scathing reviews he once wrote about her work. Kind, spiritual, and refreshingly intelligent, Mavis is truly a breath of fresh air. All her good qualities, however, cannot extinguish the seething envy burning inside Tempest. It’s completely obvious that Corelli based Mavis on herself. Even their initials are the same.
Things become strange when Mavis meets Rimanez. Through a series of fascinating interactions, she becomes the first person to uncover his true identity. This sets into motion a chain reaction of events. We learn that Rimanez is lonely and bored. His job has become so easy that it no longer offers him much of a challenge. Still, retirement is not an option. Business is just too damn good!
Tempest finally realizes what he got himself into. He more or less tells Rimanez to, ahem, go to hell. Before long, Tempest loses his entire fortune, and his life falls apart. He ends up in the middle of the ocean on Rimanez’s yacht, about to commit suicide. In his darkest hour, Tempest finds the strength to pray to God, and as a result, avoids a watery grave. He returns to the conditions of his previous life, except now he’s a new man; reborn and redeemed of all his sins.
Overall, Correlli is heavy handed with the social and religious themes that underlie the story. Nevertheless, she manages to wash over these flaws by delivering a stunningly imaginative, entertaining, and thought-provoking tale. What’s even more interesting than the book is Corelli herself. More than a century before J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer, Corelli was the first female superstar author; outselling all of her popular contemporary writers combined.
What may seem like serendipity was in fact a pioneering literary operation by an extremely cunning lady.
Back then, biblical themes were etched into the minds of the common populace. This was the Victorian Age. Society was–at least on the outside–extremely reserved about sex and sexuality. Corelli played on all of this. Moreover, she shrewdly weaved New Age mysticism into her books. Such a mash-up was unthinkable at the time, yet she did it in a way that fascinated both her staunch Christian readers and the rapidly growing New Age movement. Corelli tirelessly lambasted the upper class in her books. Money was considered a dark force that could, given the chance, muddy up the pure souls of working-class, God-fearing citizens.
Her readership was cultish, to put it mildly. Corelli never had to worry about anyone discovering that in real life she had nothing in common with her books. She lived with a female companion, Bertha Vynera, for more than 40 years, and left Vynera her entire estate. Rumors began to fly that she was a lesbian. Her fans felt these rumors were fabricated by envious writers and their publishers. In their minds, it was impossible for such an angelic Christian writer to be a homosexual. Corelli never confirmed or denied anything. In fact, she and Vynera often attended social events together. This was extraordinarily brave for 19th-century Europe.
Those who accused Corelli of being a socialist were probably ecstatic to learn that she was extremely wealthy, and all of it self made. Corelli was an aggressive businesswoman who would ram her fist down the throats of publishers and bookstores for every penny of royalties owed to her. As a result, she enjoyed the best of everything, lived in a palatial estate, and hobnobbed with the elite of society. Hypocritical and disingenuous? Well, a writer is under no obligation to live by the doctrines of her fiction.
Corelli tailored her stories to the specific psychology and mindset of the commoner. This worked because 19th-century society was far less complicated. Today such tactics wouldn’t work, at least not in the way Corelli applied them. Our society is indecipherably mercurial. There are billions of opinions on billions of subjects, and both the subjects and opinions change a billion times. This is one of the reasons why marketing has become so frighteningly invasive. But I digress. What does this mean for the modern writer? It means don’t think about any of this bullshit and tell the stories you want tell.
You can purchase this novel at Amazon Books.
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What The Heck Is Transmedia?
And How I Found Myself In This Strange World
By Mira Zimet
I met my husband on Match.com. I had been divorced a year, and he was the ninth or 10th person I met. We married three years later, and a few years after that, I embarked on a master’s degree in writing. I wanted to find a way to tell the story of the mating dance in the 21st century. I could write it or, having been a documentary writer/producer for almost 20 years, I could film it. But all that had been done. Was there another way to tell this story? Was there a way to bring in both of these skill sets? At this point I stumbled across the new, newfangled term “transmedia.”
In a nutshell, transmedia is telling a story or rather, extending a story across different platforms. It isn’t a book made into a movie, but rather a book or blog or Twitter feed or live event centered around a character or theme that wasn’t fully explored in its original medium and has been extended on other platforms.
