Skip to main content

Confessions of an Independent Filmmaker 3: Breaking Sundance

The third part of my filmmakers guide/memoir went live on Amazon and Barnes and Noble today.

It documents what was perhaps the most stressful two weeks of my life: promoting a film during the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.

We made a film about the whole experience called The Misbehavers, but because of legal issues with those involved in it, music licensing, and the threat of lawsuits, it will never see release. In fact, I"m almost counting days until I get a cease and desist about this book. But since everything contained herein is the truth, and I have video evidence and journal entries to back up my story, I'm not too worried about anything like that affecting me.

But in case it does, buy the book now.

Here's the trailer for the movie the book is inspired by:



Here's the blurb from Amazon:

In the third part of his "Confessions of an Independent Filmmaker" series, he documents his time promoting a film called Abby Singer at the Sundance Film Festival. Abby Singer featured Brad Pitt and Jake Gyllenhaal and was renowned for its guerilla marketing campaigns. From stealing cameos to breaking into every major film studio lot to drop trailers, Abby Singer had done it all. And when it wasn't programmed in the Sundance Film Festival, the filmmakers turned to the author and his cohorts to market the film.

They navigated the strict laws against most forms of film promotion in Park City, Utah, and launched one of the most talked about marketing campaigns in the festival's history.

This first hand account brings readers through the drama, the struggles, and the marketing avenues taken to put the name "Abby Singer" on the tip of every tongue during one of the biggest independent film festivals in the world.

Be sure to check out Part 3 on on Amazon and Barnes and Noble today.

Here's Part 1 (Amazon)
And Part 2 (Amazon and Barnes and Noble)
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

50+ Rules and Tips About Writing I've Collected Over the Years

I have twenty or thirty notebooks and journals filled up with snippets about writing, my plans for stories, bits of dialogue, interesting ideas, plotlines, scraps of short stories, and a dozen other things. I carry one with me at all times and it takes me a couple of months to fill one up.

One of the things I've kept in one of my notebooks was a collection of writing tips and rules that I've collected over the years in my travels. From teachers, from books, from wherever. Most of my career has been spent screenwriting, so a lot of these are most applicable to that, but I wanted to present them so they might be of use to you as well.

I've never stopped collecting these over the years and I never will.

To start the list are Kurt Vonnegut's eight rules of writing. They are the first in my notebook and, I think, the most useful. I'll add a star to those I think are applicable most to screenwriting. Some of these aren't applicable to everyone in every situation, but…
Read more

Anatomy of a Scene - City Lights

We're going to break down another scene this week, and it's one of my favorites in cinema history. It comes from the ending of City Lights by Charlie Chaplin, which I think is the greatest romantic comedy ever made. 
It's a touching film from 1931 and I would make it mandatory viewing for anyone who wants to learn to tell a story.
The scene we're going to be breaking down comes from the very end of the film, so if you haven't seen it, I don't want to spoil it for you. Go watch the film. You can rent it for $3.99 in HD on Amazon or for free on Hulu with a free trial or plus subscription. You should just buy the Blu-ray, though. You're going to want to revisit it.
For those of you familiar with the movie, or for those of you who are going to ignore my pleas to watch it and go ahead with this post anyway, I'm going to set this clip up a bit before you watch it.
City Lights tells the story of Chaplin's Tramp and how he falls in love with a blind flower …
Read more

Anatomy of an Opening: The End of the Affair

Instead of breaking down a scene from a movie, this time we'll break down the opening of a book. (Previously, I've done scenes from City Lights, Citizen Kane, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  I've also broken down the opening to Starship Troopers.) 

Graham Greene's The End of the Affair is absolutely one of my favorite books. The writing is lyrical and story heart-wrenching and beautiful. Greene's style of writing is such that he always has me gripped, whether it's the beginning of the book or the end. And he shows you so much about the character in his opening lines.

So, here are the first two paragraphs from the book:
A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which, to look ahead. I say 'one chooses' with the inaccurate pride of a professional writer who - when he has been seriously noted at all - has been praised for his technical ability, but d…
Read more