Yep. It's done. And I don't mind telling you that it's easily the best movie I've done. With the score in, pieces of it are actually pretty damn good.
That's not to say it doesn't have its problems. There's a few things I wonder if people will pick up on, but I bet we get a lot more positive reviews for this one.
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NOTE: Will have a special Premiere Post with All New Pictures!
AUGUST 21st, 2007: The Abyss Beckons
Okay. I'm in a dark place right now. Not literally, but mentally.
Those who know me may be thinking, "Why?" And it really does show that everything is a matter of perception.
My premiere went well. There was between 350-400 people. We got some good press. People geniunely seemed to love the sequel.
But for me, still a partial failure. Even with all those people the theater cost more than I made in ticket sales. That's a very bad thing right now, as I've sunk all my money plus some into FOC2. I can't afford to go any more into debt.
And you have to understand; I am a deeply cynical and pessimistic person. I really am. I had the thought a while back that if I was Steven Spielberg you know what I'd be thinking right now?
Not "Wow, look at all the great films I've made and the millions of filmmakers I've influenced with my style."
I'd be thinking, "Why did I have to go and make Hook?"
Believe me, this is not how I want to be. I don't know why I think like this. Perhaps the opposite of "Ignorance is bliss" is true.
Regardless, I stand now on the brink of a giant decision. I feel like I did just before I shot "Hunting Humans". I was terrified. I was a twenty-six year old writer with minimal training in actually SHOOTING film. I had $11,000 saved, and a credit card with a $4000 limit. I had an amateur actor buddy who I thought was pretty good, but no other real actors that I had confidence in. I had hired a director of photography that I'd only talked to once; his reel looked good though, but who makes a reel with crappy footage?
There was this point where I thought--if I take this chance and fail, where will I stand? What will I have? No place to live, no money, and another failure on my list of failures.
But I jumped off the cliff on that one, and came up okay. Here I am again.
FOC2 doesn't have a distributor. Lionsgate wants it, sure. A couple of other companies have also contacted me. But I can almost guarantee none of them will pay me what I want for it.
What appears to happen is that the distributor makes all the money on the movie and throws scraps to the actual filmmaker. So for the past year I have been doing pretty extensive research into what it would take to become a distributor.
It's expensive. It's time-consuming. It's risky.
But if it pays off, it pays off BIG. So I'm sending out a screener of FOC2 to my rep tomorrow but I'm standing at the brink of simply going ahead with the plan to distribute and get the movie into Blockbuster/HV/Netflix/Amazon/Best Buy/etc on my own.
Scary scary stuff though.