To quote University of Southern California Professor Henry Jenkins*, who said, “A story like Heroes or Lost might spread from television into comics, the web, alternate reality or video games, toys, and other commodities picking up new audiences as it goes and allowing the most dedicated fans to drill deeper. The fans, in turn, may translate their interests in the franchise into concordances and Wikipedia entries, fan fiction, vids, cosplay [costume play], game mods and a range of other participatory practices that further extend the story world in new directions.”
My first reaction was, “Wow.” My second reaction was, “I’ve got to try that.”
At The Starting Gate
While some people begin their transmedia project as an add-on to something they’ve already worked on, it seemed simpler to dream up the whole concept at once. Since my master’s at USC was going to be in writing, I knew my project would originate in the written form, then move from there. I was already diving into unfamiliar territory in terms of form, so I chose a storyline based on some of my own experiences.
Thus, Connie Casey was born. She was 42, divorced three years, with two teenaged kids. She worked as a vice principal at a local elementary school and was ready to start dating again. While it wasn’t my story, it was a story I hoped would be relatable to other women. With the basic idea in place, I imagined how I could turn this concept into a transmedia project.
Creating The Bible
The bible is where you dream, where you come up with all the ways in which this scenario can live on different platforms and in different worlds. It’s similar to a treatment or an outline in that it includes the story you are telling and character descriptions, but in addition, you factor in all the other elements you plan to use and how to integrate them.
As I imagined Connie’s character, I also took into consideration which platforms would interest her. She would be on Facebook and Pinterest. She would journal and read blogs. As I created her children, her daughter, Dora, came to life with a cellphone in hand; and her son, Ben, ended up being a computer-game junkie.
One of the interesting aspects of transmedia is that fiction and non-fiction can co-exist. In order to keep everything straight in my head and the minds of my readers, I created three different worlds.
The first world is one of total fiction, and runs about 100 pages long. The story begins when Connie finds out her ex-husband is having a baby. His new wife posted the news on Facebook as soon as she took the test. This becomes the catalyst that pushes Connie to restart her own life, and thus sets the story in motion. In addition to standard third-person prose, I also included texts, emails, Facebook posts, journaling, and transcripts to push the story forward.
The second world I created is one in which these fictitious characters have actual presence on social-media platforms. Connie is on Pinterest, Spotify, and Facebook. I have also created a Facebook page for two of Connie’s fictional friends, Kim and Eva. Readers can choose to follow and interact with Connie on any of these platforms.
The third world I created is non-fiction. Because of my background in documentary filmmaking, I wanted to include a video portion in this story. I videotaped interviews with a group of women ranging in age from 35 to late-50s, talking about issues of post-divorce dating that the fictional character encounters. These videos , 30 seconds to two-minutes in length, are embedded in the book and posted to YouTube.
Other aspects of the non-fiction world revolve around Connie’s interaction with blogs on the Internet. These links are created to extend the story into other people’s worlds. For example, Connie gets a text from a guy after a first date and wonders how long she should wait to respond. She uses Google to find the answer, and included in the book is the site she found that gives her advice. Finally, I included quizzes and polls in the story to test the reader’s reactions to Connie’s decisions, as well as their own readiness to start dating again.
Starting To Write
Once the bible was complete, I wrote the actual story, and at the same time started to build the characters’ lives on Facebook and Pinterest. This process took about six months. One of my early struggles was telling a story using all of these different mediums. I ended up setting up some of the scenes with play-like introductions that helped ground the reader so they wouldn’t get lost in the changing narratives of prose, texts, emails, etc. I waited until the first draft of the book was finished before I started the video component. I wanted to make sure that the questions I asked would mimic the same type of thoughts and issues that were coming up for Connie in her searches. As I looked for other examples of how writers dealt with this situation, I found none that mimicked what I was trying to do. I realized that because of this I was treading new territory, so it gave me a chance to make up my own rules and approach the writing process in an innovative way.
