Friday, September 3, 2010

The Ultimate Foot in Mouth Situation

When I first moved out to Los Angeles as a screenwriting hopeful, I saw a film called "Wrong Turn" starring Eliza Dushku. After watching it, I thought to myself, "Thank God for this movie. It's shit like this that keeps me motivated because I know I can write a better script and make a better movie than this." That movie still sits in my head and reminds me how easy it is to waste $10 million. This could be the ultimate foot in the mouth scenario. I'm hoping to stop the "I could make a movie better than that" phase of my life and actually make a movie better than that.
Of course $10 million is not exactly the budget I have to work with. This has lead me to seek out films that have made either a limited release in theatres or straight to dvd. My first thought was looking at After Dark Films, Fangoria Filmfest, Dimension Extreme, Ghost House Underground: companies who have established themselves and now buy smaller budgeted, indie horror flicks. Diving deeper in the research, most of those movies are not quite as small budgeted as I had hoped. A lot of those movies are in the $5 - $10 million range.

As the search continued, I found myself going through the horror section at Blockbuster Video, starting at the letter A. I made a list of the films that seemed low budgeted and honestly, downright ghetto. Nevertheless, there are films that were made for under $500,000 that are on the shelves at a video store. And in theory, that's one of the goals: to get my movie to a place where people can see it.

Whether it's "The Curse of El Charro" (which uses the voice of Danny Trejo) for $200,000 or "Nightmare Man" for $250,000 (After Dark Films), the point is, these movies make it to shelves on Blockbuster Video. It's time for me to seek out my competition, and see what other people have done with such limited budgets.

So within the next few years, I'll have to sit down and watch the dreaded "Wrong Turn" again. Sorry Eliza, I'm just speaking from the heart. And I'll watch it, either chewing on popcorn with a look of satisfaction on my face that I did create something better, or I'll simply be eating the leather of my shoe to get my foot in my mouth.

ps...Producer Hat says, "Wrong Turn" has multiple sequels, which means it's a franchise...and wouldn't you Shaun, like to have a franchise? Yes, please.


  1. Jolly -great pen name, eh?September 7, 2010 at 11:31 AM

    Picoult makes the research list!!! Love it. I will have to reread. Love to have a reason to do so.

  2. It's my first Jodi Picoult novel. Figured it was time to see what she was all about.