Integrating Transmedia
Once the written part and all of the components were developed, the next challenge was to find the best format that would allow the reader to interact with all of the story’s different elements. I wanted it to be as seamless as possible, so I spent weeks researching all my options, and I was surprised by the limited amount of good choices available to build an interactive book. I needed a platform that would allow me to embed videos, add photos, and link to the Internet. I settled on a free program created by Apple called iAuthor. This program would allow me to include all of the interactive features I’d developed. Its only drawback was that it could only be accessible on an iPad. iAuthor had a fairly easy learning curve, and there were a lot of tutorials online to help navigate any questions. The main issue with iAuthor is it was really developed for non-fiction and textbooks, and is set up in such a way that the writer needed to create an introduction section before each chapter. Needless to say, books don’t usually have an introduction, and I was able to find a way to delete it. iAuthor was also filled with lots of cool widgets for adding interactive material. I used quite a few, including a map widget that allows readers to tap on the page to call up a map of where the story takes place. At the same time, I also created a website using WordPress so that readers could access all the other interactive elements, such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Spotify. There is also a link on the page to the YouTube videos.
This was truly an enriching experience on many levels. It allowed me to take advantage of my skills in visual storytelling to combine text, video, and social-media content in order to tell a story in a completely different way.
Additionally, in creating this transmedia project for a distinct audience, my hope is that they discover a new way a story can be told.
You can download Mira's book here for free from iTunes or link from this website by clicking on the "read e-book link." I'd love to hear your feedback!
*Click here for a look at Henry Jenkins's Transmedia Syllabus
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10 Things I Want In A Filmmaker:
My Soul Mate Director
By Brette Goldstein
Brette Goldstein is a NYC-based casting director for indie film and commercials. She’s cast more than 40 films. Brette loves actors, bromance comedies, and carbs.
I was single around the time The Secret came out. My other single friends and I used to list the criteria of our ideal soul mate. We believed that if we wrote it all down, putting it out into the universe, we’d manifest our visions (like WEIRD SCIENCE.) Ridiculous or not, we dorked out hard on that Secret stuff…and I must admit that it did work out for me; I married a smart, funny, talented man who looks like Seth Rogen.
With that success in mind, I’m writing down my Secret list of what I want in a filmmaker – my Soul Mate Director (SMD). If you make movies and want to have a great long-term relationship with a casting director, you might want to tack this list to your fridge.
1. SMD’s got their shit (and script) together.
The script is SMD’s baby and she/he cares about that baby. No careless mistakes, typos, misplaced apostrophes, spelling or grammatical errors. Sloppy is unprofessional, and SMD ain’t sloppy.
SMD’s hired a great producer who knows that I need a SAG-AFTRA production number in order to release a breakdown. This means paperwork has to be filed.
SMD knows how to write a breakdown and understands that agents can be ADD. Gender, age, prototypes (“the masculinity, sex appeal and leading man looks/command of Jon Hamm with the subtle, dry humor of Jason Bateman”) and physical look lead each character description, followed by the energy and “feel” of the character. SMD knows that a breakdown is not the place to go into lengthy descriptions of plot points and character arc.
It goes without saying that my SMD takes care to return phone calls, emails and texts in a timely manner, and answers questions thoroughly and as decisively as possible. Casting is often a quick and dirty process. If I’m emailing managers at 2am on a Saturday, fighting for our dream cast and staying on the phone with LA reps until 11pm EST after a 9-hour session, I want to know that we’re all in this together..
2. SMD is connected and/or is very realistic.
SMD plays poker every Tuesday with Bobby Cannavale and Sam Rockwell and has no qualms about asking either to be in her/his film. SMD went to college with So-n-So and gets high on Thursday nights with Such-n-Such. It’s almost always an uphill battle with agents when dealing with a low budget film and a filmmaker with less street cred than Jason Reitman. Good thing SMD drinks beer with the buddies she/he wants to make movies with.
Or…she/he’s a real mensch and gets it that big names get big offers (and little ones) a lot. SMD does not expect that Jennifer Lawrence will jump at the chance to attach her name to his/her project, thereby attracting millions of investment dollars and a distro deal. SMD is realistic according to the time parameters for production and knows that I can only make one offer at a time. We’re on the same page about offer deadlines. SMD rolls with the punches and travels down the road with my team as we fight the good fight.
3. SMD is funny.
Levity is a good thing. SMD thinks that life is shitty enough as it is and not all indie films need to be so dang dark. SMD knows how to bring the funny – even simple, small moments of humor.
SMD also doesn’t expect actors to take a shell of a script and turn it into a comedic gem. This filmmaker loves Curb Your Enthusiasm and Waiting For Guffman, but also knows that – for now – she/he is neither Larry David nor Christopher Guest. SMD knows that - for now - it would be in her/his best interest to provide a great script to the great actors we bring into the room or make direct offers to. (Their reps will appreciate this, too.)
4. SMD is hooked up with at least enough money or money potential for me to do a dog and pony show.
There are a lot of projects out there that simply never get where they need to be in terms of financing and simply don’t get green lit. Many of these projects have names attached.
When it comes to investment dollars, my consummate client Will Get His/Hers, by hook or by crook. (Well, hopefully by more hook, less crook.) SMD has already lined up most of what she/he needs financially to make the movie happen by the time my team gets hired. If the production company is only part of the way to their financial goal, at least there’s solid communication with potential investors. For example, I can go to Agent A at WME with a solid offer for Actor B, knowing that Investor C will throw a quarter million into the project if Actor B (or three other names, should she/he pass) attaches. It’s certainly an easier call to make on my part and vet on the agency’s part.
5. SMD is good to actors. And maybe gives an adjustment or two.
I love a director that puts out at callbacks. None of this, “Um, thanks, yeah, man, good job” janky hipster crap. This guy/gal knows that it wouldn’t kill her/him to give a note, as actors, by nature of being human and all, aren’t psychic and cannot read minds. I get it…”ya know when ya know” and we want the actor that just “is” the role…but actors are trained to make choices. My SMD will work with actors in the room using action words in adjustments (“She’s trying to get him to really hear her” as opposed to “She is sad because he’s kind of ignoring her”), which are playable for actors. Heck, actors are smart, why send ‘em away so quickly??
SMD lets actors read the script in advance of their auditions. SMD makes actors feel comfortable. SMD wants to work with good actors that are easy to work with.
6. SMD protects her/his creative process by letting his producer produce.
SMD can’t say enough about the brilliance of his production and creative team. SMD gets it that micro-managing isn’t the best choice. There’s an amazing line producer and 1st AD aboard. Budgets are clear, I know my offer range for each actor and it’s easy to piece the casting puzzle together, including answers to questions such as which roles are being cast locally, in NY, LA, etc.; and deal memo items, such as billing, on or abouts for shoot/hold dates and back end points.
My ideal director runs (or is at least on board) a tight ship. SMD knows how to delegate and make strong choices.
7. SMD’s not allergic to cats.
If SMD writes, she/he’s read books like Save the Cat!... or at some point actually learned how to write a good screenplay. SMD doesn’t shun formula and “all that Hollywood bullshit.” She/he’s got a pretty cool log line and keeps a typo-free feature script to less than 120 pages.
SMD knows how to tell a good story well.
8. SMD gets that Rooney Mara probably gets a shit-ton of offers. Daily.
SMD questions if stars and their deal memos will be worth it in the end. There are so few actors who can “guarantee distribution” or “open a film”. SMD wants to make a good movie, period.
There was a time when it was easier to get a script read by name actors, their reps and covering agents at big agencies. There was a time when it was easier to get letters of intent from talent. Nowadays, I drop scripts off at stage doors and Fed Ex them to houses. I’ll engage in a whole bunch of gorilla-shit because I don’t trust that a script will get to talent. I can understand why an agent or manager would not want their client to do some random filmmaker’s $200,000 film when they’re getting studio offers…it’s both a bottom line and a career trajectory issue.
Names are attractive. That said, it’s hard to get something for nothing… and SMD understands that even if their script is mind-blowing, an agent’s first question will most likely be “Is the project fully financed?” Agents will often ask for money in escrow to secure an offer. I’ll protect my SMD from making a pay-or-play offer that may put him or her in the hole if the film does not get green lit.
9. She/he has respect for the story she/he’s telling (and knows that these investor dollars could go elsewhere…).
I mean, we’re not curing cancer here, right? And think about how far $1.5M could go towards curing cancer. There are lots of films being made. SMD knows that if she/he’s gonna spend big money (and face it, even an ultra-low budget is big money when you really think about it) she/he should make something amazing…or at least really frickin’ entertaining.
10. SMD is just freakin’ good at what she/he does.
And SMD’ll be psyched when Ms. Mara comes sidling up at his/her big Sundance premiere party
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Fat
Hollywood’s Rise In Body Shaming, And Why It Won’t Stop
By Sa'iyda Shabazz
There’s an epidemic in Hollywood that has been spreading for a long time. Women are judged and punished for their body type. It goes back to the beginning of film, no question, the notion that stars should be beautiful. But there was once a time when Marilyn Monroe’s famous curves and Audrey Hepburn’s waif-like thinness could co-exist. Back then, Marilyn had the ideal body type; voluptuous, curvaceous, in a word: stacked. It’s funny that even though she’s still considered one of the most beautiful actresses of all time, by today’s standards she would be considered fat. A lot has changed in the 50+ years since Marilyn graced our screens. By today’s standards, Audrey Hepburn would be the ideal, but of course she’d have to have curves. It is a weird double standard. You have to weigh 90 pounds, but you also have to have full breasts and a round derriere. Finding a woman like that is almost impossible. The trend really started in the mid-1990s, when model Kate Moss ushered in the wave of “heroin-chic.” But nowadays, when the average American woman is a size 14, Hollywood must change its thinking.
Today’s blatant criticism of actresses who don’t fit the ideal body type is astounding. Female celebrities are expected to maintain the same weight their whole careers, even though we know that as a woman ages, her body changes. It is especially true if she has children. They are expected to be back to their pre-baby weight within months of giving birth, a trend Heidi Klum perpetuated when she walked the runway of the Victoria’s Secret fashion show a mere five weeks after giving birth to her fourth child in 2009. As a new mom, I know that in the first five weeks you should be worrying about your baby, not hitting the gym to pose in underwear. Ever since, women in Hollywood became expected to hit the gym as soon as the ink dried on the baby’s birth certificate. Those who don’t are mocked.
Recently, comedian Jay Mohr did just that to actress Alyssa Milano after they both appeared at a NASCAR event in early December. Mohr said, “It seems like she had a baby,” and said "I don’t give a s**t" … I read it on her gut. … Somebody sat in the director’s chair and was not wearing Spanx, and I was like ‘Jesus Christ.’ ” Milano gracefully took to Twitter to respond to him saying she felt sorry that he felt the need to “fat-shame” her and sent well wishes to Mohr’s wife, actress Nikki Cox, who had their child in 2011, the same year Milano gave birth to her son. While she seemed to take it all in stride, she admitted to Mario Lopez that “it hurt.” For the record, Mohr did apologize, stating in his blog that he took his joke “too far.” But he should have never been allowed to joke about it in the first place. Had Milano not responded, it would have been completely acceptable, and there’s a chance that many Hollywood executives agree with Mohr’s statements, but don’t publicly say so.
At the center of yet another fat-shaming issue is actress Jennifer Lawrence. An outspoken advocate against fat-shaming, she doesn’t realize that she is feeding right into the culture. In a Huffington Post piece, writer Jenny Trout points out how many of Lawrence’s indignant quotes can be construed as fat-shaming to genuinely fat actresses. In the year since her Oscar win, she has become somewhat of a martyr. A woman’s woman, shall we say. Young women and girls idolize her and hang on her every word, many of them going so far as to create GIF sets and memes that run rampant on Tumblr. They hang on every word she says, proclaiming her their new hero. She brags about eating unhealthy foods like McDonald’s, and claims to binge eat while watching Netflix in her rare time off. Yes, many young women also do this and therefore can relate, but they forget that regardless of what she may say, Lawrence still has a team of people to help her lose weight if and when she inevitably needs to. Trout also brings up the point that we accept this from Lawrence because contrary to popular belief, she still represents the ideal body type Hollywood is perpetuating, even though they now put it in a different package. Lawrence, even without speaking, is the girl most girls want to be. She’s sometimes blonde, her skin is taunt and slightly bronzed. Sure, she does have some curves, but they make her look sexy, not overweight, contrary to what she believes of herself.
If an actress who was genuinely overweight like for example Melissa McCarthy made the same claims as Jennifer Lawrence, it 
is safe to say that they would not be received with the same “you go, girl” attitude. Because if an overweight woman says that she would tell a higher up to f**k off if he told her to diet, she would be a bad example. Critics would be all over her for perpetuating an unhealthy lifestyle. So instead of being able to just have society accept the fact that she is heavier than your average actress, she must apologize for her size. Even though she has been able to be accepted for her talent, her size will always get in her way.
It is hard to say if this trend of blatant fat-shaming will subside anytime soon, but it is safe to say that it will probably get much worse before it gets better. The only true solution is to actually put into practice the body acceptance we claim to preach. The average person won’t accept the reality of society until Hollywood does. I don’t recommend holding your breath.
